We’re 0-2 with the Tobins

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

On Saturday, Bishop Tobin of Providence, RI, reminded Catholics via Twitter not to participate in Gay Pride marches, which is about the most non-controversial thing a Catholic could say.

Yesterday, through an official diocesan statement, he apologized and was praying for their activities to be ‘productive’ (I doubt the chancery queens intended the irony).

Can there be any doubt why, with cowardly leaders like this, there is a vocations crisis? (Providence has just 12 seminarians in a diocese of 670,000 Catholics!! That’s a decline of 98% compared to 60 years ago, if you’re wondering).

What straight young man would look up from the pews and, gazing upon his Bishop, say to himself, “I want to learn what is right, and how to quickly apologize to the mob for saying it”.… Read the rest

Schrödinger’s Sock

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

For more than 20 years I’ve wondered how my Wife manages to lose so many socks. It’s so bad, we have a large laundry basket overflowing with nothing but socks which have no match.

Think about that…it must be hundreds, perhaps thousands of orphan socks.

How does this happen? I mean, you take the socks from the basket, into the washer, then to the dryer, and then back out again. What’s so complicated about it?

Yesterday I did my own laundry for the first time in many years. I’ve been on the road for more than a week and it simply couldn’t be avoided.

I loaded the washing machine with two black t-shirts, three pair of black boxer shorts, two pair of navy dress socks, one pair of black dress socks and three pair of black athletic socks.

It’s a small load, so what could go wrong?

After I pulled the clothes out of the dryer, I found that I was short one navy dress sock and one black athletic sock.

Out of 12 socks, two were missing.

I checked the dryer, and then the washer, and then the area around the machine, and then the basket, and then the path from my room in the condo to the machines.

Nothing.

I guess when I get home tomorrow, I’ll check the bastard sock basket.… Read the rest

The Tyranny of ‘Good’ Intentions

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

For Statists, whether Left or Right:

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult.

To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” {C.S. Lewis} H/T Eric S. Giunta… Read the rest