4/25/25 – We also love literature. April 10 was the 100-year anniversary of this classic. We’re a bit late in recognizing it, and we were a bit early in referencing it via the Bloomberg article below. In any case, the novel is just as relevant as ever. Flashback Friday: “2/5/25 – We hope everybody’s read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, from St. Paul, MN. Bloomberg makes a keen reference to it. The problem with rich people who break things is that they don’t end up paying the price for the damage they inflict. Therefore, they don’t learn anything. The rest of us are left paying the price and cleaning up the mess. Trump and Musk Are Vandalizing the World” We are left paying the price and cleaning up the mess, but that doesn’t mean that we need to be miserable. It’s no way to live a life. We need to retain our joy through it all. God gave us life and our amazing planet. Let’s be grateful for his gifts and his creation and our own.
4/25/25 – We love languages. If you are a good and even if you are not a good singer, a helpful video, well-founded in linguistics, on the correct ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation.
Latin pronunciation guide for choirs
4/25/25 – Did anything special happen yesterday? Not really. A certain person is still screwing up our country, which is still polarized. People are still spending far too much time on social media and obsessing on the news. The world is still sinful and generally falling apart. Et cetera. If you’re waiting for this general state of affairs, which is simply reflective of our fallen nature, to end any time soon, that’s not going to happen. So, unless your plan is to be miserable from now until the end of your life, you might want to find some balance and get some other things going on in your life that don’t have to with said misery-making things. You can stay informed and engaged and will likely be even better able to improve our world if you spend your days in a healthier, more balanced way. What are you passionate about?
4/23/25 – Word to the wise: The liturgical calendar is the one to follow. Sure, we have the Gregorian calendar (named after Pope Gregory XIII), and it serves an important function, marking time and such. So, obviously, we check it every day for practical reasons, but the liturgical calendar provides structure to the year according to the most important spiritual events in the Christian life. (Other religions have their own respective calendars.)
For Christians, at least, Catholics: Ordinary time, Lent and Holy Week (Ash Wednesday until Holy Saturday), Easter (Easter Sunday until Pentecost), more Ordinary time, Advent, and Christmas (Christmas until the Epiphany). Imagine the calendar as a pie. A devout Christian has 40 days to do penance, prayer and almsgiving, often involving reflection and gratitude, then with Advent, anticipating the upcoming birth of our Savior, usually invoking feelings of joy and gratitude.
Now, when you start to structure your life around your spiritual calendar, a magical thing happens; you stop thinking so much about your daily trivialities and politics. Imagine the same size pie cut into the twelve months and all of the days of the year. An atheist would eat this pie one day at a time with nothing else to think about but quotidian concerns and, well, politics. Every day is just a day like any other day, but for the devout Christian, the day is a day in Lent, or a day in Advent, etc., and you know that certain masses or services will occur and that there are certain spiritual expectations of you as it relates to your relationship with God depending on where we are on the liturgical calendar.
Psychologically, time stops being impersonal, the tick tock of a second hand, mechanical and robotic. Instead, it takes on a character aligned with our God, the Trinity, with particularly focus on the Son and the Holy Spirit during certain parts of the year, e.g. Pentecost with the Holy Spirit. Focusing on the liturgical calendar helps one better walk with God because we are moving through the year thinking about time as it relates to God, not to our own aging, the seasons, or anything else. Also, the most abstract characteristic of God, which nothing and no one else shares, is that he exists outside of time. Paradoxically, putting our God who exists outside of space, time and matter at the center of our understanding of time helps realign the structure and focus of our own existence to his existence.
4/22/25 – God’s great gift to us, our shared home, is our planet. We are supposed to share it, value it, and take care of it. We are not doing this. Pope Francis’s encyclical on our planet, Laudato Si, was in keeping with Saint Francis’s gifts, the order’s charism and with Biblical teaching. Caring for our planet isn’t about politics. It’s about doing what our God asked us to do. Happy Earth Day!
4/21/25 – Peace Prayer of Saint Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
4/21/25 – Pope Francis is loved and will be missed. He is with our Lord.
4/20/25 – Our Lord and Savior is risen. Happy Easter! Go to church.
4/18/25 – Qambel Maran | Syro Malabar | East Syriac Liturgical Hymn
4/17/25 – Remember, meaning never forget, that Jesus and all of his disciples were Jews. Therefore, they observed Passover, a day to remember God’s deliverance from their Egyptian enslavers.
10 Passover Customs from Around the World
4/16/25 – The Copts, courage and conviction in the face of persecution. “‘Egypt’s Christians live under constant pressure—from discriminatory laws, violent attacks, and systemic injustice. Despite constitutional promises and international treaties meant to protect religious freedom, the reality presents critical challenges,’ she said. ‘Yet, in the face of such hardship, the courage and resilience of Egypt’s Christian community are a powerful testament to the enduring hope of the Gospel. During my trip, I witnessed that hope firsthand.’”
Egypt’s Christians face ‘constant pressure to hide their faith’
4/16/25 – Christian Monasticism began in the Egyptian desert, with St. Anthony, one of our desert fathers and the world’s first Christian monk, and with the Copts, meaning Egyptians.
Desert Oasis: The Monastery of Saint Anthony – “Ends of the Earth”
4/15/25 – The power of the Holy Spirit: May we heed the call for conviction and courage in all aspects of our lives. From the comments: “Persecution is not a danger to faith, prosperity is. When everything is going well, people forget God.” “An ancient martyr said, ‘You cannot destroy us, for our blood is seed.’”
Inside the Persecuted Church of North Korea
4/14/25 – The Holy Spirit as wings that flutter on one’s shoulders – perfect. The Catholic Church should adopt this everywhere.
African Credo – I Believe
4/14/25 – So many words. So much corruption. The Nigerian government is the enemy of its people. “‘Freedom of expression is an essential human right and central to the function of democracy in Nigeria and the United States. No one should be subject to threats for exercising that right,’ the mission said in a statement April 12. ‘We call on all actors to respect Bishop Anagbe’s and Father Remigius right to speak freely without fear of retribution or retaliation.’…[T]he Board chairman of the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety, Emeka Umeagbalasi told Crux that the Nigerian government has been abetting attacks on Christians.”
Nigeria pledges to uphold religious freedom, but actions on the ground suggest otherwise
4/13/25 – Hymn for Palm Sunday
4/13/25 – Today is Palm Sunday, the day we celebrate Jesus’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey as his followers waved palm fronds. There is no Caesar, chariot or spoils of war, but there is also no more Roman empire. Whoever is interested in empire would do well to remember that all earthly glory is fleeting. God created us to glorify him not ourselves. God’s glory is forever.
4/10/25 – We are in a very bad place, and it’s not just the tariffs although they are quite bad. Annie Lowry wrote a couple pieces in The Atlantic that included some descriptions of the negative impact, in our words, lawlessness can have on investor psychology. Our word is our bond. If we come across as unable, unwilling or indifferent to honoring our commitments, whether it’s trade, bonds or whatever, we undermine investors’ confidence in our word. In fact, we have broken and keep breaking our word. There will be long-term negative consequences for it. The United States has defaulted on its debt only once, and it was due to war financing and early on in our existence as a nation. In the approximately past decade and a half, we have flirted with default several times. We’re playing with fire, and the world is taking note on this and on our general untrustworthiness, belligerence and disrespect. We will literally be paying the price for this irresponsibility and ill-treatment. To the unpatriotic selfish parasites: “Greed is good” until you find yourself shut out of credit markets. Don’t believe us. Ask Lehman Brothers.
4/10/25 – Another part of financial markets to watch is short-term lending, specifically commercial paper and possibly even repo, depending on those participants’ (generally bank holding companies) balance sheets. Anything resembling a drying up of liquidity is a danger sign since these markets can freeze very quickly and for the broader financial system because of contagion and knock-on effects. The other rather terrifying aspect to this situation is that if investors lose confidence in our sovereign debt, it would be harder for the government to rescue those markets or our economy that would inevitably suffer from a financial crisis.
4/9/25 – It’s not about some irrational stock market “rally,” which is more accurately described as recovering some of its terrible losses. It’s about the bond market, specifically our sovereign debt. We understand that most Americans don’t understand the nature of a sovereign debt crisis or what it even is, but it would be catastrophic. What we saw today was not good…. Normally, we would do a Flashback Friday, but the situation is deteriorating too fast for that…. “4/4/25 – Debt to GDP is a ratio, and who knew conservatives were actually unconcerned with either the numerator or the denominator. If their tax plan goes through (apparently they intend to circumvent the standard CBO process and effectively lie about the math), there is no doubt that the deficit and the debt will increase. They are also decimating the IRS, so there will be less tax revenue collected from the unpatriotic parasites and other tax cheats. GDP will likely also be negatively impacted because of all of this administration’s foolish actions.
Our bond markets are enviably robust and deep, but for the first time ever, we feel concerned about how participants will react to all of this self-inflicted economic damage. Stagflation (inflation and recession) is a real risk, which Americans can feel since it’s the real economy, and those invested in the stock market are already feeling the pain there. The more invisible but highly consequential damage is what might happen in the bond market.”
“4/5/25 – In the event of stagflation, the Fed gets caught between a rock and a hard place, to bring down inflation, raise interest rates, to stimulate growth, lower rates. Anticipating this but not experiencing the exact features of the predicament, the best option would be to lower rates. Although the Fed has a dual mandate, inflation and unemployment, our sovereign debt is extremely important, and this would be better for it (and for other bond markets). (Separately, as we have mentioned before during the post-Covid period, it’s also long-overdue that better tool(s) be created for tackling inflation.)” And “4/5/25 – A point of clarification, usually during financial crises and other economic turmoil, our sovereign debt benefits from a ‘flight to quality,’ which is true even when the crisis has originated in the United States. This is the first time – the first and only time – that we have ever worried about our sovereign debt, which is an indictment of the total incompetence, hubris and ignorance of this administration.”
4/9/25 – Any Israelis, including and especially Netanyahu, engaging in war crimes need to be held accountable for them.
4/9/25 – Remember Pontius Pilate: The buck stops with a certain person. Scapegoating won’t work.
Trumpworld Makes the Case Against Trump
4/9/25 – A quick note on praying the rosary, for the single beads, say the Lord’s Prayer, and for consecutive beads, Hail Mary’s with the Glory Be (Doxology) on the final bead. Most Catholics know those prayers by heart. At the beginning (the crucifix) of praying the rosary, make and say the Sign of the Cross and say the Apostle’s Creed, and at the end, say Hail Holy Queen (i.e. Salve Regina in Latin). We have been saying the Nicene Creed more at mass since, apparently, people need to be reminded of the exact nature of Jesus’s divinity….
However, the Apostle’s Creed has an important detail that is also of significance, for the Jewish people and for our current moment. In the list of statements, we say, “suffered under Pontius Pilate.” We do not say suffered under the Jewish people or even the Jewish high priests. Pilate (a Roman) made the call, and it remains historically recognized as such in this important creed. We will hold the people at the highest ranks accountable for their governance. They will not be able to scapegoat anybody.
4/8/25 – It is dark and will likely get darker. We wish we had something more positive to say about the immediate future, but we don’t. Our mettle will be tested. We need to be mentally, physically and spiritually ready. America, we will get through this, but it’s likely going to be quite unpleasant to catastrophically bad.
4/8/25 – Perhaps you’ve been alternating between a fetal position dreading reading the news to a rageful position after reading the news. You would not be alone. Rage is a strong emotion and can consume a person. We offer a couple suggestions. 1. Go to confession. You’re going to keep sinning, but it forces you to hold yourself accountable for your thoughts, words and deeds. 2. A common penance, even for more minor sins, is praying (part of) the rosary. Even if you are not Catholic, it’s a good practice right now. It is tactile and can be quite calming. 3. Maybe the rosary isn’t your thing. Perhaps do some meditation/centering prayer. In any case, we all need to find some way to bring down the temperature for ourselves. You can yell at your walls. You can have dark thoughts. You can feel rage. But for our own sanity, we need to try to keep it from consuming us.
4/8/25 – We’ve been noticing more lawlessness, in general, from smaller acts to bigger ones, likely, in part, because people are picking up on the vibes coming from this administration and taking their own liberties. We need to put a stop to this by holding people accountable. We can’t have our society descend into chaos. Be a pain in the a–, and take the time and make the effort to hold people accountable for their actions.
4/5/25 – If the Supreme KKKourt weren’t totally corrupt, he would be either serving a lifetime prison sentence or on death row for inciting the insurrection. Never forget that. The unpatriotic parasitic plutocrats are only unhappy when his royal toilet paper issuer makes decisions that negatively impact them and their bottom line. Never forget that either. Our country is full of selfish greedy sociopaths. This is what happens when people lose a sense of morality.
4/5/25 – A certain person who we used to call the evil one’s “executive” orders are just toilet paper. Everyone can use them only to wipe their a—ses. Happy Saturday!
4/5/25 – A point of clarification, usually during financial crises and other economic turmoil, our sovereign debt benefits from a “flight to quality,” which is true even when the crisis has originated in the United States. This is the first time – the first and only time – that we have ever worried about our sovereign debt, which is an indictment of the total incompetence, hubris and ignorance of this administration.
4/5/25 – A quick note on economics, there are many subjects that are more technically challenging. However, economics is one of the few subjects that requires a fair amount of psychological understanding (it is a social science) because our economies are ultimately created and driven by people and a fair amount of technical/quantitative understanding. This is a hard combination to find since typically people aren’t well-balanced between these modes of thinking.
This administration lacks both of these skills. It doesn’t have the people/soft skills to manage an economy, especially one as big, complicated and important as ours, and our geopolitical relationships, and it doesn’t have seemingly any technical expertise, especially on economics.
The white South African is a joke. He, like a certain person, is a conman. That’s all these self-glorifying, narcissists who think they have superior genes are. He has adopted his political and economic ideas from his equally deranged grandfather, who is also a genetic degenerate, and belongs in a mental institution, not anywhere near our government. The rest are also total psychotic yahoos and losers, pandering ignoramuses with antiquated ideas that are detached from modernity and reality and are destroying our country.
The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk
4/5/25 – In the event of stagflation, the Fed gets caught between a rock and a hard place, to bring down inflation, raise interest rates, to stimulate growth, lower rates. Anticipating this but not experiencing the exact features of the predicament, the best option would be to lower rates. Although the Fed has a dual mandate, inflation and unemployment, our sovereign debt is extremely important, and this would be better for it (and for other bond markets). (Separately, as we have mentioned before during the post-Covid period, it’s also long-overdue that better tool(s) be created for tackling inflation.)
4/4/25 – Debt to GDP is a ratio, and who knew conservatives were actually unconcerned with either the numerator or the denominator. If their tax plan goes through (apparently they intend to circumvent the standard CBO process and effectively lie about the math), there is no doubt that the deficit and the debt will increase. They are also decimating the IRS, so there will be less tax revenue collected from the unpatriotic parasites and other tax cheats. GDP will likely also be negatively impacted because of all of this administration’s foolish actions.
Our bond markets are enviably robust and deep, but for the first time ever, we feel concerned about how participants will react to all of this self-inflicted economic damage. Stagflation (inflation and recession) is a real risk, which Americans can feel since it’s the real economy, and those invested in the stock market are already feeling the pain there. The more invisible but highly consequential damage is what might happen in the bond market.
4/4/25 – Flashback Friday: “3/6/25 – A certain person’s policies not only violate our democracy, privacy rights and separation of powers, but we might be heading to stagflation. Our constitutional structure is designed to keep us from becoming an autocracy and to sustain free markets. Autocracies, such as Russia, China, North Korea, etc., never do capitalism well. So, what do you want, America, a king and a kleptocracy, or democracy and capitalism? They come in pairs, and you have to choose between them as such. You don’t get to mix and match.”
4/4/25 – Pitts’s summary of the two main events in the recent past, NAFTA and China entering the WTO, are reasonable. However, the history of international economics has had many of these moments. Arguably, the start and the end of Bretton Woods were more consequential, especially in terms of global impact, than either of the former two events. This is why our point about evolving is really the way to think about this. Humans and the societies we create aren’t designed by our creator and therefore ourselves to be static. God didn’t make us puppets, and we don’t create puppets. We are dynamic and so are our creations. We can be afraid, or we can boldly create a better world for ourselves and for others. America, we need to get our mojo back.
Pitt’s framework of international trade within the context of Catholic social teaching is a good one to work with. International economics is composed of two main parts, trade (the current account) and macro (the capital and financial account), basically everything else, with both making up the balance of payments. There is also the closely related field of development economics, which basically focuses on helping developing countries become developed ones ideally in ways that are in the long-term interests of the country and its people. (This hasn’t historically been how western multilateral institutions have approached developing countries, but that’s another discussion.) Although capital movements and foreign direct investment are important, let’s focus on trade and how it overlaps with development economics.
He says, “First, in the wake of decolonization in the 1960s, Pope Paul VI’s ‘Populorum Progressio’ emphasizes the importance of just trade relationships (Nos. 58-61). For unequal countries, the market logic of fair [free] trade is not enough. Just as C.S.T. supports minimum wages as a way to ensure that workers are paid enough to respect their dignity, C.S.T. supports just prices in trade relationships to ensure that countries receive enough income to respect their dignity.” Some of the key aspects of fair trade are: fair wages, prices and access. He talks about tariffs as impeding developing countries’ access to markets.
Now, let’s consider fair trade from an American perspective. This administration presumably wants to revive our manufacturing sector. It feels that America is getting a bad deal and has been taken advantage of. Well, instead of punishing tariffs, which harm everyone, why not build mutually beneficial relationships and agreements centered around fair trade for all parties? To do this, however, one needs to come to the table in good faith and with an abundance mindset. An imperialistic mindset is the exact opposite of this, and as we have said before and as it has for Russia and Hungary, it will lead to our country’s impoverishment. This administration is stuck in the past and is a dead end. It does not have the vision, temperament or competence to lead us on this journey to a brighter future. The global economy is not a zero-sum game. Like everything else in life, it is fundamentally about relationships. To build strong ones, you have to treat others with respect and be willing to compromise and accept tradeoffs so that everyone can be better off. America, let’s imagine and build a better country and world.
What Catholic social teaching says about Trump’s tariffs
America’s Future Is Hungary
4/3/25 – Living a life with trust in God does not follow either of these paths. Many, if not all, of the great saints took (great) risks. The simple act of trusting God is a risk. Could we fail? Of course, but we could also fail without pushing ourselves. Might we die? Yes, but we could also die without taking risks. The act of discernment is to engage in a mystical language with our creator. We listen for whispers. Go here. Do this. Follow me. It is to let the heart, mind and soul be open. Lord, take me where you want me to go. It’s scary, but it’s also true liberation. God didn’t ask Moses and Jesus didn’t ask his disciples to be stagnant in the present or stuck in the past. We are asked to go beyond ourselves, and we trust God to walk with us in our journey. Our journey is never about getting to a destination. Our journey is the destination, but only if we have the courage and the imagination to let the burning bush speak to us or to believe in the resurrection.
4/3/25 – We’re stuck in this place between the template technocrats that copy each other’s models and ideologies and lack intellectual diversity and curiosity and the anachronistic a—holes who have a series of grievances about the dominance of the former group, some of which are legitimate, but instead of delivering a fresh future, they want to revert to a time that the world left behind because we grew out of it. You know like when you don’t fit into your old clothes anymore and need a new wardrobe. That’s basically what happens to our and the world economy. It keeps growing and keeps needing a new wardrobe. It also changes its styles and tastes because that’s what people do. They want to reinvent themselves. We have two models of governance that simply aren’t delivering for us.
The irony of the latter group is that the technofascist part of said “coalition” is supposed to be enamored with the future. You know living on Mars while being half human half robot and procreating with whatever we can get to live on an uninhabitable planet with us. You get the idea. For people whose image is based on “moving fast and breaking things” and scifi wet dreams, their greatest contribution is to arbitrarily cut our federal government, meaning trying to get the country to fit into the old clothes it grew out of. Setting aside the latter’s destructive greed, all of this is a poverty of the imagination and a lack of confidence in our country. Neither group is inspiring. In fact, they are exhausting. Instead of helping us set our sights on the future, they are either stagnant in the present or stuck in the past.
4/3/25 – rand paul has something to say about tariffs, does he? Let’s take this all the way, shall we. Let’s give rand paul what he wants. Let’s go back to the gold standard. Yes, indeed, these tariffs and the gold standard, that’s exactly what the country needs.
4/3/25 – Regarding the tariffs, Republicans are willing to destroy our country and our economy so that the unpatriotic parasites, our terrible billionaires who support a certain person and his kleptocracy, can get more, what else, tax cuts for themselves. We have some of the worst billionaires in the world. They are stupid, talentless, greedy, immoral, and on and on. We would be a better country if we could get rid of them. We should really try to get rid of them. The country hates them and with good reason.
4/2/25 – MAGA is going to fix the mess that they created. We are losing our friends. We are losing our reputation. We are losing our security. We are losing our government. We are losing our economy. And on and on. We are losing what makes Americans who we are. This is not making America great. It is making America like every other terrible country that has ever existed. It is making America a loser.
Do you know why some Republicans or even MAGA, such as joe rogan or ann coulter, are taking issue with certain actions such as aggression towards, of all countries, Canada (the best neighbor and friend we could possibly have), or not respecting immigrants’ due process or protestors’ free speech rights? Because even they understand that these actions are wrong and go against core American values.
The anti-Semitism on college campuses (and elsewhere) was despicable, but this is not how to deal with it. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Firstly, the Jewish and the Palestinian people deserve better than what they have been getting. They are both good, kind people, and we are confident that they can work out their differences. Gazans want to get rid of hamas. Help them do that. The Jewish and the Palestinian people need to have honest, respectful dialogue and find a mutually satisfactory compromise. We are certain that they can do this.
Taking over college campuses, disrupting them to express one perspective and making the environment uncomfortable or even dangerous for Jewish students, was totally inappropriate, and the faculty and the students who engaged in this activity should be held accountable. The views that some Palestinian supporters expressed were downright cruel towards the victims of October 7, 2023 hamas terrorism and callous regarding the Jewish people’s pain. However, violating protestors’ First Amendment rights is not how to hold them accountable. If they have violated the law, then they can face consequences for those specific actions. In any case, the institutions should hold them accountable. They failed in their duties, and the onus is on them to repair the harm.
Public money should not be going to elite private institutions. They are damaging our society by making it more unequal. Public money should also not be going to NPR or PBS. All of these institutions have become too ideologically liberal, and it is unfair to the American electorate as a whole to subsidize their activities. Public money should go to public institutions that can maintain an inclusive, ideologically balanced educational and research environment that reflects the values and serves the needs of our nation as a whole.
Immigrants are human beings, and their dignity, humanity and due process must be respected. We are a country of laws. The American people rightfully expect the law to be followed, whether it’s immigrants, protestors, other countries, whatever. Follow the god—m law! (See our numerous frustrations regarding this point from the very beginning of this “governing” nightmare.)
4/2/25 – There will be no third term for a certain person. It is a fever dream. He would be wise to end any flirtations with it now, before the American people end it for him.
4/2/25 – It’s not just about the loss. It’s that an ugly, stupid, genetic degenerate, total psychotic freak thought he was better than the American people. He thought he was our king and our ruler. He is nothing. He has never been anything. He is a loser. We will have justice for what the unelected white South African did to our country and to our privacy rights. Justice.