Beard Them All!

To all follicularly festooned Catholic co-conspirators; not much action on the TLBC front in the last few weeks, due to the human frailties and limitations of your blog master, who after having fallen headlong into a very challenging new employment situation, took ill on account of exposure to a rich and varied stew of unfamiliar microbes therein, a hearty streptococcus among them, apparently.

This program to toughen the immune system comes as part of an absolutely free package of benfits given to all public school employees. As a result, I have been just well enough over the last month or so to heave my aching carcass out of bed in the morning, supervise my young charges in their art-making ventures, and then let my old beater of an SUV find its way home on auto-pilot in the evening. I've actually entered "Read list of neglected household chores" as one of the items on my list of neglected household chores.

Naturally, blogging has been light, and daily visitor stats have been correspondingly anemic.

But, I am feeling much better, now.

I would like to have given more thought to the recent rash of gleefully savage attacks on the Pope disguised as sober news articles (in which nothing new is presented). The enemies of the Church gain boldness, and finding that their victim offers little resistance, they kick and pummel with ever greater ferocity and confidence. No fatwas or bomb vests to worry them here! The secular authority will not stop until it sees the Church in abject submission to earthly power... after a suitable episode of public humiliation, of course, it wouldn't be the same without that.

Fools. The life of the Church flows from such as this. Take up your hammer and nails. Drive the spear deep.

It's ironic that the attackers have latched on to sexual abuse as a kind of raison d'etat in the war against the Church, because the reality is that their deepest and most secret gripe with Rome is over her continued resistance to the Sexual Revolution, wherein mankind is stood on its head, and the pelvis is elevated above both the heart and the brain, where fulfilled desire is the ultimate value. The same people who complain of pedophile priests actively and studiously ignore the same abuse in nearly every other context, especially as it is revealed as part and parcel of the "homosexual lifestyle", which it is. Those calling most loudly for the Pope's head are likely the same ones quietly working to "protect" sexually active minors from the meddling of their parents by providing state-approved birth control and abortions in secret, and by systematically ignoring statutory rape.

It's. Not. About. The. Children. It is about finding an exploitable breech in the fortress of the Church. There is even giddy chatter about arresting the Pope. It won't happen, of course, but that is not their goal, at present. Their goal in talking about it is only to make the idea begin to appear less unthinkable, to simply get it out there, to let it begin to float around in the realm of possibility.

There is a definition of the word "beard" that I find somewhat encouraging, at this juncture. "Beard" as a verb, as an act;

–verb (used with object)

7. to oppose boldly; defy: It took courage for the mayor to beard the pressure groups.

 

Beard them all, Holy Father! We're with you!

 

(Thanks to Dictionary.com).

Comments

[Jeff Hendrix]

Absotively, posilutely full agreement all round, moderator Tim! May your beard grow ever longer and, uh, keep dodging those first-year bugs. They're a bear.

[Patrick]

Does anyone know what happened to the Irish Chestertonian? I gave up non-League Internet for Lent, and now this web-log is shut down completely.

On topic: I gave up newspapers for Lent, and boy, I missed this. I'm tempted to keep giving up newspapers.

[Tim J.]

"Does anyone know what happened to the Irish Chestertonian? I gave up non-League Internet for Lent, and now this web-log is shut down completely."

Arrgh!... that's horrid news. I'll check it out, maybe it's only temporary. Great blog. I'd hoped he might do some writing for TLBC. He knows a lot more about Chesterton than I do (but that's not hard!).

[thomas tucker]

Well done, sir!
Beard them, indeed.