Ask Nathan Anything: Quarantine Edition

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Which Catholic teachings do you find personally hardest to accept? 

The blanket immorality of same-sex sexual contact, the impossibility of women's ordination, the dogma of divine impassibility, and the dogma that it's possible to arrive at a sure knowledge of the existence of God by natural reason alone.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Worst and Best Pope (if that can be answered)?

It can't, so I'll do most overrated and most underrated.

Overrated: Pius IX, an evil son of a bitch who covertly supported the Confederacy and poisoned the well for the nascent Kingdom of Italy with his narcissistic and delusional refusal to accept its existence as a secular state. Somehow he ended up a beatus, but his canonization is probably DOA unless one of Francis's successors is a Young Pope-tier reactionary.
Underrated: Callixtus II, a High Medieval pontiff who negotiated an end to the Investiture Controversy, called a good-not-great ecumenical council (Lateran I), and, crucially, forbade pogroms, forced conversions of Jewish people, and disruption of Jewish religious and cultural rites on penalty of excommunication.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I know you're a big fan of Steven Jay Gould. Can you elaborate on your experience with him and what insights in particular you took from him?

The only Gould books I've read in full are his one on the Cambrian Explosion and The Mismeasure of Man (and, yes, I'm aware of the empirical controversies surrounding the latter), but I used to read a lot of his little articles in Natural History magazine when I was a kid (he died when I was nine) and I was on board with non-overlapping magisteria from a pretty early age. I admire that he was a scientist who wasn't afraid of the humanities--in undergrad he double majored in geology and philosophy, and in general he was always very careful to advance popular understanding of the natural sciences without indulging in the enlightened-by-my-own-intelligence anti-humanities posturing of a Dawkins or a Tyson. He had this in common with Carl Sagan, another figure I admire.

I've been gone a long time.  How have you been, Nathan?

Stressed! I'm a little ashamed to admit that 2020 actually went well for me personally, though; I have a full-time job now as an elementary school literacy specialist, and I'm contemplating either going for a Ph.D. (I got my master's in 2017) or looking for work overseas (probably East Asia, maybe Continental Europe). On a more personal or relational level, I was in a fairly intense relationship in 2015 and 2016 but have only tentatively dated since then; I've been focused on friends and family. I'm definitely more than a little jittery about the political situation; I don't think I've felt so unsettled in my understanding of my country at any other time since 9/11, and I was only eight years old then.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

opinion of conservative Protestants who convert to Catholicism because of politics and intellectual respectability (will an evangelical be put on the Supreme Court? probably not anytime soon).

The cancer that is killing Catholicism, carrying with it a vastly more dangerous new form of the Americanist heresy. Arguably the most insidious internal theological threat to the Church since Leo XIII's time.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Do you have a favorite Puritan theologian/work?

I've always been compelled by Jonathan Edwards, believe it or not. He was a Western Mass guy (preached first and most famously in Northampton--ironic given how ALATT that city is now!--and later in Stockbridge), someone who suffered for his beliefs when they differed from those of his congregation, and his "disinterested love" concept has some interesting affinities with the views of Jewish theologian Yeshayahu Leibowitz, another figure who's always really fascinated me.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What are your preferred news sources for Japanese related news?

For the most part I absorb it through osmosis from either jaichind (after I've run his posts through a mental Rothbardian-fashbertarian-to-normal-human-being translator) or an old friend of mine who lives near Nagoya. I'll sometimes read the Japan Times or the Asahi Shinbun when I want a more "professional" look at something. Very rarely Mainichi Shinbun or Yomiuri Shinbun.

Do you torrent anime or simply stream it from various sites? Wondering, since I used to just stream from KissAnime but have begun torrenting in the past year or so due to the shutdown of that site.

Since Heyday Heisei has been over for a couple of years and we're now well into Rewatch Reiwa, most of the anime that I watch is older stuff that still has relatively easy-to-find DVD sets. Sometimes I even find something that's still on YouTube broken into five-to-ten minute chunks like in the real good old days. The arm of copyright law is long, but apparently not quite that long, yet.

Speaking of Jonathan Edwards, do you listen to sermons or homilies by contemporary ministers? From my very limited experience, it seems to me while Catholics and liberal Protestants often are excellent theologians in terms of books or academic lectures, it is confessional Evangelicals who tend to preach the most detailed and dense sermons due to differing traditions.

I have some auditory processing issues related to my autism so I don't often listen to genres of work that I can read instead, no. I've heard some good sermons at a Baptist church I occasionally attended pre-COVID with an Eritrean refugee family I was doing resettlement work with, but other than that the only homiletic offerings I'm regularly exposed to are those of the (normal, sane) boomer priests of central Franklin County.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Since Heyday Heisei has been over for a couple of years and we're now well into Rewatch Reiwa, most of the anime that I watch is older stuff that still has relatively easy-to-find DVD sets. Sometimes I even find something that's still on YouTube broken into five-to-ten minute chunks like in the real good old days. The arm of copyright law is long, but apparently not quite that long, yet.

What do you do for anime (such as LOGH) which are not available in the US on DVD or are simply older series where DVDs are out of print and highly expensive, if available at all?

I have a friend who's a member of some pirating subreddit and I get torrents from her. I used Kissanime until it went down, though.

I'm guessing you've amassed a fairly large DVD collection over the years?

I'd say I have complete sets of about two dozen series and one or two discs of several more, yeah.

-What is your assessment of Peronism in Argentina, both in its historic and contemporary forms? Certainly, the authoritarian and corrupt elements of Peron himself as well as other leaders of the movement can't be denied but at the same time their opponents were often even more authoritarian and brutal.

It's hard to know what to make of Peronism because the Peron mantle has been claimed by so many different forces that, other than a vague #populism , seem to have little in common to North American eyes. I think you're right that comparing Peron to his contemporary opponents typically redounds to his credit, which is saying a lot because I also think that at certain points in his career he could reasonably be described as parafascist. He's similar to Vargas in that respect.

-Do you believe the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki were justified? Related to this, do you think the atomic bomb or Soviet entrance into the Pacific War was the primary cause of Japan's unconditional surrender?

I absolutely do not think they were justified and neither does any moral theologian or moral philosopher I respect. Everybody from Camus and Orwell to the various postwar Popes has condemned the bombings, and the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes establishes that indiscriminately targeting population centers in wartime is an intrinsic evil. I don't really care what forced Japan's unconditional surrender because I think that Japan's unconditional surrender turned out to be pointless, and I'm saying that as someone who's not at all an Imperial Japan apologist. If MacArthur was always going to insist on keeping Hirohito anyway, then the Allies should have accepted the conditional surrender that the Japanese had offered earlier where that was their main precondition. The naval blockade plus the Soviets entering the Pacific Theater probably still would have forced them to accept an occupation that would have democratized the country.

-Why are you strongly opposed to joining AAD?

"Atlas but with laxer moderation and with lots of the early-2010s posters I had beef with in my first few years on the forum still actively posting" sounds like an absolute hellscape.

-Do you take an interest in alternate history as a genre? I find some of the published stuff has interesting ideas and/or good plots but the actually historical development in most of them tends to be implausible. As a result, I prefer online alternate history which often are extremely detailed in its depictions of different histories.

I'm actually writing a very long and elaborate alternate history story right now, although it's unapologetically ASB so you might not like it very much. It gets very deep down into the political and cultural nitty-gritty, though.

-I have a bit of a working theory that what I would call the "Peripheral West" (there probably should be a better term, given I don't think many of these countries besides the Latin American are really Western) in which I would include Latin America (especially the Southern Cone and Brazil), Turkey, and the developed parts of East Asia (especially Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) are more "Western than the West" in its embrace of Western musical and literary traditions compared to Europe and North America. There are also certain other similarities such as the extreme popularity of TV melodramas (K-Dramas and telenovelas are world famous these days and apparently Turkish dramas are becoming increasingly popular too). Certainly it seems to me that Continental European writers such as Goethe, Andre Gide, and others are much better known in Seoul or Tokyo then in the United States. Related to this, do you think Japanese writers or artists often have an older view of Europe as their default, shaped heavily by history books, 19th Century novels, and midcentury movies? The popularity of vaguely late 19th/early 20th Century Western settings and aesthetic in cities, fashions, vehicles etc. in manga and anime seem to attest to this.

I absolutely think that the Japanese popular consciousness still has an "Old Europe" idea, yes. In Japanese bookstores you'll find plenty of stuff by and about late-C19/early-C20 figures like Tolstoy and even William Morris that would be much more squirreled-away in most bookstores in the US. Japan's period of most intense and most self-conscious contact with the West was the Meiji Era (kazoku ladies in corsets and bustles cheating on their husbands at the Rokumeikan, etc.). I do think that when many Japanese people think of Europe they think of Japan's own Westernization, and when they think of Japan's own Westernization they think of the Meiji/Victorian/Edwardian/Belle Epoque/Gilded Age/whatever.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What is your view on religious education in schools? From what I gather, it is considered a violation of the First Amendment in the US, so it is banned in public schools, but in the UK (where of course there is no separation of church and state) it is a compulsory subject in all schools. At my CofE primary school, from what I can remember, lessons were largely focussed on Christianity, but I quite enjoyed the subject at my nonreligious secondary school, where I took it for the first three years and it was titled ‘Religion and Philosophy’; there were standard religious studies topics examining the beliefs and practices of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, but there were also units on the philosophy of religion, including arguments for and against the existence of God and the Ancient Greek influence on Christian philosophy, as well as covering ethics from a more secular perspective. How does this sound to you, and would you, if it were possible, like to see something like this in US public schools? As I said, I enjoyed it and it was delivered in a fair, balanced way, but I can imagine that at Catholic or CofE schools the focus might lead to non-Christians feeling excluded.

I think a generalized education in philosophy that would include, but not specifically focus on, philosophy of religion could probably past First Amendment muster, and would likely do a world of good assuming it were taught by competent teachers. When I was in (private but nonsectarian) high school I actually had a conversation with my principal about the possibility of including something like that, but was told that it would be too controversial among The Parents. My earliest formal education in religion was actually at a Unitarian Universalist church, believe it or not; my mother knew I was interested in religion and had social relationships with people in that congregation so she had a wonderful Santa Claus-looking older guy called Mr. Reilly instruct me in the basics of the Bible (including confessional vs. historical-critical readings), world religions, etc. Perhaps something like that could also be tied into world history classes when topics like Classical Antiquity or the Reformation are covered.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Obligatory heathen questions: is there a pagan tradition that you most respect or simply find interesting from a historical or anthropological perspective?

I have a lot of respect for polytheistic reconstructionism assuming it's not teamed with far-right politics. Most of my pagan acquaintances are reconstructionists and they tend to be incredibly serious about understanding the histories and cultural contexts of the religions they seek to practice in a way that I really admire. I have a mixed opinion of British Traditional Wicca; lots of its seminal figures were incredibly clever and enterprising people (Doreen Valiente, for example, was obviously a far more talented liturgist than someone like Annibale Bugnini or other sad sacks who made the liturgical movement in Christianity such a mixed bag), but I dislike its dualism (especially since that dualism also enshrines heteronormativity in an incredibly central position in the religion) and the deeply right-wing political commitments of many of its founders (Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon, a history of Wicca and its antecedents that you really should read if you haven't already, describes Gerald Gardner making magic circles with books including Quintin Hogg's The Left Was Never Right). I don't know a ton about other Wiccan traditions, but one of my old classmates practices some sort of Dianic Wicca and it seems to have been really good for her so far.

What is your view of the numerous controversial hypotheses connecting portions of Christian iconography and ritual to earlier pagan traditions (e.g. the infamous alleged Isis > Mary connection)?

I think a lot of the specific hypotheses involved are complete BS, which is a shame because there really is a "there" there in terms of Christianity's relationship with its pagan antecedents, but people miss that forest for non-trees like "OMGOSH MARY AND ISHTAR ARE BOTH CALLED 'QUEEN OF HEAVEN' SO THEY MUST SECRETLY BE THE SAME FIGURE!!!" and "Christmas is really just Saturnalia, the Christians have Stolen it from paganism, it's Stolen Property That Must Be Returned"--the latter in particular is a comically presentist "intellectual property"-focused take on how religions develop that absolutely no actual theologian or religious studies scholar takes at all seriously, other than maybe Bart Ehrman up on his "the Deutero-Pauline corpus is forged and plagiarized in exactly the sense that we understand forgery and plagiarism today" high horse. I love looking at things like all those churches in the British Isles that were built on pagan ritual sites and then dedicated to St. Michael to keep the old gods away, or philosophers like Boethius who weren't exactly Christian but clearly wrote in conversation with the nascent Christian intellectual tradition, and seeing how that relationship worked in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The pagan substrate in Christianity, especially Catholicism, really is fascinating stuff, and I think it's a shame that people don't take it seriously and instead focus on either Pepe Silvia-esque non-connections, "THEY TOOK OUR JERBS FESTIVALS!" IP-mongering, or "Pachamama"-bashing radtrad racism.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What is your opinion of the 1929 Concordat and eventually of its 1984 revision [thanks, Craxi]?

I don't know enough about the details to say, but my instinct is to be highly skeptical of the specifics of any pair of agreements reached when Mussolini and Craxi were the leaders on the Italian side. I support the overall solution of a tiny ecclesial city-state that recognizes and is recognized by a secular Italy, though, especially since my understanding is that the Concordat makes it clear that the Vatican City State is a new entity rather than a rump Stato della Chiesa.

Do you prefer Hepburn-shiki romaji or Kunrei-shiki romaji?

I prefer Hepburn over Kunrei overall, although whether I prefer traditional or modified Hepburn depends on what specific feature of the system is being discussed. For example, I prefer to keep the syllabic ん as n, which is what it is in modified Hepburn, but for the particle を I prefer the traditional Hepburn wo.

I briefly mis-parsed this question as "Do you prefer Katharine Hepburn or Audrey Hepburn?" so I'll answer that one as well: I used to prefer Audrey hands-down but lately Katharine has been really growing on me.

Do you have any interest in the Chinese language?

Chinese is a language, or series of languages really, that I admire from a safe distance; I took one semester of it and could not get the tones right to save my life.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What's the deal?

When I figure that out, I'll let you know.

If you could go back and redo one thing from the past 5 years, what would it be?

Five years ago I was in an intense relationship that ended shortly after; I'm still very close friends with the woman involved but I would have liked to have ended the relationship itself a little more gracefully than the way it in fact ended. That, and I wish I'd made an actionable decision about applying to Ph.D. programs immediately after getting my master's in 2017 rather than still mulling it over even now.

What is your view on religious education in schools? From what I gather, it is considered a violation of the First Amendment in the US, so it is banned in public schools, but in the UK (where of course there is no separation of church and state) it is a compulsory subject in all schools. At my CofE primary school, from what I can remember, lessons were largely focussed on Christianity, but I quite enjoyed the subject at my nonreligious secondary school, where I took it for the first three years and it was titled ‘Religion and Philosophy’; there were standard religious studies topics examining the beliefs and practices of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, but there were also units on the philosophy of religion, including arguments for and against the existence of God and the Ancient Greek influence on Christian philosophy, as well as covering ethics from a more secular perspective. How does this sound to you, and would you, if it were possible, like to see something like this in US public schools? As I said, I enjoyed it and it was delivered in a fair, balanced way, but I can imagine that at Catholic or CofE schools the focus might lead to non-Christians feeling excluded.

I think a generalized education in philosophy that would include, but not specifically focus on, philosophy of religion could probably past First Amendment muster, and would likely do a world of good assuming it were taught by competent teachers. When I was in (private but nonsectarian) high school I actually had a conversation with my principal about the possibility of including something like that, but was told that it would be too controversial among The Parents. My earliest formal education in religion was actually at a Unitarian Universalist church, believe it or not; my mother knew I was interested in religion and had social relationships with people in that congregation so she had a wonderful Santa Claus-looking older guy called Mr. Reilly instruct me in the basics of the Bible (including confessional vs. historical-critical readings), world religions, etc. Perhaps something like that could also be tied into world history classes when topics like Classical Antiquity or the Reformation are covered.

How might this interact with a "sociology of religion"?

Presumably if it were tied into a world history class there could be an element of that as well. But generally speaking I think "sociology proper" is best approached in the form of the old-school civics classes that most high schools don't really have anymore. I also think it should be a gen ed requirement at all colleges and universities that have those.

What is your opinion of this?
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=416028.0

Very interesting. Assuming I'm interpreting the infoboxes correctly, there's a lot I like (homosexuality accepted but both male and female adultery shunned) and some I dislike (the purely temporal priesthood). If I were living in the actual High Middle Ages but somehow had all the social and cultural views I have now I'd probably side with this group over both the papacy and most of the IRL proto-Protestant outfits.

Do you drink soda and if so what is your favourite variety?

I rarely drink soda but when I do it's almost always either Sprite or Mexican Coke. Very occasionally Jarritos at a Mexican restaurant or Ramune at a Japanese restaurant.

Do you have an especial dislike for city or town in Massachusetts and New England more broadly?

I have an extreme personal hostility towards Great Barrington, Massachusetts the reasons for which I don't really want to get into. I've avoided the South Berkshires for almost a decade now with no plans to stop avoiding the South Berkshires in the future, although I love the North Berkshires. Other than that, I cordially dislike most of Metrowest and much of central and western Connecticut.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Which "celebrity" Catholic clergy do you most identify with?

I'm tempted to say "none of them" but I dislike Bishop Barron much less than I dislike most of the others. Barron's defenses of Vatican II against the radtrad turn-back-the-clock squad are particularly good. I've also had some personal dealings with Father James Martin, mostly via mutual acquaintances in the Catholic press, that have been mostly positive and productive.

Which flavor of Jarritos? Answers other than Tamarind are incorrect btw

Mango. Sorry.

What is your opinion about distributism?

I like most of the concepts behind it, but I (sincerely) have the same criticism of it that some right-wing Catholic scholars (disingenuously) have of the social doctrine of the Church from Pius XI onward, namely that many of its seminal figures appear to be motivated by the desire to crowd out "merchants" from the economic system for basically antisemitic reasons. I think it can be redeemed from that, though, because there are obviously many, many reasons to seek to reduce the power of finance capital that aren't antisemitic, and many, many non-antisemitic thinkers who wish to do so. Even so, it's hard to look at a writer like Belloc and not suspect that the Jew-bashing and the hatred of capitalism might have been connected for him.

How does it feel to receive so many questions in your Ask Me Anything(s) compared to the average poster? Especially questions not prompted by your own 'bumps'.

It feels pretty good, but I'm not shocked because I've been on the forum for a decade and have a pretty distinctive identity as a poster. Sanchez had a very active AMA too for the same reasons.

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I assumed you would be very turned off by the "Carnal Exaltation" tenet though.

I don't understand CK well enough to know what that means exactly, but you're right that the term itself does not inspire confidence.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I assumed you would be very turned off by the "Carnal Exaltation" tenet though.

I don't understand CK well enough to know what that means exactly, but you're right that the term itself does not inspire confidence.

For all the major Christian and Muslim faiths in the game (and Jewish too come to think of it), the "Lustful" trait is considered a sin that hurts the character's Piety score, while the "Chaste" trait provides a boost. This inverts that, being chaste is a sin, being lustful is a virtue and gives a boost for piety.

...it ain't a perfect description of the sort of contemporary thing I was shooting for obviously but it's the closest thing the game has to sex-positive, hence why I used it.

(Also because it's beneficial from a game mechanics perspective, as you can see it increases fertility of all adherents of the religion, as does the "Lustful" trait, while "Chaste" limits fertility. So it results in characters having more kids and larger families, which provides a boost to the Dynastic Renown score.)

Eh, I'm actually relatively ~sex-positive~ these days compared to most serious Catholics (although still less so than most nonreligious people or, well, hipster Christians), so I'm not as scandalized by that as I might have been a few years ago.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Which flavor of Jarritos? Answers other than Tamarind are incorrect btw

Mango. Sorry.

Blasphemy.

More seriously, have you ever done a full ranking of every Pope and explained why? A big task, but I would find it extremely fascinating to see your list.

Not all 260ish of them, no, but here's my post-1831 list (1831 because I know at least some things about the record of every Pope since then):

1. John Paul I (has a reputation as a bit of a Pope Chance the Gardener, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; seemed like a beautiful soul who was tragicomically taken from us too soon)
2. John XXIII (normal leftcath answer; would probably be #1 except for the fact that his policy on clerical abuse seems to have made the problem worse)
3. Leo XIII (long-serving Pope who compiled a mostly conservative record without indulging in the obvious human-rights enormities of other conservative Popes; also, founder of modern Catholic social teaching)
4. Francis (could end up as high as #2 or as low as #6 or #7 depending on who succeeds him; a like-minded, competent successor could either build on his legacy or end up upstaging him, whereas an incompetent or reactionary successor could either render his legacy a dead letter or make him look flawless by comparison)
5. Benedict XV (diplomatic-minded peacenik, but his pontificate suffered from the pervasive ideological and political doldrums of the C19/early C20 papacy)
6. Pius X (gets points for personal sanctity, loses them for political and social reaction)
7. Paul VI (high highs and low lows; I approve of the way he handled most of the implementation of Vatican II, but the abuse crisis appears to have peaked on his watch)
8. Pius XI (weird cross between Leo XIII and Pius X; made some very important and powerful contributions to Catholic social teaching but also waffled on the Church's response to fascism until it was far too late)
9. Benedict XVI (if I were only taking his pontificate itself into account he'd probably actually be a bit higher, but it's become clear in recent years that in his retirement he's being used by various intriguers against his successor; I don't want to rank him any lower than this, though, because that makes me feel bad for him)
10. John Paul II (even higher highs and even lower lows than Paul VI; most of it needs no introduction, but my personal favorite thing about him is that he was probably the least personally antisemitic Pope in history)
11. Gregory XVI (archconservative, but archconservative who promulgated one of the most passionate condemnations of chattel slavery in the Christian theological tradition)

12. Pius XII (I don't buy the "Hitler's Pope" thesis about Pacelli himself, but many of the people around him were very much Hitler's Mid-Ranked Curia Staff Members; he escapes the bottom slot because he had some positive contributions as well, such as Exsul familia Nazarethana and Humani generis)
















13. Pius IX (narcissistic, delusional son of a bitch who hated Jews, hated democracy, and loved the Slave Power. 'Nuff said!)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Beautiful ranking!

For a more challenging question, who was worse: Stephen VI or Benedict IX?

Oh, that's tough. Benedict IX was a morally nonexistent playboy who literally bought and sold the papacy like a share of GameStop and ran what little was left of its prestige after the saeculum obscurum into the ground; Stephen VI was an unhinged maniac who's really only known for one thing, but the thing that he's known for is one of the most violent and vindictive things any Pope has ever done. I'm going with Benedict because he stuck around for longer and thus had the opportunity to do more damage. And even if we're judging them in the context of their times, the eleventh-century papacy had at least a little more moral credibility than the ninth-century papacy, so Benedict comes off worse by comparison there as well.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Alexander VI or Julius II?

At least Julius was actually good at muh politics.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What's your opinion on the Book of Common Prayer (if you have one)?

Oh, I adore the BCP. I have multiple copies and editions of it going back to the mid-nineteenth century. I think many versions of it are not only masterpieces of liturgical writing but a masterpieces of English literature, and having everything in one place like that is something I've greatly missed in the Catholic Church. I think the shift away from the stability and dependability of the BCP towards more up-to-the-minute and--I would argue--flash-in-the-pan liturgical forms in certain Anglican churches is a real shame; at least in America, the Episcopal Church's BCP already contains quite a bit of flexibility and alternative options for things when needed.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What's your opinion on the Book of Common Prayer (if you have one)?

Oh, I adore the BCP. I have multiple copies and editions of it going back to the mid-nineteenth century. I think many versions of it are not only masterpieces of liturgical writing but a masterpieces of English literature, and having everything in one place like that is something I've greatly missed in the Catholic Church. I think the shift away from the stability and dependability of the BCP towards more up-to-the-minute and--I would argue--flash-in-the-pan liturgical forms in certain Anglican churches is a real shame; at least in America, the Episcopal Church's BCP already contains quite a bit of flexibility and alternative options for things when needed.

You don't think all copies should be burned for heresy?

ayy lmao, this question is peak HenryWallaceVP

No, and there's a specific group of mostly very conservative Catholics that doesn't think so either.

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HenryWallaceVP once again displaying his prejudices and false assumptions about Catholics. Sad!

[I love you Henry]

In other news, I came to this realization yesterday: since your two favourite foreign countries are Italy and Japan, does that mean you really love old people?

...kind of, yeah! Much like Pete Buttigieg, I've always been the kind of young person old people respond well to, and in a lot of cases I've reciprocated that fondness.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

That's two out of the three oldest countries, but what about Germany? Oh wait...

I get the joke here, but I'm going to answer it seriously and say that German culture, for whatever reason, has just never really wowed me. Go figure.

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Opinion of this article.

I didn't even have to read it beyond the title and the fact that it was published in 1870 to know exactly what it was about and what its arguments were going to be. Hilarious Article.

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In the Kulturkampf, who was the morally superior actor? The authoritarian Chancellor who had an opinion of Catholicism so low that HenryWallaceVP pales in comparison, or the Pope you have called with such nice epithets as "evil son of a bitch"?

Please don't answer "German bishops" or "the Centre Party" or something along those lines, 'cause that's lame.

Gun to my head, Bismarck was the lesser evil, but you really would have to hold a gun to my head.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What's your take on churches that invoke - nay, make Harry Potter the center of one of their sermons?

I just concluded an online service and I cannot illustrate how far my eyes rolled into my head. Though I believe you've stated you are a HP fan at one point, I can't imagine you condoning this stuff.

"Harry Potter fan" is an overstatement. I grew up with the books and haven't canceled them.

The idea of a Harry Potter-focused sermon makes me want to hurl (sane, hopefully normal).

Elaboration on this?

Yep. "Simultaneously gay and homophobic" is the peak Catholic mood, just as it is, in many ways, the peak mood for Western cultural and artistic traditions as a whole.

Catholicism is self-evidently an institutionally homophobic religion, although the intensity of the homophobia varies from parish to parish (if parishes in Massachusetts were as homophobic as those in, say, Eastern Poland, or even some of the dioceses in the American South and West, I wouldn't have converted). As far as gay goes, it's an exceptionally camp religion, with lots of bling, singing, chanting, hierarchs wearing progressively fancier outfits, etc. There's also a currently-unfashionable (among most orthodox Catholics) history of saints who ended up as gay icons, of whom cross-dressers like Joan of Arc and "friendship"-obsessed medieval abbots like Aelred of Rievaulx are only the most obvious examples.

Is Phil Scott really a Nice Guy FF moderate New England Republican?

Because if so, it's a damn shame that there aren't more (any?) Republicans like him at the national level.

Unlike Charlie Baker, yes, he is. I would have voted for him over the anti-vaxxer if I still lived in Vermont.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Has the salience of religion in your life waned, waxed or stayed about the same during your adult life?

Stayed about the same. I've been strongly religious, or at least strongly interested in religion, since my early teens. My religious practice is currently on the downswing, but that's mostly because of the pandemic.