Sunday, May 28, 2017
Monday, May 22, 2017
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
The dumbest "sociological" conjecture of all?
Every 5th grade science fair entrant knows that you make a hypothesis, and then you either prove or disprove the hypothesis with data (facts)
Of all the crazy hypotheses that have magically gone from conjecture to fact without ever having gone through the fact stage, perhaps the dumbest of all is the hypothesis that people "had children, up until our modern age, to help with farm work."
You see that statement everywhere! Everyone used to have kids to help on the farm, and that's why they had so many kids, because they needed a lot of help farming.
Now, it is perfectly okay to HYPOTHESIZE aloud "I bet one of the motivations for people to have kids was to help farm"
But to say that we KNOW that's why people had kids up until "modernity"is because of farmwork....that's simply conjecture masquerading as fact.
Do we have ANY evidence of this?
Have we unearthed a diary from anyone over the past 4,000 years suggesting that the hypothesis has any merit?
Dear diary, me and Helga are really trying to conceive a child so that 8-10 years from now, we'll have a cow milker!
Sincerely,
Jedidiah
Not only do we not have any evidence that would suggest that people had kids to help with farm work, I think it is also worth questioning the conjecture itself. Was the hypothesis put forward by anyone who has actually worked WITH a kid doing farmwork? I remember the productivity of my brothers and I working and "helping" in my Dad's garden, and I am sure that our "help" fell into the category of "Dad probably being better off without the help"
So Helga and Jedidiah were willing to risk the mortality rate for mother AND child in child birth, then feed a "useless" mouth for 6-8 years, to risk and put forward all that in order for the CHANCE to get a teenager, 10 years later, who could help milk the cows?
It seems that to me, rather, that in order to justify our own society being the coldest bunch of utilitarians the world has ever known, we have to also project our frigid utilitarianism on everyone that came before us as well.
So, to make ourselves feel better, our child-farming hypothesis needs to very quickly become not a hypothesis but a fact. I KNOW that farming is why everyone had kids for the first 4,000 years of civilization.
Maybe, just maybe, though, at least some people for the first 4,000 years (and maybe even most people) just loved each other as husband and wife, and were open to their marital love begetting children despite the risk of giving birth.
Maybe, just maybe, some of the people who predate modernity didn't just sit around and coldly calculate how many children it would take to produce X gallons of milk per week and then set out to make love according to that calculus.
Maybe they DIDN'T do it that way, even if people today would
Of all the crazy hypotheses that have magically gone from conjecture to fact without ever having gone through the fact stage, perhaps the dumbest of all is the hypothesis that people "had children, up until our modern age, to help with farm work."
You see that statement everywhere! Everyone used to have kids to help on the farm, and that's why they had so many kids, because they needed a lot of help farming.
Now, it is perfectly okay to HYPOTHESIZE aloud "I bet one of the motivations for people to have kids was to help farm"
But to say that we KNOW that's why people had kids up until "modernity"is because of farmwork....that's simply conjecture masquerading as fact.
Do we have ANY evidence of this?
Have we unearthed a diary from anyone over the past 4,000 years suggesting that the hypothesis has any merit?
Dear diary, me and Helga are really trying to conceive a child so that 8-10 years from now, we'll have a cow milker!
Sincerely,
Jedidiah
Not only do we not have any evidence that would suggest that people had kids to help with farm work, I think it is also worth questioning the conjecture itself. Was the hypothesis put forward by anyone who has actually worked WITH a kid doing farmwork? I remember the productivity of my brothers and I working and "helping" in my Dad's garden, and I am sure that our "help" fell into the category of "Dad probably being better off without the help"
So Helga and Jedidiah were willing to risk the mortality rate for mother AND child in child birth, then feed a "useless" mouth for 6-8 years, to risk and put forward all that in order for the CHANCE to get a teenager, 10 years later, who could help milk the cows?
It seems that to me, rather, that in order to justify our own society being the coldest bunch of utilitarians the world has ever known, we have to also project our frigid utilitarianism on everyone that came before us as well.
So, to make ourselves feel better, our child-farming hypothesis needs to very quickly become not a hypothesis but a fact. I KNOW that farming is why everyone had kids for the first 4,000 years of civilization.
Maybe, just maybe, though, at least some people for the first 4,000 years (and maybe even most people) just loved each other as husband and wife, and were open to their marital love begetting children despite the risk of giving birth.
Maybe, just maybe, some of the people who predate modernity didn't just sit around and coldly calculate how many children it would take to produce X gallons of milk per week and then set out to make love according to that calculus.
Maybe they DIDN'T do it that way, even if people today would
Monday, May 15, 2017
As a member of our Archdiocesan College of Consultors...
...I am not sure but I am assuming we get a consultative vote soon on what we think of the next slate of priest assignments that would take effect the first week of July.
I have not seen the slate, but I am assuming that if it is something close to what I think it will be, I will not vote in favor of it for several reasons:
1) The vote is simply consultative, and so even if all the members voted against it, it could still be implemented
2) My spiritual director told me, when I was struggling over this past year or so, that St. Benedict said that as a priest or monk, you follow the assignment given to you by your superior, and if the assignment is bad/wrong, then that is on the superior. Well, I will never have anything to do with assigning any priest to two parishes
3) I also can not support leaving any/all of our Archdiocesan high schools without a full time diocesan priest
4) I also can not support leaving any/all of our colleges and universities without a full time diocesan priest
People might say here: "give it time, the situation of 108 Masses within 7 miles of Monument Circle will get fixed, but it takes time."
Sorry, but no.
I had Mass every Friday with Archbishop Buechlein at his home right up to the time he moved back to St. Meinrad. He said several times, in conversation, that he should have closed/reorganized parishes but that he just couldn't do it.
Archbishop Tobin pulled me aside when he first arrived at the Archdiocese and said "Fr. John, I know you pray, and I trust your feedback here. Are a lot of the younger guys upset that I didn't close enough parishes in our cities?" I told him Yes. He said that he felt like there were ways to fix the issues without closing parishes. 5 years later, we can say that nothing along those lines happened.
Granted both of those men are great father figures to me, and I can only imagine all the pressures a bishop is under.
But my spiritual director has given lots of retreats for bishops around the country, and he said that a lot of bishops around the country know what needs to be done, but lack the courage to do it.
Well, tending to the Lord's vineyard means at times having to prune things so that they can remain healthy.
Someone else might say "hey, our diocese is getting ready to go through a planning process to work on some of this." Pardon my skepticism, but we just finished a 7 year process that costs tens of thousands of dollars and saw the number of Indianapolis Masses go from 121 to 118...so that means we probably spent in excess of 10,000 dollars per Mass canceled.
If we need another "planning process" to cancel another three Indy Masses, then that would put us on pace for 20 more "planning processes" if we do in fact need to cut 60 Masses in Indy.
So we are currently on pace for losing three Masses every 8 years of planning, thus putting us on a 160 year path to getting close to what we need to do to make the Masses we offer line up with the number of people who are coming in the Indianapolis area.
Or, instead of taking 160 years, a shepherd can come in and fix it now.
But anyway, in the meantime, I would never symbolically vote for something that would give the appearance that I am somehow for the status quo
I have not seen the slate, but I am assuming that if it is something close to what I think it will be, I will not vote in favor of it for several reasons:
1) The vote is simply consultative, and so even if all the members voted against it, it could still be implemented
2) My spiritual director told me, when I was struggling over this past year or so, that St. Benedict said that as a priest or monk, you follow the assignment given to you by your superior, and if the assignment is bad/wrong, then that is on the superior. Well, I will never have anything to do with assigning any priest to two parishes
3) I also can not support leaving any/all of our Archdiocesan high schools without a full time diocesan priest
4) I also can not support leaving any/all of our colleges and universities without a full time diocesan priest
People might say here: "give it time, the situation of 108 Masses within 7 miles of Monument Circle will get fixed, but it takes time."
Sorry, but no.
I had Mass every Friday with Archbishop Buechlein at his home right up to the time he moved back to St. Meinrad. He said several times, in conversation, that he should have closed/reorganized parishes but that he just couldn't do it.
Archbishop Tobin pulled me aside when he first arrived at the Archdiocese and said "Fr. John, I know you pray, and I trust your feedback here. Are a lot of the younger guys upset that I didn't close enough parishes in our cities?" I told him Yes. He said that he felt like there were ways to fix the issues without closing parishes. 5 years later, we can say that nothing along those lines happened.
Granted both of those men are great father figures to me, and I can only imagine all the pressures a bishop is under.
But my spiritual director has given lots of retreats for bishops around the country, and he said that a lot of bishops around the country know what needs to be done, but lack the courage to do it.
Well, tending to the Lord's vineyard means at times having to prune things so that they can remain healthy.
Someone else might say "hey, our diocese is getting ready to go through a planning process to work on some of this." Pardon my skepticism, but we just finished a 7 year process that costs tens of thousands of dollars and saw the number of Indianapolis Masses go from 121 to 118...so that means we probably spent in excess of 10,000 dollars per Mass canceled.
If we need another "planning process" to cancel another three Indy Masses, then that would put us on pace for 20 more "planning processes" if we do in fact need to cut 60 Masses in Indy.
So we are currently on pace for losing three Masses every 8 years of planning, thus putting us on a 160 year path to getting close to what we need to do to make the Masses we offer line up with the number of people who are coming in the Indianapolis area.
Or, instead of taking 160 years, a shepherd can come in and fix it now.
But anyway, in the meantime, I would never symbolically vote for something that would give the appearance that I am somehow for the status quo
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
A pro-life t-shirt
This was created by a former student of mine from Cardinal Ritter High School. Help out a starving artist!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/512488802/pro-life-tshirt?ref=shop_home_active_2
