A sovereign pope would do things my way, and other quick takes: 7QT XVII, seriatim.

ester­day marked the pope’s first full year in office. Good job, Pope Fran­cis. In one full year, the num­ber of doc­trines you changed was zero. Still, and no sur­prise, the fringe was out, hand-wring­ing and snip­ing. On one blog, I read that the pope we should have had would have been “a father and a sov­er­eign.” But instead of a sov­er­eign, we got a pope who obsti­nate­ly decid­ed to “do things his way.”

That explains it. A sov­er­eign nev­er does things his way; he does things my way. I mean, who does this Fran­cis think he is? The pope?

As I recall, the Jews want­ed their Mes­si­ah to be an earth­ly sov­er­eign too. Instead, they found them­selves say­ing, “Isn’t this the car­pen­ter’s son?”

In truth, I think we have our father. I think we also have some chil­dren who refuse to lis­ten to papa, because they think they know bet­ter than he.

—2—

A read­er writes to ask for cita­tions from St. Augus­tine and St. Thomas Aquinas regard­ing their belief that the gift of tongues has ceased. I had made ref­er­ence to their views, a few weeks ago, in this post. For any oth­ers who are won­der­ing them­selves, here are the ref­er­ences.

St. Augus­tine writes on the sub­ject in “Ten Hom­i­lies on the First Epis­tle of John,” VI, 10; here.

In the ear­li­est time the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed; and they spoke with tongues which they had not learned “as the spir­it gave them utter­ance.” These were signs adapt­ed to the time. For it was prop­er for the Holy Spir­it to evi­dence Him­self in all tongues, and to show that the Gospel of God had come to all lan­guages over the whole earth. The thing was done for an authen­ti­ca­tion, and it passed away.

And Aquinas makes the same argu­ment in Sum­ma The­o­log­i­ca, II, II, 176; here.

…where­as, even now the Holy Ghost is received, yet no one speaks in the tongues of all nations, because the Church her­self already speaks in the lan­guages of all nations; since who­ev­er is not in the Church, receives not the Holy Ghost.

Augus­tine and Aquinas both under­stood that to talk in tongues meant noth­ing more than to talk in known for­eign lan­guages. There is no more need for tongues because there are already Chris­tians in every nation, speak­ing every lan­guage.

—3—

Some obser­va­tions about com­box­es. I have heard sev­er­al oth­er blog­gers say that they should be elim­i­nat­ed alto­geth­er, on the belief that noth­ing con­struc­tive or use­ful is ever said there. In response to a week­end of vit­ri­ol, the Nation­al So-Called Catholic Reporter chose no longer to allow com­ments. Dea­con Greg Kan­dra has not allowed them on his blog in some time.

Oth­ers allow them but then find them­selves over­run with sev­en hun­dred, eight hun­dred com­ments per post. These are blog­gers who attract anti-Catholics in droves, and the anti-Catholics seem to want to taunt more than dis­cuss. Or, if the post is about Catholic teach­ing a, the com­ments will quick­ly veer into inter­minable debate about Catholic teach­ings b through z.

Blog­gers faced with such real­i­ties have four options: (1) allow anar­chy to reign; (2) mod­er­ate all com­ments, at a sig­nif­i­cant loss of their own time; (3) use cus­tomized mod­er­a­tion (forc­ing users to reg­is­ter so that abusers can be banned and trust­ed folks whitelist­ed, shut­ting down com­ments on posts that are more than so many days old, hav­ing heav­ier or lighter mod­er­a­tion depend­ing on the nature of the post, and so on); (4) elim­i­nate com­ments alto­geth­er.

For now, I have cho­sen option 2, and I have very sim­ple rules of engage­ment: (1) be respect­ful; (2) be on top­ic; (3) don’t be a jack­ass. Since my blog (thus far) has been light with com­ments, that makes sense.

Now, what hap­pened is, last week I wrote a post that went viral on Face­book. You may notice that there are 100 com­ments on that post. A lot more than that were sub­mit­ted to my mod­er­a­tion queue, and I spent a great deal of time read­ing and delet­ing. It was the first time I ever refused to post a com­ment, and I refused a lot. I sus­pect the psy­chol­o­gy is that such peo­ple sub­mit the com­ment, know­ing I won’t post it, but also know­ing that I’ll have to read it first.

That is fine. I see no rea­son, for now, to change the way I man­age com­ments. I’ll only add (because I saw it a lot) that being a jack­ass includes things like attack­ing Mark Shea and Sim­cha Fish­er. If you include that in your com­ment, and think, “I hope he pub­lish­es this,” you’re an idiot. I don’t know how else to say it. Com­box­es can serve a valu­able func­tion in gen­er­at­ing dis­cus­sion on impor­tant top­ics. But there are very few blog­gers, who write on the kind of top­ics I do, who don’t ask them­selves from time to time whether (for the sake of peace of mind and time) to elim­i­nate com­ments alto­geth­er. I con­sid­er that a last option, but depend­ing on what hap­pens on this blog in the future, you might see changes in how I man­age com­ments.

—4—

I am curi­ous. If you are a blog­ger, and you use Word­Press, how many of you write your posts in the visu­al edi­tor, or how many write them entire­ly in HTML in the text edi­tor? As I have grown more com­fort­able with HTML over the past four­teen months, I now write my posts entire­ly in HTML. It gives me more con­trol. I don’t think I’d know how to use the tool­bar any more if I want­ed to.

—5—

Ear­li­er this week, the New York Dai­ly News report­ed that a 47-year-old British woman, Aman­da Rodgers, has mar­ried her female dog. The dog’s name is She­ba. You know that word that’s used to describe a female dog? Well, Ms. Rodgers proud­ly uses that word to describe her­self, not the dog. “I am Sheba’s”—yes, that word—she says.

This is not a case where ratio­nal argu­ment about nat­ur­al law will do much good. The woman needs ther­a­py. It is bad enough to be insane, but it is still worse to live in a cul­ture that treats your insan­i­ty as though it is just anoth­er lifestyle choice.

—6—

And in case you have not seen it, here is a touch­ing sto­ry of the true mean­ing of mar­riage, and per­ma­nence, and love. It stars a World War II hero, and the wid­ow who wait­ed 68 years to find out what hap­pened to him.

—7—

In addi­tion to all the com­ments I got on my Latin Mass Only­ism post, I have also had a huge upsurge in e‑mails from read­ers. I deeply appre­ci­ate all of them, and all the kind words; and if you are read­ing this please know that I am work­ing to get through them all and reply back to you.

 

Read more of this week’s quick takes at Con­ver­sion Diary.