Abby Normal

Fair enough. Here are a few links to help with research into Cannabis-Induced Psychosis (CIP).


Psychiatric Times
Reports have shown a staggering increase in cannabis-related emergency department visits in recent years.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/cannabis-induced-psychosis-review


WebMd
People who used pot on a daily basis were x3 times more likely to have a first-time diagnosis of psychosis, and x5 times more likely if they used high-potency marijuana every day.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20190320/can-high-potency-pot-make-you-psychotic


AP
Five years after Colorado first legalized marijuana, pot’s bad effects are sending more people to the emergency room.
https://apnews.com/article/a6b485be1d2f42bab3dfcb2947f546ce


NPR
Daily marijuana use and highly potent weed are linked to psychosis.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/19/704948217/daily-marijuana-use-and-highly-potent-weed-linked-to-psychosis


USA Today
There was a 77% increase in suicide deaths from 2010 to 2015 among Colorado 10- to 19-year-olds with marijuana in their systems.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/15/weed-psychosis-high-thc-cause-suicide-schizophrenia/4168315002


Smart Colorado
Highly potent marijuana is linked to one in four cases of psychosis.
https://smartcolorado.org/marijuana-linked-psychosis-new-study

Sr. Lucia on America

The visionary of Fatima, Sr. Lucia, being questioned about the United States, gave this reply:

“America will be brought to its knees but will survive the great chastisement, because of the generosity and goodness of the American people.”

Transfiguration

Feast of the Transfiguration

“Do not forget to show hospitality; in doing this, men have before now entertained angels unawares.”
– Hebrews 13:2

“Who am I? I am the angel Raphael, and my place is among those seven who stand in the presence of the Lord.”
– Tobias 12:15

Part of the charm of certain fairy tales is that good and beautiful things are hidden for a while and undergo a time of testing to prove their worth. Then in the great reveal, a sudden unexpected turning, the incredible occurs: all that was secret and hidden is made clear, the truth comes out, the faithful are rewarded, the wicked are punished.

Likewise, angels walk among us, hidden from plain site but sent out by Him when the destined heirs of eternal salvation have need of them.

Even more amazing, the Light that shines in darkness and gives life to men himself became incarnate as a man and walked among them as one of them. Everyone once in a while he gave a hint through the profundity of His moral teachings or through miraculous prodigies that indicated who He really was. One time, however, he let his real self shine through – his mortal form was Transfigured – in a blaze of radiant glory.

“His countenance was altered, and his garments became white and dazzling…”
– Luke 9:29

With this event occurred on Mount Tabor, he wasn’t momentarily elevated; rather, he took off the veil and revealed himself as he already was at all times.

The proper response to God’s goodness is love, which is to will the good of another. If we accept God’s love and return our own, he will bless us by sharing some of his goodness with us. In Heaven, our resurrected bodies will be transformed, and they will take on the attributes of subtlety, impassability, agility, and clarity.

* Subtlety: perfected in its form, able to pass through solid objects with ease

* Impassibility: incapable of experiencing physical pain, sickness, suffering, corruption, or death

* Agility: swift movement without difficulty or labor, able to physically travel any distance with the quickness of thought

* Clarity: lightsome, free of deformity, filled with beauty and radiance, shining with a brilliant radiance and beauty

“Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we may grasp with purified minds this most holy mystery of the Transfiguration of Thy Son…”
– from the Postcommunion prayer for the Mass of the Transfiguration

Church of the Transfiguration
Atop Mount Tabor in the Holy Land

King Richard in Hagia Sophia

In February NPR ran an audio story titled "The Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia."

You get a sense for what it was like praying in the 6th century in one of the world's largest Catholic churches.

The story is worth a listen at
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/22/808404928/listen-the-sound-of-the-hagia-sophia-more-than-500-years-ago

Listen with good speakers or headphones. You'll get chills.

Richard the Lionheart at Mass in Hagia Sophia
by Gaspare Fossati (1849)

 

Justice for Society

It is not by class struggle that justice can be re-established, but by preaching the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
- Abp. Marcel Lefebvre, "The Mystery of Jesus"

Christ is our doctrine, it is He who teaches us. Christ us our master, it is from Him that we learn. Christ is our school, in Him we learn. Because Christ is the one and only messenger, the light on all questions, He has the key to all human problems. Our world must relearn how to know the one to whom it owes all that it is. It is necessary to speak to it of Our Lord Jesus Christ over and over without tiring. If the world knows Him in His doctrine and His works, it will rediscover in Him the Lord and master whom false guides and unworthy pastors have made it forget.And so helped to return to the source of all goods,it will find once again the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
- St. Louis de Montfort, "The Love of Eternal Wisdom"

Saints and the Incarnation

The honor paid to the Saints as servants of God does not detract from the glory of their Master, Our Lord Jesus Christ. As the Members of Christ, the Saints are but the consequence and development of that which is due to Christ their Head. The Church owes it to her Spouse, Jesus, to make a protest against the narrow view of those who would deny the honor due the saints. These protests would lessen the glory of the Incarnation, because denying the Saints denies the grandest consequences of the Incarnation.

- paraphrased from The Liturgical Year by Abbot Dom Gueranger

Words from C.S. Lewis

This short essay from C.S. Lewis treated the matter of worry about the atomic bomb, but the lesson applies to any great threat.

=======

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb.

“How are we to live in an atomic age?”

I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."

— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

Consecration to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts at Fatima

Two dozen countries were consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Fatima, Portugal on March 25 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Cardinal António Marto, the bishop of Leiria-Fatima and the bishops of Portugal and Spain performed the consecration to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. On the solemn occasion of the Feast of the Annunciation, the bishops asked for the Blessed Virgin Mary’s intercession for the “direct and indirect victims” of the pandemic that affects us, for “health professionals, tireless in their efforts to help the sick…authorities, in their efforts to find solutions," and for "all of us and our families." The rosary was also recited in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Polish. Tens of thousands of faithful watched the ceremony broadcast live on the web page for the Fatima shrine and throughout Portugal on television, radio, and many Catholic digital platforms.

The Portuguese initiative was the result of a petition begun on March 19 by a group of laymen who gathered over 5,500 signatures that they presented to the Portuguese Episcopal Conference. Among the signers were several members of the Bragança family, including Duke Duarte Pio, the great-grandson of King Miguel I of Portugal and claimant to the defunct Portuguese throne. The text of the petition stressed the urgency of the situation, highlighting not only the evils of the coronavirus but also all the miseries that are already associated with it, from isolation to unemployment "at levels never seen before."

Initially, only the Portuguese bishops intended to renew the consecration of their country to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. Then the Spanish bishops asked to take part in this consecration, followed by other bishops’ conferences the world over. The countries consecrated were Albania, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, East Timor, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Kenya, Mexico, Moldova, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.

The Basilica of Fatima was built on the site where, just over a century ago, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared six times to three Portuguese children, Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto. The Queen of Heaven told the children to make sacrifices for sinners and pray the Rosary every day for peace. A few years later both Francisco and Jacinta died to the Spanish flu, a pandemic that killed over 25 million people. Lúcia later became a nun, and she reminded the faithful that the Rosary is “something everybody can do.”

May our Lord and Lady bless this public act of adoration and reparation.

The consecration ceremony can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU0XNlO_1QY

Incarnation and Divinization

Feast of the Annunciation

From Fr. Adam Purdy in a letter to SSPX Tertiaries in the United States:

I hope this feast day is blessed for you. We celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. God became man in order that man become God. Oh admirable exchange! In bearing Christ within us - we are divinized. All Christians accept the divinity of Christ; only Catholics embrace this "divinization." Christ's role was not simply to be an inspiration and provide longing to Christians; it was not be a wise teacher of the ways of God, or a model of Christian life; it is to put the real presence of God within our soul.

Prayer, Penance, Fasting

Ash Wednesday

From Luke 13:5 - “Unless you do penance, you shall likewise perish.”

Prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God with a view to appealing to His goodness in petition for the things we need. Penance worthily done transforms our rebellious wills, giving us loving, grateful hearts and so making it possible to pray well.

By penance a sinner hates the injustice of his own personal sin against Almighty God and desires to make reparation for his defiance and ingratitude. Such penance is always required for the forgiveness of sin. To help us fulfill the requirement of reparation, Holy Mother Church, knowing our frailty, obliges us to perform works of penance at certain times. The requirement to fast during the season of Lent is one example.

Lent is the penitential season lasting from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday that serves to remind us of Christ’s fast in the desert and to prepare us for Easter. Because it is a salutary time when our Lord abundantly dispenses grace, according to ancient custom Christians perform additional acts of penance and sacrifice in Lent so that they may win deliverance from their sins and be better disposed to receive the graces that Almighty God wants to bestow upon His children.

There is a commandment laid on us to fast, for fasting helps to curb the desires of the flesh, draws us closer to Almighty God, and makes satisfaction for sins, both our own and those of others–our families, friends, neighbors, and countrymen. For this last reason our Lord and Lady also fasted, for though they were guilty of no sin, yet moved by charity they won by their fasting and acts of penance graces for poor sinners.

Our Lady told the seers of Fatima that "many souls go to Hell because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them." Likewise, St. John Vianney said that the conversion of sinners "begins with prayer and ends with penance." Let these sentiments occupy our thoughts and fill our hearts this Lent, offering this prayer when we fast and make some sacrifice: “O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

One Egg

This morning for breakfast I ordered the one egg platter. Here's what it looked like.

Just one egg

Look at the size of that single scrambled egg.

I figure either they have the world's largest hen out back, or they use ostrich eggs.

Analog and Digital

A few years ago I had a conversation about the topic of clocks with a colleague from work. He was a computer guy, and he was making unflattering remarks about how old analog clocks were not as accurate as digital clocks.

“It depends on what you’re using it for,” I said. “There’s no question that it’s easier to be more precise about the time using a digital clock. In truth, though, while the technology is a fascinating accomplishment, I don’t usually need nano-second accuracy."

We talked about that for a bit, then I added, "Time is a measure of change and motion. When I look at an analog clock, I see the moment I’m in, and I am also visually reminded of where I came from earlier in the day, as well as where I’m going. Having this context is useful; digital clocks lose that capacity. My own perspective is that when I need pinpoint precision about the time I go with digital, but otherwise for day-in, day-out living, analog is the better tool.”

My colleague, to his credit, agreed with my point.

Hungry Revolution

The slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was a PR maneuver, the dressed-up brainchild of the leftist maniacs of the French Revolution who were possessed by a fratricidal rage and who wanted to destroy the existing social order so as to bring in by force the kind of society that the American left wants to foist on the American people today.

It was never about fair treatment for all, it was only ever about mindless, hopeless, bitter resentment, envy, and rebellion.

The goal was for those who were not in power to seize power and then abuse anyone and everyone who got in their way.

But even that could not work, because the revolution is about thoughtless change and turning, never about progress.

As a witness of the French Revolution observed, "Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children" (Jaques Mallet du Pan).

14th Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled several times that the 14th Amendment does not grant birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause was written to establish citizenship for the slaves freed after the Civil War. The amendment was passed to counter the Dred Scott decision, which explicitly held that black slaves were not citizens.

That’s why, for example, the children of diplomats and foreign ministers are not granted citizenship on the basis of being born here. Only since 1982 has there been a claim that birth inside the country automatically conferred birthright. The source for this idea was a footnote to a decision written by Justice William Brennan. The claim is not Constitutional, and it has not been supported by the Supreme Court.

Here are a few examples of relevant Supreme Court cases.

Supreme Court opinion in the Slaughterhouse cases (1873)

"No one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments), lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him."

Supreme Court opinion in Ex Parte Virginia (1879)

"[The 14th Amendment was] primarily designed to give freedom to persons of the African race, prevent their future enslavement, make them citizens, prevent discriminating State legislation against their rights as freemen, and secure to them the ballot."

Supreme Court opinion in Strauder v. West Virginia (1880)

"The 14th Amendment was framed and adopted ... to assure to the colored race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that, under the law, are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government in that enjoyment whenever it should be denied by the States."

Supreme Court opinion in Neal v. Delaware (1880)

"The right secured to the colored man under the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws is that he shall not be discriminated against solely on account of his race or color."

Supreme Court opinion in Elk v. Wilkins (1884)

John Elk was a Native American who argued that he was a citizen in light of the 14^th Amendment.

The Supreme Court ruled that the 14th amendment did not grant Indians citizenship, saying, "The main object of the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside...The evident meaning of (the words, "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof") is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance...Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterward, except by being naturalized...no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent..."

Indians did not become citizens until passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.