Feast of St. Pius X.*
Forty years ago a group of male and female sob-sister goo-goos…ministers, foundation executives and W. Clement Stone, the roly-poly conservative “I-did-it-and-you-can-too” pro-Nixon billionaire with a silly pencil-line mustache like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot…decided to show the world how tolerant they were.
They sat down with the Blackstone Rangers, flooded the poor dears with money and grants and refitted an old mansion for their living quarters…believing that these poor disadvantaged ones only needed compassion and “understanding.”
They next thing was the Rangers used the endowments they got and the largesse from Stone’s foundation for guns and drugs. Then they brilliantly took guileless Stone for much more dough as paid workers for Nixon’s 1972 presidential run. Be it recorded that Nixon didn’t do any better with the black vote in 1972 than he did in `68. And Stone never got the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James…something he dearly wanted…either.
The experiment to convert gangs from killers to nice middle class citizens was an unqualified disaster although the queasy media thought it was neat. So far as I know, no one ever reported the giant swindle that the Black P Stone Nation wreaked on the gullible…chalkies—the name the gang had for chin-trembling whites.
I took one look at them and said they’ll not get a nickel of Quaker Oats foundation money. Let it be recorded that old man Daley did not think much of the venture and did nothing to advance it. He was much smarter than his kid who were he transformed into president would be setting up “getting to know you” meetings with the Taliban.
And of course, predictably, the meeting between Police Superintendent Jody Weis and the gang members led to the gang charging that they were being harassed by Weis. The next thing, the gangs will probably appeal to the ACLU to bring a suit against the Chicago P. D. for instituting humiliation, harassment, pain and suffering.
And of course the goo-goo editorial boards will say the gangs have a good case. Just take a look at the saccharine-sweet editorial in the goo-goo far-leftSun-Times and the sympathetic column written yesterday about them by the paper’s black niche columnist, Mary Mitchell. The difference between them is that Mitchell knows better…the dumb whites who co-conspired on the editorial don’t.
God did not create our universe says British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Imagine that! It just came together: no plan; just happened.
He’s a rather noble figure but twisted in more than one sense, , confined to a wheel-chair with something like ALS which he’s had since his youth. He is a total paralytic but has a fertile mind, speaking only with a computer-generated voice synthesizer. But his views have altered slightly. Earlier he wrote much poly-syllabic nonsense wrapped in dense academic language, the gist of which was that the laws of physics mean it is simply not necessary to believe that God triggered the Big Bang. Who did? Beats the hell out of Hawking. But he knows God didn’t.
Then he fudged on the existence of God but stressed: God had nothing to do with creating the universe but was a bored observer. He said then that he was an agnostic but his ex-wife says he had really declared to her that he is an atheist. That seems to be more true now than ever.
Now in public at least, he has changed--gone around the bend totally. He says the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than the sun disproves the view of Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God. It is “far less compelling evidence that the earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings” he said. Meaning that God had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Which leads to the question which Hawking has always ignored: If God didn’t, who DID, Hawking?
Further, Hawking: who ever said it was designed to please us human beings? You’re smart but not smarter than Aristotle or Aquinas. The proof that satisfied them hasn’t been repealed by you. To-wit: Suppose you’re walking through a forest and find under a tree, a wristwatch, a $15 Timex like the one I’m wearing now as I write this. Your first natural inclination on seeing it running perfectly is to assume…not just assume but deduce…that some Intelligence made the watch. Are you going to tell me that “the coincidences of our planetary conditions, the combination of earth-sun distance and the solar mass” collaborated and the watch just happened to come together…all 4,599 pieces of it—springs, dial, hands?
Not remotely rational, Hawking. Comes down to what my mother used to say about some so-called geniuses who talked goofy, who were hailed as great minds but weren’t…just densely rhetorical. .
“It’s possible to be educated beyond your intelligence.”
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St. Pius X [1835-1914]. He’s just about my favorite Pope of the 20th century—but that doesn’t mean I belong to the spurious Society of Pius X which proclaims the Church of today is in heresy. Don’t blame that on Giuseppe Sarto, the first pope since Pius V to be canonized. He rejected modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoted traditional devotional practices and orthodox theology. It would almost be a certainty that he would have opposed calling Vatican II…because the chaotic atmosphere engulfing the world would be certain to invade the Church. His lesser successors…John XXIII, Paul VI…were impelled by idealistic vision. Not so Pius who was a hard-headed realist. He followed the path of Leo XIII by promoting Aquinas and Thomism as the sole philosophical method to be taught in Catholic institutions.
He fought modernism like the courageous Lion of God that he was. He viewed it as a bastardization of religion, an import of secular errors affecting three areas of Catholic life: theology, philosophy and dogma. Of all recent popes he probably had the most pastoral experience. His charity was extraordinary, filling the Vatican rooms with refugees from the 1908 Messina earthquake long before the Italian government acted on its own. Moreover he rejected any conferring of favors upon his family just because he was Pope. His brother remained a postal clerk; his favorite nephew stayed on as a village priest and his three sisters lived together in near-poverty in Rome.
He was the Pope who first promoted daily Communion. He reformed canon law. He publicly rejected socialism which he regarded as a vile Christian heresy. A heavy smoker, in 1913 he suffered his first heart attack. He fell fatally ill on the Feast of the Assumption in 1914 and then another and another. He died of a final heart attack on 20 August, 1914. Following his death he was buried at his direction in a simple and unadorned tomb in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica. Papal physicians have been in the habit of removing organs to aid the embalming process but Pius forbade it and none of his successors have rescinded the order. In 1944 as the process of his canonization proceeded, his tomb was opened to show that his body was completely preserved. He was beatified and canonized by Pius XII.
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