Throuples/polygamy, "The Dukes of Hazzard," racists' rights, and more

• Mass: Dominus fortitudo plebis suae. Anglican processional and recessional; white-gloved altar boys loudly ringing two sanctus bells. Yep, that's my parish. Part of America as if the Sixties never happened; not primarily what church is for but, like ethnic pride at church, legitimate.
• A new home for St. Callistus. From a West Philadelphia parish closed and merged with us. We managed to cram another statue into our space to welcome neighboring Catholics who've lost their church home. That loss is common here in the American Northeast as we keep getting the effect of Vatican II and the rest of the Sixties cave-in; our white numbers are cratering just like the mainline Protestants'. We've squandered our financial and social capital gotten before the council; now the institution's crumbling. (Our archbishops probably won't be cardinals anymore; the Archdiocese of Philadelphia just isn't that important now.) We won't disappear, just bottom out, and end up conservative again. (Resurrection.)
• My town's Fourth of July parade. The American Revolution was wrong as is Obergefell v. Hodges (some conservatives are becoming "anti-American" about Independence Day, etc., because of it); that said, love of your community and country are normal. America before 1973 arguably had become the greatest country in history, a fine home for the church. (Catholicism peaked here around 1960, scaring Northern Protestants.) The libertarian pose to look cool, of belittling such patriotism (a lot like the left when the government doesn't do what it wants: terrorists such as Bill Ayers, for example), is part of libertarianism's problem, denying there are such things as society and the common good. Related: we're not really a propositional nation; in a way we're still British, although non-British Isles folk are welcome (so hooray of course for Italian and Slavic immigration, for example). The beautiful old Protestant church is in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
• Catching up with Fr. Longenecker:
  • In Catholicism, "everything's connected." Of course America's Protestant (British) culture doesn't get it.
  • His buck-up post-Obergefell post. It's woken up conservative Christians to the fact that meeting the liberals' on liberalism's terms is self-defeating, and America's most important churches (Catholic, United Methodist, and Southern Baptist) aren't supporting this; the right kind of ecumenism. (By the way, like the Catholic Church and the United Methodist Church, American Eastern Orthodoxy has dissent.) By the way, I've been told that one of our system's checks and balances is Congress can overrule this. But considering the thoroughness of the Sixties' victory, so that Republicans aren't really conservative, it probably won't.
  • "Casual Catholicism." Well-meant criticism with a point but we're not a perfectionistic cult. We never were. There are degrees of involvement in the church. A hospital for sinners as some say. Reminds me of a story I recently read from Mount Athos (not my favorite place from what I read): the tale of the drunk monk. Visitors complained about him but when he died, the angels took him to heaven. Because while we on earth just saw a man sinning, only God saw the spiritual progress he was making, overcoming that sin. Anyway, I've long been a moderate about this stuff: decorum in the sanctuary (why rites and rubrics exist, literally so the ministers don't bump into each other, and why the Tridentine Mass and the Byzantine Liturgy are better than the Novus Ordo), "come as you are" for the laity, up to a pretty lenient point. One of my anecdotes: the local SSPX parish, St. Jude's, Eddystone, at Christmas. Brought home to me that Christianity isn't limited to one rite or culture. Standing-room-only, with folding chairs cluttering the aisles. I saw the true breadth of the church: "The Catholic Church: here comes everybody." Biker chicks in denim pinning mantillas on their heads and bringing their kids. That we're at heart "judgmental" is a liberal lie. (You must not know many if any Catholic ethnics.) Pre-conciliar Catholicism isn't a club for the goody-two-shoes; it's for everyone.
  • Of course the Episcopalians chose gay marriage. The common knowledge is false in the details but "meta" true: "the king created Anglicanism to get a divorce and remarry." Pedantry: no, he did it to get an annulment he didn't deserve. Actually for centuries the Anglicans still taught the same thing about marriage (except sort of denying it's a sacrament) regarding indissolubility that we do; divorced Anglicans didn't get church weddings (why King Edward VIII had to abdicate; the Church of England said no way). Look what one seemingly small lie did. Meanwhile, interestingly, Anglicanism is going extinct in the Anglosphere (unless demographics reverse, it will be gone here in this century); it will survive as conservative but definitely Protestant African. (White liberals are fun to watch when blacks contradict them.)
  • An article celebrates a "throuple." The man's a pickup-artist instructor (for money?) so he's not exactly unbiased, and we can't confirm his story about his background, but it's safe to say game works. (It doesn't have to be sociopathic; it's just social skills, a tool for good or ill.) Except for the straight-porny girl-on-girl aspect, this seems like a reversion both to Old Testament polygamy and paganism. Which leads to the question: why ban polygamy? (Society has an interest in traditional marriage because, unlike other arrangements, it benefits the community.) Getting back to the manosphere, in an ancient-minded society (but not a Christian one) this fellow might have been a true alpha (per Rob Fedders), a pillar of the community, building it; today, he seems more a Roissyan alpha, a sociopath disrupting the community. (They DO attract women, which is how they're disruptive, breaking up families, etc. That stuff about the dark side of femininity is true.) Which relates to the common objection to polygamy in Christian societies; it's usually abusive (Warren Jeffs) as well as disruptive (why the early Mormons were kicked out of every American town they settled in).
  • Freedom and responsibility. Libertarianism is wrong when it ignores responsibilities. From Fr. L's own experience as a father of teenagers.
• "The Dukes of Hazzard." TV Land was going to cancel showing it. Collateral damage from the left's latest witch hunt: "BAD flag! Look what it made that boy in Charleston do!" I wasn't a regular viewer but as far as I know that dumb show (wasting fine, irreplaceable cars on jump stunts) never said a rude word, literally or figuratively, about blacks. The real issue is the Wrong Kind of Whites, whom the Right Kind is warring, aren't allowed to have ANY ethnic pride. Photo: The best of a few General Lee clones I've seen. Saw this autographed one again in Vineland, NJ. The recent classic-car show in Aston, Pa., in the heart of Catholic ethnic Delaware County, was an unexpected "Little Dixie" (country music playing) with a General Lee too and it was great. So what's next? Banning and expunging "The Andy Griffith Show"? It's about Southerners and there are no blacks in it; BURN IT! Don't want to give the loonies any ideas.
• Which reminds me. It seems to me, within America's golden era (roughly 1937 to the Sixties' conquest of Middle America around 1973), really embarrassing, demeaning depictions of blacks, carryovers from the 1800s (minstrel shows), ended around the '40s (was its ending a reaction to Nazism?). (And some of it wasn't demeaning; it just mirrored reality then. "Tom & Jerry," for example, had a black maid, voiced by a black woman, because there were many such. That's an embarrassment with which the Right Kind of Whites want to shame the rest of us.) Middle America really wanted to make things right with blacks. As John Derbyshire has noted, by the Kennedy era the commonest depiction of blacks was the Noble Negro; Sidney Poitier (not an American, by the way; he's a British knight thanks to his Caribbean country, Bimini), for example. As with the rest of the culture; the Sixties made hash of that so you had blaxploitation (celebrating negative stereotypes?!). Much of the dog work for civil rights began in the '50s. By the way, the problem with that movement, which is why all principled conservatives opposed it, was, often with good intent, it set the dangerous precedent of placing feelings above rule of law. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" as a private business. For example, a bakery is not like a city bus; you have no "right" to its services. Because the owner has rights too. Freedom of association: you might be a jerk, and foolish for turning away paying customers, but that's your right.