Chicago Drama

ICE’s current campaign against illegal immigrants in Chicago has led to numerous detentions at its Maywood, Illinois, facility. Complaints are now being made that ICE is preventing pastoral access (confessions and Communion calls) to detainees. If true, that would be concerning. People should have religious care. However, I have to ask to what degree the Eucharist is being “politicized” here. Pictures seem to suggest a Communion procession to the ICE facility (see here). This is the same Archdiocese that had an allergy to public street processions en route to the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress in Indiana, its archbishop one of those who objected to “politicizing” the Eucharist when it came to giving the Bread of Life to Culture of Death politicians. This space might be worth watching.

Anglican Cringe

Social media shows the interior of Anglican Canterbury Cathedral has been festooned with graffiti (see here). Its dean calls it a way to “build bridges” with “marginalized communities.” He admits they have a “rawness” but they are the “gifts” of “younger people.” One should not be surprised by Anglican proclivities towards vandalism, given that the Henrician Reform was born of vandalism (survey the abbeys and monasteries it plundered). Perhaps a Catholic “smells and bells” aesthetic is now giving way to an “unfiltered and not sanitized” one, but I am frankly getting tired of clerical “bridge builders” to peripheries of trash. As of this writing, Canterbury’s new bishopess has not weighed in on the new iconography. Maybe they can supplement the graffiti with a drone show depicting the new bishopess.

No, Virginia

The Virginia gubernatorial debate took place last Thursday night. Republican Winsome Earle-Sears did little to distinguish herself, but Democrat Abigail Spanberger has already taken to advertising Earle-Sears’s refusal to endorse abortion-on-demand (“too extreme for Virginia”) or to denounce the “discrimination” of not accepting homosexual marriage. Spanberger carefully evaded demanding Democratic running mate Jay Jones quit the race after emails surfaced of his fantasies about assassinating political opponents. Earle-Sears is a black, conservative immigrant woman. One wonders when the “high tech lynching” will kick in, or whether this is what it looks like in a social media environment.

Spanberger will likely run on the “same-sex marriage” shtick because Virginia’s Constitution still technically contains a popularly adopted constitutional amendment defining marriage as a man-woman relationship, a restriction Virginia Democrats want to repeal (alongside writing abortion-on-demand into the document). The amendment is unenforceable because of Obergefell and the left is betting Americans have made their peace with separating marriage from sexual differentiation. Pushing abortion and the gender agenda also keeps Spanberger from having to address other issues of substance. I’m doubtful we’ll hear anything from the Church on the matter. We don’t talk too much about marriage, period, these days. An Italian outlet reports (here) that, during the first half of this year, there have been 992 marriages in Milan; 929 (93%) of them were civil marriages, 63 (7%) were religious marriages. If the numbers are accurate, it means in Catholic Italy’s second biggest city, religious marriages are not even in the double digit range. But who has time to talk about the problems of marriage today when we need to bless blocks of ice and have cardinals wave blue rags to honor water?

Connecting the Dots

The epitome of inanity in the Biden Administration’s efforts to combat “disinformation” (a.k.a. “views we don’t like”) was DHS’s effort to install Nina Jankowicz as censorship queen, or “executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board.” Her executive directorship imploded when her video telling us how “atrocious” is disinformation surfaced. But Jankowicz was just the visible part of the iceberg to control information. Both the federal and state governments handed out grants to teach Americans and foreigners how to “critically” read and “evaluate” information. (It’s probably just coincidence that critical reading and evaluation always lead to left-leaning conclusions). These vital “skills” will make everybody “critical, lifelong learners” when they learn to “connect the dots.”

Reading Friday’s New York Times, I decided to do some dot connecting for readers, because it’s amazing how various dots never get connected. No doubt some will accuse my dot connections of “conspiratorial paranoia” but — unlike the Jankowicz regime — I leave that judgment to intelligent readers without prior censorship.

Here are three stories in the paper whose dots the Times leaves unconnected:

“Judge Rejects ‘Unprecedented’ Indictment Amid Trump’s DC Crackdown” (here) tells how a DC federal magistrate refused to accept a felony gun possession charge because it was handed up by a DC local court after a federal grand jury declined it. The facts: in September, during the Trump National Guard deployment to DC, forces approached a man in a car because they could smell marijuana (not unusual in Southwest DC). As they did, he fled, dropping a gun. When police caught him, he had a bag of cocaine in his possession. Adding the gun charge would force the defendant to do some real time, as opposed to the revolving door of justice. But the magistrate thinks that, not having gotten the indictment from a federal grand jury, the government should have given up prosecuting the coke-head rather than (quoting a 63-year old Supreme Court case) providing “security to the innocent against hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution” — despite proof the man had a gun and cocaine and the government eventually getting an indictment.

Because there are jurisdictions that are concerned about the “innocent” not being maliciously persecuted, “Man, 64, Is Fatally Beaten in a Subway Station after Chance Encounter” (here) shows us the outcome. Nicola Tanzi is now dead, beaten to death Tuesday by a fare beater. He previously survived both attacks on the World Trade Center. The fare beater previously was arrested in July for subway graffiti, then for assault on a movie theater employee, and finally for jumping on car hoods. In September he was arrested for stealing money from a tip jar. But he was out on the street, thanks to New York’s loose/no bail system, revolving doors of “justice,” and presumable reticence “against hasty persecution.” (Lest you be deterred from taking the subway and thus showing your indifference to “our common home,” the Times assured us outright murder on NY subways is “rare” and “down” — at least since last December’s incineration of a woman by an illegal immigrant; here.)

Having ensured justice is not hastily pursued against hoodlums, the Times then turns to a real “injustice” of our day: the mortgage fraud indictment of New York Attorney General Leticia James. “James Indictment Mirrors Her Civil Case against Trump in Miniature” (here) assures us that the charges against New York State’s highest law enforcement official are a nothingburger, political retribution by Donald Trump, a case prosecutors would rarely make for a trivial sum of about $19,000. Funny, many of those same arguments were made in the New York indictment against Trump, but to a state judge whose daughter was a paid political consultant to “progressive” campaigns, so no problem (or conflict of interest) trying it. Abbe Lowell is representing James; he might have otherwise been engaged, having represented Hunter Biden with his tax evasion conviction, but Joe B. freed up Abbe’s time by pardoning his client — you know, the pardon of his boy he promised he wouldn’t issue? And, by the way, the Biden administration was hiring thousands of IRS agents to make sure you didn’t cheat on any unreported income ($600+, the reporting threshold), especially on your waitress tips. But $19,000 for the attorney general is trivial pursuit.

It’s probably impolite to ask what blue state attorneys general think their real law enforcement duties are. James clearly felt the need to prosecute Trump, not subway killers. Virginia’s Democratic attorney general candidate decries the “injustice” of being asked to drop out of the race after emails surfaced revealing his fantasies of political assassinations. He reminds me of the defendant who throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan after having killed his parents. New Jersey’s attorney general thinks his main task is putting crisis pregnancy centers offering alternatives to abortion out of business.

No doubt these are not the stuff of “critical reading skills” that connect the dots…