God is attentive to our prayers--and a powerful means of prayer

 So I've been going through some things in the past year, and I want to share something good God has done in my life.

My most recent employer has not been good to me.  It hasn't been all bad, and I've had some good bosses in the last couple years, but a lot of that is just "meeting basic levels of decency" kind of stuff.  When I hired on, it was a smaller privately-owned company (not exactly mom-and-pop, since we had a handful of locations around the country and at least one site each in England and China), so there was still a lot of the corporate attitude of "it's my ship and I'll sail it where I see fit," which gets unhealthy when the executives get rich and can manipulate the numbers well enough to fool a board of directors who aren't particularly savvy to the industry.  It got better since then, but there were some holdovers from the previous regime:  managers who have been described as comic book villains, and people under them who don't even bother hoping the mangers' malfeasance is addressed even when it becomes a topic for discussion in production meetings.

One of them--not my boss, but I had to work with one of his mildly disturbed subordinates who retired when covid hit, so suddenly he had to pick up the slack and didn't like it--made me a target.  He started floating "evidence" of my own malfeasance to my boss, which I didn't find out until my boss clued me in about six months later that this manager wanted to put me on a "last chance to step up your game before you're fired" program.  My boss wasn't having any of that, but he and the other manager both knew that my boss wasn't familiar enough with my work to challenge the accusations straight up to the manager's face.  So at my boss's direction, I provided my commentary, which was validated by a third party that knew more about the topic than the rest of us combined.  In short, 80% of the accusations were indicative of gross (and inexcusable, considering his tenure) ignorance and flat-out lies.  But my boss sat on the matter, letting evidence grow.  We were both busy with other truly urgent things, but I knew in the long run if he didn't do something, it wouldn't matter if my real error rate was under 3% in a company where we can barely get 80% of our product out the door correct the first time around; my part of the process was early in the workflow so all kinds of ramifications could be attributed to me.

Then my boss's boss decided to put me on that "last chance" program, for unrelated reasons.  Over the previous decade I had made two or three mistakes that were visible to him; not that I committed them directly, but that I didn't correct them before an external auditor found them.  

My boss recognized that audits are a team effort and failing to catch something which I had provided to his boss and his boss's pet experts for review was not the same thing as creating the problem, but it didn't matter, and since he was in my reporting chain, my boss couldn't blow him off and try to "manage" the problem.

I saw the hand writing on the wall.  I knew this other manager was full of crap and I had a solid defense, but also knowing that it wouldn't matter, and that my boss's boss wouldn't be interested in my successes if they were anything short of perfection, I would still go home feeling angst.

Well, some time ago my mother was inspired to ask Mary to crush the heads of any demons that were harassing her.  She had been telling me about the harassment, not even realizing at first that it was a preternatural phenomenon, and then when it occurred to her to pray that prayer, the relief was immediate.

You've really got to try it.  If something seems wrong, just say something like "Mary, please crush the heads of the evil spirits that are causing worry and confusion right now about X."

I started doing it for myself.  Knowing my defense was solid and I had my boss and another expert in my corner while this manager only had the despair of the other people he'd wronged as his defense, I would ask Mary to crush the heads of the demons causing me anxiety and worry and whatnot.

Mary came through every time, God bless her.  I felt relief in minutes, but usually it only took seconds for complete peace to take over.  Every single time.

So I knew it was just an opportunity for the demons to harass me, steal my joy.  I don't know what they had to do with this manager, himself, but I can only pray that he wouldn't cooperate too much with their promptings.

When I would pray about this situation, I would get a sense of "just wait; something is in the works for you."  So I figured I should hunker down and tough it out.

But the handwriting was on the wall by then, and I could see it wasn't going to get better.  The manager could have retired, but for all I know--and he was just the sort to do it--my demise and even the company's was going to be his last project as an employee.  So after consulting with some family members, who were unanimous about it, I put in my notice.

I didn't want to leave my boss in the lurch, since he had a lot of irons in the fire and yet another audit coming up a month later, but I couldn't let this go on forever with him keeping me in a holding pattern while I'm trying to be his wingman.  

So I moved halfway across the country to stay with family while I rethought my life.  And the entire time, I had thoughts like "Was this right?  Was I supposed to keep waiting for things to change at work?  Did I not have enough patience for God to finish setting up the dominoes in my life?"  But I never got a sense of "this is the wrong choice."  I constantly prayed that I would follow God's will, that He would show me His plans to the extent I should have been able to read them.  Nothing seemed wrong.

But the days staying with family unemployed turned into weeks, and I had a few important epiphanies about my career path, but nothing actionable; and the doubts started to creep back in.  So I submitted an online application for a retail position I'd been eyeing up while I was second-guessing myself.

And all this time, I'm praying that I didn't try to "get ahead" of God, try to take the reins out of His hands to impose my wisdom on His.

Yesterday, I was offered the job, and I start after Christmas.

I received two words of knowledge, of sorts, during that day.

The first:  I'd been praying the surrender novena.  Even though I had reminders in my phone, I sometimes missed a day, or lost track of which day I was supposed to be on.  But yesterday was the ninth day of the novena.

The second:  On my way home from the interview where I go the offer, I stopped at the church I'd been attending to go into the adoration chapel and offer some prayers of thanksgiving.  On my way out, I saw on the church's electronic marquee--which rarely or never lists full Bible passages--the full text of Jeremiah 29:11:

For I know full well the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for your misfortune, plans that will offer you a future filled with hope.

Verses 12 through 14 might also have been in there; I was in too much of a daze to retain most of the text before it changed to the next message, but there was a lot of it, and I did recall the 29:11 citation all the way home.  Just for the sake of completeness, here is the rest:

When you call out to me and come forth and pray to me, I will listen to you. When you search for me, you will find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will allow you to discover me, says the Lord. I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

God is good.  He cares about your life and what's going on in it.  I might be attentive or sensitive enough to see the coincidences that really aren't coincidences, but God's not doing this because I'm special--not any more special than you are.  

Daily devotional requirements of the 5-fold or Redemptorist scapular, based on each individual one, and hopefully some clarifications.

You've probably heard of the brown scapular, if you've stopped here to read this, and may even be aware that there are other scapular devotions out there.

This post is intended to be a guide for those who are indulging their inquisitiveness about the Redeptorist or Five-Fold Scapular--five scapulars in one, including the brown (i.e. Carmelite).  When I first heard of it, I could find very little information, so I decided to eventually become the go-to place for...well, the jumping-off point for people who were interested but didn't know everything.  I know how frustrating it can be.

This isn't supposed to be comprehensive; just an omnibus article on what the 5-fold is and what its obligations are, so devotees can get started.  I was hoping to compile something that could pass for close-enough-to-authoritative in a pinch, something that would suffice for a first-blush good-faith effort and assist anyone who wanted to really close the book on the matter and get on with their lives; but even looking just at the records I have access to in English, things are too disjointed.

Oh, whom am I kidding?  I'd like for this to be comprehensive, exhaustive.  I don't know what resources exist only in other languages.  But I have tried to document and interpret everything I could find.

First, the summary of my research.  Discussion follows.  I invite your insights and knowledge.

Summary of Requirements (see discussion for details)

White    Six Our Fathers, six Holy Marys, six Glory Bes

Black    One Hail Mary, one Hail Holy Queen, and fifteen minutes of meditation on Mary's Dolors

Red        Contemplate the Passion

Brown    At least one of the hours of the Divine Office, or certain other prayers; three Hail Marys

Blue        Pray for the conversion of recalcitrant sinners, the sick and the dying, and the Chaplet of 10 Evangelical Virtues or the Little Office of the Immaculate Conception

General    Cultivate devotion and spiritual support for the scapular's subjects of devotion, the associated religious communities, and their charisms; live chastely per your station in life

I am somewhat of a generalist in life, but have learned that this attitude can lead to not doing anything much in particular at all.  When I was preparing for my first communion, I was given a children's missal that came with a Rosary and a brown scapular.  I was encouraged to wear it to avoid hell.  I wore it once but the plastic corners of the covering irritated my skin, so I resolved to rely on avoiding sin and going to confession, and took it off.  That proved to be optimistic.  When I learned that there were prayer obligations I couldn't understand, I was further deterred.  The family members who gave me the communion kit weren't familiar with scapular enrollment; my grandparents knew to tell me something about it, but perhaps because they were trying to explain something, which my parents weren't even doing, to an eight-year-old, I remained confused.

Many years later, I'm a little less reckless--I'm more reck?--and have discovered the five-fold scapular, which appealed to my cover-all-bases disposition.  But having just learned there was more than just the brown scapular out there, I was overwhelmed and confused by the apparent plethora of requirements associated with the devotion of the five-fold scapular.  I won't argue against the value of spending more time in prayer, but if they all require things like the Rosary or the Divine Office (and if they require the same thing, can I double count?), am I going to be able to fit it all into my day and still have the stamina to pray for the things I want to pray for, and still have a semblance of a normal life (to whatever degree I ought)?  If I'm a lay person or otherwise living and working in the world, am I obligated to get up at 2 or 5 and then 6 in the morning to pray certain hours of the Divine Office, or is there an option to reduce it somewhat or substitute the requirement with something else?

This is not a great question, but I like to think it is an understandable one for someone just starting out.

I found different answers everywhere I turned, which also did not help me, so the five-fold scapular I bought stayed on my nightstand.  Perhaps it is a sign that in three moves between four states in fifteen years I never lost it.  But my life turned a corner a few years ago starting with weekly Eucharistic Adoration, and again with daily prayer of the rosary; and more recently I was drawn to revisit this abandoned devotion.  So I set out to set the record straight.

This is according to my personal research; I have listed my sources at the end of this article, to the extent that I can identify them (I'm not going down the rabbit hole of trying to link random fifteen year old Internet forum posts or forgotten Google-translated Indonesian blog posts that might but might not turn up in a particularly worded Web search, even if they are unusually perspicacious; most that I have found crib the same generic descriptions and rites of enrollment that are not what I needed, and none referenced the books I used).

The five-fold scapular seemed, perhaps erroneously on my part, one of the more complicated private devotions known today and I have struggled to find information describing not just what it's about but how to practice it, so I wanted to compile everything I learned in one place, in the hope that (1) it's not wrong and I can refer back to it later as I learn the practices (2) anyone reading this who knows better can correct me (3) anyone else with the same interest will have a more or less encapsulated document to refer to and be saved a lot of time and confusion.

I invite all my readers to post corrections or recommendations for better sources in the combox.  I'll keep this post updated and will track changes by responding to your comments with my subsequent findings.

I have found many sources that are ambiguous or contradictory or had very lax recommendations. One booklet I got online, for example, even said one only had to wear the five-fold devotionally, apparently without enrollment, but other sources discussing just a singular scapular often enumerate several particular practices. Sometimes I would find an instruction that was clearly meant to supersede an older one, but other times it wasn't so clear; if a pope makes a ruling and at another time the head of an order contradicts it, which if either trumps the other? Was a pope merely trying to promote a devotion by publicizing the then-current rules rather than imposing something in perpetuity, and was the order just adapting to historical circumstances? Where I couldn't tell, I wanted to present both sides with concrete evidence so you could see for yourself and hopefully bring back a more educated opinion with which to correct me.

For the most part, the discrepancies were small once I understood what I was looking at, but others became more intractable the deeper I went, so I tried to elaborate on the contradictions where I couldn’t resolve them.

My general metric was based on the idea that the people with authority over these devotions want them to be widely practiced.  In many cases the sources themselves suggest as much:  for people who cannot read, which was more common in the earlier days than it was at the Millennium, the instructions may commute requirements for reading Scripture to something like praying seven Our Fathers and seven Hail Marys while kneeling before a crucifix; or if a devotee is in prison, requirements for pilgrimages are waived.

On the other hand, we've learned in the modern era that it is not always the case that making something easy to do makes it more popular.

My biggest challenge, it turned out, was the conflation of obligations to the scapulars with requirements for attaining certain associated promises from Our Lord or Our Lady, or for gaining various indulgences that once were tied to the scapulars but now are not (at least, not most of the plenaries).  This was, after all, my main reason for doing this.  Considering the confusion I discuss below regarding the brown scapular, I am still only confident enough to publish this with all these cautions and invitations to correction, so caveat lector.

Any priest can perform the investiture, so you don't have to track down five different friars, or even a single Redemptorist priest in particular.  Unlike other sacramentals, you don't just have a priest bless the object and then keep it on your person, but there is a particular rite of investment for each of the scapulars.  You can look up the rites in many places online, and a copy is often included with the scapular when you buy one.

I have tried to identify which scapulars have medals to wear as an alternative, but I'm not sure I've found all the answers.  Haffert gives a good capsulized history of the notion.  Just for the sake of clarity, though, medals can substitute for the cloth in cases of necessity, like if you work in a job or live in an environment where the wool panels or cords would be destroyed in short order, or if you have a wool allergy; but generally not just for convenience or preference.  Each medal should be separately blessed after investiture with the cloth scapular.  According to New Advent's entry on scapulars, however, in 1910 the Holy Office permitted the scapulars to be replaced with wearing a single medal, provided the medal has the Sacred Heart on one side, Mary on the other, and has been blessed with all the investitures that go with the particular scapulars.  It doesn't comment on necessity versus convenience, but if you want the option, I'd suggest bringing a medal to your investiture and making sure the priest knows to make a Sign of the Cross over it corresponding to each scapular, and you can sort out the details later.  You can't exclude the cloth scapular from the rite even if you intend to take up the medal exclusively.

Because of the brown scapular’s spectacular legacy, combining it with other scapulars has sometimes been discouraged.  Some of my sources suggest it is impious to wear more than one scapular, particularly anything other than the brown; others say the investiture of the brown shouldn’t be watered down by combining it with the enrollment of other scapulars.  Magennis has the most discussion on this topic that I have found, but even there it isn’t consistent; on page 6 or so, he quotes a Jesuit who admonishes against trivializing the brown but expressly does not dishonor the other four; fifty pages later, it is claimed that Leo XIII decreed that enrollment with the brown should not take place with the others—but this was only a year after the five-fold was approved by that same pope in the first place.  Allegedly this was reiterated in 1913, but that still was over a hundred years ago, so there might be more recent drama to unpack.  But again, more than a hundred pages after that, it talks about "cumulative" enrollments and whether the brown ought to be done there or just first and the others accumulated to it afterwards; and all this when faculties to enroll in all five were not universal, so objections to the modern practice might all be moot.  I probably won't know until I learn a few more languages and dive deeply into the next tier of sources. I happen to be enrolled in the brown already, so I think if I got enrolled in the other four now, it wouldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings.

Something I might like to do in the future is revisit my sources and create a list of all of their cited resources.  I mention a few of them in this work, but I could only hypothesize about whether anything not presented by one of the documents I refer to, would be applicable or helpful.

What follows is my findings for each scapular.  My bibliography of referenced sources is at the end.

White, of the Most Holy Trinity: 
6 Paternosters, 6 Aves, 6 Glorias for the glory of the Trinity and for the liberation of all those in captivity. There is an associated medal. Formal enrollment beyond the investing rite seems to be abrogated. Per Hughes, according to Innocent XI this scapular must be blessed every time a replacement is donned, while for the others the blessing automatically carries to the new garment. Comerford also cites a Summary approved by the Sacred Congregation from 1847 that says the same. However, according to O'Boyle's more recent work, the scapular may be replaced by another scapular or medal after imposition, and his work carries an imprimi potest from the Trinitarian's provincial, so I would think that would take precedent.

Black, of the Seven Sorrows (Servites): 
Meditate daily ≥15' on the dolors of Mary (preferably by praying the longer Seven Sorrows Chaplet) for the Servite order and the Church, including at least 1 Ave Maria and 1 Hail Holy Queen. Formal enrollment beyond the investing rite seems to be abrogated.

Red, of the Passion (Lazarists): 
None, other than the general requirements, although sometimes it is said for one to contemplate the Passion and pray what's on the scapular ("Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ Save Us" and "Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, protect us").
Indulgences were attached to reciting five Paternosters and five Aves while meditating on the Passion, or spending half an hour in mediation on the Passion, or kissing the scapular and praying "We therefore pray Thee, help Thy servants, whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy Precious Blood." Formal enrollment beyond the investing rite seems to be abrogated.

Brown, of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel:
For being the most widely known scapular, it strikes me as odd that uncovering the practices behind it was the most confusing, if not the most difficult.  All the various other sources, as I discuss, were ambiguous or mutually contradictory; maybe this is so because it's more popular than the other four scapulars so there's just more chance for error to crop up.  But my request for help from more knowledgeable persons has paid some dividends, and I was able to acquire a book compiled by the North American Provincials of the Carmelite Orders (O.C.D. and O.Carm, for those of you who want to check my work), who put it together specifically for the same purpose that I am writing this, titled The Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.  The book is a little dry but is an excellent primer on the usage and devotion of scapulars as sacramentals, not just the brown one.

For the record, this booklet states that the best historical evidence does not vouch for the authenticity of the Sabbatine Privilege (not to be confused with the Scapular Promise, which can be piously hoped for but does not excuse one to treat the scapular as a get-out-of-hell-free card).  The Scapular Book disagrees, citing the Sabbatine Bull of March 3 1322 and naming at least six later popes who endorse it.  Scapular Facts also supports it, citing a vision of Mary that John XXII wrote of having, where Mary allegedly made the promise of the Privilege (but not without conditions); as well as a decree by the Inquisition on 20 January 1613 saying it is lawful to preach the Privilege may be obtained if one dies in charity wearing the scapular and recited the Little Office (alas, Facts does not specify which, and I do not know which should be assumed) daily or abstained and fasted on the usual days if one could not read.  Mary In Her Scapular Promise by Haffert also goes as far as to name the persons responsible for planting seeds of doubt about the Sabbatine Privilege, making skeptics’ protests sound like little more than “Well, it seems a bit much, doesn’t it?” Either way, these requirements are pretty standard, and if exercised piously, will tend to be good for one's immediate judgment and purgation anyway; and SOLMC and Facts both have nihil obstats and imprimaturs so perhaps arguing about it is moot. But if you're interested in your own research, maybe you can find another source cited by Facts, namely, "The Sabbatine Privilege of the Scapular" by Most Rev. E. P. Magennis, Prior General O. Carm.

Haffert is interesting in this regard.  It comes off first as a devotional history, and includes so many anecdotes (some are validated by other sources I used; some of these sources even give relevant names and dates) about unbelievers being convinced to simply put the scapular on to humor someone and soon converting, that it lends some credence to the notion of wearing the scapular being a “silent devotion”—that is, the act of wearing it is a fruitfully meritorious practice all by itself.

Most of the requirements are like the "general requirements" I enumerate below:  things like wearing the scapular, frequent reception of the Eucharist, meditation on and imitation of the themes that inspired the scapular, and even meeting for communal prayer.  The unique ones come from III.18.7 of the Doctrinal Statement on the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which is included in the book from the Carmelite provincials.  I quote the paragraph in full:  "Members are bound to set aside regularly time to be with God in prayer, frequent participation in the Eucharist, daily recitation of one of the hours of the liturgy"--i.e. the Divine Office--"or of some psalms or the rosary or other equivalent prayers."  Further, on page 8, under "Some Practical Rules" in the section A Message From Your Brothers and Sisters in Carmel, it reads in part "The Scapular holds us ... to profess our special devotion to the Blessed Virgin, which should be expressed each day, at least, by saying the Hail Mary three times."

Finally:  something concrete and unambiguous.

Formal enrollment beyond the investing rite was abrogated by Gregory XVI in 1888.

There is an associated medal, and where the booklet allows for it to replace the scapular, it does not stipulate that the medal be used only out of necessity.

Added bonus:  You do not need to be enrolled to wear the scapular and receive some graces, as I said was discussed by Haffert, so if you have some impediment, it's not an all-or-nothing situation--but if you don't follow the obligations, at least be mindful that it’s not a good-luck charm.  But maybe those converted skeptics who wore it as “fire insurance” at the insistence of friends or clergy who just happen to be visiting them on their deathbeds--remember the crippled man whose friends lowered him through the ceiling to be healed by Jesus--can teach us a thing or two about what’s really faith and what’s just superstition.

Like many sacramental devotions, there are loads of indulgences you can receive by doing various things like pilgrimages to Carmelite churches or attending mass on the feast of St. Simon Stock and various other Marian feasts; but those aren't hard to find for yourself.

There is also a Morning Prayer for the brown scapular, as follows; I am not sure what attaches to it.

O my God, in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary (here kiss your Brown Scapular), I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Jesus from all the altars throughout the world, joining with it the offering of my every thought, word and action of this day. O my Jesus, I desire today to gain every indulgence and merit I can and I offer them, together with myself, to Mary Immaculate that she may best apply them to the interests of Thy most Sacred Heart. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us! Immaculate Heart of Mary, save us! Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Blue, of the Immaculate Conception:
Pray for the conversion and repentance of recalcitrant sinners, the sick and the dying, and for the souls in purgatory. Pray the Salve Regina (aka "Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy...").  Chaplet of the 10 Evangelical Virtues, or Little Office of the Immaculate Conception (similar to the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but the LOIC contains prayers for the hours but there are no propers for the day), or the Divine Mercy Chaplet.  I think this is up to the devotee's choice.  Most of my research says formal enrollment with the Theatines is still required, but Comerford cites the document Le Chretien eclaire sur la nature et 1'usage des Indulgences by P.A. Maurel, which claims the Theatines themselves gave some communique that they no longer mandate it, either. The book is available online in some countries and in a few libraries, but unfortunately it's in French and I haven't found an English translation to complement the little French I know.  Fortunately, though, I did find this Marianist web site about confraternity enrollment that offers the option of taking on the scapular without formally enrolling, so to the extent that I understand things this question of formal enrollment is answered in the negative.

And, what I have been calling the "general requirements":

These are requirements that are common to more or less all the scapulars, and would apply in some form to many another devotions.  

Wear the proper scapular (most have requirements for shape, color, or construction, with a few exceptions; and have stipulations for the medals if they are available), wear them constantly, get enrolled/invested in each one, and cultivate devotion and honor to the various devotions (e.g. develop a habit of meditating on the Passion, the Immaculate Conception, etc. and praying for the associated graces for yourself and those in most need), perform charitable works to the poor and destitute and dying and dead, partake in the sacraments as frequently as a devout Catholic should if possible (but daily mass would be even better), masses on appropriate feast days for further graces and indulgences &c, live chastely according to one's station in life.  Mostly stuff you should be doing anyway, if perhaps more mindfully--and pretty much all you need for the red scapular.

One should be inclined to support in prayer the obligations and duties of the various orders or confraternities whence these scapulars come, so their other members can receive some blessing from your membership as you receive blessings by becoming a member.  You're not becoming a professed member of anything by taking up the scapular--it's kinda-sorta like becoming a fourth-order member, which is not quite really a thing--but think twice about keeping up with the requirements before you jump in.  I don't want you to be deterred, but it is commendable to look at what you can spiritually offer these communities when you take their spiritual memberships on.

However, none of these binds under pain of sin. You only fail to receive the associated blessings on the days you do not pray these devotions or wear the scapular, which is usual for a sacramental.

At the start of each day, or when putting the scapular on after removing it (which should only be for bathing, although even then you don't have to--the whole point is to wear it devotionally), pray the following: "Holy Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, save us. Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, protect us. Holy Trinity, we adore Thee. Holy Mary, ever virgin Mother of God, we venerate Thee and throw ourselves under the mercy of the protection of Your intercession."  I don't know if it's a standard requirement but it seems a good practice.  If you're going this far, why stop short of a single fourteen second prayer?

Some people experience dye bleeding when they wear it and sweat or shower or go through rain.  It's okay to wash it before you wear it if this is a concern; hopefully someone who does their laundry with more care than I can offer some instructions in the comments about how to best extract or set extra dye in a fabric.  I shower with mine on, so dye bleeding stopped pretty early; it saves me the trouble of cleaning it separately, and the only thing it does is leave wet spots on the front and back of whatever shirt I put on next.

Several plenary indulgences were previously attached to this devotion, but some time ago they were abrogated.  I think the partials are still applicable.  The plenaries might qualify as partial now, actually; I read something to that effect once and I think it was a general rule--but again, I invite correction on the matter.  Some of the books, particularly Fr. Comerford's, are of a vintage to contain references to indulgences that are gauged by numbers of days, a practice done away with by Paul VI in 1967 with Indulgentiarum Doctrina.

The scapular must be made of wool, with all five parts bound on the same woolen red cords, but could be encased in plastic.  It does not have to be worn directly against the skin.  The red scapular must be topmost and have the prescribed image and text on it.  The white should be bottommost with a red and blue cross.

While one source does say a scapular may be cotton, this wool requirement is the consensus for all these scapulars; indeed, the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences said as much in 1868 to the Procurator General of the Redemptorist Fathers.  Lace can be permitted to decorate a scapular but the panels themselves must be woven wool.  When asked whether felt (i.e. nonwoven fabric) could suffice, the answer was in the negative; if you’re a Latin scholar, the words used were “pannus” and “panniculus” and “lana subcocta,” so hopefully you can confirm for me and my few readers whether this refers specifically to woven fabric.

I won’t get further into the designs of the individual scapulars—the descriptions you can find anywhere are normative; clear and relatively consistent—except to point out that the brownness of the brown scapular can apparently range between black and tawny

Usually the 5-fold can be found with a small cross and St. Benedict medal on the cords, but apparently they aren't required.  The St. Benedict medal normally receives a particular, lengthy (especially in the old rite, which is more potent) exorcism blessing, but once invested in the 5-fold, the scapular's blessing follows you rather than the object so when you replace it after it gets worn out you don't have to have it reblessed (but you should still dispose of it as a holy object that is fit for retirement), so I don't know how it works.  Maybe transfer the cross and medal to the new scapular.

Sources

1. The Five Scapulars, by Fr. Raymond J Miller, C.Ss.R. Refuge of Sinners Publishing 2014
2. The Fivefold Scapular, Carmel books, author and date unknown
3. The Book of Holy Indulgences, Rev. Michael Comerford, James Duffy and Sons 1876 via Palala Press*
4. The Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel:  Catechesis and Ritual, prepared under the direction of the North American Provincials of the Carmelite Orders.
5. The Blue Scapular
6. The Blue Scapular Prayer Book
   
7. The Devotion of the Holy Rosary and the Five Scapulars, Fr. Michael Mueller C.Ss.R. Loreto Publications 2004 
8. The White-Red-Blue Scapular, Patrick A. O'Boyle, Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Trinity, 1954
9. The Scapular Book and The Golden Book of the Confraternities, John Hughes
10. Scapulars, at New Advent
11. Scapular Facts by Rev. Albert H. Dolan, O. Carm. Refuge of Sinners Publishing 2015
12. The Scapular of Carmel,> by Most Rev. E.K. Lynch, O. Carm.  AMI Press 1996 ed., Washington, NJ
13. Our Lady’s Garment, the Brown Scapular, at The Fatima Center
14. Mary In Her Scapular Promise, John Mathias Haffert, Refuge of Sinners Publishing, Pekin, IN 2nd ed. 2019
15. The Scapular Book, ed. Brother Hermengild TOSF, issued 8 April 2015, author and publisher unknown

*The indulgences are almost certainly reduced since this book was published, but I doubt the devotional requirements were changed

Juxtaposed for your consideration...

 The Saint Michael prayer was composed by Pope Leo XIII after a private mass, apparently on a day in October in the 1880s.  He apparently went into a stupor of some sorts and was thought by some people around him to have died, but after several minutes he came to, exasperated at a vision he saw.

In his vision reminiscent of the story of Job--some accounts describe it more like a locution--the devil boasted to Jesus that he could destroy the Church if given a century of time and more power to afflict it, which Jesus then permitted.  

Revelation 20:
1 Then I saw an angel come down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the abyss* and a heavy chain.
2 He seized the dragon, the ancient serpent, which is the Devil or Satan, and tied it up for a thousand years
3 and threw it into the abyss, which he locked over it and sealed, so that it could no longer lead the nations astray until the thousand years are completed. After this, it is to be released for a short time.
7 When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison.
8 He will go out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea.

Apparently, the devil chose the 20th Century as the time in which his powers would be less constrained.

I am neither scholar nor prophet, but is what we're experiencing now, not the fruits of evils that were planted in the 20th Century?

I'm getting tired of being accused of rigidity and divisiveness--even if it's not a simple case of projection

Any Latin scholars passing through, I invite your corrections, for I looked this up on some Internet-based robo-translator I'd never heard of before.  

I'd like to get this phrase into more widespread use:

“Si non esset, non tibi."  

I call it the“If it weren’t for you” fallacy.  It's the solipsistic idea that everything would be fine if everybody just did what I wanted, mostly because what I want is what matters, problems only arise from the uppitiness of other people, and not because I honestly analyzed my positions and objectively determined they were closest to the truth.

So one of the thing "anti-racists" claim is that punctuality and scheduling are racist--that is, that they are too white a concept.

 I'm sorry, but this is going on my list of "things that are actually dumb that I won't sugar-coat."

In their zeal to oppose themselves to western civilization, they have completely failed to acknowledge the diversity of Europe.  

Have they never attempted to make a social appointment in Latin Europe?  I mean the Mediterranean-adjacent states, not some transplanted hispanic-american fiction you are trying to imagine.

If that's the path you're choosing, good luck.  I'm not even going to speculate about other, dumber stuff that fits your paradigm; you'll just blame me for it when it blows up in your face after you figure it out for yourself.

“DNC is more pro life. I side with them because they want to end the causes of poverty that result specifically in abortion.”

If you’re right, then fine. There’s room for people of good will to reach that conclusion on their efforts and methods as far as this goes.

However.

That’s not an entirely fair depiction.

Ending poverty by other means can achieve this—fine. That’s the stuff they accuse us of not doing, which would be fair if it were true. But them picking up the ball when we drop it isn’t all they do--and dropping the ball isn't all we do, either.

The two big things they also do that make it very hard to justify this are (1) they promote social behaviors and programs that promote abortion, such as teaching utilitarian and Malthusian philosophies about humanity that at the very least but usually far more don’t rule out abortion as a means to an end (2) promote abortion itself as a necessary and inherent good in the life of a civilized, defeminized, and fully actualized woman.

That makes it a lot harder to justify the “on the balance they’re still better than the alternatives” rationale.

Especially when the jury is still out.  Sure, in the short run, local governments providing contraception to teenagers behind their parents' backs can reduce the demand for abortion--and I'll be thrilled to see how Planned Parenthood reacts when the state bogarts their business--at least, it can today, but (1) there are medical side effects to any form of contraception that have to be factored in (2) there are sociological effects that have to be factored in, which are usually cited as evidence for bans on contraception (3) there are also sociological effects from changing laws to permit going behind parents' backs that need to be factored in (4) there is such a thing as risk compensation, and with pregnancies often taking several weeks to discover and months to run to completion, changes in behavior are bound to happen.  Do the powers that be consider any of these things, or do they just wave their hands and say "it's the responsible thing?"

Never mind that to hear them talk lately the only problems of concern in the world are racism and sexism in the US, which kind of neuters any seamless garment arguments about life issues. These are certainly not good things, but they are not the only pressing matters and I don’t want my leaders to ignore everything else or see everything as just variations on those two evils.

And if you're a Christian, you're doubly burdened because Jesus Himself said the poor we would always have with us, so while we shouldn't give up trying, we should be a lot more modest about our goals; especially if we end up not feeding the hungry and not clothing the naked and not housing the stranger  because we don't want to take our eyes off the prize to see the opportunities all around us to do some actual good.

On the Custodians of Tradition

 I know the conspiracy theories, I know the charitable theories, I recognize the sliver of truth within the propaganda....

I started going to the Latin Mass a few years ago just to experience an aspect of our heritage that I had only read about.  Eucharistic adoration was another that I was drawn to.  Also, the fact that they had frequent times for confession was appealing, so I wouldn't have to worry about going to my own pastor and being too embarrassed to be forthcoming in front of someone I knew.

I went on occasion, but after a while I went to the Tridentine liturgy almost exclusively.  There are things I like about the Novus Ordo on paper, but--and I recognize that this is an emotional argument but I don't want to get lost in the weeds here--when I'm at the Latin mass, those things just don't hold up.

So I'm not thrilled about what was promulgated Friday.  But:

The pope is still the pope.  His policy is distasteful, and might not even be honest, but he's the pope and this is the Church.  There's really no where else to go.  You can get farther away by joining one of the Eastern rites, and still get a beautiful and reverent liturgy, but Rome is still there.

And eventually Francis will pass, and then as now, Christ will guide His Church through a history that holds no secrets from God.

I don't know what we'll have to adapt to, resist, or contend with.  But keep your rosaries in your hands and your knees behind Roman Catholic pews; we need the grace and faithfulness more than ever.

Not the way to do ecumenism...two perspectives

So several days ago I was watching a Trent Horn video where he responded to a Seventh Day Adventist allegedly converted from Catholicism, who was posting a number of reasons why he left the RCC.

Some of the SDA's reasons were better than others, but none was bulletproof.  It might edify other Adventists or confuse poorly catechized Catholics, but wouldn't convince anyone who wasn't already on Team Ellen White.

To be fair, it was probably a half hour video, and you can only cover so much ground, but it was a critical research failure spoiling oversight of simple details; like, despite looking up instructions on a Catholic web site, reporting that the Rosary consists of "at least 33 Hail Marys"--okay, 53 is technically at least 33, but huh?--and basing the old canard that Catholics removed the prohibition of images in worship from the Ten Commandments on the strategy of directing the attention of the viewer to the paragraph below the one with that text. I guess the line between incompetence and malice is malfeasance.

At the risk of sounding condescending, I got a sense more that these are the things he was told as a child when he asked his parents why they started going to a new building on Saturday nights, and stopped taking him to the pretty church on Sunday mornings.

Most of the other reasons relied on assuming up front that SDA doctrines were true, because there's no way a mere mortal is going to have access to the supernatural knowledge that sacraments are inefficacious or Mary is dead/in soul sleep.  Not without some divine intervention that would have been his #1 reason, which it wasn't.

Even though half an hour is kind of long for even a top ten list, I would have expected a little more depth to his positive arguments.  But they were all on this level.

Perhaps the most interesting was his claim that that Bible was clear that Mary was dead.  In fact, the Bible is completely silent on Mary's demise.  He can only infer her death by looking at extrabiblical data on life exptectancies and taking as axiomatic that Mary did not receive any exceptional treatment like Elijah.

Sure, it's a reasonable inference or assumption for a non-Catholic, but the Bible doesn't actually say so.  This ended up being a common theme in my overall experience.

I got involved in the comments section, just meaning to make a couple points, but got dragged into it with someone who might have been a troll, and I remembered why I drifted away from religion arguments online in the first place, and have been quiet lately after I got sick of politics as well.  God bless 'im, but I don't have Trent Horn's charitable patience.

Talking with one of the commenters was...not much like talking to another person.  He expressed some satisfaction that I could cite a chapter here or a verse there, but his interest seemed to lie in proving Mary was dead in her grave.

By way of example, he tried to demonstrate that Moses was not.  And a few general references to the resurrection and general judgment at the end of the world--none of which speak to exceptions that both of us make.  Him, Elijah and Moses; me, Elijah and Mary--but maybe also Moses; I know that I don't know and that the Scriptures aren't explicit.

The discussion was difficult.  He didn't seem interested in Trent's defense of Mary or the communion of saints, and seemed to think I would find it novel to consider praying directly to Jesus.  I said I do both, and she does the same anyway, so what does it hurt?  He told me to prove from scripture that Mary prays to Jesus in heaven.

I said pretty much everyone does.  I think if I'd suggested that ligaments hold bones together, he'd ask me to provide sources.  He seemed to think that this was a linchpin in my argument--in the whole edifice of Mariology--because he kept coming back and pretending I had repeated this claim in new words instead of talking about other things, like why his Biblical claims were spurious.

I think I made a misstep here.  I'm used to debating more mainline protestants, who mostly believe that Christians go to heaven right after death, and I think I got stuck between working on that basis and working on his belief in soul sleep--which in my defense Trent Horn had gone over in his video.

When I asked how he could know Mary was dead, he quoted something about the resurrection at the final judgment.  That's nice, but it doesn't discuss Mary; he is relying again on extrabiblical sources that he hasn't disclosed in order to assume that Mary is not a special case.

His response:  "Such as?"  

Dude: You're the one making the claim that the Bible says Mary died.  I'm not the one here who has to show the passage that states it, or the supporting extrabiblical documents that argue for such an interpretation of some Scripture.  That Bible passage about the final judgment does not name or infer Mary, and by this point in the argument, we'd already visited the precedent of Elijah and Moses, so there's no way to fall back on "Well, everyone."  In retrospect, I think he was trying to dodge this and make me or his audience think that I'm being coy about extrabiblical sources to prove something about Mary, and I need to come out and 'fess up more than he needs to participate in dialog as if we were both adults.

I wasn't buying Moses, though.  I pointed out that Jude 1:9 is about the handling of his body, not the status of his soul.  But he insisted that was sufficient proof.

Man, no it's not.  It's not proof of anything.  It's not even a reference to the Old Testament.  It's to a lost book called the Assumption of Moses or the Testament of Moses, and we only know about it from Jewish tradition and a Patristic reference to this book as a possible source for Jude's comment.  

I pointed out two more things to him:  (1) He's made enough maneuvering room in his "Bible-based" doctrines for the same thing the Catholics do, but he only allows it to be applied to Moses and not Mary, based on Scripture that doesn't spell out that she died or that he was raised  (2) He's not even quoting Bible verses anymore.

"Well," he demurred--I'm paraphrasing, sorry--"I usually don't get much traction quoting Scripture to Catholics, since they don't know it."

Well, I kept up with you when you started out doing that, and you were nice enough to admit it.  So why stop when I beat him to the punch on citing one of the most cryptic verses in the New Testament?  

I'd had about enough at this point.  If I said something he thought I'd buckle under trying to defend, he'd attack, but if not, he'd go back to insisting I prove from Scripture that Mary prays to Jesus in heaven, as if all the intervening comments never happened.

That is confusing enough just to read.  Maybe he thought he was keeping me on my back foot by never giving a straight answer when he could press me to prove something that had been addressed in Trent's video.  Maybe he didn't like it--Trent's own video, including the clips from the original, was a little more than an hour, so he didn't have room for extensive dissertations either--but even if Moses was assumed into heaven the way we believe Mary was, he hadn't given any evidence that actually pointed to it--and wouldn't when asked, except to insist that what he didn't admit were Ellen White's mystical interpretations were both interpretations and correct.  It's not like I really know Moses is normal-dead, but this is leaning way over the line into "Shakespeare indicated the door was blue to symbolize the sorrow and vastness of..." territory.

There’s a difference between claiming a verse or passage means something, and explaining how it does. If he had attempted the latter without merely gainsaying me and moving on like my concerns were both put to bed and not worth discussing, I might have continued under the presumption that he was either honest or competent enough to be worth dialoging with.

Maybe he was assuming some interpretations and then assuming I'd just pick them up.  But whether it's true or not, whether it's intended or not, this stuff is not what the Bible literally says.

And maybe he was trying to do the same kind of thing I was trying to do:  me, forcing him to admit that his creative interpretations and smuggling in assumed conclusions is the same thing he accuses Catholics of doing; and he, forcing me to admit that if Mary's not in heaven because she's in soul sleep then she naturally wouldn't be praying for us.

Since I brought it up, here's Jude 9:  "But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses  he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said 'The Lord rebuke you.'"  That's not even about Moses; it's incidental.  It's a specific example showcasing Michael's humility.  You can compare other translations if you want to see for yourself.  Spirits fighting over a holy man's body does seem like an unusual situation--in fact, it's so rare I don't think there are any other cases we can make a comparison to or draw expectations from--but from that and the fact that the text doesn't rule it out only leaves us with speculations.  So maybe it's true.  But we can't honestly say the Bible sews it up.

So I told him I was done.  His response?  "But I asked you one thing, to prove Mary prays to Jesus in heaven.  Now you bow out?"  Yeah, because you're rude and incoherent.  You haven't responded directly to anything I've claimed except to bogart Mary's privileges for Moses.  But a nonanswer isn't really an answer.

I suggested if he was interested in honest discussion to pay more attention to the channel and the professionals in the combox.  But no, now he reveals that he had been a Catholic for thirty years so he was already well familiar with all our doctrines that just don't make sense.  

If he really were, he'd already be familiar with the arguments for the Assumption, and that we don't put Scripture exclusively above Tradition.  Instead, he sounds more like the guy Trent Horn deconstructed.

Yeah, I ended up effectively sidestepping his question.  But he should have already known the answer, and my point was to show him that he actually uses a similar hermeneutic to support his own beliefs, so either we both might be right and we have to look in other directions or we're both wrong.  After all, even if you take a strong view of Biblical self-sufficiency, that's still not the same thing as mandatory Biblical sufficiency.

Maybe it would have helped if I’d more directly addressed his demand for a passage. Like: “Why do I have to cite a prooftext?” As I said, if he really was an ex-Catholic who left because he plumbed too deeply and found problems, he’d know and understand what I was getting at without me having to point it out; but his double standard, I suspect, would have been too overt to elide.

I mean, man, come on:  You come onto a Catholic channel for a video that discusses soul sleep as a widely recognized error--and it's a public space, I'm not saying you're not welcome--and pick fights with everyone who will listen to you, tuning out when they don't stay on your script, to prove to you that Mary is asleep-dead but Moses isn't...

...and the problem is that I, just I, am not telling you what you want to hear?

I think you're already getting what you want.  

If I talk to him again, I'll apologize on behalf of his catechists for failing him as profoundly as those who failed the guy who did the original video, who failed him so badly he couldn't even count to 53.

Because it's that or he's a character out of a Chick Tract.

So my redneck and immigrant coworkers were arguing recently about children being tried as adults.

They shared consternation at the idea that a youth tried as an adult and convicted would be incarcerated with other adults as opposed to being put in a juvenile facility until reaching 18.  One mentioned a place that sounds basically like a prison for high school students, which sounds reasonable except maybe in the case the immigrant coworker mentioned about a 14 year old from Texas who was tried as an adult, executed, and later was exonerated.  Someone that young would do better at one of these high school places than a regular maximum security penitentiary, certainly, but kids who are bad enough to end up at a place like that are their own special kind of brutal, so would a 14 year old really do as well there as one might hope?

The redneck couldn't believe in this day and age that something like that would happen without the judge, jury, and district attorney's office getting purged and blackballed.  At first he thought it was some more fake news.

Well, turns out this was a real case from the 1940s.  Look up George Stinney if you're interested.  Actually it's a good idea to read up on it anyway; it's a good example of how a small town conspiracy can thwart federal law to maintain social mores.

"Oh!" the redneck said when he was clued in.  "That' I'd believe."

"What makes it okay in 1944 that doesn't let it still be okay today?" the immigrant asked.

The redneck had run out of argument at this point, having tried to call a bluff and lost the pot over it, but I'd like to provide an answer without acknowledging that such a miscarriage of justice is ever okay, because of other things that were said.

In short, it's not okay, and the redneck didn't even say it was.  He only said he'd believe such a story was true.

After all, such a thing has happened, and not just to George Stinney.  Separate juvenile court systems weren't established until 1899, and enjoyed a "diversity" of standards until some Supreme Court cases in the 1960s led to a modicum of uniformity.  One can still see some variation in laws and expectations from state to state when statutory rape laws are compared, as high school and college students sometimes like to do.  But even before the 60s, at least some of the problems were well recognized.  

So it's not that the redneck was wrong.  It's that the immigrant's rhetorical question that was a red herring.  Failing to distinguish the undeveloped judgment of a child from the malformed conscience of an adult criminal was a known flaw in America's justice system before the second half of the 20th Century, one that has received some attention though not perfect correction since then.

Nobody in the office that day was defending history.  But it can be educational to note who seems to be allowed to criticize it, and who does not, even if for the same reasons; and who takes on the mantle of gatekeeper in such a matter and who lets them.

I'll be coming back out of stasis shortly....

 I'll be reviewing my Redemptorist scapular post and putting it back up on top sometime in the foreseeable future; found a conflicting interpretation elsewhere in cyberspace and I want to more closely compare my interpretation of a certain source to his, and see if anything new to me has floated to the top.

Meanwhile, it will be business as usual.

So, I'm going to be changing gears in the near future, getting back to my roots a bit....

Got one or two things in the pipe, and then I'm going to get away from politics for a bit.  It's still before the electoral vote acceptance thing when I write this, so I don't know how peaceful or violent things are going to stay, but there are other projects I want to work on, and I'm having trouble juggling this and the others.

Maybe my readers are too few and visit too rarely to notice the difference, but, y'know, just in case.

I'll still be around, reading and writing, but just not as much on here for a while.  But before you decide to stop coming back, make sure a few weeks have passed since I posted this, so you can be sure I've cleared out my queue.  I am interested in some scrutiny of my next religious post, which I plan to leave front and center for a time, for the sake of visibility, so if you haven't seen it come up yet, don't step out just yet.

But meanwhile...

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner, or why I haven't seen it much elsewhere, but you know how they've been talking about how Trump is dividing the nation and we need to heal and reconcile and whatnot now that he's on his way out?

You know who else they said that about?

Lincoln.  

Yes.  Abraham Lincoln.  The man who presided over an internal war that had been in the making since before our nation was founded.  The man who realized the war was all but inevitable, and instead of sacrificing a limb just to lose the patient anyway, decided he was not going to let its fate be dictated by people who didn't want to play by the Constitution anymore.

So, all you progressives out there who only attend to a few mutually approved news sources, be careful which historical parallels you choose to draw.  Don't like thinking of The Donald as a latter-day Freedmen's Party?  Then it's time to reconsider some of the things that led you to your current mindset.

The point of the electoral college

I once had modest luck explaining the function of the electoral college to someone.  It was in Michigan, some time back when there was more serious talk about piping Great Lakes water to California to alleviate their plight/malfeasance.  So, I used that as an example:

"What if it came down to a vote between California and Michigan, between Calfornians and Michiganders, all other states having no standing to participate in the discussion or having been convinced for the sake of my argument to butt out and let CA and MI hash it out?  In a purely popular vote, California wins, by a landslide, every single time."

"Well, their need is dire, real, and immediate.  I'm willing to help them."

"They're not voting to ask you for help.  They're voting to get all your water. Water rights are complicated but out west they are a high stakes concern, and the guys downstream can really throw their weight around. Just ask the Californians who live upstream.  Anyway, the state's population outnumbers ours roughly four to one.  You want to talk about your vote not counting?  That is what will happen."

His eyes got big.  "Um..."

"Yeah.  If California votes on matters of Michigan, Michigan will never come out on top, ever.  In a simple, pure democracy, California can dictate the affairs of another state just because it has more people to vote on the matter.  We have a constitution and a federal government that trumps state governments in cases of conflict expressly for the purpose of preventing one political body from oppressing another just because they have more members.  This is one example.

The electoral college is another.  California has as many electoral votes as the fifteen smallest states combined, so don't listen to any complaints about individual Californians not having their vote go as far as yours. Half again as many as Texas, almost as many as New York and Florida combined--and note that while Texas is red for now, and Florida is a swing state, New York is solidly blue thanks to NYC and Albany (and tbf Rochester).  If you grew up anywhere outside of Detroit, how would you feel about the Detroit city council deciding how your mayor and chief of police were going to handle business in your hometown?  If you lived in Detroit, how would you like it it if pinheads in Ann Arbor called the shots for Wayne County?  That's what NYC looks like to the Empire State, what Chicago looks like to Illinois, what the Twin Cities look like to Minnesota.  The Founders wanted to stop that from happening at the national level, but may have been optimistic about the electorate, or perhaps concluded it was too intrusive to decide for the states whether or what kind of safeguards they might put in place for themselves to keep the same from happening at a smaller scale."

So, a few new thoughts...

 Yeah, I've been quiet lately.  Been spending more of my time in prayer, which is more useful than anything else I'm in a position to do.  When I write this, things are still up in the air, but the "president-elect" theater is so thick on the ground you'd think it was an official thing and not just "the guy who looks like he will get most of the electoral votes in December, assuming a normal election." But I think a few observations need to be made.

Whichever outcome you think is best, there are some concerns about how we've gotten to where we are, and where we seem to be headed.

Until now, only third-world dictatorships have stopped ballot counts partway through and then either flat-out declared a winner or made a show of resuming counts with suddenly overwhelming democratic support.  Now it's happened here.  Will it ever be otherwise in the future?

The Dems told us their game plan.  They tried to soften up our resolve with predictions of a "red mirage," which sounded like wishful thinking until they started using the phrase "by any means necessary."  Considering things now look shady, apparently that wasn't hyperbole.  

And yes, whether you like the putative outcome or not, this is sketchy.  We gave Gore the opportunity for recounts twenty years ago, and all he did was demand re-recounts in traditionally Democrat districts hoping to squeeze out more (D) votes, but every time it went further against him.  And also he tried to stop military ballots from being counted due to a discrepancy in absentee voter laws, knowing that those votes go predominantly (R).

But not only did the red mirage seem to happen, not a single late-counted mail-in ballot went to Trump.  Not one protest vote, not one crank, not one error, not one ambiguous ballot; and not one with down-ticket votes.  We happen to know already that Democrats don't comprise the entirety of mail-in voters, so where did the Republican voters go?  And why did Trump do better than Hillary in every state except for the ones that stopped counting around 11 pm and resumed after they found enough ballots to reverse Trump's lead?  States, I might add, that are swing states headed by Democrat leadership--or at least, were headed by Democrats.

Even if everything is above board--I'm sure a few things will shake out in unexpected ways, but assuming everything we suspect now is righteous--why are they acting like they have something to hide?  Judges are throwing out requests for hearings to present evidence on the grounds that they weren't provided the evidence in advance.  Georgia is destroying ballots even though state law requires they be kept for 22 months.  The media are telling us it's over and there's no news to cover regarding the recounts and lawsuits.  The recounts in 2000 were so belabored that by day 37 everyone was tired of the uncertainty and a lot of Gore voters were willing to concede if Gore would just stop being an ass about it.  Now all we're hearing is "dolphins still missing, nothing to report."

I still hold out some hope that we're finally going to wise up about election security and fraud minimization.  People who say voter fraud is better than voter suppression either don't understand that those are morally the same thing, or they're lying because historically voter fraud as a specific thing has gone their way and voter suppression as a specific thing has not gone their way.  But if the KKK had diluted legitimate votes in predominantly black precincts with thousands of fake ballots instead of just scaring them away on election day, those "any type of security is still racist even when I run out of reasonable arguments against protections that have been known to work elsewhere in the world, so you still can't do it" folks would be a lot more circumspect about how to balance the one species of procedural corruption against the other.  

And that's all it is.  Being able go into a booth and pull a lever or darken a bubble isn't some magic invocation of human rights.  Being able to participate in the process at all, and legitimately, is.   

Actually, one last thought...

 I'm not going to laud everything Trump has said or done.  I'm not going to defend his character, although the spiritual rhetoric I've heard him use lately sounds a lot more like that coming from a believer than the stuff I hear from the other side, which sounds like they're trying to talk the way conservatives and Christians talk but they only know it from how liberals and non-believers tell each other how Christians and conservatives talk.

But I used to say my biggest complaint about him qua president was he wasn't very presidential.  He was crude, inelegant in speech, prone to trolling in social media, and could have done a better job neutralizing the negative spin the MSM put on his works and words.  

Now, though?

He's the most patriotic president we've had since Regan.  He doesn't just express a love for America and a respect for hoi polloi at large, he does so consistently.  He bothers to show up to meet the people. And when he faces criticism, he may make fun of career politicians who still haven't learned the lesson about glass houses and throwing rocks, but he doesn't call concerned citizens bad names, nor does he call their race into question for daring to be circumspect and nuanced about their own political opinions.

That's a lot more presidential behavior than we've seen in a long time.

There has been so much outrageous stuff in the political sphere (never mind Pope Francis's...follies) that I haven't been able to keep up.

 So, I'm just going to hit a few bullets, while I still can.  I'm getting burned out anyway and hopefully I'll be able to make more religious or merely theoretical political posts in the future.

Or I guess several bullets.  Sorry I couldn't keep this briefer.  It's actually better than my initial drafts....

• I've been getting Scientific American weekly e-mails for years but finally unsubscribed when they got as bad as the NY Times weekly headline e-mail.  I never read every article but the last straw was today when there was one article of interest to me, one apparently scientific article that didn't really float my boat, and several political ones claiming they're not really and never were all that political but it's time to change (especially now that Trump has gone all COVID denier...not sure if that was supposed to be before or after he shut down travel from China to the complaints of Leftists that he was going overboard).  Between that and the transparently biased sources they cite, I'd had enough.  Crying out loud...multiple articles said they and scientists at large (excepting academics, who are predominantly leftist in this era; at least they owned up to that) tend to be apolitical so risking taking a stand should mean something.  Buh?  Where have you been during global warming, SA?  If you forgot that you've been politicizing it ever since Gore lost the election--and no, I don't mean just talking about policy solutions--then you're not competent to write professionally.  
• Twitter, Hunter Biden...not much I can add.  Just gonna emphasize that Trump's been harassed and impeached for what the Bidens apparently consider to be business as usual.  And if they didn't do anything wrong, why the media blackout?  After four years of weak counterarguments, open lies, and you're-only-fooling-yourself defenses like "Debunked!  There weren't 30,000 people there, there were 25,000!" the silence is deafening.
• People are saying the Left is so enraged at Trump because they thought they'd be able to usher in USSR Mark Two in 2016.  Makes some sense, but the Long March has got to be a hundred years long by now; what's another four or eight?
• I wish people at large would think about their prior knowledge when they get presented with propaganda.  Do they even ask themselves "what about what I used to know?" when they're told some contradiction?  This isn't even Gell-Mann, although maybe it's a subsequent effect.
• Various talking heads: "Trump hasn't even agreed to make a peaceful transition if (or I hope when) he loses!" Dude: You’re the only one taking this seriously. He’s clearly trolling you—you’d know if you read more than half his tweets. After all, you’re the one who thought to raise the question—you’re either drinking your own Kool-Aid or lying. Meanwhile, put a lid on your characterizations of tyranny. You know what else is that kind of behavior? Changing voting rules during the early stages of an election. And he’s not the one doing that; you are.
• Trump is like Zaphod Beeblebrox. The only problem is, in this cynical and bitter galaxy, instead of letting him distract from the real work of whatever constitutes running a country these days, everything’s just getting exposed because he’s distracting them from what constitutes running a country these days.
  
• Some protestor: “This movement isn’t going to stop until it sees real and substantive change.” Fine, but at some point that’s going to mean not causing more property damage and injuries to innocent bystanders and not further provoking law enforcement. Are they willing to come to the table or, like they’ve said, are they going to burn it all down as long as they haven’t gotten whatever they haven’t decided yet will be good enough?
• "I'm politically correct.  Unlike you, I don't think you should force your opinion on others' lives." Oh, but your whole position is that some people should do so, under certain--or broad--circumstances.  You just think I shouldn't get to be one of them.
• "We didn't build a wall; the world built a wall around us."  Okay, clearly hyperbole, and that's fine, but what that means is the rest of the world thinks building walls does work.  Message received.
• I have a much longer post on different strands of socialism I'm still incubating that I still haven't decided to post, but considering the entities and bodies--you know, I'm going to use the term "bodies" for guerrilla type organizations in the future because they might not be hierarchical in quite the same was the military or the Church is, but they are nonetheless cellular--that brought most of the actual violence to 2020's protests, I will say this:  it is disingenuous to say fascism is rightist because it focuses socialism at the state level.  A genocide that gets focused in one city instead of across a whole region does not turn into an affirmative action movement.  It's just the same thing with a few administrative alterations.  
• Pursuant to that, if the crybullies and SJWs were truthful and right in their claims to fear the government, they would already be getting disappeared.
• Someone said once "Socialists like to claim that public roads are socialist so I must be a hypocrite if I'm okay with those, but I like to tell them 'I'd be more amenable to your position if you stuck to building public roads."  In the same vein, communism is frequently defended with assertions like "It's never really been tried!  If we had the right people in charge, we could make it work."  I think you're lying to me or at least yourself when you say that, but even if that might be true, before you start talking about implementing socialism to the degree where it will lead to Maoist degrees of granularity in federal involvement in your personal life, can we have a conversation about how you expect to make sure only these elusive right people get put in charge?  Because socialism sure seems to attract people who have more of an interest in the power itself, and they pay a lot of lip service, but when we get to late stage communism, where Marx and Stalin claimed that the state apparatus would just whither away (I guess by the proletariat getting habituated to just doing whatever the right thing is; they weren't explicit on this point, understandably), these not-the-right-people just end up kicking the can down the road so they can keep what they got.
• When you call someone racist, and they tell you you're projecting, it's because you say things like "being non racist is racist."  It is incoherent to say "racism is bigotry plus power"--which sounds like the position you'll be in if Biden wins, so you'll have to wear the label racist even by your own logic--but then here turn around and accuse individuals of the same thing.  It's why when you call people racist, they don't even bother refuting it anymore; you've overused the epithet and even people who aren't racist aren't bothered enough to take it seriously.  Meanwhile, consider the circumstances of Phillip Anderson and Mouat Freelon.  If you didn't accuse every white person of supremacist attitudes, real ones wouldn't be able to come out into the light, and if you didn't oppose free speech, you wouldn't know these people for what they were until they erupted into opportunistic violence like you've been seeing.
• Think twice before attempting to uplift the Black Man with your patronizing politics.  It's infantilizing and othering.  Maybe we're all equal beneath the state, but he's not beneath you.  Engage him like an adult.
• When you gloat about how web sites that suffer sanctions for promoting fake news have a disproportionate negative effect on conservatives, stop and consider for a moment that your zeal to connect those dots makes you look like you don't really have a good answer to Trump's accusations of you propagating fake news--you know, the anti-conservative stuff that used to be the only thing most people heard because the so-called independent media have a cartel that used to monopolize the channels of communication--and are left with making the "I know you are but what am I?" defense. And we both know that doesn't cut it.
• I won't begrudge anyone for having their preferred information/news sources.  We've all got to decide for ourselves what's best to take in.  But we should make a point of listening honestly to people we disagree with who can support what they claim to whatever threshold you find to be the bare minimum of "not some tin-hat wing nut."  If you don't...if a source you trusted ever did lie to you, how could you ever know?
• "You're the people history warned us about!"  ("Leave Britney alone!") You sure?  Because w're not the people who are changing dictionaries on the fly to "enhance" support for current events.  Back in the day, it's people who were talking like you, like a majority terrified of a tiny, insurgent conspiracy, who were screaming out of fear for the fate of the Dritte Reich at the hands of the Jews.  Just sayin'.  
• People like that, and like the ones who have been knocking out black men's teeth for the sake of critical race theory:  are they doing this because this is what they think activism normally looks like?  Do they have some vague image of Kent State in their heads and figure this is Just What Is Done?
• Was looking at an information source (I won't call it news) I don't usually read and there was so uniformly pro-Biden/"Facebook is fake and Republican" that I started wondering if I had been thinking myself into a corner all this time and relying too much on unreliable sources of my own. They were going on about the Hunter smear campaign and how it had been debunked and all that. Even comments like "Trump is the worst president ever!"  Then I realized two things.  (1) I'm willing to look at the other side and ask myself if this is what's happening to me.  Even Wikipedia lets its contributors do that, no matter how their final product turns out.  (2) I saw the video for myself where Joe bragged about playing hardball with Ukrainian officials to get personal benefits ("turns out Hunter wasn't that influential," another defended, but that's just it, isn't it?  He was there to collect a salary that his dad would "tax" and to maintain a point of contact--all before Trump ran for office).
• As for Trump being the worst, let's see...Harding is widely considered a bad president just in the general not-suited-for-the-office sense.  Jackson was instrumental in the movement that led to the Trail of Tears.  Andrew Johnson thwarted Reconstruction.  FDR put Japanese Americans (not Japanese-Americans, thank you) in concentration camps during WW2.
• The "mostly peaceful" protests...okay, maybe numerically they are and only the riots get the press coverage, but one has to question the integrity, the competence, the motives of media that will stand in front of an instance of arson in progress and use that phrase to describe it.  But I'm less concerned about the--what?--alleged 97% peacefulness than I am about the 3% who are killing and burning and looking but aren't getting any pushback from their mostly peaceful co-marchers. But on the other hand, that 97% apparently had no problem with the status quo until George Floyd died, so I'm a little skeptical about motive even then.

In 2008 Obama was elected and people started talking a lot how Bush should immediately resign so, despite all succession laws and the fact that presidential terms, per the Constitution, run January 20 to January 20,  Obama could take over early and get a head start on his "progress." Now, RBG has gone off to whatever her reward is and despite the fact that Trump is still president until January 20 at least of 2021 (so hold off on your “until a new president” talk), certain entities want him to wait for him to do a well established part of his job until what they want is to believe is a referendum on his performance to choose a replacement. And meanwhile, you're openly talking about packing the court and expanding the riots--so that's an admission that you're actively engineering this unrest, this destruction of cities across the country for political reasons, as well as the odd admission that you assume your winning the presidency this fall is a foregone conclusion--and trying to rationalize it by saying things like "the precedent has been set--no nominations in an election year."

Well, that's a lie and wishful thinking.  In the 20th century alone there were at least 10  successful nominations and 2 unsuccessful ones, by Democrats and Republicans alike, during election years.  So if there's a precedent, it's twofold:  (1) the president isn't paralyzed in the last quarter of his administration just because he might turn out to be a lame duck (2) you can be relied on to threaten violence and dishonesty and unethical when you don't get your way.  LBJ tried to pack the courts, FDR tried to pack the courts, and now here you are.

We get it, you don’t really believe in the rule of law, but what would your argument be if he didn't announce anybody now, but still wins in November and then announced someone?

odds and ends from socmed

 "Don't criticize the post office for failing when the US military gets so much more money in your tax dollars."

The army doesn't charge me directly for providing a personal service.

"Beauty and the Beast is such hogwash.  Reverse the roles and see how ridiculous it would be.  No one tells a guy who give an ugly girl a chance because she's nice."

1. Beast wasn't a nice guy who happened to be ugly.

2. Guys get told "she has a great personality" all the time.  It's a meme older than socmed itself.

"Strong nationalism...government-controlled media...xenophobia...all signs of fascism and they're all happening here and now."

Yeah, except the things you call "strong nationalism" and "xenophobia" we call "vet immigrants, and welcome in those who are willing to play by our rules;" and it's not the politician you don't like who controls the media, it's opposition party politicians in other branches of government that are anti-nationalist who want to import voters who will be loyal only to them.  If you're still not sure, ask yourself which faction is trying to control the words you use and sometimes even admits that this is an effort to modify the way you think.  Whether it's well-intentioned or not, this is a tactic of fascists, communists, and other varieties of socialists.  If this seems like a granny knot of competing standards and morals, then you might just have tasted a red pill.

"A 1% dip in the market is a recession; the 2.5% dip was called the Great Recession; a 6.5% dip is a depression; what do you call the 35% dip we're going through right now?  The Trump Effect?"

Recessions and depressions aren't a simple matter of degree.  1% is a large fluctuation for an economy of this size but you have to figure in longstanding effects on prices and employment.  Meanwhile, there's a pandemic that we've collectively decided to handle by staying home instead of going to work.  If you don't like that, I have some really bad news for you about socialism....

"We didn't build a wall, but in the end, the rest of the world built one around us!"

So you're saying that there is consensus in the entire rest of the world that proactive border controls work. Meanwhile, in Scandinavia where they didn't shut everything down like you're happy to insist on here and then blame Trump for, their infection statistics are way down.  One would think the goal you're actually pursuing is not the well-being of this country, which leads one to wonder why you want Trump out of the picture.

*mouth foaming about antifa*

Do a Google video search for something like "Seattle May Day protests."  You'll find articles and multimedia about violence erupting on the Left Coast at "demonstrations" that aren't even in opposition to questionably-violent organizations, organizations that--whatever their reputations and legacies--aren't even present; easily going back ten years.  Whom are we supposed to blame for that?  Unless you count the successfully-woke Starbucks, there isn't an openly capitalistic entity in sight; there might be a few individuals floating around, but they don't refer to Oregon and Washington as being "ultraviolet" because purple has red mixed in with it.

A while ago I got in an argument with some relatives.

Several of us were on the same text message thread when one posted something tentatively hopeful about Covid treatments.  Another one tore into her for believing Fox News, whence the article originated.

OP and I were a little taken aback.  This was supposed to be a light, if a dim one, in the darkness; why was it relevant to attack us for "trusting" a news source they didn't like?

I'd been quiet for a while but tired of it quickly and called for moderation:  I pointed out that Fox has no monopoly on error (which is a little weaker than my personal position, but that was part of my point), and I hear enough ignorant back-and-forth at work, so could they please not include me in the conversation?

*bam* Links to MSM articles allegedly exposing Fox News in barefaced lies.

Dude:  I just got done saying I don't really trust anybody.  How do you think it makes you look when you get even more strident while trying to bring more evidence to the table that one side is dishonest, but it all comes from the other side?  

I don't need one more person telling me some of the "news" I take in is disinformation.  I take it in order to compare with the stuff that many people like my relatives appear to swallow whole.

It's difficult to walk the line in the middle; easier it is, to take a side, accept it wholesale, and then only let yourself see enough of the opposition's arguments to further convince yourself that they're still just making things up.

Things have been getting crazier lately so I wonder if we're getting close to a point where the MSM superfans aren't going to be able to explain away the cognitive dissonance between the beliefs they still strongly hold and the narratives they're told that change more quickly than their minds. 

I was listening to someone or other's channel on YouTube more recently (and this really isn't changing the subject), someone who I think is a little Left but mostly libertarian except on a few social issues, and very much capable of being fair to and having civilized discussions with conservatives.  She made a point that erenow I had not realized needed to be put so succinctly into words:

Conservative news and progressive news, whatever you think of them, are in the business of polarizing their viewers. 

Fox News might have been created not really as a lone voice in the wilderness to give succor to lonely conservatives, but moreso to provide merely a dramatic foil to CNN and MSNBC.  Which is not to criticize the on-air personalities (although a few self proclaimed Catholics could try a little harder to be orthodox before being conservative) as much as the top level executives who are all politically inbred.

Look at how the summer 2020 riots were covered.  In broad strokes:  Fox showed pasty young white people wearing black as-good-as-uniforms causing most of the damage and didn't shy away from black people burning down black neighborhoods, blaming Antifa and cultural problems in the black community itself; CNN & Friends showed peaceful protests and white people dressed in civvies causing problems, and blamed what they deemed conservative racists.  I'm sorry I come off as biased here but I tried to avoid getting sucked in and since I don't have TV at home I was rather at the mercy of the viewing preferences of some of my social associates.

The point is that neither side is really interested in telling the whole truth.  Maybe some individuals are, maybe they're not all drinking their own Kool-Aid.

What they're interested in doing is taking a page out of Bob Lutz's book (I mean specifically Guts, which is worth a read for his business anecdotes, but I'm also speaking generally).  Lutz believed--and I think he's right--that you'll have a healthier customer base if you put out product that is polarizing.  It won't much affect people who already love or hate your work, but it will motivate people who are on the fence; you'll drive a few of those folks away, but you'll get commitment from others who might have gone elsewhere, and that's the proverbial bird in the hand.

The problem is that news isn't a product.  Okay, in a sense it is--you or advertisers pay for an information service--but when it's this processed, it may not really be facts and analysis anymore, which is what they claim to be selling.

Also, to bring this back to the YouTuber's point, a polarized people is a divided people.  I can throw in a quote or platitude about hanging separately or houses divided against themselves.  But in the end, the highest level people with the most money and the least publicity at Fox will greet their equals at CNN and congratulate each other for keeping the populace too fragmented and off balance to really rise up and make a substantive difference.

It's not all about social engineering and tinfoil hat territory.  But it does help explain why stupid shit persists instead of winning a social Darwin Award.

Two inadequately explored questions that pertain to the 2016 and 2020 elections

1. Considering the benefits that had obtained to, for example, Biden, which we learned of during the Russian election interference probe, what benefit did Russia hope to gain by helping the political opponent of the previous administration gain the office?
2. If electronic tampering was such a problem, and considering that any improvements in polling security have been so modest that they hardly make the news to reassure the voters, then why are certain elements still insistent on relying on electronic balloting (on-site or remote/mail-in), without bothering to reassure us; instead of coming up with more sanitary ways to vote in person?

It's not that there are no answers to these questions.  The suspicious thing is that no one is really talking about the answers.  They're fighting about the questions to keep our attention focused there.

So AOC, in the current illiterate book-burning craze of tearing down statues for any or no reason, wants to get rid of St. Damien of Molokai...

(edited 8/16/20)

...to which I reply "WTF is wrong with you?"

Of course, he's Flemish, so that should be a good enough reason, right?

Not by a long shot.

St. Damien was not a "colonizer."  He was not an oppressor.  Say what you will about Europeans in Hawaii at the time in general, but St. Damien was there to serve the leper colony that lived on that island.  He eventually contracted leprosy himself and died there.

Not denying that colonization happened, or that it brought trouble with it.  But St. Damien was amongst those who were trying to take some responsibility for and mitigate the harm done, and made the ultimate sacrifice--whether that's good enough or not, it's the most anyone can be asked to do.  He didn't drive Europeans out of Hawaii like St. Patrick and the snakes of Ireland, but the lepers would still be suffering from leprosy whether or not white men were still around.

If your woke anti-colonialism won't permit someone to do that much, then most of the Woke Left needs to sit down,  shut up, and think about how your life got to a place where your outrage justifies erasing history but not actually alleviating the pain of people you claim to care for, because they're not doing anybody any more good than that.

Yeah, yeah, he taught Catholicism.  He was still instrumental--biases in Western reporting against indigenous contributions to these efforts notwithstanding--in improving the life of people in the Molokai colony.  He dressed lepers' ulcers, helped build homes and schools, organized farms.  I know this still constitutes impurity of action to the Woke, but I don't see the Woke doing even this much good.  Just some symbolic gesture so inflammatory that it is counterproductive.

You're being behalfist over the Hawaiians.  Being disrespectful to their beliefs is othering and infantilizing.  And all your Marxist-derived critical theory is European, anyway--didn't you realize Marx was an old white German man who abused his family and domestic staff?  Knowing that, shouldn't you be asking if his class warfare theories are just some next-level patriarchy that is merely hiding behind Wokeness?