Death and taxes, the two 'inevitables'. One is a natural part of the human condition due to and defining our mortality: the other a man-made imposition which beggars belief in its operation and drives folk to distraction. Taxes are anything but natural.
We know not the hour or the means of our future demise and try not to think on't too much, but with taxes we get to hear too much and too little, and while accident, homicide and simply fading away (as old soldiers may be fortunate enough to experience) happen, we seldom hear of the autopsies. And we seldom hear sensible investigation and analyses about taxes either, especially when cogent discussion is kept behind paywalls.
Behind the bars I get to hear all sorts and was pleased to hear two very cogent discussions, previously hidden behind paywalls, which I will bring to you. First though (and later) I shall give a view of my own. Yes, we need to pay for 'common goods': our roads, trains, infrastructure of all sorts that are better contributed, financially, from all. So we pay our taxes. But at every step there are opportunities for rorts, theft, embezzlement, sanctimonious cant, excuse, and an enormous range of people living off the sweat of others. And that's on the 'official' side. Like it or not we have hundreds of thousands of people - millions on Oz - who have to be paid from the public purse. They too pay taxes. But their pay and taxes are from the monies given to them by those who are not employed on the public purse. Why do the public servants pay taxes at all, I often wonder. That includes all those employed by the Tax Office. It is a great money-churn, The productive taxpayer pays them all and their taxes. It is a wonder there is any left for 'common-good' use. Why not pay public servants tax free at the rate after the tax would have been taken? Then a good half of those doing the servant-work of taking it could be sent into the productive workforce. Less tax would need to be levied. Taken at source from the ordinarily employed person, the tax-take money is not even seen by them. Out of sight: out of mind. The taxman likes it that way. Until the taxman calls. We don't often hear the tales of woe about that nor of the deaths from despair. The taxman never, ever brings joy and helpfulness, succour or even a bottle of wine to anaesthetise the pain. And those taxmen are rapacious, cruel, pen-pushers. They do not subscribe to 'Natural Justice'. Justice is another department's business.
Grace Collier is a fine lady with an analytical mind and a sharp pen. Her recent discussion in the Australian can be seen only by those who pay, so I am pleased to have her sit at a table in the Tavern surrounded by customers sitting on their wallets, and tells us herself.
ATO’s tax on natural justice
Don’t be a fool and assume you have certain rights.
You may think if you are accused of something the presumption of innocence applies unless proven otherwise in a court. You may think the authorities are not allowed to bust down your doors in the middle of the night unless they have a warrant.
You may think no one in the government can just whisk money out of your bank account without your permission, or sell your house from under you, without going through some sort of process first where it has been established that a debt is owed by you and orders are made that it must be paid.
These individual rights you think you have are what separates a free democracy from a dictatorship. In all areas of law, the listed assumptions about your rights are correct
— except when it comes to taxation.
If a person within the Australian Taxation Office decides that in their opinion you owe a debt — and they have the power to choose the amount — then by law you owe that money, whether that debt is real or not. You can dispute the debt in court, but you must pay it first.
In the meantime, the ATO is entitled to collect the debt off you in any way it wishes. It has the legal power simply to take the money out of your bank account, sell your house and raid your business or home.
In this country, taxpayers have fewer rights than murderers.
This was pointed out on Monday night by a tax barrister on the ABC’s Four Corners program. If you missed it, I strongly recommend you watch online.
Last month, this column touched on Minister for Revenue and Financial Services Kelly O’Dwyer’s since-shelved plan to give the ATO power to report alleged debts to external credit agencies (“O’Dwyer unchains tax office bullies”, 17/3). After reading the column, which detailed a submission by Self-Employed Australia, tax commissioner Chris Jordan went to a meeting with officials from two unions. He referenced the column and asked the unions to support him by rebutting my allegations.
Before Jordan’s union mates could put their shoulder to the wheel, the Four Corners program aired. It is now blindingly apparent that the allegations were true, and the sound of wringing hands and gnashing teeth is ricocheting through ATO headquarters.
Denial, anger, despair: these are the emotions senior executives are experiencing. To them I say: just imagine how your victims felt when they lost their incomes and assets, and had their lives ruined.
These Tax officials, the Department and Ministers will not have their incomes taken away, nor their assets. Their lives will continue as normal, sitting in comfortable offices, and enjoying all the salaries, perks, privileges and rorts, paid for by hard-working taxpayers. They will get fat pensions, also provided by taxpayers.
Since the program aired the floodgates have opened, and there are many more stories that will come to light in future.
As we all know, thanks to high government spending, there is a desperate and ever-expanding need for revenue, and the evidence of waste is always apparent.
Just a small example, for your consideration:
Unsolicited emails from a National Disability Insurance Scheme provider regularly land in my inbox. It wants me to register a tax-exempt, not-for-profit social franchise and start a community choir.
Me, a community choir, can you imagine?
My choir must accept anyone who wants to sing in it and no auditions can occur because auditions exclude people who cannot sing. I am to hold the choir every week because it helps with loneliness. In return, the NDIS will pay me $500 a year for every NDIS recipient who sings in my choir.
The choir idea sounds like a wonderful thing except taxpayers should not be funding it.
It is precisely because of this sort of nonsense many people who pay a lot of tax resent it.
One hears a lot of resentment, predominantly from people who pay little or no tax at all, and usually against the wealthy who pay pretty well all the tax that can be usefully deployed. The 'average' taxpayer, be he or she in the private sector earning their crust and being taxed without even seeing it; or the public servant who, as said, is paid and has their taxes paid by the taxes of the private sector taxpayer: mostly get more back in government bribes than they pay. They are nett beneficiaries. They keep quiet. But, we in Oz also have the GST. Pretty well everything we buy with what is left to us after tax, carries a 10% tax. Americans laugh at us. But are things any better for them with their Federal taxes, State taxes (we in oz don't have those) and even City taxes ! We don't have those either.
Nevertheless, the price of a civilised society is taxation. If people do owe a tax debt it must be paid and, while tax minimisation is legal, tax avoidance is not and should be punished. But ATO employees have unfettered power.
These people, who are not bad people, by the way, sit in their securely tenured public service bubbles without any understanding of what it is like to create their own income, and income for others, out of thin air every month.
Where there is a system in which individuals are issued unfettered and unchecked power, mistakes and abuses will occur, and those are unacceptable because the impact is so great. When an ATO person decides someone owes a debt, and decides to collect it, then people’s lives can be destroyed.
On March 28, Jordan spoke to federal parliament’s Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue. He disclosed that every week during the 2016-17 year, 37 people were pushed by the ATO into bankruptcy or a wind-up of their income-earning activity. And every week 455 people had money taken from their bank account by the ATO without their agreement.
There are some in our community who find the ATO’s powers acceptable. They think the ATO should be able to mercilessly extract any amount of money it wishes from anybody in any way it wants to, without any higher body having any ability to stop it.
These people belong in a communist dictatorship.
For those who believe in fairness, legal process, justice, social mobility and individual freedom, these are worrying times.
We have passed a dangerous tipping point.
Now, most households pay no net tax and, as such,
the few are supporting the many.
The majority have an insatiable demand for more and more funds, the minority are providing those funds, and the agency that collects the funds has draconian powers, which it is abusing, causing catastrophic outcomes.
Those with income and assets should be aware their position is precarious and their future fraught with danger.
Australia looks like a stagnant pond where the piranhas outnumber the goldfish and the water level is dropping.
Grace received a heary cheer for her ladylike rant. She made room at the table for Matt Ridly who widened the issue into areas we rarely get to discuss. He has taken to the Times, which also inhibited our otherwise ability to hear his view by putting it behind a paywall. Public Sector bureaucracies grow like Topsy. They originate in a social, political or trade need, and then grow, inexorably, to make sure that need continues. The need is nurtured.
The very thought of eradicating or even alieviating that need is like a toothache to them. Their very existence depends upon it. For example: Poverty? Oh yes. They need poverty. The more the better. The more there is the more need for public servants and huge budgets. And gravy-trains. And corruption. And embezzlement. And status. One might niaivly think that Capitalism and a sound Marketplace would be a good counter to the unfair and unjust impositions of Government, but that is a mistake. Corruption spreads. It is a disease.; a swamp; it sucks down and drowns. So, to Matt.
The swamp is a huge drag on us all
While the world economy continues to grow at more than 3 per cent a year, mature economies, from Europe to Japan, are coagulating, unable to push economic growth above sluggish. The reason is that we have more and more vested interests against innovation in the private as well as the public sector.
This pub of course.
Continuing prosperity depends on enough people putting money and effort into what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. The normal state of human affairs is what The jurist Sir Henry Maine called a “status” society, in which income is assigned to individuals by authority.
The shift to a “contract” society, in which people negotiate their own rewards, was an aberration and it’s fading.
I am writing this from Amsterdam and am reminded we caught the idea off the Dutch, whose impudent prosperity so annoyed the ultimate status king, Louis XIV.
In most western economies, it is once again more rewarding to invest your time and effort in extracting nuggets of status wealth, rather than creating new contract wealth, and it has got worse since the great recession, as zombie firms kept alive by low interest rates prevent the recycling of capital into new ideas.
A new book by two economists, Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles, called The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality, argues that “rent-seeking” behaviour — the technical term for extracting nuggets — explains the slow growth and rising inequality in the US.
This 'rent-seeking' is the raison d'etre of the public sector. And increasingly some of the larger aspects of the private sector that depends upon Government. And do not get me started on Charities!
They make the case that, in four areas, there is ever more opportunity to live off “rents” from artificial scarcity created by government regulation: financial services, intellectual property, occupational licensing and land use planning:
“The rents enjoyed through government favouritism not only misallocate resources in the short term but they also discourage dynamism and growth over the long term.”
Here, too, hidden subsidies{extracted, coerced, simply taken at source, from taxpayers} ensure that financial services are a lucrative closed shop; patents and copyrights reward the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries with monopolies known as blockbusters; occupational licensing gives those with requisite letters after their name ever more monopoly earning power; and planning laws drive up the prices of properties.
Such rent seeking redistributes wealth regressively — that is to say, upwards — by creating barriers to entry and rewarding the haves at the expense of the have-nots.
True, the tax and benefit system then redistributes income back downwards just enough to prevent post-tax income inequality from rising.
But government is taking back from the rich in tax that which it has given to them in monopoly.
As an author, my future grandchildren will earn (modest) royalties from my books thanks to lobbying by American corporations to extend copyright to an absurd 70 years after I am dead. Yet there is no evidence that patents and copyrights incentivise innovation, except in a very few cases. Indeed, say Lindsey and Teles, the evidence suggests that “rents that now accrue to movie studios, record companies, software producers, pharmaceutical firms, and other [intellectual property] holders amount to a significant drag on innovation and growth, the very opposite of IP law’s stated purpose.”
[Thomas Babington Macaulay MP summarised an early attempt to extend copyright in a debate thus: "The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of human pleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures." A correspondent sends me the following details of this appalling saga: "Someone noted that there is a divergence in copyright term in the European Union.
All the then member states protect works for the life of the author plus fifty years while West Germany alone protects works for the life of the author plus seventy years. Immediately the copyright publishers suggested this as something in need of harmonisation. But instead of harmonising down to the norm, all the member states were lobbied to harmonise up to the unique German standard. As a result, Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" which was going out of copyright in 1995 was suddenly revived and protected as a copyrighted work throughout the European Union.
Gilbert and Sullivan operettas whose copyright had been controlled by the stultifying hand of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company found themselves in a position to once again stop anyone else performing Gilbert and Sullivan works or creating anything based upon them.
It is not surprising that, following a brief flowering of new creativity when the Gilbert and Sullivan copyrights initially expired (e.g. Joseph Papp's production of Pirates on Broadway and the West End stage), since their revival by the European Union harmonisation legislation their use have become effectively moribund. A generation of young people are growing up without knowing anything about Gilbert and Sullivan - an art form which, it can be argued, gave birth to the modern American and British musical theatre."]
As for occupational licensing, Professor Len Shackleton of the University of Buckingham argues that it is mostly a racket to exploit consumers. After centuries of farriers shoeing horses, uniquely in Europe in 1975 a private members bill gave the Farriers Registration Council the right to prosecute those who shod horses without its qualification.
I think I may have mentioned before (or perhaps a customer did - that is more likely) that Governments take away your right to do whatever you always did and then sells that right back to you for a licence fee. Did Government copy the Mafia or the other way around?
Then there are energy prices.
Lobbying by renewable energy interests has resulted in a system in which hefty additions are made to people’s energy bills to reward investors in wind, solar and even carbon dioxide-belching biomass plants. The rewards go mostly to the rich; the costs fall disproportionately on the poor, for whom energy bills are a big part of their budgets.
An example of how crony capitalism stifles innovation: Dyson found that the EU energy levels standards for vacuum cleaners were rigged in favour of German manufacturers. The European courts rebuffed Dyson’s attempts to challenge the rules, but Dyson won on appeal and then used freedom of information requests to uncover examples of correspondence between a group of German manufacturers and the EU, while representations by European consumer groups were ignored.
So deeply have most businesses become embedded in government cronyism that it is hard to draw the line between private, public and charitable entities these days.
Is BAE Systems or Carillion really a private enterprise any more than Oxford University, Oxfam, Oxfordshire county council or the NHS?
All are heavily dependent on government contracts, favours or subsidies; all are closely regulated; all have well-paid senior managers extracting rent with little risk, and thickets of middle-ranking bureaucrats incentivised to resist change.
Disruptive start-ups are rare as pandas; the vast majority work for corporate brontosaurs.
Capitalism and the free market are opposites, not synonyms. Some in the Tory party grasp this. Launching Freer, a new initiative to remind the party of the importance of freedom, two new MPs, Luke Graham and Lee Rowley, not only lambast fossilised socialism and anachronistic unions, but also boardrooms “peppered with oligarchical and monopolist cartels”.
One of the most insightful books of recent years was The Innovation Illusion by Fredrik Erixon and Björn Weigel, which argues that big companies increasingly spend their profits not on innovation but on share buybacks and other “rents”. Far from swashbuckling enterprise, much big business is “increasingly hesitant to invest and innovate”. Like Kodak and Nokia they resist having to reinvent themselves even unto death. Microsoft “was too afraid of destroying the value of Windows” to go where software was heading.
As a result, globalisation, far from being a spur to change, is an increasingly conservative force.
“In several sectors, the growing influence of large and global firms has increasingly had the effect of slowing down market dynamism and reducing the spirit of corporate experimentation”.
The real cause of Trump-Brexit disaffection is not too much change, but too little.
We need to “radically reduce the restrictive effect of precautionary regulation” and promote a new regulatory culture based on permissionless innovation, Erixon and Weigel say.
“Western economies have developed a near obsession with precautions that simply cannot be married to a culture of experimentation”.
Amen.
So, there you have some insightful roughage to chew upon. I have the drinks to wash it down. Meanwhile I shall leave you with an 'Opinion' handed down from the bench.
The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket.
And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue"
James Avon Clyde, Lord Clyde KC DL (1863 – 1944)
Lord Justice General and Lord President of the Court of Session from 1920 to 1935
From time to time I am asked for my view on men and women. I have been around a while and have noticed a difference; those in Universities and legislatures who still have the cradle marks on their backsides and shyte for brains think there should be no differences at all and indeed that just refering to 'man' and 'woman' is an insult somehow. To them there have to be a large and increasing number of sexes, perhaps a different one for everyone. Or neuter.
Now, I admit also (shock, horror) that the differences between (the bog-standard, Mk 1, created in the Likeness) men and women are many. The quality of men and women are also matters for observation and understanding; and just how they go about their lawful occasions, which show up and put into sharp relief those differences and inequality of quality. It can get deep and complicated. But it behoves to simplify sometimes. CherryPie stopped in for a fine wine and introduced her friend, Fr Dwight, who had a few things to say that did just that. Simplify. I hope my beloved Southern Gal notes that between Cherie, Dwight and m'self, we add something to her quest for understanding.
What is a Man?
What is a Woman?
I was reading Phyllis Zagano’s book about women’s ordination and came across a peculiar thought. Ms. Zagano argues that there is “ontological equality” between men and women because both are created in God’s image. That seems fair enough.
But then she goes on to say that this truth implies a “single nature anthropology”. I’m not quite sure what that means because I am not the academic theological bright spark that Ms. Zagano clearly is.
However, what I think it sounds like in ordinary people talk is, “Men and women are not only equal but they’re the same.”
I don’t know how else to interpret the mysterious phrase “single nature anthropology”.
But what does this mean? I can’t get my head around it because if there is a “single nature anthropology” then at some point outside of this life does that mean that our masculinity and femininity doesn’t matter or that it ceases to exist? Does that mean in heaven we are all androgynous ghostly beings? If this isn’t what it means, then I’m stumped.
You are not alone !!
Anyway. I got thinking further about this and asked myself, “Well, what IS a man anyway?” and for that matter “What IS a woman?”
How would YOU define a man or a woman?
So I came up with an answer:
“A man is a father or a potential father. A woman is a mother or a potential mother.”
Think about it. Biologically a man is defined by his male genitalia and hormones. A woman is defined by her female reproductive system and her hormones, so these factors determine biologically what a man is and what a woman is, and these defining characteristics’ purpose is reproduction. In other words, to make the man a father and to make the woman a mother.
If you take “father” and “mother” out of the equation, then how do you define “man” and “woman”?
Try it. See? It’s tough.
Try to define what it is to be a man without the concept of “Father”. Try to define what it is to be a woman without the concept of “mother”.
There is a legislated trend in many western nations to do away with the terms Mother and Father so that they do not appear in 'official' documents. Like Birth Certificates and Passports. They are considered to be 'Offensive'. Offensive to whom is rarely made clear. Transgendered loonies? Non-sexist sexists? I have yet to speak to anyone who claims to be offended, but there are always some who claim on their behalf. Personally, I find the tems 'Parent A and Parent B to be offensive, but I am pretty normal.
Then I remembered that after he created man and woman as equals, the Genesis story says God gave them the first commandment: “Be fruitful and multiply.”
In other words, “Adam-you become a father. Eve-you become a mother. That’s what I created you for.”
Actually I understand He said that as He evicted them from Eden for their naughtiness and lounging around naked all day, and it may have been a polite form of another well known and more modern phrase. (Four and three letters). (I shall have to mention saying this at my next Confession.)
So, if I am correct that a man is a man because he is a father or potential father, and a woman is a woman because she is a mother or a potential mother, no wonder our society is so confused about gender identity.
For the last fifty years we’ve been so busy trying to turn off the babies and NOT be mothers and fathers.
Contraception tried hard and was followed through by the straight-forward murder of babies in the womb. We weep.
Because so much of society has decimated the role of mother and father for all sorts of reasons, a fallout from that is that people not only don’t know what mothers and fathers are they also don’t know what men and women are.
There’s more: why are we in this state? Because of a contraceptive culture. Because of artificial contraception and recreational sex and abortion as contraceptive, a whole generation have also lost the idea of what their reproductive organs are for.
That equipment is for being and fully becoming a man and a father and being and fully becoming a woman and a mother.
But if those organs are used as pleasure toys, then we forget what they are really for and so we deny and block out being mothers and fathers and we therefore forget what it really means to be men and women.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming Phyllis Zagano for this bizarre state of affairs, and I don’t think her strange notion of a “single nature anthropology” is consciously connected, but it is philosophically connected.
I think she’s jumped on the feminist bandwagon and is promoting (consciously or unconsciously) a trend toward a kind of neutered humanity in which there is no longer a distinction between men and women.
Fr Dwight Longenecker
Perhaps I am overthinking it, and maybe I’ve got it completely wrong but there it is, for what its worth.
But just to be on the safe side, I’m going to keep my beard.
I keep my beard too. A lot of time is spent quite unconsciously stroking it ! Thoughtfully. Simplification sweeps away detail. One can see the forest, unimpeded by trees in the way. That is useful for establishing some view of the Grand Scheme of things. But those individual trees - the qualities, talents, abilities, aspirations etc will bark nonetheless. They will not be ignored. Professor Peterson tackles some of those, from inside and out.
As he shows, without specifically saying it ( I won't do a Cathy Newman, don't worry) is that being a man or a woman has become considerably more difficult since the Garden of Eden days. Although there remains a great deal of lounging around naked. No doubt we shall have to make furniture from some of the more woody bits of the forest of Knowledge, to sit upon and ponder. And to have a drink and a think. Pax
We get a lot of sinners in the Tavern. This place is a refreshment stop while they gather and imbibe some Dutch courage* before going to Confession, and they can mix it up with some Heroes and the occasional Saintly person at the bars, for hints on improving their chances. We get just a very few of the saints. But today we hosted and welcomed a fairly well known and perhaps infamous chap who is known for his particular sins. Mr Milo Yiannopoulos.
Milo seems aware of his fate (as told by Mr Folau just the other day) and he too has been whacked unmercifully by the holier-than-thou mob baying beyond the Tavern's hedges. Just what the red bandana fellow would say about him I have not heard. But some 'Religious' and Priestly folk who have a magazine in America are not prepared, it seems, to break the not-quite confessional seal and repeat what he told them. Milo, though, likes to shout it about in his well-known provocative style. Bearing in mind that I do not ask my customers to sit around the table comparing sins, and that I do not see m'self getting into a 'my sins are bigger than your's' game, I nevertheless poured him a pint and let his speak his mind. Bear in mind too that I am a Tavern Keeper and I do not agree with all that my customers say and do. I pull pints, serve the tables and pray for them all. And to quote him "I’m sure he doesn’t deserve to have me hung around his neck as an admirer". So, a bit about him as introduction, for he is not all that he seems. Milo Yiannopoulos, born Milo Hanrahan on 18 October 1984 is a British political commentator and writer. He is openly gay. And a Catholic. Yiannopoulos is a former senior editor for Breitbart News, who describes himself as a "cultural libertarian". He is a critic of feminism, Islam, social justice, political correctness, and other movements. Though often described as a member of the alt-right, he rejects this label, stating that there are many "points of difference" between him and the alt-right movement.
Yiannopoulos was born and raised in Kent, England. After being expelled from Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, he studied at the University of Manchester and Wolfson College, Cambridge, but failed to gain a degree from either. After university, Yiannopoulos initially secured a job at The Catholic Herald. He was interested in becoming a theatre critic. However, Yiannopoulos' break came with his interest in technology journalism while investigating the subject of women in computing in 2009 for The Daily Telegraph. The rest is very loud and vociferous appearances on social media and many venues in many countries, where he is regularly berated. He gives as good - and better - than he gets. Stand, sir and speak. Note though that I had ales to pour and didn't hear it all. You may need to follow the link to fill in what I missed.
The Catholic Magazine Interview with MILO They Refuse To Print
(A while) ago, I sent the following answers to questions I was asked by America magazine, a journal run by Jesuits.
They have chosen not to publish it, perhaps out of compassion, fearing too many of their aging readers would suffer heart failure. Or perhaps they couldn’t stand my tweaking of their most famous contributor, Fr. James Martin, notorious for equivocating over any Church teaching that might cause a stir at an Anglican garden party.
Amusingly, while the Jesuits struggled to decide if they could bear to publish my answers, one of the Church’s highest ranking Cardinals called out Fr. Martin by name as “one of the most outspoken critics of the church’s message with regard to sexuality.”
That means my side in this dispute enjoys support from a black prince of the Church raised on a continent where martyrdom is common, while the other side’s champion is a white bourgeois man in whose life the worst threat is that the wine is a bit off this week.
Ask yourself: Which of these men would you want to have your side?
Q.Although you grew up Catholic, you now say and do many shocking things in your public career which seem to be at odds with your childhood faith. In what sense do you still consider yourself a Catholic?
Plenty of saints were shocking, to say nothing of our Lord, who got in a spot of trouble for His shocking claims, as you might recall. I am certainly no saint, but I don’t think “shocking” is a helpful way of approaching the question of Catholics in public life.
It doesn’t settle much to say that the current Pope is shocking to many Catholics, including me.
Or to note that I’m shocked by supposedly Catholic politicians who make laws in flat contradiction to the natural law, which you need no faith to grasp.
In my case, do you mean it’s shocking that a Catholic like me is loudly worried about Islam, which has waged war on Holy Mother Church for more than a millennium?
Or that I say Planned Parenthood’s abortion crusade amounts to black genocide?
Or that I’ve supported Pope Paul VI’s criticism of artificial contraception so strongly that Hillary Clinton attacked me for it in her presidential campaign?
Frankly, what’s really shocking is that a poor sinner like me has spoken out more on contraception than 99% of our bishops, who seem too preoccupied with diversity and climate change to talk about God.
Maybe you mean it’s shocking that I’m always joking about my lack of chastity and my fondness for black dudes, but I still call myself Catholic. And I don’t see what’s so shocking about that, either. One of the most famous saints of all time, sixteen centuries ago, prayed, “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”
Anyone who grows up in Catholic cities like New Orleans and Rome emerges pretty unshockable — and certainly wouldn’t be alarmed by me.
I think it was a visit to New Orleans that inspired Evelyn Waugh to make an observation I often quote:
Protestants seem to think, I’m good, therefore I go to church, whereas Catholics think, I’m very bad, therefore I go to church.
Waugh also said, when people asked how he could call himself a Catholic:
"You have no idea how bad I’d be if I weren’t".
Sins of the flesh, let us remember, are at the bottom of the scale. The Church says self-righteousness is at the top. Therefore, I’m in a lot better shape than some of my feminist and establishment Republican enemies. To say nothing of Islam!
In life, I believe in aspiration. If you’re a poor kid, aspire to rise economically. If you’re shy, aspire to confidence, so you can defend your views in public.
And if you’re a wretched sinner like me, aspire to end up better than you are now. Miracles do happen!
I am happy to report that many in the bar stood, cheered and raised their glasses. We hope for Divine assistance too.
Q. Where do you experience tensions with Catholicism in your life?
Who says any Catholic should lack tension stoked by his weaknesses? We Catholics are better at clothes, food, and parties. Why shouldn’t we be better at guilt, too?
Ho Ho Ho !
You don’t see me disputing the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. There’s no intellectual tension, because I wouldn’t dream of demanding that the Church throw away her hard truths just to lie to me in hopes I’ll feel better about myself. I love the truth, not lies, and I know no one’s feelings are the basis of truth.
That’s why I don’t understand those Catholics — such as, if you’ll forgive my horrid impertinence, this magazine’s editor at large, Fr. Martin — who imply that if people don’t like what the Church says, maybe the Church is wrong or should apologize.
The Church was founded on a rock and a cross, not on a hug.
Still, if you insist I talk about feelings, I’ve said before that I feel there’s something wrong with the fact that my lovemaking can’t produce the mini-Milo’s I’d like to have. How’s that for a subjective confirmation of the Church teaching that same-sex attraction is “objectively disordered” because it can’t lead to procreation?
Bottom line: The Church says I’m not culpable for my temptations, but I shouldn’t sin.
She’s right. And her founder said He came to heal those who knew they were sick, so I don’t despair.
Q. What was the best thing about your Catholic upbringing?
One good thing was hearing Mary praised for her motherhood.
Whatever my own mother’s shortcomings, I learned that motherhood is the greatest vocation, and one that God banned all men from. That’s why I think it’s sad that today’s feminists, as Chesterton observed, despise motherhood and all the other chief feminine characteristics.
The idea that men and women shouldn’t be different — shouldn’t have different interests, strengths, and ways of relating to Creation — is insane, and it’s empirical fact that trying to deny these differences makes all of us less happy.
Growing up Catholic also taught me the value of humility, even if that’s not exactly a forte of mine. This virtue is important for society, because it teaches us to be tolerant of a diversity of opinions, rather than arrogantly trying to silence people we disagree with. And it’s important for me personally, because despite my vanity, I know I’m not as smart as Thomas Aquinas or as good as St. Francis.
There’s a great line from the novelist Flannery O’Connor, who liked to shock and troll a bit herself:
“I’m not limited to what I personally feel or think;
I’m a Catholic.”
She meant the same thing Chesterton did in his famous quip, “Tradition is the democracy of the dead.” Political correctness gives us thin gruel and loneliness. The Church gives us a grand party with red meat and red wine.
Q. How do you pray?
On my knees.
Ahhh. My knees are getting old. I pray on my knees in church where a cushioned 'kneeler' is made available, but otherwise not while driving, walking, washing up, cooking, pouring pints etc.
Q. Who are your role models, either living or dead, in the Catholic faith?
Pope Benedict XVI is still the wisest and most erudite man in Europe, though I’m sure he doesn’t deserve to have me hung around his neck as an admirer.
He was also brave enough to declare publicly that Islam’s irrationalism is one of the world’s great problems.
By the way, in the same Regensburg lecture he pointed out that secularists in the West are also dangerously unbalanced, because they’re as hostile to religion as Muslims are to rationality. I note that he credits my wild pagan ancestors in Greece for the West’s deepest rational roots.
My personal motto, “laughter and war,” comes from a passage in Chesterton’s Heretics.
He should be the patron saint of Catholic journalists.
And of course Hilaire Belloc was brilliant as a defender of the West. In the 1930s, when the Caliphate had collapsed and no one imagined Islam would ever come back, he prophesied that the West would again be threatened, because our superior money and technology can’t take the place of a devotion to your civilization.
I’ve already quoted St. Augustine, who had his own pelvic issues. I once tweeted out an illustrated page from his Confessions that began, “I will now recall my past foulnesses.” That’ll work for my memoirs someday, too.
Rabelais and the anonymous trolls who wrote the Carmina Burana are kindred spirits.
Q. What’s your favorite Scripture passage and why?
I’m tempted to go for the easy Waugh line from Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
Q. You recently self-published the new book “Dangerous” after Breitbart fired you and your original publisher withdrew the contract. How do you respond to critics who say you are “hateful” and “hurtful” to others?
The truth often hurts, as the Church has always understood. That’s one reason she so often shows us a Man in agony on a cross. I don’t delight in others’ pain, but I’m not scared into silence by the fear someone somewhere will take offense.
The fact that so many of us think hurting people’s feelings is the greatest evil says all you need to know about the decline of our civilization. If I’m wrong about something, don’t whine; show me evidence and make rational arguments.
Or tell a good joke! A big part of what I do is playing the jester, telling the powerful the truths they don’t want to hear. Maybe that’s what you meant about my “shocking” aspect.
A friend who’s a brilliant medievalist at the University of Chicago (and who was just received into the Church this Easter, Deo gratias), likes to embarrass me by writing about me as a holy fool.
I say embarrass, but of course it’s a great compliment and I am happy to receive any kind of attention.
Q. What does masculinity mean to you?
It means a willingness to expose yourself to enemy fire, whether or not you wear a uniform, in order to defend the good —
your family, your church, your country, your civilization.
Now the men in uniform are much better men than I, but even I can do a bit to defend those things with the gifts God gave me.
Our Lord, as always, showed the way: He endured the horrors of the Passion to defend and redeem the whole world. I’m with Rod Dreher:
Anybody who only preaches a namby-pamby God, and not the highly masculine God of Scripture, is leaving young men vulnerable to the monstrous false gods of race and ideology.
Boys struggling to become men are always potential barbarians, because they hunger for masculinity but aren’t sure where to find it or how to productively express it.
Our Lord revealed it to them, but too many in the Church keep masculinity hidden or the subject of shame.
Q. The Vatican has launched a commission to examine and overhaul the Holy See’s media communications strategy. If you could give any advice to Pope Francis about how to do journalism today, what would it be?
Stop talking.
Q. Any final thoughts?
Pray for me. I need it.
I will sir. I hope all will. There are those who can absolve sins and those, like me, who cannot. But I can drink to your redemption. I can drink to and pray for His Mercy to come down upon you to lift the yoke of your particular manner of sinfulness. Pray that He lifts mine too, different but damaging to my soul as they are. Off to Confession now Milo. Pax Brother. PS. * It will be the very thin-skinned Dutchman that takes offence
OK, he doesn't lead anything really important but by crikey he finds himself pursued by a pack of baying dogs. He is a Rugger player. A pretty good one by all accounts. But he has been condemned and excoriated for answering a simple question, simply, and in a manner that would not have turned a hair several decades ago before the lights of reasonableness went out. One more nail in the coffin of western values, one might say, and another rung underfoot for nonebrities who shout the loudest. Like the FitzSimons chap with the bandana head.
Let's look at Israel. The fellow, not the Nation. Israel Folau (Tongan: Isileli Folau; born 3 April 1989) is an Australian professional rugby union footballer who plays for the Waratahs in Super Rugby. He has previously played professional rugby league and Australian rules football. Folau played rugby league for the Melbourne Storm in the National Rugby League (NRL) from 2007 to 2008, where he broke the record for most tries in a debut year. He then played with the Brisbane Broncos from 2009 to 2010. Playing as a wing or centre, Folau represented Queensland in State of Origin and Australia (the Kangaroos), becoming the youngest player to play for both teams. He won eight international caps.
In 2011 Folau joined the Greater Western Sydney Giants in the Australian Football League (AFL) and played for two seasons without great distinction. In December 2012, he announced he was to switch codes again, this time to rugby union, and signed a one-year contract with the Waratahs. He made his international debut for Australia (the Wallabies) in 2013, and has since won 62 caps. Quite a sportsman, it seems. Well regarded. He plays the manly game. He knows the rules. But some tweeting personage asked him about homosexuals, and being a Mormon (I think. - barely a Christian in the usual sense) he went to his Bible and read the rules. As you can imagine, the proverbial hit the fan. The 'news' exploded. The CEO of Qantas had a hissy fit. Rugger chiefs peed their pants and dropped their daks. Media luvvies rushed to the grounds to jostle to the head of the line with whips and cudgels.
Top referee Nigel Owens says Israel Folau’s Instagram post went too far
GAY referee Nigel Owens has penned a highly personal column criticising Israel Folau, saying the Wallabies superstar’s infamous “HELL” Instagram post had the potential to tip a young person struggling with their sexuality “over the edge.”
Welshman Owens is one of rugby’s most respected figures who controlled the 2015 World Cup final between New Zealand and Australia.
He came out as gay in 2007 and has become a leading voice for inclusion in sport.
Well, as Mandy R-D would say: "he would say that, wouldn't he".
Owens praised rugby’s sense of community in dealing with such issues but said Folau’s comments — in which he said gay people would go to hell unless they repent — were a major setback.
“Comments like Israel Folau’s about gay people and all other types of bullying by all kinds of people is what can put people like that young boy in that moment where it’s enough to tip them over the edge, because there is a minority out there who give the impression that you cannot be who you truly are,” Owens wrote.
Owens said he respected Folau’s right to oppose same sex marriage but argued that saying gay people were destined for hell was “something totally different.”
Would you let your son play on his pitch? Those homo rules have been around for over 3000 friggin' years and he thinks they are 'different? Anyway, aren't differences to be cheered? Tolerance and all that. Inclusivity? A nonebrity sporty from a different sport altogether chimed in..
Goalkeeping great Mark Bosnich slams Israel Folau ‘hate speech’
GOALKEEPING great Mark Bosnich has urged Rugby Australia and the Waratahs to take decisive action on the Israel Folau controversy, saying the Wallabies star’s ‘gays to hell’ post had crossed the line from freedom of speech to hate speech.
Folau met with RA chief executive Raelene Castle and Waratahs boss Andrew Hore on Tuesday to discuss his use of social media.
Castle and Hore will talk to media at 1pm AEST.
Folau, a devout Christian, caused a firestorm with his Instagram post in which he said gay people were destined to go to hell unless they repent.
Heck, it is not as though it is a personal decision by Folau that buggers will get theirs in the end. He was simply telling what the rules say. Well Raelene (who?) and Hore (an apt enough name if spelled slightly shamefacedly) did meet.
Rugby bosses Raelene Castle and Andrew Hore speak after Israel Folau meeting
ISRAEL Folau has not been disciplined for his divisive ‘gays to hell’ post after a meeting with his rugby bosses.
But the deeply religious Wallabies star “understands he’s caused some grief.”
Folau and his manager met with Rugby Australia chief executive Raelene Castle and Waratahs boss Andrew Hore in Sydney on Tuesday.
Castle described the meeting as “very open, very calm and very honest.”
What the heck is that woman doing being CEO of a men's club? Why is Hore not wearing a skirt? Is he a misogynist? But it was the 'less measured' (if you can call that above as measured at all) media luvvies' comments that took the flag. Or the cup. Or shield. Whatever luvvies play for. The most strident and demanding voice was of Peter FitzSimons, a nonebrity of enormous ego, not to metion strangely attired head. Mark Powell filled us in.
Fairfax, Folau and FitzSimons
The Fairfax papers has become so strident in their LGBTIQ advocacy that they cannot tolerate anyone having a view other than their own. And what’s more, they’ll publicly name and shame anyone who does. Just take the recent incident involving Israel Folau who unleashed the social media lynch mob recently, simply for expressing—perhaps a little incautiously—the traditional Christian view that sexual immorality will result in God’s judgment (i.e. 1 Cor. 6:9-11).
As the following screenshot—of the since-deleted tweet—demonstrates, Folau was simply answering a question that was directly posed to him in a completely unrelated thread.
And to his credit, he gave a straightforward answer as to what he personally believed.
A couple of years ago a statement like this would hardly have raised an eyebrow,
and even been broadly supported by the media,
but in this new era of ‘sexularism’, Folau has been publicly condemned by Peter FitzSimons, the self-appointed judge, jury and executioner of Australian sporting celebrities for their offences against political correctness.
Now, an aside for non-Oz folk. FitzSimons, who likes to present himself like an ostentatious bikie, is married to a TV presenter moll who has a gig with Waleed Ali, the Oz TV favourite Muslim. I wonder what his reaction (and her's) would be to someone tweeting Waleed and asking what his religion says should be done to homosexuals. It would not be much different from Falau's remark, except Waleed's mates would send them there from the top of a high-rise. The gay referee would be tipped over the edge, for sure, regardless of his affinity for a Muslim airline.
Just take FitzSimon’s article where he self-righteously declared that Folau’s comments were “anathema” to the “greatest of rugby’s values”.
But I wonder if Fitzsimmons—himself an outspoken atheist—appreciates the irony, or even hypocrisy, in his choice of words? Because the term “anathema” means:
*Something or someone that one vehemently dislikes.
*A formal curse by a Pope or a Council of the Church, excommunicating a person or denouncing a doctrine.
For someone as irreligious as FitzSimons, it’s interesting that he has chosen to take upon himself the role of pronouncing religious heresy—with its subsequent sanction of excommunication and ultimate damnation—upon those with whom he disagrees.
The question I’d like to ask is, “Who made him Pontiff?” Because I for one certainly didn’t see any white smoke coming out of the Vatican.
Nor the TV media stations. Heck, not even the ABC.
In comparison, consider the mature and measured comments of Alan Jones. (Yes, I really did just use those two adjectives to explain something that Jones said in the same sentence) It would have been easy for Jones to have gone along with the crowd and condemn Folau for his comments about practising homosexuals. But he didn’t. Instead, he focused his attention on the real issue facing the Wallabies at present:
All most rugby fans know about rugby’s inclusion policy is that it includes too much failure.
Israel Folau is entitled to his view. Let him express it. He will be judged accordingly and would not expect not to be so judged.
The greatest difference between the perspectives of Jones and FitzSimons is what they perceive as being rugby’s “greatest values”. Because whereas for Jones it’s winning—especially against the All-Blacks—for FitzSimons it’s the virtue signalling of identity politics. As FitzSimons states:
The greatest of all rugby values is inclusion. We want everyone on board: white, black, tall, small, fat, thin, abled, disabled, straight, gay, men, women, young, old, etc.
Good grief. And people wonder why Australian rugby is in such a state of crisis.
The next thing you know FitzSimons will be saying that we need to give everyone a go and the opportunity to pull on a jersey? Somebody needs to remind him that this an elite sport that we’re talking about, rather than working for Qantas.
You see, while Fitzsimons thinks that the most important thing to be done is to affirm absolutely everyone under the rainbow spectrum, Jones analyses why it is that the National Team is no longer winning. Because let’s face it, they’re a long way from the ‘halcyon days’ of the eighties and nineties when we actually had a chance against New Zealand.
According to Jones, it all comes down to talent, and in particular, the structures that are needed to develop and keep our best players, coaches and support staff from being pilfered by league. As Jones rightly explains:
If we can’t keep the best, we have no hope of being the best. There’s no room for “average people”.
We can’t allow our young people to be demoralised because they’re drowning in mediocrity, surrounded by mediocrity, coached by mediocrity and, as a result, being dismissed as part of rugby’s mediocrity.
Understandably, the ambitious see a system that doesn’t work and go where their talent can be identified, evaluated and cultivated.
Jones is not afraid to name names in outlining his course of action as to what has to take place if Australia rugby is to be saved. And you also get the sense that Jones still has the passion and the skill to oversee the process to make the Wallabies once again successful.
But not so with FitzSimons.
He’s only concerned with passing eternal judgment upon those with whom he disagrees.
And as such, it’s FitzSimons really needs to pull his head in, red bandana and all. For if FitzSimons wants to champion the value of “inclusion” then he has to tolerate people having a different opinion to his own.
FitzSimons is, quite frankly, behaving like a bully, especially towards Folau, but also anyone who dares to express an opinion different to his own. Sure, Folau was incautious in the way he expressed his viewpoint in response to an antagonist on his Twitter account, but he is certainly no ‘homophobe’ and has never incited hatred towards LGBTIQ people.
But it seems that we have entered a new era of religious ‘intolerance’, where anyone who disagrees with the current status quo is socially excluded and professionally sanctioned.
Or where, even more seriously, the greatest ‘sin’ is to believe that there is such a thing as sin itself.
And as such, FitzSimons would be better off listening to Alan Jones—his former coach—and focusing his energy on fixing Australian rugby then culturally reprimanding everyone else.
I don't hold a brief for Israel Folau. I am not his lawyer. Heck I am not even a mormon. But his very small comment, saying what pretty well all Christians have been saying for several millenia, is not a matter for his excoriation. Particularly by drongos, gay, (or straight), airline-running, TV nonebritying, sports 'authority' bossing etc. Drink up. You may be next. Pray for the lefty luvvies and society wreckers. They are feeding the crocs. Pax
