Revisiting and Reflecting

 It has been a time of retrospection for me recently, especially when faced with some personal challenges I have been dealing with recently.   However, often when one goes through times of adversity, it leads to personal reflection, and that is what this is all about today.

One of the projects I worked on this week so far was setting up my home shrine again, and that too was a reflective opportunity for me. Since about the middle of 2011, I have had most of the accessories to my home shrine packed away first in boxes and then later in a small steamer trunk I bought some years back. The trunk was obscured for many years under a table in my bedroom, on which I had a huge amount of storage bins stacked up.  I recently reorganized all that, and on the weekend after a very good homily at our parish, I felt inspired to dig out the shrine and set it up again.  So, yesterday I pulled everything out, and repurposed that table in there as a new shrine base, and I was able to set everything back up in a corner of my bedroom.  Upon getting it all set up, a different atmosphere came into the house that I hadn't felt in some time, and it was frankly inspiring.  At some point, I will post a picture of what my "resurrected" shrine looks like, but I just wanted to talk about a few things today which more or less relate to that. 

Last week, I talked about some commonalities I had with the new Republican VP candidate, J.D. Vance. Vance essentially by his story challenged me to revisit many things in my own life, and one of those is how I was able to reconcile some of my West Virginia upbringing with my Catholic faith.  This is still a complex question, but it is one that does inspire some thought for sure.  The thing about conversion that many people don't understand - be they the radical Protestant Fundamentalist types or the stauncher trads in our own church - is that conversion does not necessarily mean that you ditch everything that is uniquely you.  For this, I turn back to Dr. Crosby's discussion of incommunicability versus universality.  In this discussion, as is found in his book The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), Crosby distinguishes between what he calls incommunicable traits of a person versus that communicable (universal) traits a person shares with others.  This also goes back to the Archer discussion on CNCs and how they contribute to the story.  Incommunicability and universality do not have to be in conflict either - they are both needed.  While all of us identify with some group - ethnic identity, religious traditions, political leanings, social organizations, etc. - we are still individuals in that is how God created us.  God did not make human beings to be either clones of himself or copies of each other - we are all imbued with our own attributes that make us distinctive, and over time those attributes are shaped further by our experiences.  What this means is that how God created us is hardwired into our being as individuals, and not every individual will be going through the exact same experience.  We each, in the words of Kenneth Archer, have our own "story," and our "story" is also a chapter in the collective "story" of whatever groups we identify with.  Our chapter has its distinctives, but it is also part of the entire "story" too.  And, that leads me to faith and background on a personal level. 

The importance of conversion to Christ is one thing and one thing only - it is reconciliation with him overcoming the concupiscent nature we all inherited from our common ancestors, Adam and Eve, from the Fall chronicled in Genesis 3.  Because God created us in his image, he does love us, and he desires us to be one with him for eternity.  Yet, he also gifted us with free will, so we can either accept or reject what he offers us in the form of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is indeed God the Son.  I want to touch on something very briefly that I think I have discussed in more detail before, but it bears repeating - forgiveness must be accepted as well as given.  This is a bit of a radical take, but you need to consider this for a moment.  One day, someone gives you a gift - the gift only means something if you, as the recipient, accepts it. If you do not accept the gift for some reason, you do so because you willed not to, and the consequence is that any benefit that gift could have given you is also ineffective until you do accept it.  We look at forgiveness also as a gift - it is there for us whenever we want to accept it, but in order to reap its benefits it must be accepted.  This is true both regarding the salvation of our souls as well as how we relate to each other.  This is forgiveness is also an attitude and not necessarily an action - if someone really hurt or offended you, we of course should always be ready to offer forgiveness to them, but in their mind they may not think they did anything wrong, and thus forgiveness to them is a rejected gift.  Until it is accepted, the recipient of forgiveness will not reap the benefits of it, but the one offering forgiveness can forgive them in spirit without an action necessarily - to act on that without a person being receptive to receiving it is a waste of time, so you give them to God and let him deal with them at that point and they are not on your hands any longer because you did your part.  Then, when they do express regret and come to you asking your forgiveness, you will be able to give it to them because in your heart you already have forgiven them.  That is really how it works.  Now, as the giver of forgiveness, you may struggle too - you may actually despise the person who offends you, and thus you need to ask for God's help to heal you and give you that attitude of forgiveness.  And, that can take time.  So, how does that rabbit trail relate to personal faith and individual attributes?  That is where I am going to direct the discussion now. 

Your personal faith is your response to the supernatural grace God gives you, and what is incommunicable to you plays an important part in that process.  This is where I get back to my story.  I grew up in West Virginia, and my Appalachian culture defines a lot of my faith.  But, I was not born and raised Catholic either, as many of you know.  Especially as a young adult first in the Baptist faith I was baptized into, and later into the Pentecostal tradition which I grew up around and returned to in my early 20s, there are many things about who I am that perhaps a "cradle Catholic" would not understand.  I grew up in a small rural area, and I also grew up in poverty - that shapes a lot of my experience.  And there are things about my former religious traditions that I liked and have (I feel anyway) successfully incorporated into my personal faith.  For those who would be either Fundamentalists or very staunch Trads, I have this to say - I am no less Catholic and Christian because of my experiences, and perhaps I am more faithfully Catholic and Christian because of them.  You do not know what I have had to struggle with, what my personal experiences were, and how my personal faith impacts me, so this is one of those rare occasions where the verse in Matthew 7:1-3 - judge not lest you be judged - actually applies correctly.  It also points to verses such as Romans 12:4-5, which was one of the first Bible verses I memorized years ago - many members in one body, but all members having distinct functions that benefit the whole.  That is the Church described to a tee.  We as Christians - and particularly as Catholic Christians - need to get over ourselves sometimes.  It is the height of pride to claim that because someone is different than you, you are better than them - the Bible does not teach that, and Magisterial teaching of the Church refutes that type of pride, which ironically is often clad in the language of "humility."  It is OK to appreciate your own "story" of faith, as it is uniquely yours.  What is not OK is a prideful and judgmental spirit that denies that same self-appreciation to others.  So, what does the Church actually say about this?  Let's go to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and look at it for ourselves. 

One very important aspect of our personal faith as it relates to Magisterial teaching is simple - we should encourage those individual attributes that do not contradict the faith, and we should utilize them in the expression of our personal faith.  One of the beauties of authentic Catholicism is the diversity within it - this is not in any way synonymous with the secular idea of "diversity," because often that is not its true application.  Rather, the Church uses the cultures of those who are part of it to enrich the spiritual lives and faith of its members.  We see the first principle of this in CCC 2105, which affirms based also on Pope Paul VI's 1965 Apostolicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity) that evangelization is "to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws, and structures of the communities in which (they) live."  Taking that in context with the Deposit of Faith, what this means is that what is compatible in a culture or society with the faith can be preserved, while imperfections can be made perfect by the gift of supernatural grace.  This applies to individuals, communities, and to every ethnicity on the planet.  It is relational in the truest sense.  It is also a reflection of the dignity of the human person while at the same time reaffirmation of the traditional faith of the Church.   Having Appalachian heritage myself, there are many things that I brought into my own pilgrimage to the Church which may have made me a better Catholic as a result, and I do not regret that.  Also, the various aspects of my own faith journey have brought me to the place I am now.  So, if you are a convert, how does that work?  Let me illustrate that.

As I accepted Christ in a Baptist church at the age of 16, that was formative for me.  In the Baptist church I was baptized into, I learned much about the importance of personal Bible study and the value of prayer.  These are invaluable gifts my mentor and pastor who baptized me, Rev. Olen Phillips, and the pastor I got a good background in Christian service from, Rev. Frank Brubaker, endowed me with. I am eternally grateful to both of them today.

When I began to embrace my Pentecostal roots beginning in 1989, two other things were given to me.  The first was an appreciation of the supernatural - God was not meant to be viewed as an abstraction, but moved among us in very special ways.  I experienced divine healing, and also received supernatural guidance from some who exercised certain charisms they received as part of their infilling of the Holy Spirit.  Although I have refined my convictions on those somewhat over the years, they were important.  Also, the Pentecostal experience I had gave me a true enthusiasm for my faith, and it helped integrate my faith more into my everyday life - that was an important step toward my acceptance of the sacramental life of the Church.  Many mountain Pentecostals in my home region of Appalachia I found out have what is essentially a rudimentary sacramental understanding of their faith - it would be only natural for me to embrace the entire Church and her teaching later.

Years of involvement as a Continuing Churchman in the Anglican tradition taught me more intimately about liturgical worship - I learned then that faith was integral to symbolism and tangible actions, and that also led me to a more Catholic understanding of the Sacraments later.  It was also as an Anglican that I developed my Marian devotions as well as thinking sacramentally.  Added to this at around the same time was a fuller realization of what the Christian East imparted to me - there is a lot of rich spiritual inspiration I got from that as well.

Finally, when I was received into the Church officially in 2000, I had seen how all of this built upon the other aspects of my spiritual journey.  However, that was not as easy as it looks - my early Catholic journey was not as well grounded, and it was only while working on my graduate degree at Franciscan University of Steubenville that everything sort of coalesced and I began to have several "aha!" moments.  And, it also tied up some loose ends regarding some long-held convictions I had that I knew were right but seemed as if many Catholic writers disputed - as it turned out, many of those things were actually very Catholic, and not only did I retain my convictions but they were given a new dimension by a better understanding of what the Church actually taught. Let me discuss that briefly.

As a young person who was raised in a fairly conservative Christian tradition, there were two things I was imbued with even before my own acceptance of Christ that really integrated into my personal faith.  The first of these was a love and appreciation for the Jewish people.  I myself have Jewish forebears going back many generations, and this was an area that was close to my heart.  But, I was also raised to be a very strong dispensational premillennialist, and it took some time to sort all that out, especially when I heard some very anti-Zionist things coming from Catholic figures across the spectrum.  As it turns out, only Christian Zionism is what the Church opposes - the Church has never denied the special role of the Jewish people in salvation history, and thanks in part to two individuals - the late Fr. Elias Friedman, who founded the Association of Hebrew Catholics, and the late Orthodox theologian Lev Gillet, who in his book Communion in the Messiah (Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 1942) notes in a section called "Christianity and the Earthly Problems of Israel" that encompasses a 12-page discussion on what Zionism is and how Christians respond to it that Jews have a strong connection to their traditional homeland, and essentially allowing them to return to it would be also an asset to Christians - he wrote this in 1942, approximately 8 years before Israel was established as a modern state.  Fr. Friedman expands on this in his book Jewish Identity by noting that God's ultimate purpose in allowing the modern state of Israel to exist is to aid in their future conversion, which is affirmed as an integral part of both Orthodox and Catholic eschatology.  It is a new way of looking at this question, and not only does it not conflict with my earlier sentiments, but it helps to refine them.  I have dealt with this in detail in the past, and may revisit it again, but it is an area where the Church did not compel me to throw out my previous sentiments, but rather refine them in light of actual Magisterial teaching on the topic.  This means the establishment of the modern state of Israel, as well as new genetic evidence regarding many "Arabs" in the region which suggests that many of that community may actually be ethnically Hebrew too, is part of God's redemptive plan.  While the debates still fly and it is OK to criticize some policies of Israel (I do actually), the bottom line is that anti-semitism is ultimately also anti-Catholic. I will explore more of that later.  

The second area I had some reconciliation on was regarding Biblical creation.  Many Catholic teachers have embraced the heresy (and it is what it is!) of "theistic evolution," and for many years that was a problem (this was due in part to the heterodox teachings of one Fr. Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, a renegade Jesuit who embraced this garbage and may have even had some occultic influences in his thinking).  However, thanks in part to individuals such as Dr. Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, I was also able to continue to affirm the Biblical Creationism of my personal convictions as being completely a Catholic view.  As a matter of fact, Owen and other Catholic Creationists (and there are more than many think) gave me the inspiration for my own in-depth study of Genesis, which I was able to teach some years back to an Anglican parish I was part of then.  In part now, I am probably a more committed Creationist as a Catholic than I ever was as a Protestant, and that says much too.

These two areas - the role of the Jewish people and Biblical Creation - are two very important areas in which I had long-held convictions prior to being received into the Church, and I still hold them today.  They comprise an integral part of my own pilgrimage of faith, and the Church has only enhanced them by giving them a richer dimension.  There are many other things as well, but these two areas immediately come to mind. 

I have rambled on quite a bit here today, and I doubt if I even got to the complete thought I originally had.  But, hopefully I can encourage somebody with this, as I am sure others - especially new Catholic converts - have struggled with similar things.  Becoming Catholic never throws away your distinctive identity of personhood - rather, it refines and enhances it in such a way that it makes one a more faithful Catholic if one is open to that development.  On that note, thank you for allowing me to share, and I hope and pray the best for each of you until next time. 

The New Vice Presidential Nominee and A Re-Examination of My Own Background

 Although I am not a registered Republican, I watched last week's RNC in Milwaukee with very personal interest.  Before I get to that however, I wanted to make a correction regarding the assassination attempt on President Trump last week - I got the would-be assassin's name wrong, as it was not Mark Violets but rather was a 20-year-old reclusive punk named Thomas Crooks.  While we should never totally glory in the death of anyone, Crooks was dealt with justly as a perceived threat to a Presidential candidate, and he was dispatched with precision (although in all honesty the Secret Service should have been more on top of its game and perhaps President Trump could have been safer from these nutcases who were seeking to destroy him). I wanted to note that correction up-front before I began today's discussion. 

While there were many things that were great about the Republican Convention (one being the true spirit of unity displayed - that was encouraging in and of itself), the most noteworthy announcement was Trump's VP pick, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.  Vance is young (he isn't even 40 yet) and he is also of personal interest to me because of his background, which is remarkably similar to mine.  Seeing him accept the VP pick evoked a lot of things within me, and I wanted to talk about those now. I want to start by noting Vance's seminal book, Hillbilly Elegy. 

Hillbilly Elegy came off the press in 2016, when Vance was still very young.  This was written before he was elected to the Senate, and it is a combination of both personal memoir as well as a cultural analysis.  I bought my copy of it a couple of years back, and after seeing Vance become Trump's VP pick, I decided to give it another read.  Vance grew up a lot like I did - he has Appalachian roots, was raised by his grandparents and dealt with a broken home and a mother who was less than perfect when he was young.  Although Vance and I are almost a generation apart, I identify with many things he said in that book.  One thing that stuck out to me in particular is on page 194 of the copy of the book I have, and it says this:

"Here is where the rhetoric of modern conservatives (and I say this as one of them) fails to meet the real challenges of their biggest constituents.  Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers.  I have watched some friends blossom into successful adults and others fall victim into the worst of Middletown's temptations - premature parenthood, drugs, incarceration.  What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives.  Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It's not your fault that you're a loser; it's the government's fault." (J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy. New York: Harper, 2016. p. 194).  

If Middletown, OH, were replaced with Kirby, WV, that would echo my own sentiments over the years. The comedian Bill Cosby also made a similar observation about the Black community in his book Come On People: On the Path From Victims to Victors (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) when he notes on page 20 the following: "Low expectations coming from a teacher can cause a child to fail.  Coming from a parent, low expectations can crush the soul."  Vance and Cosby are saying the same exact thing about two similar communities - expectations can make or break an individual, and those who the young look up to need to exercise more accountability for their own actions lest they cause catastrophic consequences for future generations.  A quote I heard from an evangelist many years ago sums that up also - your present position does not determine your future potential.  While adversities may create challenges, the right influences and encouragement and a proper support system in the community will go far in helping someone overcome those. When I was younger, I saw a lot of commonalities between my own poor Appalachian background and that of inner-city Blacks - we faced many of the same issues, and just like in many cases conservatives failed to meet the real challenges of those who should be their allies, the liberal Democrats have been doing the same thing for years.  J.D. Vance talks about this same thing in his book on page 31, and it seems he came to the conclusion I did about this although he cited his reference from a book called Appalachian Oddyssey.  It is one reason why I am an independent, as both of those major parties have failed us.  However, there may be hope, in that Trump seems to be doing something that many career politicians have failed to do, and he is getting results.  Trump was a huge factor in my home state of West Virginia becoming more Republican, and now he is making tremendous inroads among Black Americans for the same reasons.  The elitists in both parties have failed us all on so many levels, and a change is needed for sure.  I believe Vance is a catalyst for that change, and Trump did well choosing him. 

One other thing that has been going through my mind about this over the weekend was this - I have had to reconcile my Appalachian upbringing with my Catholic faith and other status in life, and this has proven an interesting challenge.  I recently wrote a book about some of the negatives I have experienced, and if someone were to read that initially, it would seem like I am more or less eschewing my former life and maybe even would be ashamed of it.  Let me assure you though that this is not the case at all - my readings of Aquinas in recent years since my graduation from Steubenville have taught me some things, and one of those things is supernatural grace.  I have taught on supernatural grace before, and in Thomistic terms its purpose is to elevate, heal, and perfect us as humans, but also nature in general.  If I were to put this another way, it would be what I have said many times over the years - preserve what is good, and learn from what is bad but don't let the bad define you.  In all honesty, I love where I come from in small-town West Virginia, and it is ingrained as part of me that I deeply appreciate and value.  But, it was far from perfect - growing up, I knew what it was like to just have fried cabbage and boiled potatoes for dinner, and I also knew what it was like to wash clothes in a bathtub, and even at one point when we couldn't afford electricity we had to use a small creek at the hill below my step-grandfather's house as a refrigerator, and we cooked meals on an old woodburning stove outside at times.  I am also one of the few Gen Xers to probably understand what using an outhouse was - my grandmother and step-grandfather did not have an indoor bathroom for years, and during the day the toilet necessities were met by an outdoor outhouse while at night a "chamber pot" was used which was a rather clever invention my step-grandfather came up with.  He essentially took an old kitchen chair, cut a hole in the seat, installed a toilet seat on it, and then underneath was placed a large 25-gallon plastic bucket.  That setup behind a curtain in the bedroom was how we dealt with bodily functions then.  Likewise, bathing was in a large metal tub with water heated on a wood stove in the winter and this too was done behind a curtain for privacy sake.  For the time we were without electricity, my step-grandfather dammed up the creek and made a huge reservoir of water in which he stuck a large cooler with all the refrigerated perishable items - thankfully that was in the winter months, and it served as our refrigerator for about a month.  That was essentially how I grew up, but as time went on it gradually got better.  Additionally, having a single mother who struggled with alcohol abuse was not a picnic either - many times from about the time I was 11 I had to practically take care of myself.  Mom would eventually get better as well, and by the time she passed away a couple of years ago, she had done well over the past 30 years, roughly from after I started high school up to fairly recently (my mom stayed with me the last couple of years of her life, and I was essentially her caregiver).  When I read Hillbilly Elegy, I see J.D. Vance as going through many of those same challenges to some degree, and that is why I relate to him so much.  His leadership as VP is essentially reflecting people like me, and thanks be to God for that.  That all being said, let me now talk a little about reconciling Appalachian culture and my faith. 

Like myself, Vance was a convert to Catholicism from a more conservative and strict Appalachian Protestant religious background.  And, like his own family who was originally from Kentucky, my West Virginia relatives were part of the Appalachian migration to bigger metro areas - the only difference was where we all went.  Kentuckians such as Vance's family often ended up in the big metro areas of Ohio as well as cities such as Detroit and Fort Wayne.  For us West Virginians, the destination was often either Baltimore or Pittsburgh.  I have discussed before how a large area off of Wilkins Avenue in Baltimore was often called the "Hillbilly Ghetto" due to so many West Virginians who lived there in the 1960s and 1970s, and my own family essentially lived in our own neighborhood - I spent part of my childhood in Baltimore, where I attended Stuart Hill Academy when I was in kindergarten in 1974-1975.  Many of my cousins now - the kids and grandkids of the original relatives - were born and raised in the Baltimore suburbs and still live there today.  St. Agnes Hospital probably welcomed more cousins in our family than any other institution in the US.  I stuck out though because I was one of the few of that generation of our family to actually be born in West Virginia, and I also spent more of my childhood there than many of my Maryland-born cousins did.  For many of them, West Virginia was a place to visit on weekends to see "Granny and Pop-Pop," or my great-aunts and uncles who were their grandparents. Also, Baltimore was good in many aspects to the economic stability of the older family - they came there young, worked and raised families, but all of them practically returned home after retirement and would die where they were born.  That is what the whole "sense of place" concept in our region is all about, and it defines us to this day.  I can say essentially that the same thing happened to me as well - after living in Florida, where I got married, finished college, and built up a decent occupational resume, I ended up moving back to the region I grew up 7 years ago.  Although I live in Maryland, my home state is just a 10-minute drive across the Potomac from my house now, and many of these areas I am familiar with still from my childhood.  There were many good memories about that too, and Baltimore for me as a kid was an exciting place in all honesty.  Further, those years in Baltimore were some of the last times our family was really close - it seems like over the years we have all scattered to the four winds and other than social media we don't have anything to do with each other anymore, and that is sad.  So, that being said, let me reflect some on reconciliation and reflection. 

Like anything in life, our personal "story" has both positives and negatives that shape us.  As we grow in life, many of these attributes merit re-examination.  What was good that I can keep, and what is bad that I can keep the lessons learned but otherwise discard?   Change is both constant and inevitable, and we all go through personal changes as we grow older.  We are not exactly the same people we were when we were 16, 25, or 30, and we will change more as we turn 80 eventually.  That is life.  That being the case, two things are going to happen usually at the same time.  As we look back at our earlier lives, we begin to miss certain aspects and it causes us to reminisce and ask what happened to that old passion and enthusiasm we once had about certain things, and we really feel like a piece of ourselves was lost.  The second thing that happens is this - as we ponder all that, we start to think if there is a possibility we can revive that old passion, and if so how would it fit into the person we are now?  That is really what inspired my whole discussion here, as over the past few days I have been thinking about a few things that evoked those feelings, and my mind has not rested since.  I want to talk about that some now, as it actually relates to my religious faith. 

All of you who know me know my story as well.  Although raised in a fairly religious environment, I was not converted to believe in Christ until I was 16, and I was baptized that same year in a small Baptist church in Rowlesburg, WV.  I took to my new faith of course with great enthusiasm, and right before I started college in 1989 something else happened - although I had become somewhat ambivalent toward the cultural Pentecostalism of my youth, I began to learn more about it and then I received the Pentecostal experience of speaking in tongues at a small Pentecostal Holiness congregation in Georgia in 1989.  This led to a 6-year identification as part of the Foursquare Church, a Pentecostal denomination founded in 1923 by the late female evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson.  However, although in principle I liked the Foursquare denomination, my experiences in its individual parishes I was involved in were not so positive.  The first, in Alabama, ended up being a hotbed of spiritual abuse overseen by an authoritarian pastor who had ambitions to start his own personality cult.  The second, in Florida, was the exact opposite - it was a house church led by a weak pastor who didn't know how to lead a congregation, and everything was dysfunctional there too.  Both churches ended up closing - the Alabama church location was eventually purchased by a Hindu temple, and the pastor of it would die some years later of Alzheimer's.   The Florida church likewise folded, and the pastor and his wife ended up divorced. This led to my involvement with a movement called Convergence which in time would lead me home to the Catholic Church, but that process would take in total 4 years.  I will do a whole thing on Convergence later, but it is an integral part of my testimony and I include it here now because much else that happened in my life was contingent on my identification with this movement. And, that is where we go now.

The Convergence Movement was the product of several of us who were former Pentecostals and Evangelicals who began to see the richness and beauty of the ancient Church, especially how the liturgy spoke to us.  We wanted the heritage, but also we sought to retain the spirituality of our old backgrounds too, and to be honest, that gave us a job of sorting everything out and was a constant process of growth. I mention it here as it does play into this discussion, and a fundamental question is asked in particular by those of us who eventually ended up as Catholics or Orthodox Christians - what good can we preserve to integrate into our personal spirituality?  Over the past couple of days, I was thinking about the Kathryn Kuhlman crusades I used to wish I was part of as a young Pentecostal college student.  Now, she was technically not a Pentecostal herself (I think she was a General Baptist or something) but she did gain quite a following in her lifetime among even some old-time Pentecostals - my mom always admired her.  And, through her association with Demos Shakarian and the Full Gospel Businessmen, her audience was also very ecumenical, and many Catholics loved her crusades as well, especially during the earlier days of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement.  The one thing though that always drew me to her legacy was the music she featured at her meetings - it was first-class and not the crazy stuff that I had seen either in "contemporary" churches or the bad but well-meaning mountain singing of the Appalachian churches I recalled from my childhood.  I think that is also why she had a more ecumenical appeal.  And, her message was basic too - without Christ we are nothing, but he transforms us into something beautiful (or as she was quoted saying, "God doesn't make gold vessels or silver vessels - he makes yielded vessels.").  This was not to say Kathryn Kuhlman didn't have her controversies or problems - she was still a fallible human being, and her detractors often pointed out those flaws and magnified them in such a way as to discredit her.  And, many also try to associate her with the "Word/Faith" nonsense of people such as Kenneth Hagin, which to be fair often that is propagated by the guy who self-identifies as her heir-apparent, Benny Hinn.  In reality, she never preached that - her crusades largely talked about how God makes something out of nothing and how healing and other benefits of the Atonement were not merit-based, but freely given.  In the past couple of days, I began to somehow pivot my thoughts to Kathryn Kuhlman, and the question came up - can her legacy be accepted as part of my Catholic spiritual identity now, and if so, how?  The same could be said about my Appalachian upbringing too - what can that do for my own faith journey now?  That made me revisit a few things from my Personalist Philosophy textbook I had at Steubenville, and that is the direction of the discussion I want to go in now. 

The textbook I am speaking of is W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many - A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).  There are several important takeaways from Clarke's book that in all honesty I have applied even to my dissertation, and they are as follows:

1. God authored two "Books" - Revelation and Nature.

2. Nature affirms and authenticates Revelation, and Revelation perfects and completes Nature.

3. In the perfection and completion of Nature, Revelation is manifest in supernatural grace, which is an exclusive gift of God in the Atonement - it elevates, heals, and perfects.

4.  The Transcendental Properties of Being are three in number and are part of the restorative process of supernatural grace - those are Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

5. All of this applies to us as individuals, but also in many ways also is applicable to the universe as a whole, since it is God's creation. 

There are other areas all this applies to as well (in particular it helped shape my acceptance of the Marian dogmas) but let's now take this to another level.  You heard me talk many times about CNCs, or Central Narrative Convictions.  This was a concept a professor I had, Kenneth J. Archer, introduced me to years ago when he talked about the documenting of the "story" as being part of the way a community (or an individual) interprets Scripture.  Archer borrowed and refined his idea from Brian J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton, The Transforming Vision - Shaping a Christian Worldview (Downer's Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1984).  The terminology of CNC is not mentioned by Walsh and Middleton, but the concept is discussed by them as being the basis of a worldview, and they note the connection between worldview and language, and the latter reflects the former, and the former shapes the latter.  Within this is the role of faith, and the answers to four fundamental questions which in turn would be defined by Archer as CNCs - those four questions are as follows:

Who am I?

Where am I?

What's wrong?

What's the remedy? 

As the authors note, the answers to these questions (CNCs) help the individual begin to see reality in a sensible pattern, and thus the worldview that results is not synonymous with a philosophical or theological system, but is foundational to it (Middleton and Marsh, 35).  I would somewhat differ here in that here is how I see worldview - what you think (philosophy, or reason) joined with what you believe (faith).  The questions are answered by those two concepts, and there is always room for growth.  Further, this defies the thrust of the Enlightenment, which sought to divorce faith from reason - the two are inseparable in all honesty, as we need both. And, that is how everything encapsulated in that would relate to this particular discussion. 

For those of us who are converts to Catholicism, we have had adjustments to make.  There are things we had to struggle with - long-held convictions which were often at odds with our new faith.  And, as is the case, it was hard to let some of that go.  For instance, let's say that when you were converted to the Catholic faith, you had an eschatology that was formed by dispensational premillennialism.  That created an issue because you start to find out that in the Holy Land in particular there are Christian minorities who are even persecuted by "God's Chosen," the modern nation of Israel.  And, if you have some Jewish ancestry as I do, it really created a conundrum.  Can a faithful Catholic, for instance, support the nation of Israel while at the same time acknowledging Catholics among the Arab populations as our spiritual brethren?  After much, much travail over that issue, I did come to a conclusion which was fully conciliatory while being able to grow beyond the dispensational eschatology I once held, and that discussion is for another day.  So then, what of tongues, miracles, and other things - can a Catholic accept those and still be a faithful Catholic??  Again, it took a process, but supernatural grace likewise helped me clarify that too.  Essentially, my faith heritage is a part of me still and it is not something I can totally divorce from, so I learned to discern what is not in conflict with Catholic faith and I retained it with a new understanding of it.  Now, some more radical "Trads" among my Catholic brethren are going to huff and puff about that, but that is OK - while I am almost totally in agreement with their basic convictions too, I am also not a "cradle Catholic" and don't believe God ordained my history just to reject it all.  I am devoutly Catholic yes, but I am also an Appalachian American with a totally different journey than someone like Dr. Taylor Marshall (whom I do admire) may have had, and I don't feel that God rejects everything about my past because to do so is to deny him.  Even now as I think about those old Kathryn Kuhlman crusades from decades ago, I am in the process of being refined and polished like my dissertation I am finalizing, and as I look at the legacy of a person like J.D. Vance, I see that with him as well.  Nice "circling back" to that, right?  I would make Biden's former press secretary Jen Psaki proud due to the fact I actually did "circle back."  It took me a while, but we got there. 

Many issues I touched upon could be merited for discussion in their own right, but the idea here is essentially this - we all grow, and change is inevitable to us personally.  But, that doesn't mean change is bad, and good change is always built upon old and strong foundations of past tradition.  If you try to obliterate everything old - like the Emergents among Evangelicals and the "Woke" ideology of modern politics try to do - it leaves a void and that ultimately leads to destruction.  We have to build upon what we have, and we cannot afford to jettison everything about ourselves or even our civilization.  We can clean it up, refine it a bit, and even make some needed repairs and replacements, but the foundation must remain the same.  That is why as a Catholic Christian, I embrace the best of who I am, learn from past mistakes, and get rid of whatever hinders me or causes erosion to a good foundation.  Thank you for allowing me to ramble, and will see you next time. 

Reflections on Postdoctoral Life

 I have to admit - the past several years have been busy for me.  Finishing up a Ph.D. will inevitably be a lot of work, so that is to be expected.  As I write this now however, I am basically finalizing the draft of my complete dissertation, and my RD wants to schedule me to defend in just a few weeks, which is perfect.  I started this journey in August of 2020, and I am almost finishing it four years to the day that I started, which is surreal in itself.  Taking a break from my construction of political manifesto this week, I wanted to just reflect upon that journey some today.  First though, our prayers continue to be with President Trump, who as many of you have seen on the news or social media was the target of an assassination attempt.  Miraculously, he just sustained an injury to his ear, but God was definitely watching over him.  Like many others, I will be monitoring that story too as new information comes to surface, but it was definitely a deliberate assassination attempt by an Antifa-affiliated terrorist who I believe was named Mark Violets or something like that.  The terrorist was effectively neutralized (he was shot by a capable marksman who was protecting the President) and is now atoning eternally for his sin of attempted murder.  I wanted to mention that because it has figured prominently in the news cycle the past couple of days. Any rate, back to the subject at hand. 

I am completing my Ph.D. in History at Liberty University.  In all honesty, Liberty was the last place I figured upon getting any degree, but in all honesty, it was an overall good experience.  The coursework was intense but good - although Liberty does get denigrated a lot for being a Christian university, in all honesty its standards are quite high academically, and I would wager on a fellow Liberty graduate against an Ivy Leaguer any day - especially considering that the Ivy League schools are now hotbeds of activist elitism and have long abandoned any academic credibility.  There was a time when a degree from Harvard or Yale was considered something of worth, but in all honesty, I believe Liberty has more quality academic substance than either Harvard or Yale do now.  Even the dissertation process was rigorous in my experience at Liberty, but that is a good thing - the professors there want you to produce an academically excellent work that reflects good scholarship, and I am all about that.  So, I am very grateful to my research chair, Dr. William Skiles, and to my readers who gave me the proverbial "second and third sets of eyes" in finalizing my draft, Drs. Glaze and Broome.  Their advice and input have been invaluable to me, and it helped me to accomplish writing what is essentially a 350-page book.  I plan on making my dissertation a published work later, and when it is I will post more information about how to get a copy of it if anyone is interested.

A doctorate is something I have had my sights on earning for many, many years.  I started planning for it back in my undergraduate classes 30 years ago, and originally I wanted to obtain one in a theological field.  Then, many things happened - I went from being essentially a Pentecostal minister to joining the Catholic Church, so focus changed quickly.  My Master's came from a Catholic college, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and many of you already know that journey.  My Master's from there was in Catechetics, which essentially is Catholic theological education.  The plan I had after Steubenville was to stay on that trajectory and obtain a doctorate from Catholic University of America in DC, but that proved to be a disappointment - I didn't get in there due to that stupid GRE exam, which is pointless in all honesty.  So, in early 2020, I had to re-evaluate a lot of things, and after consulting with my parish priest at the time, I found that Liberty University offered online doctoral programs and so I looked into it.  Obviously, given Liberty is an Evangelical Protestant university (it was actually originally an independent Fundamentalist Baptist school but over the years it thankfully has broadened its focus), any study of theology was out for me as a Roman Catholic.  However, given that a significant part of the student body at Liberty is Catholic now, it was frankly reasonable to think about pursuing another field of study to obtain my much-anticipated Ph.D, and at that time they had just introduced the History program for doctoral-level students and I signed up.  I was accepted in April 2020 actually, although I would not start class until August, and by June I had been awarded a decent financial aid package too - so, it was a go.  However, 2020 in itself was a weird year, and a lot was going on that year which almost derailed my plans.  Thankfully they didn't.  Let me talk some about that now. 

The biggest change to come in early 2020 was the COVID mess - everything was affected by that, and it altered the lives of practically everyone.  But, it had its good side.  Although I had work at the beginning of the pandemic, it ended at the beginning of May, but the good news was I had unemployment compensation and it provided me with a good benefits package for a while. But, in my personal life, trouble happened when my wife and I separated after just over 28 years of marriage - that required a lot of readjusting.  Then, my father passed away that July, and there were some adjustments to make there although thankfully I did get an inheritance from his estate that helped me a lot. By the time August rolled around that year and the dust was beginning to settle from all the upheaval of the previous months, I also was taking a class to get my state driver's license at around the same time my doctoral courses began, so that proved to be somewhat hectic.  As 2020 wrapped up, I was in a totally different place than I was a year previous, but on the positive side I totally aced my first semester in my doctoral program at Liberty, and it made me confident for the rest.  As 2021 dawned, things were pretty secure in the household and the year largely went by smoothly both with classes and also other aspects of life, until December.  At the beginning of December 2021, some challenges hit us when we had to hospitalize my mom, who was living with me at the time, due to a nasty fall she had one night while I was out on an errand.  Mom would be put into a rehab facility to recover from two fractured bones, and while there she developed other health concerns.  Although she was temporarily home in February 2022, and for a while seemed to be OK, on the morning of March 21 Mom had a nasty stroke and had to be taken out to the hospital, and one week later she passed away.  That was a bit of a shock, and it took another very intense readjustment of life for me which I am still coming out of even as I write this now, just over 2 years later.  Yet, my doctoral studies still proceeded and I continued to do well.  A lot of things transpired academically during that period as well.  

My doctoral program was organized such as it had essentially four phases.   The first phase, which essentially covered the first four semesters, was core classes.  Those were like typical graduate-level courses, and nothing really significant about them except they were in a different discipline than my Master's classes were previously.  The second phase, which I completed in the first couple of semesters in 2022, was the electives - all of those except one were what is called 797 Seminar courses, and their purpose was a sort of crash course in the dissertation process, and were a good way to practice those skills.  The third phase, which began in Fall 2022 and ended in May 2023, was my Comprehensive Reading classes, which at first intimidated me but I ended up doing quite well in all four of those.  Then, the final phase, the dissertation itself, began in the Summer 2023 semester and from that point it was all about constructing the dissertation.  That phase was divided into its own phases - gathering research, drafting the chapters, revisions and finalization of the final complete draft, and finally defense and submission to the university library.  I am in the third of these right now, as I am finalizing the draft and Dr. Skiles, my RD, is in the process of scheduling my defense for early August, meaning it is a matter of a couple of weeks away now.  If the dissertation is successfully defended before the committee, you essentially have earned the degree - the submitting to the school library of your final draft is a formality at that point.  I am almost there as of now, and it has been an interesting journey to say the least. 

This Ph.D. will be the terminus of my formal schooling, which has lasted off and on for almost 50 years since starting kindergarten at Stuart Hill Academy in Baltimore in 1974 when I was 5 years old.  In all honesty, I am glad to be finishing this up, and the only education I will be doing after that is just maybe the occasional online course for specific training professionally if required.  All of this schooling encompasses 3 formal degrees (BA earned in 1996, MA earned in 2018, and now the Ph.D. in 2024), three certifications (my culinary certificate I earned in 1992, my paralegal certificate I earned in 2006, and my Executive Cert in History I got at the midpoint of my doctorate in 2022), and of course my high school diploma I earned in 1989.  The fact that I am finally finished with formal university education as a student is surreal. On one hand, I am happy it has happened, but on the other I now have to consider my postdoctoral life.  That is what I want to talk about now. 

When one earns a doctorate, it places them in the top 6% of the world's population that possesses such an achievement. But, what do you do with it?  This is a question I get asked a lot by people, and to be honest I don't have a solid answer - I know what I want to do, but getting to that place is rife with challenges of its own.  Ideally, I would like to teach on the university level, and adjunct work may be an option.  Historians can also be an asset to museums and other cultural venues, and fortunately for me this area is full of those.  At the moment, although I have probably hundreds of resumes of myself floating around out there, not many have responded, so it is a waiting game.  This is a situation where I need to trust God to open the doors, and that is about the best answer I can give at this point.  In the interim, until an opportunity comes up, I at least do have other skills to fall back on, so we'll see what happens. 

Thanks for letting me share today, and look forward to seeing you again soon. 

 

Ignorance vs. Stupidity and Personal Will

 I have spent the past couple of weeks essentially constructing the rudimentary framework for a political manifesto, and while that is good, I wanted to take a break from that this week to get into lighter fare instead.  There are a couple of things that have piqued my interest over the past week or so, and therefore we want to talk about them.

I was talking to someone a couple of days ago, and an important point came up - God does not create stupid people.  So, what exactly does that mean?  I was thinking of that, and wanted to just reflect a little about it as it is an interesting observation.  So, let's get into that.

In the opening chapters of Genesis, God created everything.  As he completed a certain aspect of creation, he said it was good.  Then he got to humanity, and the phraseology changes to "very good."  Now, here is where we face some challenges.  The secular field of science is by and large dominated by those who prescribe to something called "scientism," meaning that science essentially is deified by them.  The most blatant example of this recently was the infamous Dr. Anthony Fauci, who declared himself to be "the science" despite the fact he was wrong on everything.  Scientism deifies scientific data as somehow infallible, and in essence it has created its own "Scripture" with its own form of inerrancy, and God forbid anyone question it.  The problem is that scientific data changes as we discover more - for instance, look at what they did with classifications of animals - a skunk was once considered a relative of weasels, but now is a family unto itself.  Pandas were once called essentially giant cousins to raccoons, but now they are bears.  There were also once nine planets in our solar system, but now Pluto is not considered a planet.  On and on these "innovations" go, and thus the conflicting signals scientism gives can basically be said to not be true science either because it is a mass of contradictions.  And, how can "scientific evidence" be infallible when it changes more often than a Kardashian changes husbands??  That is because the stuff we call "science" is not truly science - it is theory.  Evolution is a theory - it is not fact, there is nothing substantiating it, and over the decades that theory has existed it has undergone more changes itself.  So, what is true science??  Let me tell you that.

True science is based on the physical world, and it is governed by indisputable laws - if you freeze water, it hardens into a solid, and if you heat it to a certain temperature, it turns into gas.  Also, if you drop an object off a tall building, it will fall - that is the law of gravity.  Another fundamental scientific principle is mixing vinegar and baking soda - the chemicals of each neutralize each other because they represent two opposing chemical compounds, an acid and a base (alkaloid).  We were taught a lot of this in third-grade science class, and it holds true today because these are natural law.  That is actual science.  And, it is part of the natural order that was created by God himself.  It also means that natural law has a supernatural origin, as the great theologian/philosophers such as Aquinas and Bonaventure understood when they subscribed to what is called the "Two Books" principle - God authored and spoke to us through two great "books" - Nature, where created things speak to us directly, and Revelation, where God himself reveals his own inner nature as well as his free gifts and special plans for humanity (W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2001: 7). We all know what Revelation is - it encompasses all of Holy Scripture essentially in this context, but there is another part to it as well.  Holy Scripture is the Rhema of God as Revelation, but Jesus Christ is the Logos Revelation of himself to us, and thus in Christ is ultimately the entire plan of salvation for mankind, which is central to understanding basic Christian doctrine.  I want to talk a little though about Nature, as there is something very fundamental in that which God uses to remind us he exists and we mean something to him. 

Although I have addressed this before, it begs repetition in this context. For those of you who grew up in either a very Fundamentalist or traditional Holiness/Pentecostal background, I am sure you have either heard sermons from pulpits or you have heard the lingo of the zealous church member when they rail against things such as "the flesh," or they refer to something they don't like as being "in the natural."  I never understood that in all honesty, and to be honest, it grated on my nerves when those people said that as often they did not even know what they were saying.  In all honesty, it was tantamount to a heresy called Gnosticism, which condemned all physical matter as evil and instead sought to be super-spiritual to the degree it denied the very creation God made.  It shows that there exists a serious theological illiteracy among many, including pastors, about even basic Biblical affirmations such as God creating the entire universe and saying it was good - it is the same mentality, ironically, that transgenderism promotes today in a different context.  These attitudes are heretical in that essentially, they call God a failure and they presuppose God being fallible, which no Christian teaching has accepted for millennia.  To the other extreme is pantheism and monism, which worships creation as God itself and would say God is all and all is God, also heretical in that it doesn't make a distinction between Creator and creation.  What many don't realize is that this second fallacy was a core tenet of Nazism (they called it Blut und Boden, or "blood and soil"), and it has its roots in evolutionary theory as Ernst Haeckel first proposed it.  Both of these heresies deny something God himself affirmed - everything he created was perfect, and he himself called it "good."  So, what happened? Genesis 3, that's what.  When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sinned by eating of the very fruit he told them not to eat, it caused the universe to be sick and disordered.  And, that is where God sent supernatural grace, which culminated in his own giving of himself (Christ) to elevate, heal, and perfect creation by renewing it.  What that means is that creation in itself is not evil or bad - God did make it after all, and it is his gift to us - but it has become tainted by original sin.  The idea is not to deny or destroy creation then, but rather to renew it.  And, that includes us, as the pinnacle of God's creation. And, this brings us back to the original discussion.

Stupidity is real, no doubt.  But, there is really no such thing as a stupid person - there are people who do stupid things, but they are not inherently stupid.  Why?  Because God created us, and he doesn't make mistakes in his creation.  Concupiscence, however, can make us do some really stupid things when we don't let God work in our lives, and all of us are guilty of that at least some point in our lives.  We all have done stupid things, regardless of our status in life, and I guarantee that at least once in every person's lifetime they will do something they will later regret, as unfortunately actions do have consequences.  This past Sunday, our priest at our parish said in his homily at Mass that God wants us to be uncomfortable.  What does that mean?  It means that we should always realize we are limited, and that there is always room to learn and for growth, and if we think we have "arrived," we are not in God's will. Does discomfort mean we need to be miserable every day of our lives?  The world would have us think that for sure, but that isn't what it means at all.  Being "uncomfortable" just means that we know we have limitations, and that we should never just settle when God expects better of us.  At times it can be painful, as growth definitely has "growing pains," but we come out better.  Remember Thackaray's story The Rose and the Ring that I talked about earlier when the Fairy Blackstick gave the young Giglio the gift of  "a little misfortune?"  That is what this is about.  If we see it properly, a challenge or adversity in life should motivate us to overcome, and only with our complete dependence on God's guidance can we do that.  It has been said that adversity builds character, and surely it does.  So, God allows us to make stupid decisions on occasion as it is a growth experience for us, and if we respond properly to it, we learn from it.  It also shows us something else very fundamental to how we relate to God too, that being he wants us to choose to follow him, and that is where free will comes in.  God does not desire us to be robots who mechanically do what he wills us to do - no, on the contrary, he knows it is better for us to choose the right thing, but that choice may come with a few detours of stupid decisions before we get there, and God allows it to grow us.  So, if we are uncomfortable with the status quo, we are on the right track, because it means we are growing.  And, stepping out from our comfort zone is not always going to be pleasant for sure, but in the long run it bears fruit. That is what I think Fr. Grassi was talking about in his homily at Mass this week.  So, let's bring this all home, shall we?

Stupidity is not an identity, but is a choice.  A person is not stupid, but can make stupid choices.  But, there is a positive side - often, when the reality of the stupid decision hits, it motivates the person to change course and do better.  Also, stupdity is not synonymous with ignorance - with stupidity, we often know better but choose to do what we do anyway.  Ignorance, on the other hand, means that we may not even realize that we are doing something counterproductive, but it also is characterized by an openness to learn and adapt.  There are many times, for instance, when these can be confused - we may accuse someone of being stupid in a certain context, but in reality they may be just ignorant and need some guidance.  The level guidance is accepted also makes a distinction between these two concepts - stupidity oftentimes will resist guidance until it's too late, but ignorance welcomes it and will value sound advice.  And, fact is, we have all been both.  Looking at it this way, it means that we perhaps need to also cultivate more empathy for people who do stupid things as well as those who just simply don't know any better (ignorance).  A newborn baby, for instance, is not stupid because they cannot walk upright or talk - they are ignorant and these are behaviors they need to learn, and once they do then they develop.  However, one's teenage son who decides to go out on a "bender" with his buddies and then proceeds to destroy the neighbors' mailboxes because it looks "fun" is stupidity - one way or another, it is a regrettable action which will elicit a change of heart and mind, either through disciplinary measures of the parents or just dealing with their own inner remorse for their actions when the hangover lifts and they are suddenly faced with the question "what in hell was I thinking??"   That example highlights the difference between ignorance and stupidity.  One is corrected by learned behavior, while the other is a willful act despite knowing better.  Ignorance is not sin, and there is no such thing as "willful ignorance," as I don't believe anyone truly wills to be ignorant.  It would be actually contrary to nature.  The refusal to learn - so-called "willful ignorance" - is a mild form of stupidity actually that is reinforced by one's stubborn resistance to learning a new thing.  An important distinction needs to be highlighted here though - having a fear of something new is not the same as stubborn resistance.  Fear is a natural response, as it is uncomfortable for us to step out and take on a challenge of something new.  For some, it is easy to face it head-on and conquer, but for others it may take time.  Driving a car for instance - it can be a bit intimidating when you are first behind the wheel of a two-ton car and you have to do this, do that, and coordinate everything to make sure your driving experience is safe.   That scares people, and is one reason why some are hesitant to drive.  It is not willful stubbornness in that they want to learn, but it scares them.  Therefore, patience and empathy are necessary to help the person feel more at ease to step up to the challenge.  It is another reason we should not flippantly judge people either - the circumstances and story behind why they are who they are should be properly understood first, and then it opens doors for both that person and you.  And, if you are that person, you desire people to see that as well, and it can be painful when people don't understand you or attempt to do so, and in that case the willful stubbornness is on their part and not yours.  They may call you "stupid," but in reality they are acting stupidly by judging you and refusing to know the facts.  That is an important lesson for us all. 

I hope you didn't tire too quickly of my ramblings for today, but it was just stuff that has been on my mind.  Hope you all have a good remainder of your week, and thanks for stopping by. 

Further Political Reflections

 I had not anticipated doing three discussions in a week, but in all honesty I have been on a roll and wanted to get some thoughts down while they were still fresh.  In a lot of ways, these latest discussions are almost like a type of manifesto, but they would need further development as most of what I have expressed has been initial extemporaneous sentiments.  A true political manifesto will back up those reflections with substantiation to give them an air of legitimacy, and in time I may actually do that too.  But, for now, it is just reflection.  A couple of more issues I have been grappling with are local in nature and are also things that strike a personal chord, and I wanted to share those today. 

I live, as you know by now, in a city called Hagerstown in Maryland.  I know Hagerstown well, as I grew up in this region and especially remember visiting here a lot when I was a kid and my grandfather lived only a few miles away in Martinsburg.  As a community, Hagerstown has a lot of potential - it is on the doorstep of the DC/Baltimore metro areas, it is within less than an hour of three other states, and its historical significance cannot be underestimated - you can literally throw a rock from my front yard and probably hit something that is historical.  And, aesthetically it is a charming town - Hagerstown is quaint, it is not densely populated, and it is the perfect distance from both the mountains and the ocean.  The potential that Hagerstown has is amazing - resources, networking, etc.  However, the unfortunate thing for Hagerstown is that it is practically isolated from the very areas it could benefit from, and the local government here doesn't seem to give a damn.  The cost of living is astronomical, and local job prospects here are negligible at best, given that almost everyone that lives here has to work in areas that require a significant commute.  Those two factors are what facilitate this particular discussion today, and I wanted to begin by noting a relevant thing from a local politician who I personally like, but he has come up somewhat disappointing regarding these facts. 

Neil Parrott is a local businessman, and he has served as a delegate for the Maryland legislature.  He is a Republican, fairly conservative, and for the most part I would agree with the majority of what he platforms.   But, he isn't perfect, and one area that got my attention with him recently was when he posted his platform positions on his campaign website - Neil is running for the 6th District Congressional seat for the House of Representatives, and it is a seat occupied for many years by a very elitist rich Democrat named David Trone. Trone is a leftist, and a bad one too - he is so out-of-touch with his constituents right now that it is frankly a tragedy, but thankfully he is vying for a Senate seat that I hope he loses and will not be seeking re-election for his House seat.  Parrott and Trone have ran against each other before - in 2022 they competed for the House seat, and for some odd reason Trone won it when Parrott was ahead in the numbers, because Parrott rolled over and played dead when I am certain he should have won.  That unfortunately began to make me question Parrott, and as I did so, I began to look into his campaign positions.  What I found was actually shocking, and I want to share that now as it is seriously important to us here as a region.  Regarding funding for a public transport system, Parrott had this to say on his campaign website - "Private solutions like Uber, Lyft, Bird, and Lime should be utilized more so that we spend less tax money paying for underutilized public transportation options."  There are so many issues with this statement, and I want to get into them now.  First, anyone who knows Hagerstown will attest that the public transport system here is practically nonexistent - they do have a city bus, but it only has four routes and is not practical for most people to commute.  That is the first issue I have.  Secondly, "private solutions" like Uber are very expensive, and to be honest, they can handicap the person who is trying to work a menial job to pay their rent if transportation is not readily available.  Parrott labors under the assumption here that everyone is independently wealthy and thus, like him, can take this for granted.  This could cost him dearly in the election if he doesn't modify his position.  This means that public transportation options are not "underutilized," but they honestly are inadequate to meet the needs of people who would benefit from it because they are not readily available in Hagerstown and smaller communities.  Also, given that Parrott's potential Congressional district also includes Frederick and a part of Montgomery County, this doesn't make sense - Frederick and many Montgomery County communities are very well-served by efficient public transportation infrastructure, and thousands of people depend on it as a cheaper commute option to their jobs, medical appointments, etc.  The public transport options in that part of the district are also plugged into the bigger Metro bus/train system there, which means work options are more abundant as people can easily commute to DC or Baltimore for good jobs.  If Parrott tries to eliminate that, it would cripple the local economies and would exacerbate the unemployment rate as well as the cost of living - he is frankly delusional if he thinks it is a good idea to get rid of those public transportation options.  Maybe if he had to work in a job he was overqualified and got paid less money, he would be more empathetic to the needs of real people.  A new proposal has been out there in recent years called the Maglev, which is high-speed rail which would actually connect Hagerstown to these larger metropolitan areas and open up more opportunities for people.  If Parrott is on this trajectory with his position on public transportation options, he would more than likely advocate for the same stupidity that Rick Scott did in Florida by blocking a similar high-speed rail system which would have connected Tampa to Orlando and Miami - like an idiot, Scott refused the money allotted then and it went essentially into Gavin Newsome's pocket in California.  I agree with conservative media commentators like Ben Shapiro who say that the big issue with Republicans is that they know how to snatch defeat out of the hands of victory - the 2022 mid-terms proved that.  It seems like Neil Parrott, as nice of a guy as he is personally, may be falling into that same trap - say anything to get elected, and then roll over and die when faced with a challenge which affects real people.  This is one reason why I generally have no love for Republicans either - they are Establishment hacks for the most part who are out of touch with what real people face every day, and the system remains broken because many Republican politicians don't have the balls to stand up and say "Enough!"  Donald Trump is a refreshing exception, and thankfully he looks poised to win this year.  But, the reason I have been an independent for years now is because the Republicans are a paper tiger and a eunuch political force - I recall the loudmouth Republican Senator from Iowa, for instance, back in 2010 I believe saying she was going to "make them squeal" in regard to the forced ACA (Obamacare) mandate that was foisted upon Americans then, but she did nothing, and she still runs her mouth but is effectively neutered politically.  This is another reason why earlier I laid out my ideas for term limits and salary reductions for Congress - elitist Democrats and emasculated Republicans both need a lesson in humility and perhaps that is where the fat needs to be trimmed rather than regarding public transportation options.  Congressmen make way too much money that they don't work for, and that should stop.  And, hate to say it, but if Parrott intends to maintain this status quo, he should not be elected to office then.  Time to get real leaders who hear the voice of their constituents and not aspiring superstars who want to run their mouths and do nothing.  A third-party option is needed, in other words.  

Besides public transportation issues for Hagerstown in particular, another issue is rental prices.  Over 60% of the American population has to rent their homes, and home ownership is becoming less realistic for many than it used to be.  As a result, some "blue" states such as Maryland have astronomical tax rates and thus the cost of living is practically unaffordable.  Yet, politicians - Democrats and Republicans alike - favor higher-income people over average citizens who are just trying to survive.  The rental costs in Maryland are astronomical - for a 3-bedroom mobile home like mine here, it costs on average almost $1400 a month now, and due to the fact that the politicians are against rent caps which would help make housing more affordable, it creates issues for many people.  I myself have struggled to pay rent now for over 2 years, and to be honest, it gets scarier as each month passes.  I found out recently why this is the case - the Washington County Commission here, while majority Republican, has a lot of rich realtors sitting on it, and they hate the idea of limits on rent increases.  So, despite the fact noble efforts were made to get a cap on rents legislated, the rich realtors block it, and rents continue to be almost unrealistic to meet for the average household here.  In essence, it seems like in lieu of greed, these politicians are almost forcing people to be homeless just so they can make more profits, and they are too stupid to understand that eventually it is going to come back to bite them too - if people find this area too expensive, they will move elsewhere and thus it will impact the local economy negatively. That means that greedy politicians who happen to be real estate professionals are going to lose money.  They need to understand that limits on rental costs would actually benefit them as well, as people generally are attracted to areas with more affordable living expenses and in time it benefits all. My advice for any politician of any political persuasion is to take a basic Economics course as a requisite for holding office, and then to take a salary cut for a while and have to deal with what many of their constituents face.  I guarantee you that once it starts to affect them personally, they will change their positions on things.  I did not see whether or not Neil Parrott has a position on rent caps or not, but it is something that is crucial for him to address.  Those two issues - public transportation options and rental regulation - are what I wanted to address.  Whether you are Democrat, Republican, or anything else, these are the real-life adversities many of us face, and our leadership needs to have more empathy and less rhetoric in dealing with them.  But, perhaps I am expecting too much - they are politicians after all, and many of them are stupid, so they will never get that.  Yet, it is good to just air the grievance regardless, because it resonates with the common citizen who has to work to pay their bills everyday.  In time, those common citizens are going to decide enough is enough, and I see the tide reversing as hopefully common sense will come back.  Let's pray it happens soon.

Back to term limits, there are two very important reasons why I support them.  First, politicians say anything to get votes, but then many of them don't deliver.  This is true regardless of political party. The average American deserves better than that, and we need leaders with the testicular fortitude to make promises they can keep.  Second, many of these politicians have been in office as a lifelong career and they don't have a proven track record, yet they get paid (by the taxpayer) these crazy large salaries to do nothing.  If the average person did what many of these career politicians do - sit and collect money for nothing - that person would be fired from any job.  Therefore, it is time to maybe fire some elected officials who are dead weight and don't give a damn about their constituents - we need to get rid of them, and not vote the same thing in again.  Until we do that, our country is not in a good place - as Trump has said in many of his speeches, America is in a state of decline and if that isn't reversed soon, America as we know it may cease to exist.  I see many people starting to wake up to this thankfully, and it probably took a planned pandemic like COVID as well as a doddering puppet like Biden in the White House to motivate people, and it seems to have worked.  Let's hope enough momentum is gained to turn things around. 

That concludes today's political discourse, and you can take it as you will.  Some will agree, some will probably hate me for stating the obvious that they want to deny, and it's to be expected.  However, there needs to be a new chapter in our nation, and as we celebrate our independence tomorrow, let's keep that in mind.  Thank you, and hope you all have a wonderful celebration of the 4th of July with your families. 

Addressing Educational Policy and Issues

 Today's discussion is a continuation of the last but is focused on one key area - education.  Recently, I was asked on a job application what my personal teaching philosophy is, and although it is not as relevant to this discussion, it did make me think about what I would do to remedy the education problems we have in the US right now.  I have formulated some thoughts based on my convictions over the years, and also from an eyewitness perspective as I have been a substitute teacher in our local school district and saw things that concern me personally.  Due to the fact that education has become an arm of the government bureaucracy and also has largely evolved into an indoctrination tool rather than providing actual education to our kids, a discussion is necessary as to how to fix our very faulty educational system.  It seems now like from preschool to the university, indoctrination has become an objective of many elitist oligarchs in government.  If you remember the last discussion, I mentioned how elitists need extremists to implement their agendas, and many public schools are turning the young into an extremist apparatus to advance their agendas.  Some of the extremists on today's college and high school campuses will inevitably become the future elitists if this is allowed to continue, and they will be so radicalized that it could imperil our society as we know it.  So, it needs to be fixed.  I have a couple of proposals that have been in my mind for many years, and I want to talk about those now. 

The public school system as we know it today is the product of two individuals, John Dewey (1859-1952) and Horace Mann (1796-1859).  Mann had died the same year Dewey was born, but Mann was the ideological mentor of Dewey regardless.  While some of Mann's ideas were fine - he was an abolitionist for instance who believed in Blacks being properly schooled, and he also did establish a standard for teachers to be properly educated - it was some of his other policies which were problematic.  For one, Mann advanced the idea that education must be paid for by "an interested public."  In writing, that sounds good, as proper education is a common good for society, so OK.  But, what that meant was that education would be government-funded by tax revenue, and thus also must be non-sectarian.  Again, the non-sectarian aspect is fine as well, but the problem is what would come later, which would be a direct divorce of religious and civil influence, a concept rooted in the Enlightenment thinking of Spinoza and Descartes and carried to extremes by those such as Machiavelli and Rousseau.  When Dewey came along later, he further radicalized these ideas in the form of what he called "transactionalism" which would later be advanced in a postmodern context to turn absolutes into abstracts, and in doing so "truth" would become subjective rather than empirical and observable.  This was further evolved later by the ideological successors to Dewey as it meant that education was to be completely secularized and state-administered.  What this meant then was that a positive (access to education and literacy for all) was neutralized in time by negatives (subjectivism, secularism, state-controlled education, etc.).  The neutralizing of the positive meant that essentially the fundamentals of education (literacy, computation, rhetoric, etc.) would be sacrificed on the altar of indoctrination of the young to serve the state.  And, we see the results of this quickly decadent approach to education today in our schools, which is one reason I refuse to teach anything in a public school now.  The ideas of Mann and Dewey were further radicalized by political activists such as Saul Alinsky, who saw the school as a seedbed for implementing his own ideology.  This essentially would ruin education in the US and in other Western nations.  It also created further problems when social norms began to be redefined and traditional ideas challenged, and it led to the banning of prayer in schools in 1963, then the disastrous Roe v. Wade abortion decision in 1972, and eventually "progressing" to the radical redefinition of marriage in the 0bergefel decision of 2015.  The introduction of weird ideologies such as "political correctness" and Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Common Core mathematic pedagogy further diminished the quality of education in the US over the past 20 years.  It atomized and Balkanized young people from high school into university level, and in recent years such atrocities as "Drag Queen Story Hour" and weird esoteric/New Age techniques have further diminished the quality of American education.  Against that backdrop, it establishes that even with dropping literacy rates and high levels of high school dropouts in recent decades are attributed to a lack of incentive to learn fundamental and practical skills such as reading and mathematics (some of these radicals in control of education are even labeling these as "racist" and other such garbage).  And, many concerned parents are now opting for alternative educational models such as homeschooling and private schools for their kids, and with good reason. Thus, the need to address and correct the problem.

Years ago, I proposed that a government "Department of Education" is a huge waste of taxpayer money, and it inserted government in areas which traditionally were the authority of parents.  Therefore, I also proposed that any government entity overseeing education should be either eliminated or at least redefined in its role to limit its overreach.  The idea I came up with was to totally privatize all schools, including universities - the day of the "state university" should end, in other words. The model I proposed was that schools should be overseen by three entities - religious groups, non-profit private entities, or military.  The third - military - would be also private in scope, and would be overseen by individuals such as retired officers who would instill a proper military training into the students at such academies.  Private military academies are nothing new in all honesty - they have existed in states such as Virginia for a couple of centuries now.  The idea here would be to expand that model and make it a sector of the American educational infrastructure which would encourage well-rounded military service.  The private non-profit school would be the most flexible of the models, in that those would be overseen by an organization who could design the curriculum as they see fit.  The question of funding these also would come up obviously, as there are many struggling families, so a co-op system could be set up in which the tax system currently in place could be replaced with an incentive model.  For those who could afford it, an annual dues system could be set up that would be well within budget range, and for those who can't, a certain amount of the budget could incentivize their participation.  In return, struggling families could volunteer their talents and services to help the particular school their kids are enrolled.  With the abolition of the current public school system, there would be no competition and the parents could determine which school would fit their children's needs the best.  As the reformation of the educational system would also be in conjunction with the tax law I talked about last discussion, it would also open up opportunities.  Now, if the local communities wanted to allot official assistance to such a school, that would be a possibility too.  There are a couple of other ideas which would incentivize this model, so I will get into that now.

Teachers' unions in recent years have become problematic.  These unions (notably groups like the NEA) are not there to advance the best interests of the students.  Rather, these unions are about money and agendas.  That needs to stop, and one of the first steps in education reform is to get rid of the teachers' unions once and for all.  There are many good teachers today who are held hostage by these cartels (and that is what a teachers' union is in reality), and they oppose these unions as much as I would because they are not reaping benefits from them.  I would propose that some professional group would need to exist, but I see more of a guild system in place than these unions.  An educator guild would have resources available to help teachers get credentialed, provide jobs for them, and also would set in place an accountability system which would incentivize the teacher to prioritize their students over their agendas.  The best teacher is the perpetual student, so the teacher could always be trained in areas that are needed, and this would be incentivized by a fund set up by the guild to handle that.  Contributing to this guild would be completely voluntary and not mandatory like union dues are, and lack of ability to pay would also not preclude membership.  And, there can be more than one guild too - teachers for different types of schools could belong to a guild that specifies them and not some overarching bureaucratic union with the structure of an octopus.  The only lobbying these guilds could do is to make sure that teachers are paid fairly and treated appropriately in the workplace, and the guilds would also be interactive with parents as well - I would not be opposed to parents even becoming associates of these guilds to support and provide input to the teachers.  I think this model would incentivize more people to seek careers as educators, and the quality of the educator would be better.  I have some details I would need to think over with this model, as it is not perfect and just a proposal, but it is well worth consideration. 

With privatized schools and vetted instructors, I feel as if education would recover in this country in a way that would promote excellence and also provide a well-rounded and accessible education to anyone who wants it.  Curriculum is a more detailed matter, as is pedagogy, but those would factor in as well. While I won't go into curriculum in detail here, the model proposed would comprise a few areas:

1. The Fundamentals - reading, grammar/spelling, basic mathematical skills, fundamental science and social studies

2. Aesthetic/Academic - foreign languages, art, music (including instruction to learn one musical instrument or develop vocal skills), classical literature, religious instruction

3. Physical Development - sports (if the student so chooses), basic fitness, and nutritional education.

4. Vocational - a track consisting of coursework in a chosen skill - carpentry, masonry, agriculture, computer science, bookkeeping, culinary arts, etc. (enrollment in a military academy could also meet this requirement)

5. Classical - an expansion of the aesthetic/academic, focusing on more specific areas.

This basic academic model would be supplemented by extracurricular activities such as volunteering for local charities, and a greater emphasis on existing programs such as the FFA, 4-H, ROTC, and other good programs we all had in school.  Community projects would be key as well, such as the old "Adopt-a-Highway" programs or even helping to set up tiny house communities for homeless people or rehoming stray animals.  It is a service-based model that would integrate the particular school into the local community, and thus also would even encourage parental involvement.  Traditional fundraisers such as cookie sales and raffles could also be maintained - they are a good revenue source for specific programs. I also love the idea of community gardens in which school kids would be active participants, as well as beautification programs to clean up and refurbish areas of a town that need it.  The community aspect of education thus would contribute to the common good, and it would also aid in keeping otherwise problematic kids from getting into mischief.  To make a further incentive, any of these skills a kid learns in school like this would also contribute toward the building of a professional portfolio, and thus make these kids ready for the workplace without having to wait on gaining "three to five years of experience" and other BS.  Local businesses could be incentivized to participate in this too, by offering internships to kids in law offices, etc.  Part of the incentive will be a minor stipend given to the kid as they work for the business, and this would be positively reflected in the tax law as well of the community, who could offer reduced taxation for a business that contributes in this way.  This means then that kids as young as 10 could be incentivized at an early age to develop a sound work ethic that would benefit their communities as well as enriching their own skills.  If this educational model existed, it would really revitalize many small communities in particular, but in cities it would be different.   In a city environment, the activities of the school would be limited to its local community within the city and not be city-wide.  It makes the satellite urban areas more productive too, and that in turn benefits a whole region. As with all of this, the model is not perfect and is subject to revision, but it would be a constructive start. 

Thank you for allowing me to share an abstracted version of my educational philosophy, and I will more than likely be adding to it in the future.  Have a good week, and a safe celebration of Independence Day as it is coming up later this week.