L.A.’s Inferno and Metanoia

As we pray for those affected by the Los Angeles fires – still burning and uncontained as I write – the significance of this tragedy should not be lost. The whole area is devastated, a charred, barren landscape Biblical in proportion, with thousands of multi-million-dollar mansions – some of the most expensive real estate on earth – burned to cinders and ashes. We may thank God that most lives were spared.

Speaking of Biblical, we may ask: Why Hollywood? One answer might be the mysterious one that Christ offers to those crushed by the tower:

Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Silo’am fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. (Lk 13:4)

Yet, at the same time, we also believe that the providence of God is ‘concrete and immediate’ (CCC, #303) with not a sparrow falling to the ground without Him knowing and willing it. (Mt 10:29).

We are also called to discern the signs of the times (cf., Mt 24; Lk 21:3). Some acts of God’s providence are more significant than others, as a warning and a spur to repentance, that metanoia with which Christ opens His Gospel. Bigger barns, bigger mansions and all that.

The thing is, Hollywood already was a moral ‘inferno’, in the Dantean sense. As someone close to me has said more than once, he – along almost everyone of our generation – was ‘raised by television and movies’, which is to say, almost all of which was spewed forth by studios as the visual equivalent of toxic junk food. Even ‘good’ films and shows had sexual innuendo, burrowing into our minds and souls, which over time became more explicit and more deviant. There were other evils, blasphemy galore, plot lines advocating deceit, lying, avarice, bloodlust, revenge. Anything to do with the Church and moral virtue were portrayed as repressive, old-fashioned, out-of-date, if not downright evil. Virginity and chastity, bad, fornication and adultery, good. Family life, of course, didn’t fare much better, with fathers coming across as bumpkins and hypocrites. Cast off your conscience, live according to your unbridled passions, and damn the consequences.

We can’t read the mind of God, and we should strive to suppress our schadenfreude at the suffering of others. Perhaps this is a ‘random’ event, but one can’t help but get a slight whiff of fire and brimstone. If so, it’s a whiff meant for all of us, for none of us is guiltless. But it’s better such here and now, when repentance is possible, than in the next life, when it is not. Life and the goods of this life, as Pope Benedict warns in his Spe Salvi, are precarious. Our hope must not be in them, nor in this life – all the hyparchonta – but in heaven, the hyparxin, eternal beatitude, and the anchor and goal of all our striving.

There is a silver lining, with reports that the L.A. and its Fire Department are rife with D.E.I. mania, and whose current chief, apparently a quota-hire, a strident lesbian raising three children with her ‘partner’ (and I’d rather not delve into whence those children derived). The hydrants are apparently all dry. Did no one think to check water sources and reservoir levels? And what of proper brush cutting, fire swathes and so on? We shouldn’t lay blame a priori, and things will come out in the wash. I suppose one can only be so prepared for such an actus Dei, as is said in the insurance business (and curious that many fire insurance policies were cancelled not long before this inferno). But, like the Boy Scouts, prepared they must be, and prepared, it seems, they were not.

Perhaps this will properly wake up the woke millionaires of Malibu, that D.E.I. is a place institutions go to die. At the very least, maybe now they’ll elect the competent and the sane. And who knows? As the rebuilding begins, they may even start making good films again.

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→

A Closed, Unsustainable, Descending Loop

As a follow-up to my thoughts on Payette’s payout, here be a stark image of where are here in Canada. As the graph shows in, well, graphic terms, since 2025, the public sector has contributed to 95.5% of economic growth. The private sector – which funds the public sector, or is supposed to – has[…]Continue reading→

Remembering Father Alphonse de Valk

(Today marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Father Alphonse de Valk, C.S.B., a faithful, courageous and indefatigable Basilian priest, pro-life-and-family apostle, and the founder of Catholic Insight magazine. Here is what we wrote those on his entering into eternity five years ago, as we continue to remember him in our prayers and thoughts)[…]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→

Presidential Pardon of Weronika Krawczyk

As a good news, follow-up to our story from Poland, of the persecution of Weronika Krawczyk for her pro-life views, we heard that she has been granted a presidential pardon. One might still wonder why one needs a presidential pardon for simply holding the long-held belief that the child within the womb is a child,[…]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→

Pope Leo and a Rosary for Peace

Pope Leo XIV has asked Catholics across the world to join him in a Rosary for peace today, at 18:00 Rome time (6 pm), which would be noon from where I write (EST). If you are able, whether at that time or another, and in whatever way you pray, to join in intercession with the[…]Continue reading→

Payette’s Payout

I was glancing through some headlines, and noticed a mention of Julie Payette – engineer and astronaut and sometime the Queen’s representative in Canada – which brought back vague memories. She was appointed Governor-General by Justin Trudeau in 2017. Ms. Payette resigned in 2021, amidst claims that she created a ‘toxic work environment’, with allegations[…]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→