Philosophers, Trudeau and Trump
Today is the feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a woman ‘renowned for her learning’, put to death as a virgin martyr in 305 under Emperor Maximiam (whose wife the saint converted, and who was also thereby condemned). The emperor brought in the best and brightest pagan philosophers to convince Catherine of the folly of Christianity, but Catherine’s reasoning and eloquence bested them all. So Maxentius resorted to the argument that ends all arguments, the ad baculum fallacy, or ‘to the stick’. In short, he could not argue, so had her tortured and killed. Catherine thereby gave the ultimate witness, and her triumph, or rather Christ’s, was assured. She has been adopted as the patroness of philosophers, so to all of you out there who think at all, a seemingly decreasing number in our milieu, at least amongst our elites; for should we all not be philosophers as both Saint Thomas and Chesterton declared, a blessed and joyous day! Read a phrase or two of Plato, Aristotle and Thomas to celebrate.
Speaking of not-thinking, Justin Trudeau was in Liberia the other day, the nation that was created out of thin air just before the American Civil War to house all the former slaves of the United States colonies. Not surprisingly , it has never really worked as a country. Like many other African nations, Liberia is struggling just to survive. Yet Trudeau has the solution: Wider access to ‘abortion’, and other rather vague and sinister aspects of ‘maternal health’. Sad, sad, sad. This ill-formed, adolescent man, whom Canadians have adopted as their leader, a faint vestige of a ‘Catholic’, espouses pre-born murder as a means of advancing the cause of women, and saving a nation.
And here we are back in Canada, paying through the nose to maintain the residence where he and his family refuse to live, it is in such rough shape, at least for the Trudeaus. We, the taxpayer, are on the hook for $10,000 a month in hydro bills alone for Rideau Hall ($22,962 when you add gas and ‘maintenance’), a giant, gusty mansion in which no one dwells, except, perhaps the ghosts of Prime Ministers past. (Hmm. I see a book in the offing). The cost to renovate the place to fitting living standards has ballooned, as all governmental things seem to do, multi-fold: From just under 10 million to just under 40 million dollars; the silver lining, I suppose, is that it’s all in Canadian currency, slowly folding like a hastily-built bedouin tent. Forty million could buy you quite the mansion all on its own. I don’t know too many movie stars and moguls who live in an edifice that expensive. I wonder how much of that is actual ‘renovation’, and how much union wages, expenses, overtime for all the government contractors and material?
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has apparently decided to spend part of his time living in his own residence, the multi-storied penthouse on top of Trump Tower in New York. Melania and Barron, his wife and their ten-year old, plan to stay there full-time. This will save the American taxpayer a few bucks, one might presume, but also creates a nightmare for the Secret Service. As too many sub-par movies to mention describe, the White House is fitted with any number of ‘secret’ defenses for the President, from hidden, reinforced rooms, to caches of weapons, to any number of heavily armored personnel, with high calibre weapons at the ready. How does one defend an exposed penthouse, right off the waterfront of New York harbour? This does sound like another one of those movies that one would never have thought come to life…
I will say this in favour of Mr. Trudeau: No one seems out to assassinate him, for he does exude an air of absent-minded bonhomie, whatever his deeper intentions. And I am a fan of his devotion to his wife and children, even if he is raising his boys as ‘feminists’.
On that note, Bill C-16 makes its way through parliament, which would criminalize any discrimination based on ‘gender identity and expression’. Will the use of the ‘wrong’ pronoun put you in jail? Perhaps. Certainly, other things will accrue, all those ‘accommodations’ that make this world a more and more bizarre place for any sane individual to live and move and have his being. Which, I suppose, is why the Bible says that such verbs take place in God alone, regardless of these passing and transitory inanities, even all the evil that they will bring in their train.
I suppose laws such as this are what make our Prime Minister, and Canada in general, less threatening on the world stage, insofar as we are on the stage at all. I fear our much-vaunted nation, built by valorous men and women, will become a laughingstock. The times, they are a changin’, sayeth one Nobel laureate, whom no one can seem to find. I just wish sometimes that Trudeau and his parliamentarians would make themselves as invisible as Mr. Dylan/Zimmerman. Perhaps he’s out rollin’ with the stones…
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów
We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→
Saint Gemma Galgani
On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→
An Ideological and Improper Translation
I noticed something odd with the psalm reading at Mass the other day. Our bishops’ conference here in Canada has decreed that the Mass in English – Novus Ordo – use the ‘NRSV’, the ‘New Revised Standard Version’, an ‘updated’ translation of the original RSV, first published in 1952. This ‘new translation’ has the tendency[…]Continue reading→
Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle: A Teacher for Teachers
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (1651 – 1719), a French nobleman, ordained a priest, founded the first order in the Church’s history entirely without priests, and this came about almost by accident. I say ‘almost’, for, of course, there are no accidents with God. Destined for ordination from an early age, Jean-Baptiste never looked back, even[…]Continue reading→