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Monsignor Charles Pope is a long-time family friend, and recently presided over the marriage of my youngest, so I am admittedly biased.

Msgr Pope recently contracted Coronavirus, and the media seems to want to spin this as some sort of just retribution for daring to tell people that their souls are more important than their health, and that we can’t be ruled by fear.

My spin is that the media has this backwards. This isn’t a case of a man denying the risks and then falling prey to the virus. This is a case of a man who knew the risks and did his job anyway.

Monsignor Pope believes what he preaches — that life is to be lived, despite fear, and that church and community and the sacramental life are important. He knew he was putting himself at risk. He also knew he had a higher calling.

I have been somewhat astonished at the response of church leadership to this crisis. Yes, it’s serious. Yes, precautions need to be taken. Yes, there is a place for prudence, and “let us not forsake our own gathering together” is not a suicide pact.

But from my perspective, the response by many churches has been a little cowardly. Priests are called to care for souls, and sometimes that means telling people to man up and face the risks.

I was wondering how something like two-factor authentication could be used to ensure that mail-in votes are accurately counted, and I quickly came up with several ways to audit the election, but then I also quickly came to another conclusion.

Solving the problem of voter fraud is less important than demagoging about voting.

Or, more broadly, demagoging is more important than solving problems. Any problems.

Our politicians hardly even try to pass legislation any more. Appealing to their base is far more important.

He’s one of the smartest people I’ve read, but I had no idea about his past. It’s a very interesting story, and worth your time.

The Nonconformist

Evolutionary biologist forced out of academia for insisting male and female are not social constructs

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright says his cancel culture critics have derailed his career because he refuses to stop saying this: “Male and female are not social constructs, but are real biological categories that do not fall on a spectrum.”

We planted the seeds for this confusion a few decades ago when we started substituting “gender” for “sex.”

Gender is a social construct to some degree. What it means to be a man, or a woman, or gay, or trans, or whatever — varies from culture to culture.

Sex is not a social construct. Sex is a fundamental biological reality.

As with all things in nature, there are weird outliers — e.g., where somebody is XXY. But that doesn’t change the reality of male and female.

Have you seen posts, tweets, memes, etc. with that intro? It seems to be more common recently.

If you think about it for a while, the sense of the intro is that there’s some piece of data — an event, a fact, a quote, etc. — that the poster believes will support a position that the poster holds. However, the poster knows there are people out there, minding their own business and not even talking about that issue, who don’t agree with the poster’s position. The poster feels it is his responsibility to educate them.

Okay, fair enough. If I believe there are a bunch of people “out there” who believe government control of the means of production and distribution is a good idea, I might want to give them a thought or two to turn them against that notion.

In that particular case, I might say “for all you socialists out there.” But in the case of the “I don’t know who needs to hear this” post, no group is mentioned. It’s just “whatever ignoramuses might be within the range of my social media posts, ….”

It rubs me the wrong way, and I’m not exactly sure why.