Essays in Idleness

Were it not for priests forwarding articles from obscure Internet websites, I’d hardly know what was going on in the world. The laity should be mentioned, too; but I have found the priestlie class to be the best-informed, and most adept at googlesearching.

Take, for instance, these two items ping’d to me this morning (here, and here). I had not been following events in Brazil with any consistency, and had, let me plainly admit, not even heard of that country’s new foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo. He was appointed in October, after the new “Trump-like” president, Jair Bolsonaro, defeated the latest avatar of Latin America’s incredibly corrupt, perverted and psychotic Marxist heritage — and by a wide margin.

In response to the usual commie hack bleating on television, how worried he was that the new president was “talking about God too much,” Araújo writes:

“So now talk of God is supposed to worry people. This is sad. But the people of Brazil don’t care. Bolsonaro’s government doesn’t care what pundits say or what they worry about: they don’t have a clue about who God is or who the Brazilian people are and want to be. Their worry is that of an elite about to be dispossessed. They are afraid because they can no longer control public discourse. They can no longer dictate the limits of the president’s or anyone else’s speech. The last barrier has been broken: we can now talk about God in public. Who could imagine?”

It was a remark that might rouse the sleepiest Catholic mind.

There are many kinds of populism, both Left and Right, and as gentle reader may be aware, I have never trusted The Peeple. It took me quite a few years even to trust God. Every electorate is fickle, as well as appallingly ignorant. But by creating a permanent underclass, dependent on hand-outs, the pagan liberal and progressive parties are able to maintain them as a permanent voting block, terrified of losing their pogey. Once in every tenth blue moon these victims twig to their predicament. In Europe and the Americas — throughout the scattered remains of Christendom — we would seem to be enjoying such a moment. Count me as a Populist, for as long as it lasts.

So everyone get busy. Talk too much of God. If nothing else, it drives the demons crazy.

*

For nearly half a century, Father James Schall (SJ) has been a light to lighten this gentile at least. I should think I have mentioned him before. Please read the dying man’s magnificent column in the Catholic Thing today (here). And join the rest of us in praying for this beloved man’s soul.

My understanding is that Father Schall declined further medical intervention, to let nature take her course — some weeks ago. I think of another kind old friend who, tiring of their ministrations, fired his oncologists a year ago. In both cases, the patient is still alive. This often happens. Killing off sick people is harder than most of the modernists realize. It takes a lot of technology.

Ditto, I would hope, for good old Western Civ.