I don’t agree fully with @DouthatNYT’s take on V2, but I think he has an important point here. The loss of Friday abstinence, a meaningful Eucharistic fast (≥ 3 hours), and feasts like Ascension Thursday and 1/6 Epiphany has weakened Catholic identity.
nytimes.com/2022/11/04/opi… With regard to Friday abstinence especially, certainly one can call the reform a failure. Consider:

1. Friday abstinence from meat is still technically universal law in the Latin Church, applicable everywhere except where national bishops conferences determine otherwise.

Things that should not have to be said:

Quipping about someone being “on suicide watch” as a burn after an alleged humiliation or setback is not okay. You don’t know what they’ve been through. What you intend (or rationalize) as a burn could be something they—or people close to them—have struggled with. They could have lost loved ones to suicide. Even if they haven’t, contemptuous indifference to the possibility is horrifying.

It pains me to say this: If #Lightyear is Andy’s Star Wars, what an impoverished childhood Andy had.
decentfilms.com/articles/light… When I say it pains me, this is what I mean: I was a new father when Toy Story debuted, so Toy Story wasn’t my Star Wars (Star Wars was my Star Wars). But I had the great privilege of raising my children (most of them, most of the way) in the now-gone era of Pixar greatness.

Religion and science thread: Nobody asked, but as some peeps are talking about human origins, original sin, and Adam and Eve, I want to offer a clarification on the two very different ways the terms “monogenism” and “polygenism” are used in two related but distinct discussions. “Polygenism” or “polygenesis” originally referred to the now-discredited theory, historically favored by 19th-century advocates of quasi-scientific racism, that “humanity” is made up of separate, distinct “races” descended from distinct nonhuman ancestral groups.

Earlier this week my lady Suzanne had to talk on the phone to a COVID precautions skeptic who was big on “not living in fear.” She wound up shouting in frustration at her. Also this week two of my kids served a funeral for a man who died of COVID.

He was in his 40s. He left a widow and three children.

So COVID-skeptical conservatives are abuzz about the CDC finding that nearly all COVID deaths involved co-morbidities, with only 6% of deaths ascribed to COVID alone. So COVID is no big deal, right?

The first thing to note is that “co-morbidities” ≠ “preexisting conditions.” Many people who died because of COVID were vulnerable, yes, whether because of age or conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure.

Many also developed serious co-morbidities—like pneumonia—because they got COVID. That’s what viruses do.

To people who don’t understand why people are saying the official Trump 2020 “America First” T-shirt is a Nazi-inspired design—or who say things like “It looks like the Marines logo”—you aren’t paying attention. I’ll explain. Note that the eagle’s head in the Trump and Nazi logos faces its left (our right). The Nazi logo, called a Parteiadler, is almost identical to a prior German icon, the Reichsadler, except the German Reichsadler looked to its right (our left) and the Nazi Parteiadler to its left.

Every year during the Pascal Triduum my family watches #TheMiracleMaker in three unequal installments. This year I think I’ll live-tweet our viewing.
decentfilms.com/articles/must-… The title was suggested by Mel Gibson when Icon picked up distribution. The working title, “In My Father’s House,” was a double allusion to the finding in the Temple and Jesus’ saying about preparing a place for us. I liked the original title better.

To those whose response to the news about Emilia Clarke being pressured to do nude scenes in GoT takes the form of “If you don’t like the mud, don’t roll around with the pigs”…let me tell you a secret. It’s not much of a secret. You would know it already if you were a woman, or if you had listened to more women in your life.

Here it is: Pigs are everywhere.

Also mud.

Everywhere.

The Great King Arthur Movie Classic Has Yet To Be Made: A Tragedy In 7 Tweets*
*not counting this one KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE (1953): Stiff and stodgy. Not a bad interpretation of Arthuriana, but not a very good movie.

It is appalling to contemplate just how desperately sad, pathetic, and nihilistically vacuous this is.
businessinsider.com.au/disney-world-d… To have no greater access to the realm of meaning, hope, transcendence—no more resonant framework to give a final context to a loved one's mortal remains—than a kitschy theme-park ride with animatronic ghosts owned and operated by a mass media and entertainment conglomerate.