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R.R. Reno Comes Out on the Short End of the Gas Attack
It was a vicious counter-attack, to be sure, and had the desired effect:
I regret my foolish and ill-considered remarks about masks and mask wearing on Twitter on Tuesday, May 14. Masks are clearly indicated in many situations. I used over-heated rhetoric and false analogies. It was wrong for me to impugn the intentions and motives of others, for which I apologize.
As a World War I buff, I was honestly gobsmacked by this. The Germans first used poison gas at Bolimow on the Russians; it didn’t work out very well because it was winter and the gas mostly froze. The Germans got better with it, as did the Allies, although on Western Front the Allies had the upper hand because the Germans were on the wrong end of the prevailing winds. Soldiers on both sides had good reason to wear gas masks.
World War I was an especially nasty business, but until armies broke under the strain the men who fought were courageous. Their courage and devotion to duty in the face of an awful situation inspired J.R.R. Tolkien in his portrayal of the hobbits heading to Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings. Reno’s “over the top” comments (another World War I expression) deserved the gas attack they got on Twitter, which led him to can his account.
As an aside: trad Catholics should celebrate these people too, the Catholic soldiers of France, Italy and Austria celebrated Mass under difficult conditions ad orientem.
On the Allies side, a priest celebrates Mass ad orientem (or whatever direction he can manage) to Italian Alpine troops during World War I. The Alpine troops were the best on both sides of the conflict; evidently they had the crack priests to go with them. -
The Ambassador Airplanes: How the Assemblies of God Became Involved in Missionary Aviation — Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
This Week in AG History — May 13, 1950 By Glenn W. Gohr Originally published on AG News, 14 May 2020 Did you know that the Assemblies of God owned two passenger planes just after World War II that carried Assemblies of God missionaries overseas? Following World War II, commercial flights were not readily available, […]
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Those Scientific Episcopalians (Not!)
The old home church tries to make it look good while mulling over if and when to re-open:
The Episcopal Church approaches these decisions with great care and bases changes in our practices on solid, scientific data.
I never thought the Episcopal Church was particularly “scientific.” In fact, looking in the rear-view mirror one thing that may have alienated me and others in my family from the church is their distinctly aesthetic emphasis, an emphasis which minimised the importance of the “hard facts.” That’s true of our elites in general, even those which never darken the door of the Episcopal or any other church: they’re basically unscientific by training and temperament, and parading that they “believe in science” is only proof that their idea of escaping this ignorance is turning science into a religion.
It gets worse: the science of COVID-19 is a poorly-understood moving target, one that has befuddled expert and amateur (and everyone else in between) alike. When we’re on the frontiers of scientific knowledge, that’s the way it is. It’s hard to make public policy or private decisions based on that moving target; the day when we can say we have overall “solid science” on this topic is in the future.
Given what we do know and Bethesda’s superannuated demographics (something they share with the Episcopal Church in general and their Diocese in particular) caution is certainly warranted. (The fact that their Rector attended the COVID-19 “ground zero” for the denomination isn’t comforting either.) And their online program is definitely above average. But to claim solid science for this may sound good but doesn’t conform to the “hard facts” of the situation, not yet at least.
P.S. I also noted the quote from the contract on the Episcopalians in their masthead.
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The Ornaments Rubric Explained — The Porcine
If you’ve ever done a little research into Anglicanism and vestments, you have encountered the Ornaments Rubric. It sits before Morning Prayer in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 1559 BCP. It reads as follows: “The Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used in the accustomed Place of the Church, Chapel, or Chancel;…
via The Ornaments Rubric Explained — The Porcine
My take: if the cassock and surplice is good enough for the Red Baron, it should be good enough for us.
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My Response to Some of the “Sad Sack” Videos Churches Have Been Putting Out During COVID-19 — The Bossuet Project
A response inspired by Meditations on the Gospel.
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My Laboratory Course Introduction, Including Some of My Philosophy of Teaching
COVID-19 has forced many of us in academia to go online (or at least hybrid/blended) in our teaching. This includes the lab course I teach, and this is the first in a series of videos for that course.
In the process of introducing students to the course, I make some comments on my philosophy of teaching in general and engineering education in particular, which I thought might be of interest to a broader audience.
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Maybe We Americans Sometimes Need to Pray for the Queen
I was watching this, a recitation of the traditional Morning Prayer service by Len Finn at St. George’s Anglican Church in Burlington, Ontario.
It’s “traditional” because it’s from the Canadian 1962 BCP, their “final true Anglican prayer book” before they went off the deep end like their counterparts south of the border. (Technically it’s still their official prayer book, but as the UK they have workarounds.) I’ve not given much attention to this, but I should have: Finn does a nice job on a nice liturgy. There are certain variations (like the Venite, which the 2019 BCP fixed) but overall it’s closer to what I was raised with than that dreadful 1979 BCP that’s used in places like this.
One thing, however, that is different is this:
Then the Priest standing up shall say:
O Lord, show thy mercy upon us;
People. And grant us thy salvation.
Priest. O Lord, save the Queen;
People. And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee.And there are other prayers of this kind.
When the “Protestant Episcopal Church” was founded, we were celebrating our independence from King George III, and so we changed it to this, as noted in the 1928 BCP:
O Lord, our heavenly Father, the high and mighty Ruler of the universe, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth; Most heartily we beseech thee, with thy favour to behold and bless thy servant THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and all others in authority; and so replenish them with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that they may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way.
While such prayers are especially important these days, we shouldn’t entirely forget the Queen, who has been head of state through Brexit (which many of us supported) and COVID-19. We’ve also sent over Megan Markle (complete with Michael Curry sermon) with disastrous results. So perhaps some prayers from these shores would be appropriate.
At the start of Morning Prayer is the General Confession, complete with the “miserable offenders.” Maybe while reciting that some penance would be in order…
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The Birds are Still Singing
It’s fair to say that it’s been a spring for the record books. COVID-19 has upended our country in general, but for those of us in academia it’s especially bad. For my part the jolting transition to online has been easier on me than my students; I think that the academy has a rough road ahead of it.
Two other events of less general interest have made life difficult. The first was that, Easter Sunday night, a tornado blew through our area. Our own dwelling came through with minor damage but, as you can see, others didn’t. As is the case with every disaster, ministries showed up in a hurry to provide relief, and now the long term recovery is under way. But it was strange to wake up after the night of destruction (there wasn’t much sleep, to be sure) to hear the birds singing outside. How they battened down the hatches during this maelstrom is hard to know, but at least enough did to give us a cheery greeting the next morning.
The second storm (about the same time) came in the Anglican/Episcopal world, where a well known figure departed from a well known program in a way whose tension (or maybe compression) had been building for some time. With some insight on how this came about, I took the trouble to write the one who departed with this insight. He responded in an audio recording, evidently done outside, because in the background I heard the birds happily singing as they had after the physical storm had passed our own house.
It always amazes me that our smug and ostensibly secular opinion leaders display the apocalyptic attitude towards life that they do. Growing up at Bethesda, end times prophecy were not on the radar screen; I had to get off of the island to find out about that. I suspect that a good number of our elites were going the other way, making a “hick moves to town” transition where they simply repurposed the apocalyptic fears of their childhood to the social causes of their careers. Growing up in an ethic where disasters were to be toughed out and problems fixed, I still find the solution-free panic that our elites meet every crisis with hard to take.
But through all of this the birds keep singing and creation moves forward as its Creator intended it to do. A truly Biblical view of the apocalypse doesn’t focus on the disaster but the goal after the disaster. The Bible is premised on the obvious, that difficulties are inevitable in the pursuit of the objective. This grates on prosperity preacher and sybaritic elite alike, but that’s the way it is.
So when things aren’t going your way, stop and listen. You might hear the birds singing.
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Spiritual Communion as past and future experience. — Ad Orientem
[We] must affirm Christ’s objective presence in the Eucharist, and must maintain that “Spiritual Communion” is not the same as the Eucharist. We can understand liturgical contemplation and “Spiritual Communion” as receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit by recalling the sacraments we have already received, recalling our baptism, which is praised by the Early…
via Spiritual Communion as past and future experience. — Ad Orientem
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 