Showing posts with label Zeitgeist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zeitgeist. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 102nd edition. Short attention span and a Ballroom Blitz*. And self sabotage.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, September 15, 1915. Counsels leave Nor...

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 102nd edition. Short attention span and a Ballroom Blitz*. And self sabotage.


Attention span deficit.

Something I hadn't expected, but which really says something about our times, is that the murder of Charlie Kirk is already, for the most part, in society's rear view mirror.

Yes, there's a lot of discussion about it still, but it's in the chattering class, which I suppose includes this website.  Otherwise, things have already moved on.

The speed at which news moves, and the lack of attention to it, is a very bad thing.

Of course, now that it doesn't really appear to be a politically motivated killing, it's lost its attraction as a story to some degree.

A fictional narrative

The story, as noted, is now in the domain of the chattering classes, but also the possession of right wing myth makers, which are really working on it.  The odd thing here is that the media has an incentive to downplay what is being learned about the killer, and to an extent, the MAGA myth organ does as well.

What we now know about the killer, Tyler Robinson, is that he was a homosexual living with another homosexual who was in the process of being mutilated to take on the appearance of a woman.  Unless this isn't clear enough, they were in a "romantic" relationship, which means they were engaged in sodomy.  The "transitioning" roommate was apparently shocked by the killing, but according to one family member, that person was deeply anti Christian and hated political conservatives.

Now, the reason that this isn't getting this much press as the "transgendered" aren't particularly associated with crimes of any kind, let alone violent ones, and homosexuals certainly are not, but this story is deeply weird.  A man trying to become a woman is deeply weird, and it is not the same thing as homosexuality.  One man screwing another man who is trying to take on female morphology is very weird as well.

We touched on this in a post about Robert Westman, who was an actual "transgender" figure who committed a mass shooting recently.  Indeed, he's the only "transgender" figure I know of to commit one, the overwhelming majority are white hetrosexual men.

Anyhow:

A deeply sick society.


We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.  We laugh at honor and are shocked find traitors in our midsts.  We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.  
C.S. Lewis.

I explored the topic pretty fully there, and I'm not going to repeat it here other than to note that finding a transgender person hating Christianity isn't surprising. Real Christianity holds that to be wholly immoral, even while real Christianity still loves the person. And such a person hating conservatism isn't surprising either, as conservatives hold a similar view.

Robinson wasn't the transgendered person here, but the whole story of this relationship would lend to the theory that he was pretty pliable as a personality.  The point is, therefore, this likely wasn't really an act of domestic terror in the conventional sense, so much as it was a person reaching out  under the influence of a sexual partner.  In an odd sort of way, this killing is more comparable to Dr. Carl Austin Weiss Sr.'s murder of Huey Long, which was over redistricting that impacted his father in law.  I.e., a personal connection is likely to have motivated it more than any overarching weltanschauung.

That's a story that's not really going to get explored, I suspect.  The right wing wants Kirk to be a martyr, the left doesn't want to talk about the mental health issues this really brings up.

Groypers?

I'd never heard of this term before, but apparently they are followers of Nick Fuentes.  As I don't pay any attention to Fuentes, I didn't know that.

Apparently they've drawn a lot of attention following Kirk's murder as there was some peculiar speculation that they were responsible for it.  They obviously are not, but that speculation was there, and I'm not sure why.

Fuentes, whose movement is outwardly anti homosexual, as well as anti a bunch of other stuff, has said some really odd things in this arena, one being that having sex with women is gay.  Eh?  Another apparently was that homosexual sex doesn't mean what it used to, as women aren't living up to their reproductive responsibilities.

Not in homilies

Apparently, at least according to Twitter, a lot of people are mad today as their parish priest didn't include a reference to Kirk's murder in their homilies yesterday.  

Why would they?

For Apostolic Christians, Catholic and Orthodox, yesterday was the Feast of the Cross, and homilies probably largely had to do with that.  Moreover the Catholic Church is just that, catholic, i.e., universal, and this is a domestic American matter that remains unclear.  Kirk wasn't attacked because he was Catholic, he wasn't, and the attack upon him may only have a tangential relationship with his Christianity.

Nonetheless, I saw one person who was irate at the Pope for having not mentioned it.

Spencer Cox

The guy who is really coming out looking good after all of this is Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox.  He's spoken multiple times and has been a calming voice every time.

This isn't the first time he's waded into these issues.  Following the killing at an Orlando gay bar some years ago he appeared at a vigil and stated:

How did you feel when you heard that 49 people had been gunned down by a self-proclaimed terrorist? That’s the easy question. Here is the hard one: Did that feeling change when you found out the shooting was at a gay bar at 2 a.m. in the morning? If that feeling changed, then we are doing something wrong.

Cox's comments are clearly against the stream of the MAGA mainstream. He was originally a never Trumper but claimed to have changed his mind and voted from Trump in his Presidential contests.  I suspect we'll be hearing more out of  Cox going forward, and he may very well be a Presidential candidate in 2028.

Ballroom Blitz

King Donny went from being outraged by the Kirk killing to bemoaning how it interrupted his might fine, in his mind, ballroom from being the focus of everyone's adoring attention.

That's pretty weird.

Also weird is how quickly this is going up.  It's apparently under construction right now.  Trump clearly wants it up before he leaves office, on the theory that will mean nobody will take it down.

The monstrosity will now be 40% bigger than originally planned.

Quite frankly, I thought this vandalization of the White House would not actually occur, as it would, in normal times, take quite a while to design and engineer a building. Indeed, I was frankly planning on just that.  I never thought the monstrosity would go up, as whomever is Present next won't be stupid or narcissistic enough to bother with a Trump "look at me!" ballroom.  It's really moronic.

But it's going up.

If I were President, which of course I never will be, my first executive order would be for the Army Corps of Engineers to remove the offending pile of dogshit within twenty foour hours of my being sworn in.  I'd have the resulting trash hauled and upmed in front of Trump Tower.  But that won't happen.  Trump is probably right.  A giant cancerous growth will be there forever.

Here is the oldest photo of the structure, and what it's actually supposed to look like:


Of course, as it might be noted, the building has been altered before, most notably the addition of the West and East Wings.  Those additions were made due to legitimate working concerns, however.

Again, if it were me, I'd be tempted to take it back to purse original.  It's just supposed to be a big house.

The architects for the vandalization are McCreery Architects, whose website has an image of the interior of the structure as its first slide.  The following slides show a lot of other impressive structures they've worked on.  They do seem to favor heavily classic styles, which is nice.  The site oddly doesn't have any text, but maybe if you need to hire a  heavy duty architect, you don't need text and the equivalent of architectural headshots works better.

A rational question would be why does this bother me so much?  Well, perhaps I just have an irrational reaction to all things Trump by this point.  But the ostentatiousness of the whole thing smacks of trying to be The Sun King.**Have we reached that point in this country?  I fear we have.

We've always had rich men, of course, but this is the era of fabulously wealth men.  It's not right.

Ah, sic transit gloria mundi.

Something we may wish to consider a bit. . . 

Maybe we have it too darn good (so we're self sabotaging).

It sounds absurd, but there's something to it.

The current Wyoming Catholic Register has an article pointing out that, in 1980, the year before I graduated from high school, 40% of the world's population lived in desperate poverty, an improvement from the mid to late 19th Century when it was 90%.

Now, just 10% does.

Big, huge, improvement.

By any objective measure, the condition of the world has massively improved. 

Why do we believe otherwise?

Evolutionary biology has a lot to do with it.  We evolved to live in a state of nature, and nature if pretty rough on everyone.  So we're acclimated to things not being quite right, and trouble being just around the corner.  Now, for most of us, that's not the case.

Gershwin wrote:

Summertime and the livin' is easy

Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high

Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'

So hush little baby, don't you cry

Well, it turns out that in summertime when the cotton is high and the fish are jumping, we're looking for a thunderstorm and worried about work on Monday.  

I know that I do.

And a super rich society, like ours, seems to make up its own problems.  

This is all the more the case when the gates are off the door, as they are.  Now, not only are there all our real and imagined problems, but we just go ahead and make new ones up.  Woman trapped inside a man's body?  Not if the Goths are at the city gates planning on killing everyone.  

Anyhow, it seems like we're busy, now that we are in the richest period of our existence as a species, making sure that real problems appear.  Apparently we missed them.

Footnotes

*Ballroom Blitz is an early 1970s, rock song by the band The Sweet.

**King Lous XIV.

Related threads:

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer up your pants.*

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A littl...

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer up your pants.*

Strange bedfellows.

Politics, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows.

New Senate Whip John Barrasso with President Elect Donald Trump and President John F. Kennedy with his nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Politics is, we also know, the art of compromise, but to what extent is a politician to blame for compromising with the truth?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been chosen by Donald Trump to be the new head of Health and Human Services.

He is, frankly, a nutter on health topics, who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near such a post.

John Barrasso is, by training, an orthopedic surgeon.

I've long suspected, well I'm pretty much certain, that Dr. Barrasso doesn't actually believe even half of what he's saying..He's doing it to 1) keep his Senatorial seat; and 2) advance himself in the Senate, even though at his age he could easily retire and be done with it.

Without getting too deep into it, I also believe that once you start compromising on fundamental things, you keep doing it, including with the truth.  You don't start off deep into it, but you end up there.

Dr. Barrasso was known, at one time, as "Wyoming's Doctor" and had spots on local television with health minutes, and hosted the Labor Day Marathon.  He continued to do this after he became Senator, a spot he was appointed to by the legislature to fill a vacancy before he was elected.

I've met him, as a physician, but can't claim to know him.  I've been with him on commercial aircraft numerous times.  I've always left him alone, as I figure that while traveling, people don't like to be bothered.  I don't.  Not everyone was like that, however, and I'd see people who recognized him treat him sort of like fans treated Elvis Presley.

Dr. Barrasso is originally from Pennsylvania.  With a solid Italian American parentage, and an early Catholic education, I'd guess, but don't know, that he was a Catholic up until some point.  He list himself as a Presbyterian now, and has been divorced, and later remarried.  He's in his early 70s.  Early on, his positions were clearly moderate Republican, but starting at least as early as 2016 they began to rapidly head towards Trumpism.  He had a right wing challenger in the GOP primary last go around, and while I think the chances of him every losing were small, he went hardcore to the right.

Now he's the whip.  Trump is going to expect him to whip up support for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, holds some of the nuttiest ideas on healthcare, and particularly vaccines, imaginable.  He shouldn't be anywhere near the Department of Health and Human Services.

Will Barrasso choke those down and support them.

Again, people don't get to supporting anything overnight.  Some do rapidly, some over decades.

RFK, Jr. has no business in this office.

Kennedys

Before moving on, hasn't the country had enough of the Kennedys?  

I certainly have.

The over tattooed and expropriation.

Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is taking a lot of flak.  Some of it is for things he's said or believes

Some of it for his tattoos, which are interpreted to mean things which they might not.

One of those tattoos is of a Jerusalem Cross.


The Jerusalem cross consists of a large cross potent surrounded by four smaller Greek crosses representing the spread of the gospel to the four corners of the earth.  It was used as the emblem and coat of arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem after 1099.

Hegeth is a member of a church which is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.  Therefore, he's appropriating a Catholic symbol, while he's not a Catholic.  Indeed, he's not even close, as he's on his third spouse, something no adherent Catholic would have done.

He also has a tattoo on a bicep that states Deus vult, "God wills", a phrase that dates back to the First Crusade, but which has been appropriated by many groups over the years.   And it doesn't stop there.

“Israel, Christianity and my faith are things I care deeply about,” he's stated.

Perhaps he should learn more about the faith espoused by the symbols that he's had inked on himself.  Indeed, quite frankly, the men who cried Deus vult in the 11th Century and those who fought to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem would have regarded him as a heretic. 

Anyhow,  one thing that I've worried about since the rise of Christian Nationalist is that Catholics are the ones who are going to take a beating in the end, even though its really a Protestant movement.  I can already see it starting to happen.  Former Senator Adam Kinzinger, who comments heavily on Blue Sky and Twitter, had a post noting that "the Crusades weren't Christian".  Oh yes they were, the thing they weren't is the edited version that English Protestants came up with to attempt to tar and feather the Church.  Others have been running around claiming that the Jerusalem Cross, which Catholics use a lot, is a Nazi symbol, which it isn't, or a camouflaged swastika, which it isn't.

The United States remains a Protestant nation, including in the way it reacts to symbols and in its misunderstanding of history.

All this serves, I'd note, to bury a deeper item that should be of actual concern, which is the American Evangelical view towards Israel.  This is not universal, by any means, but there's a branch of American Evangelicalism which sees itself as having a direct role in bringing about the Second Coming through its interaction with Israel.  According to somebody who knew him and commented on it recently (therefore at least making it somewhat suspect) former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who has been nominated by Trump to be Ambassador to Israel, and who is a Baptist minister, has those views.

Really, people with the apparent views of Huckabee and Kinzinger really have no business in the offices they've been nominated to serve in.

Hairless wonders.


This is sort of an odd aside, but the huge increase in male tattoos, including chest tattoos, has caused me to wonder, has there been a reduction in male chest hair in recent years?

Chest hair is a secondary male characteristic which is caused by a variety of genetic factors.  One of those is a high testosterone level, and for that reason, hairy chests have gone, at any one time, from being regarded as "brutish" to sexy.  Because of the conditions of the Second World War, Americans were acclimated for a time to seeing men shirtless, which was unusual, and for a good several decades after the war, hairy chested men, or just flat out hairy men in general, were in vogue.  Indeed I can recall seeing some 1960s vintage war movie with Fabian in it which was ridiculously hairy.

This is clearly really out now, but it still raises the question, what's going on.  Personally, I couldn't have a giant chest tattoo like Hegseth for the same reason that Tom Selleck couldn't.  I doubt that I really could have a tattoo anywhere safe for the the generally non visible part of my arms either.

It's interesting to note that there has been a substantial reduction in detected testosterone levels in the US since the 1980s.**

Maybe RFK, Jr. can look into that.

Creeps

It's a real irony that the man so many Christian Evangelicals saw as the Christian candidate has such a horrible personal tract record at least in the sexual ethics category, but perhaps that fact should cause us to be less than surprised that he nominated Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General of the United States.

There seem to be no doubt that Gaetz dabbled down in this category to a 17 year old.  Yes, he wasn't prosecuted, but he may have had a credible defense based on scienter.  According to at least one report, once he learned she was 17, he abstained from her favors until she was 18.

The thing here, however, is that this conduct is completely immoral.  Not only is it sex outside of marriage, which Christianity, but Gaetz is a creep who is fishing in the bottom of the well.  Frankly, this deserves further investigation as most 17 year olds or 18 year olds would have had no interest in Gaetz, so something should be done to figure out why they did and what's behind that.

This guy has no significant legal experience and shouldn't be anywhere near the AG's office.

Scenes from the American dumpster fire.


Strange bedfellows indeed.

At this point, however, if Matt Gaetz invited Mike Johnson over to the Playboy Grotto, if it still existed, I'd expect him to go.

Something about this photo just shows how trashy American culture has become.

Trashy.

I think there is sort of a faction in the Republican Party that has a strange kind of... sort of homoerotic fascination for Putin.

Boris Johnson recently stated this.

The fascination for Putin (who has a hairless chest, I'd note) is pretty weird.

Trad Rant

The recent election seems to have bubbled some stuff up from the bottom of the cultural dutch oven, and not just stuff like the weird things noted in the two above entries. Some of this is interesting to ponder, including pondering whether its a serious trend or something else.

One of them is the emergence of secular (and religious) trad women, holding a romantic, it seems, view of the not so distant path.

Here's an example.  Interesting trad rant starting at 21:00.


Interesting trad rant starting at 21:00.

This topic has come up here before, and the same way, more or less. The video clip above was cut down as a TikTok clip and reposted on Twitter, where it went viral.  Just the part where the young female Republican Trumpite starts the rant linked above.  We posted on this topic before, where a young woman, who was not aspiring to be a Hallmark farm wife, was having an absolute meltdown about having to work.

It's easy to dismiss this stuff, but there's something to it, which as noted, I've dove into before.  What's bizarre, maybe, is there somewhat to be some sort of minor movement.  Witness, in photos lifted from Twitter, although if I did it right, you can jump right to their Twitter feed.





I don't want to go to far in criticizing this, really, as it has a real appeal, as does a lot of sort of agrarian conservatism and Chesteronian distributism I see creeping into the culture, sort of sideways.  These people are sincere, and there's a real appeal to it.  Shoot, I'd live an agrarian life if people around me would allow it, or so I tell myself.

Others tell themselves that too, and also mock themselves, as for example, here:


Well, enough of all of that.

Footnotes:


**That may actually be due to the overall increase in the median age, as testosterone levels decline, normally, in males as they age.


Last edition:

Sunday, May 26, 2024

Lex Anteinternet: Harrison Butker telling us what we don't want to h...

Lex Anteinternet: Harrison Butker telling us what we don't want to h...

Harrison Butker telling us what we don't want to hear.


I'd never heard of Harrison Butker before this past week.

That should be no surprise.  I'm a lot more likely to know the name of a football player of the 1970s, when I was growing up and football was background audio and visual in my household, than I am to know of anyone now.  From high school graduation until early in my marriage, I didn't see a single football game from stem to stern in any fashion, as I don't like football.

I first heard of Butker when he was mentioned on Twitter, where I disregarded the entry. But then my daughter mentioned this speech, in a horrified fashion, and a quite liberal female friend of mine posted about it in hostile terms on Instagram.


So I looked it up, and I've repeated it, for purposes of commentary, below.

Let me start off with something controversial.

I don't think it's a bad speech.

What I think it does is tell us a bunch of things we know, but in our modern world, flat out don't want to hear.

I'll also note that Mr. Butker didn't intend for us to hear this, really, in the first place. This was a graduation speech to Benedictine College, which most people have never heard of.  I may have heard of it, but I didn't really know anything about it. As the name would indicate, it's a Catholic institution, and the fact that so few of us have heard of it would note that it's not very large.

I'll break the speech down in chunks, when I feel like commenting on it.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2024, I would like to start off by congratulating all of you for successfully making it to this achievement today. I'm sure your high school graduation was not what you had imagined and most likely neither was your first couple years of college.

By making it to this moment through all the adversity thrown your way from COVID, I hope you learned the important lessons that suffering in this life is only temporary. As a group you witnessed firsthand how bad leaders who don't stay in their lane can have a negative impact on society. It is through this lens that I want to take stock of how we got to where we are and where we want to go as citizens, and yes, as Catholics.

The "bad leaders" is an interesting comment.  A lot of people will instantly think Biden, although he wasn't in office for the thick of the pandemic, Trump was. Trump doesn't get high marks for the pandemic.

Maybe he means state officials.  I know that here a lot of people were apoplectic when Gov. Gordon imposed quarantines and still think that COVID was a fib. 

The pandemic oddly remains a right wing dog whisle.

One last thing before I begin I want to be sure to thank president Minns and the board for their invitation to speak. When President Minnis first reached out a couple of months ago I had originally said no. You see, last year I gave the commencement address at my Alma moer Georgia Tech and I felt that one graduation speech was more than enough, especially for someone who isn't a professional speaker. But of course president Minnis used his gift of persuasion and spoke to the many challenges you all faced throughout the COVID fiasco and how you missed out on so many milestones the rest of us older people have taken for granted.

Again, "COVID fiasco"? 

While COVID might have played a large role throughout your formative years it is not unique. Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder. Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I'm sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice. He is not alone. From the man behind the COVID lockdowns to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America, they all have a glaring thing in common: They are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn't cut it.

Again, "bad policies and poor leadership".  Trump or somebody else?  But here's where he really starts getting in trouble.  He calls  abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia and unnamed, degenerate cultural values and media disordered.

And he's correct. Those things are in fact disordered.

These are the sorts of things we are told in polite society to not bring up. You know, the difficult and unpleasant things. But if we are going to be men and women for this time in history we need to stop pretending that the “Church of nice” is a winning proposition. We must always speak and act in charity but never mistake charity for cowardice. It is safe to say that over the past few years I've gained quite the reputation for speaking my mind. I never envisioned myself nor wanted to have this sort of a platform but God has given it to me so I have no other choice but to embrace it and preach more hard truths about accepting your lane and staying in it.

Here again, even if we are told not to bring these topics he's raising up by the "polite", people who do bring them up will be shouted down, including Butker himself.  He's also correct that being the "Church of nice" is a losing proposition. 

As members of the church founded by Jesus Christ, it is our duty and ultimately privilege to be authentically and unapologetically Catholic. Don't be mistaken: even within the church, people in polite Catholic circles will try to persuade you to remain silent. There even was an award-winning film called “Silence” made by a fellow Catholic wherein one of the main characters, a Jesuit priest, abandoned the church, and as an apostate, when he died is seen grasping a crucifix quiet and unknown to anyone but God. As a friend of Benedictine College, his Excellency Bishop Robert Barron said in his review of the film it was exactly what the cultural elite want to see in Christianity: Private, hidden away and harmless.

I haven't seen Silence, but so I won't comment on it, but here Butker has a point, although its a fading one.  It's not so much, really, that Trad Catholics, or the highly orthodox, will be told to be kept quiet, but in really open declarations, outright attacked.  Butker is experiencing that right now.

As an odd example, Catholics in general are not howling with outrage at Joe Biden's actions which are clearly offensive to the faith, while some who wish to be as American as possible are shouting down Butker. 

Our Catholic faith has always been countercultural. Our Lord along with countless followers were all put to death for their adherence to her teachings. The world around us says that we should keep our beliefs to ourselves whenever they go against the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion. We fear speaking truth because now unfortunately truth is in the minority. Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the Biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.

Here Butker strays off into populist conspiracy territory. The bill he noted that was designed to protect Jewish Americans doesn't require any modification of beliefs or statements at all. And for that matter, the conventional Catholic view in that humanity, i.e., we, or us, were Christ's killers.   The unique attribution of that action to the Jews misunderstands the Gospels, with that misunderstanding having formed an excuse for antisemitism for centuries.

He is correct, however, that standing against certain widely advanced cultural trends will get a person attacked in public.

But make no mistake, before we even attempt to fix any of the issues plaguing society we must first get our own house in order, and it starts with our leaders. The bishops and priests appointed by God as our spiritual fathers must be rightly ordered. There is not enough time today for me to list all the stories of priests and bishops misleading their flocks, but none of us can blame ignorance anymore and just blindly proclaim that that's what father said. Because sadly many priests we are looking to for leadership are the same ones who prioritize their hobbies or even photos with their dogs in matching outfits for the parish directory. It’s easy for us lay men and women to think that in order for us to be holy, that we must be active in our parish and try to fix it. Yes, we absolutely should be involved in supporting our parishes, but we cannot be the source for our parish priests to lean on to help with their problems just as we look at the relationship between a father and his son, so too should we look at the relationship between a priest and his people. It would not be appropriate for me to always be looking to my son for help when it is my job as his father to lead him.

St Josemaria Escriva states that priests are ordained to serve and should not yield to temptation to imitate lay people but to be priests, through and through. Tragically, so many priests revolve much of their happiness from the adulation they receive from their parishioners, and in searching for this, they let their guard down and become overly familiar. This undue familiarity will prove to be problematic every time, because as my teammate’s girlfriend says “familiarity breeds contempt.” St Josemaria continues that some want to see the priest as just another man. That is not so they want to find in the priests those virtues proper to every Christian and indeed every honorable man: understanding, justice, a life of work, priestly work in this instance, and good manners. It is not prudent as the laity for us to consume ourselves in becoming amateur theologians so that we can decipher this or that theological teaching unless of course you are a theology major. We must be intentional with our focus on our state in life and our own vocation, and for most of us, that's as married men and women.

There's something to this, but this really seems over played, particularly in the case of parish priests, but also in the case of a lot of bishops as well. 

Still we have so many great resources at our fingertips that it doesn't take long to find traditional and timeless teachings that haven't been ambiguously rewarded for our times. Plus, there are still many good and holy priests and it's up to us to seek them out. The chaos of the world is unfortunately reflected in the chaos in our parishes and sadly in our cathedrals, too. As we saw during the pandemic, too many Bishops were not leaders at all. They were motivated by fear: fear of being sued, fear of being removed, fear of being disliked. They showed by their actions, intentional or unintentional, that the sacraments don't actually matter. Because of this countless people died alone, without access to the sacraments, and it's a tragedy we must never forget.

As Catholics, we can look to so many examples of heroic shepherds who gave their lives for their people, and ultimately, the church. We cannot buy into the lie that the things we experienced during COVID were appropriate. Over the centuries there have been great wars, great famines, and yes, even great diseases, all that came with a level of lethality and danger. But in each of those examples, church leaders leaned into their vocations, and ensured that their people received the sacraments. Great saints like St. Damien of Molokai, who knew the dangers of his ministry, stayed for 11 years as a spiritual leader to the leper colonies of Hawaii. His heroism is looked at today as something set apart and unique, when ideally, it should not be unique at all. For as a father loves his child, so a shepherd should love his spiritual children, too.

That goes even more so for our bishops. These men who are present day apostles, our bishops once had adoring crowds of people kissing their rings and taking in their every word, but now relegate themselves to a position of inconsequential existence. Now, when a bishop of a diocese or the Bishops Conference as a whole puts out an important document on this matter, nobody even takes a moment to read it, let alone follow it. No. Today, our shepherds are far more concerned with keeping the doors open to the Chancery than they are saying that difficult stuff out loud. It seems that the only time you hear from your bishops is when it’s time for the annual appeal. Whereas we need our bishops to be vocal about the teachings of the Church, setting aside their own personal comfort and embracing their cross. Our bishops are not politicians, but shepherds. So instead of fitting in the world by going along to get along, they too need to stay in their lane and lead.

Again, something to this, but much overplayed. 

I say all of this not from a place of anger as we get the leaders we deserve. But this does make me reflect on staying in my lane and focusing on my own vocation, and how I can be a better father and husband and live in the world, but not be of it. Focusing on my vocation while praying and fasting for these men will do more for the church than me complaining about our leaders. Because there seems to be so much confusion coming from our leaders. There needs to be concrete examples for people to look to, and places like Benedictine, a little Kansas college built high on a bluff above the Missouri River, are showing the world how an ordered Christ-centered existence is the recipe for success. You need to look no further than the examples all around this campus, where over the past 20 years enrollment has doubled, and construction and revitalization are a constant part of life and people, the students, the faculty and staff are thriving. This didn’t happen by chance. In a deliberate movement to embrace traditional Catholic values, Benedictine has gone from just another liberal arts school with nothing to set it apart to a thriving beacon of light and a reminder to us all that when you embrace tradition, success, worldly and spiritual will follow. I am certain the reporters at the AP could not have imagined that their attempt to rebuke and embarrass places and people like those here at Benedictine wouldn’t be met with anger, but instead with excitement and pride. Not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it. But the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the Holy Ghost to glorify Him.

This is the point at which Butker begins to make some interesting observations, and where he also begins to take sniping from the progressive gallery.  Let's break some of this down.  First, this;  "I say all of this not from a place of anger as we get the leaders we deserve. But this does make me reflect on staying in my lane and focusing on my own vocation, and how I can be a better father and husband and live in the world, but not be of it. Focusing on my vocation while praying and fasting for these men will do more for the church than me complaining about our leaders."

That' is the classic Catholic view, and he really can't be faulted for much of what he says here.  He's not calling for marching in the streets, at least not here.

He goes on to note how conservative Catholic institutions are on the rise, and he is correct.

The he stated; "Not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it. But the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the Holy Ghost to glorify Him."

The off handed reference to "Pride Month" drew criticism.  But frankly, anyway you look at it, we now have so many months that they become pointless unless backed up by compulsion. We've written on this before:

On Pride Month, the nature of Pride, and compelling opinions.

Additionally, as we've also noted before, being "proud" of your sexual orientation is an extremely odd concept.  Pride?  If, as homosexuals insist, although its not really solidly backed up by the science, sexual orientation is programmed in, then a person could not really bear any pride for it as it wouldn't be an achievement of any type. 

Reading that article now shared all over the world, we see that in the complete surrender of self and a turning towards Christ, you will find happiness. Right here in a little town in Kansas, we find many inspiring lay people using their talents. President Minnis, Dr. Swofford and Dr. Zimmer are a few great examples right here on this very campus that will keep the light of Christ burning bright for generations to come. Being locked in with your vocation and staying in your lane is going to be the surest way for you to find true happiness and peace in this life. It is essential that we focus on our own state in life, whether that be as a layperson or priests, or religious.

Oh my, he makes a radical suggestion, that being;  "Being locked in with your vocation and staying in your lane is going to be the surest way for you to find true happiness and peace in this life. It is essential that we focus on our own state in life, whether that be as a layperson or priests, or religious."

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2024, you are sitting at the edge of the rest of your lives. Each of you has the potential to leave a legacy that transcends yourselves and this era of human existence. In the small ways by living out your vocation, you will ensure that God’s Church continues and the world is enlightened by your example. For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you, how many of you are sitting here now about to cross the stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you’re going to get in your career. Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.

Butker might be guessing too much, but he raises a real point.  Whether the women at Benedictine University are looking forward to marriage and children consciously is one thing.  The fact is that the majority of people who are not called to celibacy in fact do have it deeply ingrained in them. And the suppression of it is one of the major causes of discontent in the world.  But the concept that this would be true flies in the face of the joint Capitalist/Communist prevailing belief that humans exist for work (careers) and find all fulfillment in it.

The massive great lie of the modern world is just that.  You will be happy in your career and you must have one, and that must dictate your life above all else, at all times.  It was forced upon men first, and then upon women with the feminist revolution of the second half of the 20th Century.


There's nothing intrinsically wrong, of course, with women having careers.  But the truth of the matter is that once the industrial revolution industrialized the work place, it dehumanized it and made it deeply unnatural.  At the end of the day, careers are just work, some of the jobs better than others, and some better suited for their occupants than others. They aren't life.

I’m on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me. But it cannot be overstated, that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker. She’s a primary educator to our children. She’s the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from that of a husband and father. She is the person that knows me best at my core. And it is through our marriage that Lord willing, we will both attain salvation. I say all of this to you because I’ve seen it firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life. Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true. But if you ask her today, if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud without hesitation and say, “heck no.”

As a man who gets a lot of praise and has been given a platform to speak to audiences like this one today, I pray that I always use my voice for God and not for myself. Everything I am saying to you is not from a place of wisdom, but rather a place of experience. I am hopeful that these words will be seen as those from a man not much older than you who feels it is imperative that this class, this generation, and this time in our society must stop pretending that the things we see around us are normal. Heterodox ideas abound, even within Catholic circles. Let’s be honest, there is nothing good about playing God with having children, whether that be your ideal number or the perfect time to conceive. No matter how you spin it, there is nothing natural about Catholic birth control. It is only in the past few years that I have grown encouraged to speak more boldly and directly, because as I mentioned earlier, I have leaned into my vocation as a husband and father and as a man.

This was bound to raise complaints.  We'll note, once again, what we said earlier:

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

To the gentleman here today, part of what plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities. As men, we set the tone of the culture. And when that is absent disorder, dysfunction and chaos set in this absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the US. And a correlation can be made in their drastically lower violence rates as well. Be unapologetic in your masculinity. Fight against the cultural emasculation of men. Do hard things. Never settle for what is easy. You might have a talent that you don’t necessarily enjoy. But if it glorifies God, maybe you should lean into that over something that you might think suits you better. I speak from experience as an introvert who now finds myself as an amateur public speaker, and an entrepreneur, something I never thought I’d be when I received my industrial engineering degree.

Here he states another truism; "Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the US. And a correlation can be made in their drastically lower violence rates as well."

Living in a town that has had two (reported) teenage murders in recent weeks where you can read the articles and tell, without being told, that this is almost certainly a factor in what occured, well. . .

This is interesting; "You might have a talent that you don’t necessarily enjoy. But if it glorifies God, maybe you should lean into that over something that you might think suits you better. I speak from experience as an introvert who now finds myself as an amateur public speaker, and an entrepreneur, something I never thought I’d be when I received my industrial engineering degree."

The road ahead is bright, things are changing, society is shifting, and people young and old are embracing tradition. Not only has it been my vocation that has helped me and those closest to me, but not surprising to many of you should be my outspoken embrace of the traditional Latin Mass. I’ve been very vocal in my love and devotion to the TLM and its necessity for our lives. But what I think gets misunderstood is that people who attend the TLM do so out of pride or preference. I can speak to my own experience. But for most people I have come across within these communities. This simply is not true. I do not attend the TLM because I think I’m better than others, or for the smells and bells, or even for the love of Latin. I attend TLM because I believe just as the God of the Old Testament was pretty particular and how he wanted to be worshiped, the same holds true for us today. It is through the TLM that I encountered order and began to pursue it in my own life. Aside from the TLM itself, too many of our sacred traditions have been relegated to things of the past. When in my parish, things such as Ember Days — days when we fast and pray for vocations and for our priests — are still adhered to. The TLM is so essential that I would challenge each of you to pick a place to move where it is readily available. A lot of people have complaints about the parish or the community, but we should not sacrifice the mass for community. I prioritize the TLM even if the parish isn’t beautiful, the priest isn’t great, or the community isn’t amazing. I still go to the TLM because I believe the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is more important than anything else. I say this knowing full well that when each of you rekindle your knowledge and adherence to many of the church’s greatest traditions, you will see how much more colorful and alive your life can and should be. As you move on from this place and enter into the world, know that you will face many challenges.

We've made the same observation here on this site; "The road ahead is bright, things are changing, society is shifting, and people young and old are embracing tradition."

Sadly, I’m sure many of you know of the countless stories of good and active members of this community who after graduation and moving away from the Benedictine Bubble have ended up moving in with their boyfriend or girlfriend prior to marriage. Some even leave the church and abandon God. It is always heartbreaking to hear these stories, and there’s a desire to know what happened and what went wrong. What you must remember is that life is about doing the small things well. So setting yourself up for success and surrounding yourself with people who continually push you to be the best version of you. I say this all the time, that iron sharpens iron. It’s a great reminder that those closest to us should be making us better. If you’re dating someone who doesn’t even share your faith, how do you expect that person to help you become a saint? If your friend group is filled with people who only think about what you’re doing next weekend, and are not willing to have those difficult conversations, how can they help sharpen you? As you prepare to enter into the workforce, it is extremely important that you actually think about the places you are moving to. Who is the bishop? What kind of parishes are there? Do they offer the TLM and have priests who embrace their priestly vocation? Cost of living must not be the only arbiter of your choices. For a life without God is not a life at all. And the cost of salvation is worth more than any career.

I’m excited for the future. And I pray that something I’ve said will resonate as you move on to the next chapter of your life. Never be afraid to profess the one holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. For this is the Church that Jesus Christ established, through which we receive sanctifying grace. I know that my message today had a little less fluff than is expected for these speeches. But I believe that this audience and this venue is the best place to speak openly and honestly, about who we are and where we all want to go, which is heaven. I thank God for Benedictine College, and for the example it provides to the world. I thank God for men like President Minnis who are doing their part for the Kingdom. Come to find out you can have an authentically Catholic College and a thriving football program. Make no mistake, you’re entering into mission territory in a post-God world. But you were made for this and with God by your side and a constant striving for virtue within your vocation, you too can be a saint. Christ is King to the heights.

All in all?

The speech started off badly, but frankly it concluded well, and over half of it is receiving criticism in larger society as it tells people what they don't want to hear. Careerism is crap. Having a career central to your being is a mistake.  Being unnatural is unnatural.

It answers Berry's question; "What are people for", but if he's right, our days are spent in the larger society doing things that are meaningless and counterproductive, if we misunderstand their existential nature.

People who tell you what you don't want to hear, aren't well received, particularly if it's true.1


 Footnotes:

1.  Predictably, and indeed as Butker's speech even anticipated, he's received criticism from inside the church, including, from a group of the Kanasas Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica. Their reply is below.


This response is interesting in and of itself, starting off with the comment of "Instead of promising unity. . . ".

Christ didn't promise unity.
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Luke 12:53. 

Reading the Sister's reply, it's actually a bit difficult to determine what they are actually upset about, as they don't make it very specific and to some degree support what Butker stated.  The "unity" item is interesting however, as noted.

Beyond that, however, their complaint against what Butker stated doesn't actually counter what he stated.  He didn't say women can't have careers, what he essentially challenged is the secular assurance that women are fulfilled, like men, through careers.  Neither is anywhere close to being true.

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