What to Do About ICE?

This isn't a prediction, it's a thought experiment.  The truth is, even though the awful time we're in feels like forever, it isn't.  Trump won't be here forever, he's 80 with mental deterioration and health issues. He can't run for a third term. Oh, he'll probably try. But his ability to do so is diminishingly even possible.  However what he has set in motion will still have to be dealt with. The people he has surrounded himself with are still going to be dedicated to authoritarianism and outright fascism.

The Donroe Doctrine is a Scam

This is from an article on the New Republic site, by the same name.  New Republic has never been one of my favorite opinion journal places, but I don't think anything they said in this article is untrue. Seem like they pretty well nailed it:

The Donroe Doctrine Is a Scam | The New Republic

Is Confession Dead? A Catholic Historian's View UPDATED!

 Is Confession Dead? An Interview with a Catholic Historian

Of course, the state's attempts to root out sexual abuse by focusing, in part, on the privacy of confession assumes that American Catholics are still celebrating the sacrament. But only a minority of the faithful are seeking out confession at all, finds author James O'Toole in his urgent, provocative new study of the sacrament, For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America

O'Toole, professor of history emeritus and the university historian at Boston College, details the growth and eventual decline of confession in the United States, prompting questions about the sacrament's future. A former archivist for the Boston Archdiocese, O'Toole spoke with the National Catholic Reporter about the once-widespread popularity of the sacrament in U.S. parishes, the ongoing controversy surrounding clergy-penitent confidentiality, and the social changes that he says dramatically reduced Americans' visits to the confessional.

Happy New Year!

 

Goodbye to 2025, welcome 2026.

This is a winter poem by Rudyard Kipling that my dad liked: