NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

Posted on 30 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

People either like or hate my food posts. Hence, I enjoy posting them.

But first, as I watch what’s going on in the Church right now, two paintings at the MET jumped to my full attention.

First, my necessary entrance hotdog. The cart in front of the Met has great hotdogs, and the proceedes go to a wounded Marine. Tell them Fr. Z sent you.

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

Here is a portrait of a German merchant of the Hanseatic League by the amazing Hans Holbein.

Look at everything in the frame.

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

Did you see the slip of paper in the book?  It sports the words which might have been a moto of the sitter.  It’s a line in Latin from Terence’s Andria.

Veritas odium parit.

Truth breeds hatred.

Today, if people speak about about real problems of ambiguity and confusion being caused in the Church these days, they get terrible blowback.  Certain libs pour out their venom on the those who insist that mercy cannot be extended at the expense of the truth.  Truth and mercy must go hand in hand.

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

And another portrait by Holbein of another well-to-do merchant.

He, too, has papers.  I’m interested in the one at his elbow.

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

This one has a line from the Aeneid: Olim meminisse iuvabit.  This is just enough of a famous line that everyone would know.  When Aeneas et al. are shipwrecked, he utters: “Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit… perhaps someday remembering these things will give you joy.” 

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

That is to say:  Things are really bad now, but someday in the future we will look back on these events and will be able to find the good in them and how they were, ultimately, of benefit.

Going on.  Brueghel’s great summer harvest painting has people eating.

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and slidersNYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

Carpeaux’s magnificent marble of imprisoned and starving Ugolino, as he is faced with the horror of eating his own children.

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

Corned beef and Pastrami from the 2nd Avenue Deli.   It was good…. but… I must admit that I’ve had better.

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

That was a fun experience, by the way.  I went to the Deli with a cop on the NYPD who is fairly high in the ranks.   He remarked that it was like a joke: “So, … ‘dis cop an’ a priest walk into a Jewish Deli….”  Indeed we were the focus of the attention of many tables.  A couple of very Jewish families with little kids came over to say hello when they were finished and departing.  Delightful.   A good moment of public relations, too.

Last night a priest friend and a couple went to supper and started with sea critters.  The oysters were great.

NYC Days 1-3: Slips and sliders

So, I’ve been ticking off my errands and visiting some new and old dining places and seeing friends.

And today I made an interesting BREAKTHROUGH on the VESTMENT front!  Stay tuned.

 

Posted in On the road, What Fr. Z is up to |
15 Comments

ASK FATHER: Who is in charge of the Moon?

Posted on 30 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

ASK FATHER: Who is in charge of the Moon?From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

It occurs to me that two of the three people on Apollo 11 were in the military at the time of their trip the moon. The command module pilot, Michael Collins, and the lunar module pilot, Buzz Aldrin, were both active duty military at the time of their trip. Is there an argument to be made that this is sufficient to make the moon part of the Archdiocese of the Military?

Thanks for your good work, and for keeping it light at times too.

There are a few bishops and priests, etc., whom I would happily send to your planet’s Moon, so that they could straighten the situation out for good.

However, as it stands now, it seems that the Moon is under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Orlando.

“ORLANDO?!?’, you may be saying.   “Disneyworld?  EPCOT?  THAT Orlando?”

The idea is that, back in 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, the Diocese of Orlando included Cape Canaveral.  Because the journey to the Moon began from the Diocese of Orlando, Orlando had jurisdiction.

There is an anecdote about this.  The late Archbishop Borders, at the time Bishop of Orlando, during an ad limina visit in Rome told Paul VI that he was the bishop of the Moon.

I would have given anything to have been there with a camera to record for history Paul VI’s expression as he considered this statement.

That said, we also must consider that the 1917 Code was in force at the time of the Moon landing.  In the 1917CIC, can. 252 said that the competence of the Congregation for the Propogation of the Faith extends to “those regions which, since the sacred hierarchy has not been constituted, retain the status of a mission.” (Eius iurisdictio iis est circumscripta regionibus, ubi, sacra hierarchia nondum constituta, status missionis perseverat.)

This is a strong argument in favor of Propaganda having jurisdiction (hence, “Rome”).  However, if Orlando, having a competing view, wanted to press its claim, the diocese could bring a case before the Apostolic Signatura to assert its claim to jurisdiction.

I suspect that the Archdiocese for the Military Services is, right now, stretched a bit thin and won’t immediately want to make any claims.  I could be wrong.  I’ll ask around.

And since we are in pre-Lent, and starting to think about fasting and abstinence, etc., regarding whether astronauts are obliged to fast, can. 13 of the 1983 Code (in force now) says that travelers are not bound to the particular laws of their own territory while they are absent from it, or by the laws of the territory in which they are present (with the except of laws which establish good order).

Hence, if there is going to be any colonization of the Moon, someone is going to have to work this jurisdiction thing out.

Maybe the Moon would be a good place for future retired Popes?  Popes Emeriti?   I deeply esteem Pope Benedict, but the thought of having a bunch of these ecclesiastical outliers around strikes me a lunacy.  And, if that’s lunacy, what better place to plant them than on the Moon?  With their great experience, they would do well in governance there, quiet as it might be.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged ,
10 Comments

ASK FATHER: Visiting retired, elderly priests

Posted on 30 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

ASK FATHER: Visiting retired, elderly priestsFrom a reader..

QUAERITUR:

I have a particular devotion to the Priesthood and priests and would like to start visiting retired priests who are no longer able to live in residence in a rectory and have had to move on into the nursing home for priests this Lent. There’s a bit of a problem, though. I’ve never visited elderly people, let alone elderly retired priests who likely don’t have much longer in this world. I’m also an introvert and not particularly great at making small talk with strangers, and notoriously great at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or saying something that sounds great in my head, but comes out completely wrong or gets misinterpreted and somehow offends someone. As a result, I’ve always shied away from this kind of work and stuck to cleaning priests’ bathrooms.

Do you (or your readership who may have done this before) have any practical advice or tips for going about doing this?

This is a good thing.  Thanks for thinking about this.  Many priests are pretty much alone in their lives, even though they are surrounded by people.  That gets worse as they get older.  I suspect that that is what awaits me, as a matter of fact, given my circumstances.

Every individual situation is going to present different issues.   Sometimes just being there is good enough.  Sometimes conversation is what is needed.  Some people are talkers and some listeners.   You’ll have to figure it out as you go.

It may be that some priests will tell stories about decades past, which could be pretty interesting.  They have lore about the diocese that will be lost with their passing.  Seminarians, too, should listen to the stories old priests tell.   Sometimes I think that, with their consent of course, their stories should be recorded.

It may be that Father has a hard time talking, but he can listen.  Perhaps he has a hard time reading. You could read aloud to him.

Visit and assess.  Talk to the people taking care of him or who know him well.  Figure it out.

You have your own inclinations, you write above.  However, remember that true charity involves sacrificing one’s own inclinations for what is truly good for the other.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Priests and Priesthood | Tagged
12 Comments

14 Feb 2018 – St. Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday

Posted on 30 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

14 Feb 2018 - St. Valentine's Day and Ash WednesdayEach year that St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday, in Lent, we witness the lunacy of dispensations so that people don’t have to do their regular Friday, lenten penance.

This year, the Feast of St. Valentine – transmogrified, commercialized and warped by big business into something nearly perverse – coincides with Ash Wednesday, one of only two days remaining in the Church year when most Catholics are bound to both fasting and abstinence.

The UK’s best Catholic weekly, the Catholic Herald, has a piece about how this year Catholics are bound to fast and abstain on Ash Wednesday – St. Valentine’s Day insanity notwithstanding.

Catholic in good health aged 18 to 59 must fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday. They may eat one full meal, supplemented by two smaller meals that together do not equal the full meal.

If you have been successfully programed and pressured through incessant advertising into a secular observance of St. Valentine’s Day, perhaps you can shift your observance to the day before Ash Wednesday, Shrove Tuesday.

Yes, I think that would work well.  After all, “shrive” (whence, “shrove”) means both to present oneself for sacramental confession and, for the priest, to absolve a penitent.

So, by all means, this year, anticipate your celebration of St. Valentine’s Day on the day before Ash Wednesday and…

GO TO CONFESSION!

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, GO TO CONFESSION, Saints: Stories & Symbols | Tagged ,
17 Comments

ASK FATHER: Re-bless a ring that has been re-plated?

Posted on 29 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

I have a sterling silver ring from a private vow I made a number of years ago. My spiritual director who witnessed my vow blessed my ring using the Blessing for any object from the Roman Ritual. Over the years it has become scratched and lost its shininess, so I was going to take it in to the jeweller to get polished and possibly plated with rhodium. Would doing this cause my ring to lose its blessing and require re-blessing? (Supposedly getting a chalice re-plated inside requires it to be consecrated again, which is where my thoughts on this are coming from).

You mention the case of the chalice.  While some authors are divided, the strong consensus is that, if you gild the cup again, then – yes – the chalice must be reconsecrated before use.  I know about “simply use the chalice and it will be consecrated again” blah blah.  We are not minimalists.  Our objects for worship are important.  We are our rites.  Let’s be more of who we are rather than less.

In the case of your ring, sure… have it plated.  In that case, you could have it blessed again.   But the blessing of that ring isn’t quite the same as the consecration of a chalice.   It not hurt anything to bless the ring again.  Necessary? Probably not.

On the other hand, that ring has been through lots of experiences with you and it shows wear just like you do.  Spouses show wear to each other (and cause the wear) and they stick it out… sometimes without facelifts, if you get my drift.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box | Tagged ,
3 Comments

ASK FATHER: Can a diocesan priest say Mass in an SSPX chapel?

Posted on 29 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

Is it OK for a diocesan priest to offer Mass in an SSPX chapel on a regular basis?

Interesting.

Let’s consider a couple points.

Can. 932 §1 states:

“The eucharistic celebration is to be carried out in a sacred place unless in a particular case necessity requires otherwise; in such a case the celebration must be done in a decent place.”

The law says that Mass can be celebrated in a decent place. There is no question that a SSPX chapel is a “decent place”. One might debate about what “necessity” means. That’s a pretty flexible term. It seems to me that it could include the fact that Father wants to say Mass and he needs a decent place to do it and have proper furnishings, etc.

I don’t think there is a problem with this in a “one off” situation, or even a few times. Say a priest is traveling and the local SSPX priest says that the priest can use their chapel for private Mass.

If there is question of public Masses, it seems to me that the priest should have the good will of the local bishop where the SSPX chapel is located even for ONE public Mass.

While Francis has greatly altered the situation of the SSPX through his concessions regarding faculties for confession and for marriages in their chapels, there is still a ways to go. I think this situation requires the knowledge and consent of the diocesan bishop. Of course the SSPX superior should know about it, too.

That said, if the bishop is okay, and the SSPX superior is okay, then… why not?

After all, if a church has to close for some reason, sometimes a neighboring Protestant church will generosity lend their space for Masses. If in Protestant churches, why not in a clearly Catholic SSPX chapel?

Posted in 1983 CIC can. 915, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, SSPX | Tagged ,
7 Comments

2 Feb – Rosary To The Interior: For the Purification of the Church

Posted on 28 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I received an email about an interesting project.

On February 2, 2018, which is the day celebrating the double Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there will occur throughout the United States the gathering of faithful in their parish churches to pray the Rosary for the intention of the Purification of the Church, and the Triumph of the Light of Christ over all sin and error.

While being inspired by the Rosary on the Borders in Poland, this Rosary event – titled Rosary To The Interior: For the Purification of the Church – does indeed have a different and very specific intention. Recognizing that the Catholic Church alone in this world was blessed and commissioned with the Light of Christ necessary for triumph over the Darkness of sin and error, and that this Light has now been severely obscured by the sin and errors of its own members, this Rosary asks us to turn our eyes inward in order to effect that interior purification which alone can once again make Christ’s Light manifest in its fullness to the world.

A website has been established, which offers a more complete explanation of both the nature and structure of this event. It is found here:

www.rosarytotheinterior.com

Posted in ACTION ITEM!, Our Solitary Boast | Tagged
4 Comments

Fr. Murray looks again at the Profession about marriage issued by the Bishops of Kazakhstan

Posted on 28 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Murray looks again at the Profession about marriage issued by the Bishops of KazakhstanNot long ago, the Bishops of Kazakhstan issued a document, a Profession of the Immutable Truths about Sacramental Marriage.   I wrote about it and provided an audio reading of it HERE.

At The Catholic Thing my friend Fr. Gerry Murray has written a piece about it.  Let’s have a taste, with my emphases and comments:

A Second Look at the Kazakh Bishops’ “Profession”

As has been widely reported, three bishops in Kazakhstan – Tomash Peta, Jan Pawel Lenga, and Athanasius Schneider – issued a Profession of the Immutable Truths about Sacramental Marriage on December 31, 2017. This precisely reasoned defense of Catholic teaching on marriage gets to the heart of the problems occasioned by the eighth chapter of Amoris Laetitia.

Now that the initial flurry of commentary has died down, I’d like to examine calmly here three paragraphs that summarize why permission to receive Holy Communion given to people who are in “second marriages” and have the intention to continue to commit acts of adultery is a grave offense against Catholic teaching on the sacredness and indissolubility of marriage. This permission abolishes the perennial sacramental discipline that protects and upholds this teaching. [The Church’s laws are not pulled out of a pointy hat.  They are founded on divine law, revelation, and the experience of centuries.  Cult (worship), Code and Creed are interwoven. Undermine one and you undermine the others.  This is especially the case when changes touch on our most fundamental teachings and life events.]

The Kazakh bishops write: “Sexual relationships between people who are not in the bond to one another of a valid marriage – which occurs in the case of the so-called ‘divorced and remarried’ – are always contrary to God’s will and constitute a grave offense against God.” This is plainly true. Adultery is never pleasing to God, is never authorized or tolerated by God, is always evil.

They continue: “No circumstance or finality, not even a possible imputability or diminished guilt, can make such sexual relations a positive moral reality and pleasing to God. The same applies to the other negative precepts of the Ten Commandments of God. Since ‘there exist acts which, per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object.’ (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 17)”

This is a key point sometimes overlooked in the debate. Adultery can never be never “a positive moral reality and pleasing to God.” Therefore, the Church must never encourage people to engage in acts that are always per se offensive to God. It is pastorally deficient [that’s a diplomatic way to put it] to advise that a person committing such evil acts may responsibly judge himself not to be guilty of giving serious offense to God due to alleged circumstances that diminish his culpability for his sins.

How can he be so sure of his innocence of his persistent mortal sin that he thinks God will not hold him to account, but rather wants him to receive the Holy Eucharist without repenting of his sin? And why would a priest advise someone that he may continue to commit the sin of adultery as long as that person thinks he will not be held guilty by God for that sin?

The priest’s job is to tell people not to sin, not to tell them to discover reasons why their sin is not sinful for them. It is an act of spiritual arrogance in God’s sight for the priest advisor or the civilly “remarried” person to claim that, because of some alleged exculpatory reason, he does not have to obey the Sixth Commandment now and in the future, and that he can worthily receive Holy Communion. We are called by Christ to conform our lives to God’s law, which includes the recognition by our intellect of the justice and holiness of that law.

[…]

Read the rest there.

Looked at from one point of view, the main job of the priest is to say, “No.”  I suspect that most parents find that to be true.

Just as good parents do not make rules simply to ruin what might have been a great time for their children, so too neither God’s laws nor the Church’s are intended simply to screw with our heads and repress our fun.

They are given to us in love to help us not to hurt ourselves and others and to see more easily amidst the rocks and thorns what path to tread towards heaven.

 

Posted in Canon Law, One Man & One Woman, Our Catholic Identity, The Coming Storm, The Drill | Tagged , ,
8 Comments

WDTPRS – 4th Ordinary Sunday: Billy loves bugs

Posted on 27 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

bugsToday’s Collect prayer for the 4th Ordinary Sunday (it’s Septuagesima in the traditional calendar) was not in the post-Tridentine editions of the Missale Romanum but it does have its origin in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary.

Were you to hear this prayer intoned in Latin, or at least in an accurate translation, you would be thereby transported back 1500 years to our most Roman of Catholic roots.

Concede nobis, Domine Deus noster,
ut [et (in Ver.)] te tota mente veneremur,
et omnes homines rationabili diligamus affectu.

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Lord our God,
help us to love you with all our hearts
and to love all men as you love them.

Is this what the Latin really says?

CURRENT ICEL (2011):
Grant us, Lord our God,
that we may honour you with all our mind,
and love everyone in truth of heart.

SLAVISHLY LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Grant us, O Lord our God,
that we may venerate you with our whole mind,
and may love all men with rational good-will.

“Affection” just doesn’t cut it for affectus and something more pointed than “love” is needed too.  I came up with “rational good-will”.  We mustn’t reduce all these complicated Latin words to “love”.  Why not?  Note in the prayer the contrast of the themes “reason” and “mood”, the rational with the affective dimension (concerning emotions) of man; in short, the head and the heart.   The fact is, a properly functioning person conducts his life according to both head and heart, feelings under the control of reason and the will.  The terrible wound to our human nature from original sin causes the difficulty we have in governing feelings and appetites by reason and will.

Today’s prayer aims at the totality of a human person: our wholeness is defined by our relationship with God.

We seek to know God so that we may the better love Him and His love drives us all the more to know Him.  Furthermore, possible theological and Scriptural underpinnings of this prayer are Deuteronomy 6 and Jesus’ two-fold command to love God and neighbor: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (cf. Matthew 22:36-38; Mark 12:2-31; Luke 10:26-28).  In Deut 6:5-6 we have the great injunction called the Shema from the first Hebrew word, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might….” Jesus teaches the meaning and expands the concrete application of this command in Deuteronomy 6.

There is no space here for the subtle relationships between the Latin words St. Jerome chose in his translations and the Greek or Hebrew originals of these verses.  Suffice it to say that in the Bible the language about mind, heart, and soul is terrifically complex. However, these words aim at the totality of the person precisely in that dimension which is characteristic of man as “image of God”.  Heart, mind and will distinguish us from brute animals.  We are made to act as God acts: to know, will and love.  Thus, “mind” and “heart” in man are closely related faculties and cannot be separated from each other.  Mind and heart are revealed in and expressed through our bodies and thus they point at the “real us”.

Love is at the heart of who we are and it the key to our prayer today.

We are commanded by God the Father and God Incarnate Jesus Christ to love both God and our fellow man and God the indwelling Holy Spirit makes this possible.

But the word and therefore concept of “love” is understood in many ways and today, especially, it is misunderstood.  “Love” frequently refers to people or stuff we like or enjoy using.  Bob can “love” his new SUV. Besty “loves” her new kitten.  We all certainly “love” baseball and spaghetti.  But “love” can refer to the emotions and affections people have when they are “in love” or, as I sometimes call it, “in luv”.

Luv is usually an ooey-gooey feeling, a romantic “love” sometimes growing out of lust.  This gooey romantic “love” now dominates Western culture, alas.   The result is that when “feelings” change or the object of “luv” is no longer enjoyable or usable, someone gets dumped, often for a newer, richer, or prettier model.

There some other flavors of “love” you can come up with, I’m sure.  But Christians, indeed every image of God in all times everywhere, are called to a higher love, the love in today’s prayer, which is charity: the grace-completed virtue enabling us to love God for His own sake and love all who are made in His image.  This is more than benevolence or tolerance or desire or enjoyment of use.

True love is not merely a response to an appetite, as when we might see a beautiful member of the opposite sex, a well-turned double-play, or a plate of spaghetti all’amatriciana.

True love, charity, isn’t the sloppy gazing of passion drunk sweethearts or the rubbish we see on TV and in movies (luv).  Charity is the grace filled adhesion of our will to an object (really a person) which has been grasped by our intellect to be good.

The love invoked in our prayer is an act of will based on reason. It is a choice – not a feeling.

WDTPRS - 4th Ordinary Sunday: Billy loves bugsCharity delights in and longs for the good of the other more than one’s own.  The theological virtue charity involves grace.  It enables sacrifices, any kind of sacrifice for the authentic good of another discerned with reason (not a false good and not “use” of the other).  We can choose even to love an enemy. This love resembles the sacrificial love of Christ on His Cross who offered Himself up for the good of His spouse, the Church.  St. Augustine, as a matter of fact, taught that “enemy love” is the perfection of the kind of love we can have in this earthly life.  Rationabilis affectus reflects what it is to be truly human, made in God’s image and likeness, with faculties of willing and knowing and, therefore, loving.

Knowledge and love are interconnected.

The more you get to know a person, the more reason you have to love him (remember… love seeks the other person’s good in charity even if a person is unlikable).  Reciprocally, the more you love someone or (in the generic sense of love) something, the more you want to know about him and spend time getting to know him.

For example, Billy is fascinated by bugs.  From this “love” for bugs Billy wants to know everything there is to know about them.  He works hard to learn and thus launches a brilliant career in entomology.  Given Our Creator’s priority in all things, how much more ought we seek to know and love God first and foremost of all and then, in proper order, know and love God’s images, our neighbors?  He is far more important that the bugs He created.  Even spouses must love God more than they love each other.  Only then can they love each other properly according to God’s plan.

We also have a relationship with the objects of both love and knowledge.  What sort of relationship?  With bugs or spaghetti it is one thing, but with God and neighbor it is entirely another.

In seeking to understand and love God more and more we come to understand things about God and ourselves as his images that, without love, we could never learn by simple study.  The relationship with God through love and knowledge changes us.  St. Bonaventure (+1274) the “Seraphic” doctor wrote about “ecstatic knowledge”. This kind of knowledge is not merely the product of abstract investigation or analytical study (like Billy with his bugs).  Rather, it comes first from learning and then contemplating. According to Bonaventure, by contemplation the knower becomes engaged with the object. Fascinated by it, he seeks to know it with a longing that draws him into the object.

Consider: we can study about God and our faith, but really the object of study is not just things to learn or formulas to memorize: the object of our study and faith is a divine Person in whose image and likeness we ourselves are made.  To be who we are by our nature we personally need the sort of knowledge of God that draws us into Him.  Knowledge of God (not just things learned about God) reaches into us, seizes us, transforms us.  To experience God’s love is to have certain knowledge of God, more certain than any knowledge which can be arrived at by means of mere rational examination.

Bring this all with you back to the last line of our prayer and the command to love our neighbor, all of them made in God’s image and all individually intriguing – fascinating, in a way that resembles the way we love God and ourselves.  This we are to do with our minds, hearts, and all our strength.


Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, WDTPRS | Tagged , , , ,
2 Comments

Fr @RayLBlake explains Peronism

Posted on 27 January 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr @RayLBlake explains PeronismMy friend Fr. Ray Blake, intrepid PP of Brighton, has a strong post upon which you might reflect.

Peronism and Corruption

I had a lesson in Peronism from an Argentinian waiter recently, in Argentina he was a PPE graduate.

Peronism, he said, was the most corrupt form of politics, because you could be a Communist, or a Facist, or a Capitalist, the only thing that mattered was support for Peron, post Peron any other head of State. It is a remnant of 1920/30s Facism, where the will of the Fuhrer or Il Duce was all that mattered. Right or Wrong, Good or Bad, Custom or Tradition, Law or Morality or anything else pale into insignificance and have no validity compared to the Will of the Leader.

Therefore the ideal is to be as close as possible to the Leader, failing direct proximity the next best thing is to be close either to those who are close to the Leader or those know, or claim to know, the mind of the Leader. Under such a system moral automony is reduced to slavery because is no mral compass, such abstracts as Right and Wrong are of no importance. All that does matter is Dux Vult. If the leader is somewhat erratic that doesn’t really matter, it just means his followers have to be closer and listen even more intently and it could be that what was the Leader’s will last year or even this morning, might not be so now, or his will expressed to A might be the complete opposite of what was expressed to B.

To the Peronist the old elite, who based their authority on intellectual expertise or their understanding, or knowledge, even their fidelity to the law must be supplanted, nothing other than the leaders will matters. They represent an alternative authority, and therefore a possible alternative source of power, and certainly a source of evaluation and criticism. Peronism hates intellectuals, they are always totally arbitary and concerned with what is expedient, what adds to or deepens the leaders power.

[…]

Read the rest there.

Posted in The Drill | Tagged ,
9 Comments