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  • Beating the Bounds of Anglican Eucharistic Doctrine–The North American Anglican (Or More Accurately, Beating Around the Bush)

    Beating the Bounds of Anglican Eucharistic Doctrine [Commentary on Browne: Article XXVIII]

    This is a long exposition of Anglican Eucharistic doctrine that mostly succeeds in making it look complicated.

    I thought about doing a “blow by blow” on this, but I will restrict myself to referring my readers to my 2020 article on the subject, Overcomplicating Anglican Eucharistic Theology.

    Overcomplicating Anglican Eucharistic Theology

  • Reformed Methodist–The North American Anglican

    Reformed Methodist

    The “ties that bind” American Christianity are a complex web, and this is a good example of that. It’s no secret that the Wesleyan tradition–like John and Charles Wesley themselves–came out of Anglicanism, and had things worked out a little differently the Episcopal Church itself could have stayed together with North American Wesleyanism.

    But now we see that one of the first offshoots of the Protestant Episcopal Church–the Reformed Episcopal Church–came out of the interaction of Methodists and Episcopalians. It’s sometimes hard to see today, but the REC started as a reaction to creeping Anglo-Catholicism in the Episcopal Church, and it was natural that Methodism, which was a reaction to the dry, nominal Church of England of the eighteenth century, would be an inspiration and a help to the fledgling REC. It is an interesting meeting of two traditions–liturgical and revivalistic–which have generally been at odds with each other.

    Perhaps the most revivalistic heir of Wesleyanism–modern Pentecost–will take some lessons from this story, we certainly could use some in our present situation.

  • The Strategic Issue Behind Trump’s Spats with Canada and Greenland

    The American media’s its usual uninformative self about geopolitical issues, but this video puts many things in a whole new light:

    It makes perfect sense that the U.S. would want to secure its northern frontier against incursion by the…Russians and Chinese, those people who Trump’s enemies have convinced themselves he has sold out to. Complicating matters is Denmark’s inability (as a result of its size) to defend Greenland and Canada’s refusal to recognise the Northwest Passage as true international waters, something I’m sure has come up in Trump’s discussions with “Skippy.”

    While our chattering classes obsess with their idea that we have “sold out” to the Russians in Ukraine, we should be focusing on this, a much larger theatre of conflict which is a lot closer to home.

  • A Few Reminders on Fast and Abstinence During Lent

    As Lent fast approaches, I’ve seen some pushback on X from Anglicans on “why do we do the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday as Anglicans?” It’s a fair question, and the culprits in the Anglican-Episcopal world are the “more Catholic than the Pope” people, the Anglo-Catholics. In the middle of their preparation for the impositions and their exhortations to “figure out what you’re going to give up during Lent” it’s worth stopping to consider a few things. As someone who has done both the Old High Church and Roman Catholicism, I think I can bring a different perspective to this whole discussion.

    I don’t remember going to an imposition of ashes during my years at Bethesda, although I may have gone to one during my prep school years at St. Andrew’s. I didn’t do many as a Roman Catholic, and there’s a good reason for that: Ash Wednesday isn’t a Holy Day of Obligation for Roman Catholics in the U.S.! (Neither is Good Friday.) I was faithful to the days of obligation (and that was back in the day when you went to them during the week, and not this “move to Sunday” rubbish) but Ash Wednesday wasn’t one of them.

    Turning to the issue of fast and abstinence, the regulations for those haven’t changed either, as this from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops attests:

    Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are obligatory days of fasting and abstinence for Catholics. In addition, Fridays during Lent are obligatory days of abstinence.

    For members of the Latin Catholic Church, the norms on fasting are obligatory from age 18 until age 59. When fasting, a person is permitted to eat one full meal, as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal. The norms concerning abstinence from meat are binding upon members of the Latin Catholic Church from age 14 onwards.

    The fast was put more simply back in the day: skip one meal. As a student at Texas A&M, unencumbered by my Baptistic mother, I fasted the entire day when I could.

    With the abstinence, being an engineering student at Texas A&M had one bonus for Texas Catholics: there was a McDonald’s across the street from the Zachry Engineering Centre, which allowed the convenient weekly Lenten consumption of the Filet-o-Fish sandwich. We now know that this was the whole point of that menu item.

    For those exhorting us to “up our game” on Lent–Anglo-Catholic, Trad or exvangelical liturgical enthusiast–the simple requirements of post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism may come as a shock. But the truth is that Roman Catholicism instituted the imposition of ashes and all of the Lenten practices that followed, and it has–for better or worse–adapted those to life today. That should give pause to the “more Catholic than the Pope” people of all kinds, and perhaps should turn the rest of us away from trying to keep up with the Joneses and do something that will draw us closer to God between now and the time we celebrate His Resurrection.

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  • Something Worse than Monarchical Absolutism

    Sometimes the most interesting and profound of statements come from some of the unlikeliest places, and this is one of them: it was reprinted in the January 1919 edition of Crane Valve World, the periodical of the Crane Company, the Chicago based company that makes valves and other fittings for piping of air, steam, water and other substances. (My great-great-grandfather was its CFO in his later years.) With a little editing I’ll reproduce it in its entirety. The four main European continental monarchies that went into World War I–Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire–were gone. But what to replace them? As is the case today, democracies, of course! But there are pitfalls, and this article points out a number of them. It also speaks out against the lynchings of black people, something that may surprise some people given the date. But Union monuments, then and now, dot the landscape in and around Chicago, so…maybe not.

    When the absolute monarchs have been put away and their estates have been probated it will be necessary to turn attention to the other absolutism.

    Of the two absolutisms the other one is on the whole the stupider and the wickeder. If monarchical absolutism learned little from the days of Nero to those of William II, the other absolutism has learned nothing since the days of Cain. Both absolutisms have been murderers from the beginning, but the other one has taken the greater relish in butchery for the animal excitement of it.

    The other absolutism is the insensate power of the amorphous many, otherwise known as the mob or rabble. The amorphous many is ignorant be yond belief. Three thousand years of enlightenment have sent hardly a ray into its instinctive mind. It is cruel beyond imagination. Two thou sand years of Christianity have not awakened within it a pulsation of sympathy. It bawled “Crucify him” thru the alleys of Jerusalem, and it bawls “Hang him” in the streets of Petrograd. It yelped in pandemonium when Brutus, the megalomaniac, struck down Caesar, and it leered impartially at Marie Antoinette and Robespierre on their way to the guillotine. In England a century and a half ago it burned and looted “papistical edifices” in the name of the Protestant religion, and in the United States in the twentieth century it burns negroes in the name of civilization.

    A peril to life and liberty since the beginning of history, the absolutism of the amorphous many has become a menace to the human race. Extended beyond bounds by the aggregating percussion of modern communication, and frenzied by the brain storms of revolution, it now imagines itself to be humanity. It proclaims itself “the people,” and announces its creation of “a new social order.”

    On what has this monster fed? On what is it feeding now; and wherewithal is it arrayed?

    It is barbarically arrayed in countless strings of pearls that a bastard sentiment which has stolen the name of Christianity has been busily casting before swine. This sentiment insists that all human beings are by nature good until they are exploited. Destroy discipline, credulous sentiment says, compel no one to obey, give everybody “freedom” to “realize” himself, and the millennium will be at hand. An environment of ancient social injustices multiplied and magnified by modern capitalism is the cause of all badness: this is the irresponsible teaching. These beads of imbecility are the necklace with which the amorphous many accentuates its intellectual nakedness.

    And the food on which it subsists, by which it grows and ravens and gathers absolute power, is the self-same dogma on which monarchic absolutism was nourished: the dogma, to wit, that the end justifies the means. Must a throne be strengthened? Assassinate all rival claimants. Must the state expand? Make scraps of paper of covenants and treaties. Must democracy triumph? Destroy the fruits of industry and thrift. Must the white man rule? Burn the “n—-r.” For “the king can do no wrong.” The state “makes its own moral law.” The “higher race” is its own justification. And “the people”? What is the people but a majority? And is a majority, forsooth, to be balked in its triumphant progress?

    These are plain words. The time for plain speaking has come. The danger is real, and it is imminent. If the blood and treasure that have been poured forth to destroy the absolutism of the monarchs has been expended only to create and usher in the absolutism of an amorphous many, undisciplined in thought and uncontrolled in conduct, bitter with envy, and taking over from the older social system only its dogma of unscrupulous method, and its sentimental gurgle-song of the inherent goodness of human nature, what shall the travail of civilization have profited us?

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  • The Mikado and the Europeans

    Teaching at Lee University has brought back memories of things I experienced there before even I was drawn into their fledgling engineering program. Now that we are on our way to a building for same with the woes of the present world for a background, there’s something that has come back to mind that I think bears repeating.

    In 2016–the same year That Man With the Orange Hair was elected to the White House the first time–my wife and I got to see Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado at Lee. The production was, to say the least, unconventional:

    It was a strange production; it was one of those things where the audience sat on the stage and the performers did their thing in the seats.  The program regaled us with the usual politically correct rubbish of “it isn’t about Asians.”  (They could have chosen an all-Chinese or Korean cast; both would welcome a shot at making fun of the Japanese.)  It had the potential of being a serious dud, but Lee University, as all the world knows now, has a deep bench of talent in singing and the performing arts and the faculty to make the most of it.  So it was good.

    I’ve been hearing the soundtrack from The Mikado since growing up in Palm Beach, and one of my English teachers there–one in a long series with whom I had difficulties–played it in class. In all of this he made an observation that has stuck with me ever since:

    Probably the most profound one was in connection with Gilbert and Sullivan; in playing the highlights in class, he observed that G&S lived in a country (the UK) where you could make fun of the government and other social institutions.  In other parts of Europe (like Tsarist Russia) such satire was forbidden.

    To which I made the following observation:

    A lot has been made about the pressure on free speech from the students.  And that’s a problem.  Today we have a generation that, faced with a society which changes at a blinding pace, is running scared.  The last thing anyone wants to hear is someone advocating changing something else, especially when every change makes a new set of people unemployable, either temporarily or permanently.

    But none of this stifling could move forward without the acquiescence of collegiate governance.  And it’s often more than acquiescence; they write many of these speech codes and carve out these “safe spaces” which make free expression on campus tricky.  That even applies to what gets performed on campus; one victim of our obsession with not offending anyone is The Mikado itself, which can’t be performed in many places.  I should be thankful that Lee actually put it on, politically correct drivel notwithstanding.

    If we allow this trend to continue, we won’t be any better off than Russia, Tsarist or Putinist.  And that’s going to cost us in the long run.  Without the free exchange of ideas we won’t have any ideas, which only works in a corporatist bubble.  And we’ve had enough bubbles to burst the last few years to last us a lifetime.

    Russia is, as I found out in my years of contact, one of those plus de change plus la même chose types of places: we have tsars, we have General Secretaries, we have Putin, but the autocracy–and the wild way Russians deal with it–doesn’t change. It is, to use their inimitable phrase, their idea, and they’re loathe to part with it, even when given the chance, as was the case in 1917 and the 1990’s.

    For our part the volte-face we pulled in our last general election is breathtaking. Our wholesale rejection of respectable conventional wisdom–in a country where respectability is something of an obsession–left everyone bouche bée, not least of all the Europeans. To stick the knife in deeper, we dispatched the scion of the one group His Majesty’s government was the happiest to see the stern of their ships come back and lecture the Europeans on their lack of commitment to free speech. It didn’t help that no less of a media production than 60 Minutes put the Germans on camera saying that insulting people on social media could get you thrown in jail, this a people whose bluntness in conversation many of us find insulting on a routine basis.

    When we speak of “democracy” one really begins to wonder if many of these countries ever completed their transition from “divine right” monarchies to supposedly democratic processes. Henrik Ibsen had his doubts too, which is why he wrote An Enemy of the People in supposedly paradisaical Scandinavia. The Germans have had their rough road too; their elected system went to a military dictatorship during World War I and we all know what happened next. They’ve reconstructed their country to politically bowl in very narrow lanes, which works until the ruling elite starts doing stupid things like letting in unassimilable immigrants in larger numbers than the society can absorb or shutting down nuclear plants and calling it a victory in the face of climate change when the Ukraine war cut off their Russian gas supply.

    But the saddest spectacle is taking place in the United Kingdom, where the government thinks nothing of letting violent criminals out and putting dissenters into prison and prying into Apple customers’ messages and photos. The land that allowed Gilbert and Sullivan’s satire has taken a decidedly Cromwellian turn. We used to say that the United States was founded to correct some defects in the way the “rights of Englishmen” were guaranteed, and now we really know what that means.

    In the midst of trying to figure out what they’re going to do about Ukraine, the Europeans need to begin by further differentiation of their own attitude towards personal freedom than those to the east of Belarus. That has to start with the “undemocratic, Procrustean experiment” called the European Union, an end run around democratic process if there ever was one.

    In Rome’s last years some of its people, tired of the brutality and corruption of Late Roman rule, went to live with the barbarians or didn’t put up much of a fight. (We also have the example of Britain, which bolted in 410 when Rome couldn’t defend it any more.) Unless Europe gets is house in order and starts “reading the room” instead of locking it up, they may find the general enthusiasm for pushing back against enemies to be lacking, and then things will really get interesting.

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  • “Old High Church” Planting–North American Anglican, with Some Comments

    “Old High Church” Planting

    Ah, the Old High Church…

    The popularity of the Old High Church–both in the Colonial period and in the years immediately after World War II–is something that flies in the face of a lot of Evangelical church growth orthodoxy. How is it possible to grow a church with such as specific form of worship? How can a church expand if its appeal isn’t broadly popular?

    The simple answer, from a Palm Beach standpoint, is this: the Episcopal Church didn’t appeal to many people but the right people, and same–demographically elevated and aesthetically minded–responded. That explains the growth of the Episcopal Church in both periods.

    One thing the Episcopal pioneers and their Evangelical opponents would agree on, however, is that in order to grow a church you need two things: commitment to the basic message and way of the church you’re promoting and organisation to back it up. That realisation comes from years in church work and it’s something that eludes many who would like to make it happen.

    As a product of the Old High Church, I find there are relatively few people who really want to bring it back, much less make it a vehicle of church growth. So what happened? There are several factors.

    The first is the demographic elevation that results. Today the Episcopal Church is filled with people who are relatively well to do, white and old. There is no game plan to find “trads” who will fill an Old High Church, and frankly in the Episcopal Church there is no viable game plan to fill the pews with anyone else either.

    The second is the aesthetic appeal, which has been a reliable draw for the Episcopal Church. That kind of appeal, however, draws people who are long on the way the church worships and short on what the church actually teaches and believes, which means that when the liberal seminaries and the ministers they turned out lurched the church leftward from the 1960’s onward, the aesthetically minded let things pass.

    The third is Anglo-Catholicism. Say what you will about “formalism” and “vain repetition,” the Old High Church was essentially Protestant in doctrine and belief. Today, however, virtually any church which uses the 1928 BCP–or any other traditional Anglican prayer book–is Anglo-Catholic to a greater or lesser degree. Obviously this started with the Oxford Movement but in times closer to the present the ecumenical movement has made union with Rome an obsession. As someone who went from the Old High Church to the Old Folk Mass in two years, my question is simple: What is Catholic? Is it all the frilly vestments you wear, including those birettas? Is it the Latin interjected into the Mass, like EWTN does? Does this and everything else make the sacraments more valid? Were ours invalid because we strummed guitars during the NOM? (Confession: we actually cheated and offered the Eucharist in both species before it was legal in the U.S., although it was Texas…) And where is the Roman Catholic Church really going after the present Occupant of the See of St. Peter goes to meet God, a serious question for all of us?

    I really think that the Anglican/Episcopal world–all of it–would do well to stop and consider these questions before allowing Evangelical and Catholic alike to lead those who don’t understand the tradition astray.

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  • Hopefully, @JDVance Won’t Be Too Soon Old and Too Late Smart About Roman Catholic Social Justice Teaching

    The Catholic Church in the US is distressed about Trump’s immigrant policies:

    Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the USCCB president, said in a Wednesday statement that some provisions of Trump’s executive actions, including those that affect immigrants and refugees, “are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences.”

    To which Vance came back:

    “I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns?” Vance questioned. “Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”

    That’s an interesting twist to this whole thing, but it isn’t the only one. As someone a) with Scots-Irish background (not as much as his) and b) who swam the Tiber in my time, I can say that he’s beginning to realise that Roman Catholicism, for all of its doctrinal and worldview strengths, is an institution with issues, and those issues are central because institutionalism is what the Roman Catholic Church is all about.

    In my time the Church played both sides of the street on social justice issues. It wasn’t as bad as the Episcopal Church (and that was on display last week) but it was bad enough. It ultimately was what broke me of being Roman Catholic. He may connect the dots and he may not, but what’s going on now is certainly something for him to think about.

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  • My Impressions of “Communion Chapel”

    My Impressions of “Communion Chapel”

    Most of you who have followed this blog know that I was able to do two series at my local church (the North Cleveland Church of God) on liturgical worship and the liturgical calendar. That’s not something that is typical in a Pentecostal church, but it isn’t unique either; I’ve been aware of things going on outside of the church, and some of those things have been taking place at Lee University, where I started teaching last fall. My schedule allowed me to attend the monthly event called “Communion Chapel” (it used to be called Liturgical Chapel but that made people nervous.) It is an official part of the chapel system that students are expected to take part in at Lee; there are a variety of services.

    The whole business of exvangelicals has been one that I have dealt with because it looms large in the life of the ACNA and other liturgical churches. This is different in one important respect: it lives in a Pentecostal institution. Although liturgical worship is certainly in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition (and John Wesley himself was a lifelong Anglican) most Pentecostal churches have eschewed liturgy as “formalism” (following Baptist characterisation) and thus unspiritual. That runs against my own experience during the 1970’s in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal; although much of that worship was not liturgical, there were definitely Charismatic Masses, especially at the Steubenville conferences for young people. So the possibility of seeing the two combined again was intriguing to me.

    The director of this chapel is the Rev. Dr. Heidi Johnson. When I emailed her to confirm they were having it on the appointed date, she advised me that “Communion Chapel is tomorrow in The Chapel beginning at 10:45 – however, seats fill up fast, so I recommend coming a bit early.” Now Lee’s chapel isn’t the biggest I’ve seen (yes, Anglicans, I always mentally compare structures like this to Bethesda) but she was right: it was full. 

    Since I said these were “impressions” I’ll present them in that way.

    • The order of service is above, although it doesn’t cover the liturgy completely like a missal or BCP would. It’s definitely a “Gregory Dix” type of liturgy. It is concise; this is doubtless to fit the time constraints, but liturgies from outside (and sometimes inside) churches that do this for a living can be sprawling, unwieldy businesses. Vatican II’s advice that liturgies must be “distinguished by a noble simplicity; they should be short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions; they should be within the people’s powers of comprehension; and normally should not require much explanation” is a good one.
    • The music—which, as you can see, is well supported by the music department—is very traditional by Evangelical or Pentecostal standards. The organist takes me back to childhood church music in the “Old High Church” tradition on a pipe organ. In this case, however, it’s on an Allen. (Note to Anglican churches: real pipe organs are high maintenance, especially in hot and humid climates, most of you would be better off with an Allen.)
    • The liturgy includes a penitential rite. This may not seem revolutionary to some but in an Evangelical or Pentecostal churches it is; these are generally absent from such services, even though doing it before communion is scripturally mandated! The one used here admittedly did not require Lee students to characterise themselves as “miserable offenders” (which was totally justified for us back in Palm Beach) or recite a “mea culpa” but it was there all the same. The lack of penitential rites is a product of a theology of unconditional perseverance, which is sad to say creeping into our church.
    • In an Evangelical way, the liturgy uses scripture through direct quotations, even outside of the liturgy of the Word. One of the geniuses of the traditional Anglican liturgy is that Cranmer was skilled in kneading the scriptures into the liturgy in a seamless way, which made for a smooth liturgical flow.
    • The communion itself is a study in contrasts. On the one hand, we can all thank God that it does not endorse Bill Clinton’s Eucharistic Theology. On the other hand it is done by intiction, which is good in and of itself but brings back memories of Intiction: “I Don’t Think You Can Do That.”
    • The “Lee Benediction” at the end is “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” (Psalms 19:14 KJV) It is the banner scripture of the University. Fans of traditional Anglican Morning and Evening Prayer will recognise it as one of the sentences at the start of those liturgies, which means I’ve been preparing for Lee for a lifetime.

    This takes place once a month. One suggestion would be to fill the rest of the slots with Morning Prayer, something that Wesley himself included in the prayer book he prepared for the new United States.

    So what to make of all this?

    • It’s not the “Old High Church,” although it reaches for that at times, especially with the music.
    • It’s not the “Old Folk Mass,” although with its deep talent bench Lee could certainly do that (it showed that during the revival the year before last.)
    • It’s not the “Old Time Religion” either. In a sense it’s a rejection of the Scots-Irish roots of the church, roots that haven’t quite found wings, especially in the face of the praise and worship movement, which can be shown to have some roots of its own in the Catholic Charismatic worship of the 1970’s.

    I’m inclined to think that, for all the interest in liturgical worship by exvangelicals and those who are just looking for something different, this kind of worship will remain an acquired taste in American Christianity. For those of us who acquired it at the start, Communion Chapel may not be exactly what we had in mind, but after all of the years of liturgical upheaval “we” aren’t exactly univocal about what to do better. For me, the best solution is where the burden of our sins becomes intolerable before the comforting words. But now, as Origen would say, this piece having reached a sufficient length, we will bring it to a close.

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  • The Diocese of Washington Strikes Again, and About Those Security Clearances…

    The successor of the likes of John Chane takes her opportunity:

    President Donald Trump blasted Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, after she directed politically charged remarks towards him during an interfaith service of prayer for the country at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday, the day after Trump’s inauguration.

    “Let me make one final plea, Mr. President,” she said. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and [transgender] children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”

    I’ve said for a long time that the Episcopal Church is singularly unsuited for social justice work, being as it is the church of an elite, white demographic. This is why she put the LGBT community front and centre: they are the first demographic elevated enough to populate her pews (but given the way the Episcopal Church’s numbers are going, it’s not working that well.) And, of course, you have to factor the numerous gay conservatives, like those whose confirmation is wending its way through the Senate…

    She gets around to the immigrants, but my bet is that there are far more Evangelical and Pentecostal pastors–to say nothing of the Roman Catholics–who are worried about the immigration status of their flock than Episcopal ones. To once again steal a line from Liberation Theology, the church cannot have the preferential option for the poor unless it is the preferential option of the poor, and the Episcopal Church was and is not.

    While we on the subject of Washington things, we have this:

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday night revoking the security clearances of 51 former intelligence officials who falsely claimed emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian “disinformation” to help Joe Biden’s 2020 election prospects. The directive also pulls the security clearance of John Bolton, who served as national security advisor in Trump’s first term.

    As someone who at one time held a security clearance, I find it outrageous that anyone who holds a security clearance while working for the government or a government contractor would be able to continue to hold the security clearance–and retain the classified documents–after they leave the employ of the government or contractor. That was the core of one of the government’s lawfare cases against Donald Trump. How is it possible to properly secure these documents? (And it’s not just Trump, but Biden and Pence and…) Had both the clearance and the ability to retain the documents ended with his first time in office, the situation would be a lot cleaner. It’s time to stop this practice for good.

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