Hey, anti-Catholics who think the Mass is blasphemy - 

Daniel Vecchio points out:

//I mentioned to my friend, Joel, that the devil would have no interest in mocking a Catholic Mass if it truly were a sacrilege, since he would be pleased by the fine job we are doing ourselves. There is no point in making a blasphemy of a blasphemy, since the devil might as well direct his Satanists to follow the Catholic faith, as an effective and idolatrous way to imperil their souls. Joel made the interesting connection to Christ’s claim that a house divided cannot stand://

When was the last time we heard about Satanists mocking a Presbyterian service?

The spiritual "thinness" of Catholicism thickens.

Father Longenecker writes:

The historic ritual of Catholic religion is rooted in an acceptance of the metaphysical. In other words, we believe that through the ritual we are making a transaction with the other world. The supernatural impinges on us at all times. We are at the threshold of heaven and on the doorstep of eternity. Most AmChurch Catholics don’t understand this. I am convinced that it is simply not a part of their world view. Why should it be? They have been educated in a culture and by a system that is essentially materialistic, utilitarian and secular. There is no sense of the immanent, no sense of the awesome presence in life. The Protestant founding fathers weeded out all that “nonsense” and the deists and materialists finished the job. Such poetic and otherworldly ideas are not even dismissed by the typical American. They are not even misunderstood. They simply do not exist in their vocabulary.

Worship has become for most American Catholics therefore a mixture of civic duty, a way to inculcate good values into their children, a matter of family tradition which is presented in a way that is comfortable, easy going and entertaining. The idea that we are in touch with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the pillar of fire and the burning bush, the idea that we are on the threshold of a life changing mystical experience is utterly foreign to their imagination.

The desire for the mystical, however will not die, so instead of finding this mysterium tremendum et fascinans in the ritual, music, architecture and art of ordinary Catholic worship or in the religious traditions of contemplative prayer, monasticism and devotions the American Catholic is most likely to wander off into the misty mystical mess of New Age practices, Eastern religions or the occult.

Hah! Get this, get me!

From Tim Stanley at the Telegraph:

This speaks to me. There’s often a presumption – because of our line on sexual morality – that Catholics are prudes and bigots who wouldn’t know a good time if it booked them a room for two with Monica Lewinsky at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The reality is quite the opposite. Catholicism is a community of sinners seeking grace, taking strength in each other’s company – a sort of Alcoholics Anonymous for screw-ups. As such, I’ve never known an environment more compassionate and comfortably eccentric. 

I converted to Catholicism not because I was full of religious chauvinism or intellectual conviction but because it offered hope to someone who was very alone. I was burnt out and mostly drunk. I had struggled to find a church that would help me; all of them seemed either compromised or hopelessly idealistic. Slowly I was drawn into the Catholic community. Here was a place where monks drank beer, priests smoked like chimneys and filthy jokes were at a premium. It wasn’t hypocritical, just human. And behind the humanity was a concern with encountering the divine – made possible by a very practical, step-by-step approach to salvation. Go to Confession, make penance, take Communion at Mass, buy the priest a pint afterwards. As soon as I understood Catholicism, it became second nature. I converted and my soul was saved. I suspect that my life was saved, too. 

Since then, I have never once doubted the Truth of the Church’s teachings, but I have struggled to be faithful. If I skip Mass it’s usually because the petty minutiae of the rest of my life distracts me. Things go wrong, hope is lost and it feels like Jack Daniels is the only man who understands me. But something wonderful always draws me back. A few weeks ago, I visited my favourite priest in his rectory. I saw the light glowing under his kitchen door, tasted the smell of Marlboro Reds on my tongue and heard a babble of mad voices discussing what’s wrong and what’s right about this Argentine Pope. I opened the door and walked in to love, knowing that I was returning home to my tribe. The tribe of screw-ups.

And if you don't get it right in this life, there's always purgatory to clean things up.

The NYT is running a "push poll" on "Catholic" attitudes toward Catholicism...

...which plays up the negative elements.

Note that the numbers for weekly attendance are drastically different.

*Yawn*

Britain has become a Catholic country.

According to the Telegraph:

Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country's dominant religious group. More people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.

This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation's most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation.

Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call.

The statistics show that attendance at Anglican Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000. A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, shows the number of people going to Sunday Mass in England last year averaged 861,000, compared with 852,000 Anglicans ­worshipping.

The rise of Catholicism has been bolstered by an influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and Africa, who have packed the pews of Catholic parishes that had previously been dwindling.

It is part of the changing face of churchgoing across Britain in the 21st century which has also seen a boom in the growth of Pentecostal churches, which have surpassed the Methodist Church as the country's third largest Christian denomination.

Spooky Catholic Halloween Stuff.

Back from the Dead Walk.

Because no one does "spooky" better, what with Purgatory, the Communion of Saints and exorcisms and the fact that the Catholic world view envisions the distances between the natural and the supernatural as being much, much thinner than alternative metaphysics.

Obama turns out to be a uniter after all.

Bringing Mormons and Catholics together since 2011.
Romney declares:

Religious liberty — our first freedom of those enumerated in the Bill of Rights. And the president and his administration said they are going to usurp your religious freedom by demanding that you provide products to your employees, if you’re the Catholic Church, that violates your own conscience.

And so whether it’s a Catholic businessperson or the Catholic Church itself they’re being told what they have to do that violates their religious conscience. That attack on religious freedom I think is a dangerous and unfortunate precedent.

And I know we’re not all Catholic in this room. Many presumably are. But I feel that we’re all Catholic today. In our battle to preserve religious freedom and tolerance and freedom in this country, it is essential for us to push back against that.

Video here.

For "Education Junkies."

A new site is pushing "Catholic Courses" on a "The Teaching Company" model.

It looks pretty good, with courses on Dante, Saints, Theology, Friendship, the Apocalypse, etc.

I can see where some of my "disposable income" is headed.

Vote like it matters in eternity.

The word for this definition of "Catholic" is "Protestant."

Feminist Catholic Mary Hunt is apparently interested in a kind of copyright infringement by appropriating the name Catholic:

The crux of the matter, as it were, is that most of the nuns, like many Catholics, have matured beyond the Vatican’s imaginings. The notion that postmodern Catholics assent to “the doctrine of the faith that has been revealed by God in Jesus Christ, presented in written form in the divinely inspired Scriptures, and handed on in the Apostolic Tradition under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium,” (or, simply, the fathers know best) is simply ludicrous. As one observer asked me, “What Bible do they read?”

The truth is, most Catholics no longer look to Rome for guidance on our personal lives, or anyone else’s. Nor do we live within the narrow confines of a cultic Christianity, or, as women, accept male leadership and priestly ministry as if theirs were God-given and ours were not. We appreciate the complexity of these matters and strive to create forums in which to listen, discuss, discern, and pray.

In short, our ways of being are as different from the Vatican’s as are our views.

If hierarchy and tradition and truth revealed in the Scriptures and from Apostolic Tradition is so offensive, there are lots of churches that don't have those things.

A different view of the Marines at Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

Father Z posts this picture and this comment:

The great Roman Fabrizio sent me a photo of Marines on Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi at Mass, His commentary follows.

My first thought looking at these brave Marines was for the Angels who saw this happening and how they must have celebrated around the Throne. Admittedly we’re just human beings and everything we do for the Lord looks pathetic if compared to His Glory. And yet, I can’t think of many other things that must appeal to the Heart of Jesus as much as a man like that, in the middle of a veritable hell, possibly a few minutes from death, kneeling on the scorched ground of Mount Suribachi because that’s how you receive your Savior! The Holy Angels must have thought “maybe that’s why He loves them so much, why he said to them:

si fuerint peccata vestra ut coccinum...”

The latin phrase seems to be from Isaiah

18. Venite, agedum, et disceptemus, dixit Dominus: si fuerint peccata vestra ut coccinum, quasi nix dealbabuntur: si rubicunda fuerint instar purpurae, quasi lana erunt.

or

18. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Turns out that some nuns are grateful to the CDF.

Like a lot of mainstream Protestants in liberal denominations, it turns out that there are nuns who see their congregations dying a slow, self-inflicted death because of the embrace of wacky theology by their disengaged leadership.

Ann Carey writes:

Additionally, the CDF document emphasizes that the initiative is addressed only to the LCWR, a 1,500-member organization to which many leaders of women’s religious orders belong. The initiative is not directed to the other 54,000 sisters in the United States who do not belong to the LCWR, though press reports have tended to confuse this point and characterize all sisters as members of the LCWR.

This is quite incorrect, and many sisters who are in LCWR-related orders have contacted this writer to emphasize that they have neither membership, voice or vote in the LCWR, and they do not appreciate being associated with the organization. In fact, many sisters in LCWR-related orders are quite pleased about the CDF action. As one such sister wrote in an e-mail: “I am so grateful to Pope Benedict and to all in Rome and in the USA who have contributed to this resolution. It has been a long nightmare and a severe cross for 40-plus years!”

And:

Over the years, Catholic liturgies at LCWR meetings and assemblies were edged out in favor of New Age rituals and para-liturgies led by women. Workshops and speakers tended to focus on social and political issues rather than ecclesial, as evidenced by the resolutions passed at the 2000 LCWR assembly: To work for legislation to bring people out of poverty; for better working conditions for laborers in factories along the U.S.-Mexico border; and support for a “global peace force.”

Bad Religion.

Ross Douthat and William Saletan debate orthodoxy.

Here's a sign that the '60s may end during my lifetime.

Vatican begins to reform American nuns.

The spirit of "Goddess-worshipping" craziness that has gone mainstream in a lot of mainstream Protestant denominations has been circling the Catholic women's religious community for years.

Addresses at the LCWR Assemblies. Addresses given during LCWR annual Assemblies manifest problematic statements and serious theological, even doctrinal errors. The Cardinal offered as an example specific passages of Sr. Laurie Brink’s address about some Religious “moving beyond the Church” or even beyond Jesus. This is a challenge not only to core Catholic beliefs; such a rejection of faith is also a serious source of scandal and is incompatible with religious life. Such unacceptable positions routinely go unchallenged by the LCWR, which should provide resources for member Congregations to foster an ecclesial vision of religious life, thus helping to correct an erroneous vision of the Catholic faith as an important exercise of charity. Some might see in Sr. Brink’s analysis a phenomenological snapshot of religious life today. But Pastors of the Church should also see in it a cry for help.

And:

The Cardinal noted a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith in some of the programs and presentations sponsored by the LCWR, including theological interpretations that risk distorting faith in Jesus and his loving Father who sent his Son for the salvation of the world. Moreover, some commentaries on “patriarchy” distort the way in which Jesus has structured sacramental life in the Church; others even undermine the revealed doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the inspiration of Sacred Scripture.

Rendering unto Caesar - the Kulturkampf Returns.

During at least the period of 1870 to 1945 in Germany, an attentive reader of history can see in stark detail a tension - and then split - in the loyalties of the German Catholic community. With the establishment of the German empire in 1870, Catholics were presented with the question of whether there primary loyalty lay with the Reich or with the Church, and, particularly, its Italian leader "over the mountains."

Catholics who found that their primary loyalty lay with the church were identified as "ultramontane."

Those who found that their primary loyalty lay in their German identity tended toward a departure from the Catholic church. The first way that this departure expressed itself in the wake of Vatican I was the foundation of the "Old Catholic Church," which rejected the dogma of papal infallibility. We shouldn't lose sight of the political dimension of this event. The creation of a German national "Catholic" church played into the contemporary issues of German nationalism which had achieved a particular resonance at the time: both Vatican I's declaration of papal infallibility and the establishment of the German Reich happened in 1870.

The creation of the German Reich in 1870 also inaugurated the anti-clerical, anti-Catholic Kulturkampf. The Kulturkampf was a liberal project. German liberals throught that their philosophy required them to inveigh against Catholicism as superstition and alien. A thread that ran through liberal Kulturkampf arguments were attacks on multi-national Catholic institutions such as monastaries and the Jesuits.

The same conflict between ultramontane Catholicism and German national identity existed in the Nazi movement. Although the late Christopher Hitchens like to sneer that "Fascism was right wing Catholicism," in German the opposite was true. Nazis who had once been Catholic were invariably - virtually always - apostate Catholic, but, moreover, arch-anti-Catholics. Himmler echoed the Kulturkampf in his fear of Jesuits and his anti-clerical plan to dismantle the Catholic Church. Both Hitler and Goebbels demonstrated in their conduct their apostasy by their marriage of divorced Protestants; the key to seeing their apostasy - strategically ignored by Hitchens - was not that the women were Protestant, but that they were divorced. Anyone with a dime-store knowledge of Catholicism has some inkling of the problems that Catholics have in marrying divorcees without an anullment.

Protestant Nazis, in contrast, were able to remain Protestants in good standing because German Protestantism didn't present the choice between loyalty to a German identity and loyalty to a transnational identity. Goring remained a church-going Lutheran - and in fact the head of the Prussian Lutheran Church - duing his time in state leadership. Hitler was recorded as saying that only a good Protestant could be a good German and vice versa, and that he felt more akin to Protestantism than to Catholicism, albeit he never formally apostasized.

We see the same dynamics in America today. The recent contraception kerfuffle, for example, was clearly a "wedge issue," but a wedger for whom? One thing that the issue was intended to "wedge" was Catholics and non-Catholics, but, probably, the more important target was liberal and Democrat Catholics from "ultramontane" or "conservative" Catholics. Another thing the issue was intended to "wedge" or promote was anti-clericalism.

There has been a conflict of loyalties in the liberal Catholic community for years because particular Catholic teachings conflict with liberal "dogma," such as teachings on bioethics, sexuality and abortion. Democrat Catholics have been "apostasizing" in fact if not in name insofar as they have been required to make a choice as to where their primary loyalty lies.

The following story from Reuters points out that things are probably going to get worse as the Catholic Church may start forcing the issue of "primary loyalty" as much as "liberalism" has through pressure to conform to its particularist and jealous ideology.

Vatican officials seldom single out political leaders who differ with the Church on issues like abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research. But now that the Vatican’s highest court is led by an American, the former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, we can expect things to get more explicit in Vatican City — at least when when it comes to U.S. politics.

Burke, who was named prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature in June, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the U.S. Democratic Party risked “transforming itself definitively into a party of death for its decisions on bioethical issues.” He then attacked two of the party’s most high profile Catholics — vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — for misrepresenting Church teaching on abortion.

He said Biden and Pelosi, “while presenting themselves as good Catholics, have presented Church doctrine on abortion in a false and tendentious way.”

Pelosi drew U.S. bishops’ scorn for saying in a television interview last month that the Church itself had long debated when human life begins. Biden is a practicing Catholic who also supports abortion rights and analysts have said he could help woo wavering Catholics into Obama’s fold. Both argue that they cannot impose their religious views on others.

Burke said pro-life Democrats were “rare” and that it saddened him that the party that helped “our immigrant parents and grandparents” prosper in America had changed so much over the years.

Burke made headlines as archbishop of St. Louis for his public attacks on public figures who strayed from Catholic teaching. He suggested during the 2004 presidential campaign that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Catholic, should be denied communion because of his views on abortion. Several bishops said at the time they would not give him communion and the media staked out churches where he attended Mass to see if he received it.

“Lately, I’ve noticed that other bishops are coming to this position,” Burke told Avvenire, which is owned by the Italian bishops’ conference.

Heretics in the Church of "Have it your way."

Father Steve Grunow at Word on Fire discusses the problems of not being a consumer-driven church in a consumer-driven world:

The Johnson/Father Guarnizo bout suggested a truth underlying the situation that went mostly unexamined in the press, but that most priests have frequently encountered. Many people coming to the Church, even those that have some association with its beliefs and practices, are looking to the Church to satisfy a need or desire that may or may not be possible to satisfy. God help the Church's minister should he prove unwilling, incapable, or just unable in conscience to give a person what they want, or in the terms of the peculiar circumstances of the Johnson/Guarnizo situation, should the Church's minister make what turns out to be an imprudent application of Canon Law. Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals, and even the Mass itself have become commodities, and the Church is presumed to be a provider for faith-based goods and services tailored to consumer demands. A principled profession of Faith expressed in a unique way of life has been replaced by the mandates that the religious customer is always right even when they are wrong, and the point is to give the lady (or gentleman) what they want. The new Gospel is that no one who encounters the Church should ever leave unhappy— or better expressed—leave emotionally unsatisfied. That’s a tall order, especially for a faith that serves a Lord who offends and emotionally upsets just about everyone who is willing to take him seriously. If the Church even signals that it might be “judging” someone or, in an appeal to maintain the integrity of its beliefs and practices, the Church offends someone’s feelings, grievances will be adjudicated in the court of public opinion. The Church had better be wary because, in that court, the Church is usually the loser.

There is more to the current story of the Church than controversy, disappointment and anger, but one might not know that from the stories the media highlights. On the day the events involving Barbara Johnson and Father Guarnizo happened, how many funeral Masses were offered in the United States alone? All of those funerals involved people with a story worth telling, but of all those, only one was deemed newsworthy. And why? Because it involved controversy and because it fit with what has become a genre of storytelling about the Catholic Church that conforms to cultural expectations. Unfortunately, it seems that stories about people's positive experiences of the Church or of the constructive work that the Church is doing right now fall beneath the radar screen of the press, or if brought forward, are assumed not very newsworthy or propaganda. It seems that not only has the sex abuse scandal rendered any appeal to the victimization of the Catholic Church as either unbelievable or rightly deserved, but it also has created a genre of reporting in which, if anything good does come from Catholicism, it is just not a story worth telling.

I am not saying that the story of Barbara Johnson and Father Guarnizo amounts to anti-Catholic fiction. The events associated with the two really happened- its just that the facts of the story have been sublimated into a narrative about the Church in which the Church is the presumed victimizer. Whether or not this was the real story or the true story is beside the point— the story that was told was deemed to be precisely what American culture both wanted and needed to hear.

Guess who is losing his attempt to rouse up the masses in a "two minute hate" against Catholics?

Obama, that's who.

How do we know that?

Because on Friday as part of the traditional "Obama news dump," the administration announced a new defintion of "religious employer" that includes colleges and universities.

According to Jimmy Akin:

From the National Catholic *Reporter* (not Register):

Taking a conciliatory tone and asking for a wide range of public comment, the Obama administration announced this afternoon new accommodations on a controversial mandate requiring contraceptive coverage in health care plans.

Coming after a month of continued opposition from the U.S. bishops to the mandate, which was first revised in early February to exempt certain religious organizations, today’s announced changes from the Department of Health and Human Services make a number of concessions, including allowing religious organizations that self-insure to be made exempt.

Also raised is the possibility that the definition given for religious employers in the original mandate could be changed.

. . .

News of the changes also came as a separate ruling on student health insurance coverage was announced by the Department of Health and Human Services this afternoon. Under that ruling, health care plans for students would be treated like those of employees of colleges and universities—meaning the colleges will have to provide contraceptive services to students without co-pay.

Religiously affiliated colleges and universities, however, would be shielded from this ruling, according to a statement from the HHS.

“In the same way that religious colleges and universities will not have to pay, arrange or refer for contraceptive coverage for their employees, they will not have to do so for their students who will get such coverage directly and separately from their insurer,” the statement said.

In the 32-page proposal on the broader health care mandate published in the Federal Register today, the Health and Human Services Department says it is not yet making final rules on the contraceptive mandate, but is instead issuing questions and suggestions for a 90-day comment period to begin today.

Repeatedly, throughout the document, the federal departments involved in the ruling—which include Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury—ask for advice on how best to address several issues raised by the mandate.

The federal departments, the document says, “seek input on these options, particularly how to enable religious organizations to avoid such objectionable cooperation when it comes to the funding of contraceptive coverage, as well as new ideas to inform the next stage of the rulemaking process.”

Among the suggestions made in the document, known as a “proposed rulemaking,” is that self-insuring employers with a religious affiliation be given several options to ensure that they will not have to cover contraceptive services. Included in the possibilities is the use of a system of third-party administrators to administer the coverage.

While the original version of the mandate defined religious employers as those which primarily serve or hire those of their faith, the rulemaking acknowledges that federal law in other areas define religious employers more broadly.

A few thoughts:

1) Note that this was in a Friday news dump from the administration, to have minimal news impact.

2) The provisions, while welcome, do not go far enough. Nobody should be required to pay for abortion and contraceptive services against their will. Religious freedom matters for everybody, not just the minimum number that the Obama administration thinks it must grant religious freedom to.

3) This is a sign of weakness. The Obama administration has begun to realize how badly it has burned itself by its thuggish, totalitarian move to restrict freedom of religion to freedom of worship in this country.

4) This is not the time for the bishops or others to go soft. It’s time to press further and demand full respect for religious liberty. Caving at the first opportunity would be a grave mistake.

5) Ignore analysis about tone (e.g., taking a conciliatry tone, dialing back rhetoric, etc.). Tone is just the wrapping on the package. What’s inside the package is what counts.

Factor in the booing on St. Patrick's Day and you have to wonder what Obama's polling shows about the "blow-back."

The Real Contraception Wars, aka...

Can you say, "The Catholic church was right"?

Megan McArdle on the European Birth Dearth:

But that’s where the dearth of workers comes into play. Everyone agrees that rapid growth would be much nicer than higher taxes and slashed pension payments. The hitch is that over the past five years, growth in the Italian economy hasn’t averaged even 1 percent a year. Soaring growth will be tough to achieve, because more and more Italians are getting too old to work—and fewer and fewer Italians have been having the babies needed to replace them.

Italy’s fertility rate has actually been inching up from its 1995 low of 1.19 children for every woman, but it is still only about 1.4—well below the number needed to replenish its population (2.1). As a result, even with some immigration, Italy’s population growth has been very slow. It will soon stall, and eventually go into reverse. And then, one by one, the rest of Europe’s nations will follow. Not one country on the Continent has a fertility rate high enough to replace its current population. Heavy debt and a shrinking population are a very bad combination.

Since the invention of birth control and antibiotics, country after country has gone through a fairly standard shift. First, the mortality rate drops, especially among the young and the aging, and that quickly translates into a bigger workforce. Then, birthrates drop, as families realize that they no longer need to birth a basketball team to ensure that a couple members will survive to adulthood. A falling birthrate means that parents can invest more in each child; with fewer mouths to feed, more and better food can nourish each of them, and children can spend more years in school, causing worker productivity to rise from one generation to the next. As the burden of bearing and rearing children lightens, mothers can do more work outside the home, boosting both household resources and the national economy.

In 1984, when Ronald Reagan spoke of “morning in America,” he was at least demographically accurate. The youngest members of America’s vast Baby Boom were in college; the oldest were on the brink of their peak earning power. America was about to reap what the economists David Bloom and David Canning have dubbed the “demographic dividend” of rising labor supply and productivity. Bloom and Canning’s analysis of East Asia and Ireland attributes a substantial fraction of the recent economic booms in those places to this dividend.

And a "tale of two cities":

To see why, picture two neighboring towns, sharing all the same infrastructure and economic opportunities, with one key difference: their median age. In the first town, which I’ll call Morningburg, the average resident is 28. In the second, which I’ll call Twilight City, the average householder is 58.

Research indicates that even with all the same resources at their disposal, these two places look very different, and not just because one’s grocery store does a booming business in diapers while the other’s has a whole aisle devoted to Centrum Silver.

In Morningburg, young workers are rapid, plastic learners, eager to try out new ways of doing things. Since they’re still hoping to make a name for themselves and maybe get rich, they take a lot of risks. They push their managers to expand into new markets, propose iffy but innovative product lines, maybe start their own firm if the boss won’t let them advance fast enough. For the right opportunity, they’ll put in 18-hour days for a year or more.

In Twilight City, time horizons are shorter—people aren’t looking for projects that will make them rich or famous 20 years from now. They are interested in conserving what they have. That’s mostly rational, given Twilighters’ life stage; but studies show that older people worry more than younger ones about losses and are therefore especially averse to risk. Twilighters also tire more easily and need more time off for illness, so hours worked slowly decline each year. Wages stay steady, however; Twilighters, like most people, get very angry if you try to cut their salary.

That makes Twilighters expensive—so when they lose a job, finding another is tough. As a result, Twilighters tend to cling fiercely to their positions, and may block younger workers from getting a foothold in the labor market.

The difficulty of reemployment contributes to Twilight City’s surprisingly high, but somewhat deceptive, rate of entrepreneurship. Looking closely, we find that businesses there are disproportionately owned by semi-retirees who have hung out a consulting shingle, or become part-time caterers, or invested in a hobby business like an antique store. These businesses typically don’t have much growth potential, in part because cautious Twilighters won’t (or can’t) borrow money for expansion.

Morningburg is a boomtown, prone to periodic savage busts when the young strivers realize that those fur-bearing-trout farms they invested in aren’t going to make them rich. Twilight City is a less volatile place—but little change also means little growth.

In theory, smart policy could make Twilight City look a little more like Morningburg: public investment and forced savings could boost research and business development; employment laws could be reformed to make labor markets more flexible; heavy investments could be made in education to improve the productivity of Twilight City’s few young workers.

In practice, all of this is likely to be fiercely opposed by Twilight City’s citizens, who tend to vote against change, particularly if it threatens their pensions or health care. Many of the most vehement public demonstrations in Europe over the past two decades have followed attempts at pension reform.

Odd Factoid.

Protestant countries have higher suicide rates.

Religion may play a role in determining whether someone will take their own life, suggests new research that shows suicide rates are higher in Protestant countries than in Catholic ones.

Researchers from the University of Warwick in England analyzed data from Prussia in the 19th and 21st centuries, as well as modern data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

"We used the 19th century data because at this time virtually everyone adhered to a religious denomination and religion pervaded virtually all aspects of life. In Prussia, both Protestants and Catholics were non-minorities living together in one state and the two religions give a basis for comparison," lead author Sascha Becker said in a press release.

"The results were quite striking, in the 19th century suicide rates among Protestants in Prussia were roughly three times as high as among Catholics."

To broaden their perspective, the researchers also looked at data from 10 OECD countries in which either Protestants or Catholics still made up more than 85% of the population in 2000. The suicide rate in Protestant countries was 15.5 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants compared to 8.9 suicides in Catholic countries.

"Even today, countries that are majority Protestant tend to have substantially higher suicide rates than those which are majority Catholic, suggesting that the relation of religion and suicide remains a vital topic," said Becker, adding that the two religions' views on individuality and sin could be a factor.

"When life hits hard, a Catholic can rely on a stronger community which might help him to cope. Secondly, Protestantism stresses the importance of God's grace alone and not by any merit of man's own work, whereas Catholicism allows for God's judgment to be affected by man's deeds and sins. As a consequence, committing suicide entails the prospect of foregoing paradise for Catholics but not for Protestants," Becker said.

What's more, Catholics believe in confessing sins, and suicide is the only sin you can't confess.

A couple of other things occur to me. For example, Protestant countries are northern, with longer winters, and, therefore, more "seasonal affective disorders." Further, one wonders how much the social sanction against suicide might cause families and governments to classify suicides as some other kind of death.

In any event, it seems like an interesting correlation.

Typical Tactic of Tyranny: If the tyrant doesn't like what the Catholic Church teaches...

...it nominates a new Catholic Church.

Obama administration lectures Catholic bishops on Catholic teaching:

Cardinal Timothy Dolan sent a letter to his brother bishops earlier this week where he revealed a shocking conversation that recently took place at a meeting between White House and USCCB staff:

At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table. They were informed that they are. So much for “working out the wrinkles.” Instead, they advised the bishops’ conference that we should listen to the “enlightened” voices of accommodation, such as the recent, hardly surprising yet terribly unfortunate editorial in America. The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers

Let’s break this down so we don’t miss anything about the context or gravity of the situation:

1. This meeting was prompted because the White House decided to curtail and violate the religious freedom of the Catholic Church and individual Catholics.

2. The White House refused to consult with Catholic bishops while originally formulating and issuing this mandate. President Obama misled Cardinal Dolan when he promised the Cardinal he would be happy with the White House’s final decision.

3. The White House has continually lied about and misrepresented the opinion and position of the U.S. Bishops in this process (claiming, for instance, that they were always against Obamacare and that Catholic Charities USA supported their false accomodation). They have continued to act in bad faith.

4. The White House has also chosen to ally itself with liberal, left-wing Catholic dissenters like Sr. Carol Keehan throughout this process, thereby snubbing the U.S. Bishops and all faithful Catholics.

(Are you still there? Because now it gets really good….)

5. After all of this, when the White House finally gets around to inviting staff authorized by the USCCB to negotiate on behalf of them, the White House says what to them?! First, they issue an ultimatum saying all compromise is off the table. So what on earth are they supposed to talk about if the White House refuses from the outset to compromise in any way, shape, or form? The cynical answer is the White House, once again, simply wanted to establish the appearance of dialogue while offering zero substance.

6. Then, the White House proceeds to lecture the USCCB staff about how to interpret Catholic teaching! Can you imagine anything more offensive? Telling Catholics how to be Catholic? They show them a copy of the America editorial as if a) the staff has not already read it and b) the U.S. Bishops give a fig what the editors of America think.

7. Let’s read Cardinal Dolan’s line again:


The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers.

In other words, what we have here is NOT a failure to communicate. What we have here is an Administration and White House officials who believe they know Catholic teaching better than us. And who have the hubris to lecture us about what our faith teaches.