Where Did Summer Go?

Yeah, I know. Us adults don’t get a summer, the same way the little ones do. We have to work through those July and August heat waves to earn the dough to make the summer days magical for the little ones. True, I did take the summer of 2015 off, but that was due to a layoff, and that was far from magical, unless you count my ability to function despite sleepless nights worrying about bills.

But I generally have fun summers with the girls. This one, though, seems a little shortchanged. Maybe because I had the bronchitis for a month and was not much fun. Maybe because the wife is contemplating uprooting us and moving across country, which was not much fun. I dunno. But there were indeed pockets of fun, so perhaps I should focus on that.

Okay!

You just read about the week in Hilton Head. That was the highlight. I had a blast, and thought about it all week long as I labored in the payroll mines here at work. We visited my parents a couple of weekends out in rural PA, and that’s always a relaxing time. The fourth of July fireworks extravaganza, put on by the next town over, where we’re dazzled by exploding fireballs a hundred feet over our heads laying in a football stadium, that was memorable.

Read some intriguing stuff: PKD’s demented philosophy, a bunch of books on Napoleon, a re-read of The Iliad, a World War II yarn (yes, I just used the word “yarn” to describe a story, I am now officially old), a book on paper economics, a book on Chinese communist economics, and some books from the Bible, along with one from Mormon. Books books books. Oh, and the 220 books I donated to the library, my local parish, and my nephew. Paradoxically, I got a good feeling out of giving them away.

Didn’t really watch anything good all summer. As a favor to my buddy I saw Deadpool 2, which I hated. Watched a couple of the Kevin Costner Yellowstone episodes, which I grew to hate. About the only TV I don’t hate is Impractical Jokers, which still has the ability to bring tears to my eyes from laughing so hard. I watched a lot of them this summer.

Saw two baseball games – the Mets back in early May and the Yanks Memorial Day weekend. Both lost. But then the most unpredictable thing happened. Little One, age thirteen, suddenly developed intense Yankee fever. She loves them all (except Greg Bird and Neil Walker, though Neil is growing on her), tracks their stats daily, follows their Instagram and twitter accounts, and watches every game she can, staying up way past her bedtime, despite her mother’s threats and punishments. She stayed up to 1:30 am watching an extra innings game, allowing me to fall asleep on the couch. She’s even doing box scores for each game for the past month or so. I love the passion she has for it.

Patch, age nine, is starting up soccer. She had a week long training clinic where they worked them to the bone. She also shot up a couple inches in an incredible growth spurt. She’s now almost as tall as her big sister. She’s an avid reader, but she’s her own reader, shelving the books I’ve given her to read (Watership Down, Robert Jordan books, Silverberg’s Conquerors from the Darkness) after politely reading the first chapter. And her artwork is getting better by the day.

The girls had a magical summer. Two separate weeks in the woods of Pennsylvania. A week in sunny Hilton Head. Three weeks with cool sitter Victoria, who drove them to the pool, the lake, the beach, the mall. Three baseball games (the wife took them to a second Yankee game while I was sick). A week in Dallas with their aunt and uncle. Sundays at the Jersey shore with mom. First summer with a puppy (though he’s now a muscular, thirty-pound puppy). Bible camp for a week. Art/music camp for four weeks. Little One volunteering at both, in addition to two weeks at the local library. A pair of fairs. Trips to the park, to Blimpie’s, Subway, and the trio of Pizzerias in my town. The Mets-Yankees showdowns.

Man, do we spoil them!

So, goodbye August! Goodbye, summer 2018! Here’s looking to an amazing Fall. Bring on the birthdays and the holidays!

The Crisis in the Catholic Church

I’ve been following it closely over the past week; really, since the McCarrick story broke last month. I avoid mainstream media sources on the stories, though. I assume they will be slanted in a protect-Francis mode, since the media largely agree with his liberal progressive agenda (global warming, pro-LGBT, watering down Catholic tradition) and do not want to cast homosexuality in any bad light (81 percent of the victims are teen-age males). Instead, I think the best coverage is to be found in the articles by Rod Dreher over at www.theamericanconservative.com. The articles at www.onepeterfive.com are also informative and enlightening. The news aggregator website www.canon212.com is another good resource, though it tends to highlight the incendiary. Which, in the mood I’m in right now, is not a bad thing.

I used to think of myself as, well, if not devout, then a serious Catholic. Now I’m not so sure. I still believe wholly and completely in Jesus Christ, His Person and His teaching. But not the Catholic Church, in its current form and its form dating back to the Vatican II council, 1962-1965. I consider the Novus Ordo mass, instituted in 1970, a watered-down joke of the true worship due Our Lord and Savior. None of that has or will change.

No priest ever, through his preaching, brought me closer to God. True, those three weeks I spent in the hospital in 2009 renewed my faith, and I was visited by two of my parish priests. Their words and the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick comforted me and, for all I know, brought me through to health. But one of them has now been placed on leave pending an investigation into a claim of sexual harassment in his past with another seminarian. When I got out of the hospital and went to my first mass, this priest came up to me and hugged me. Now I am creeped out.

I went to a Catholic High School run by the Jesuits. None of them, thank God, took an interest in me. I used to feel sorry for myself that none did, in an innocent looking-for-a-mentor way, but now I am thankful. There were rumors of one of the brothers taking an “interest” in my fellow students, including a story where he brought a few guys up to his room and shared some beers. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but in light of the recent allegations – and, think about it, nothing has really changed since 2002 when the dam first broke – in light of what we know of McCarrick and countless other buckets of sleaze, I have to give it some credence.

So I say let the whole thing burn down. Let the Church become poorer, smaller. Let schism come, if these demonic clerics refuse to step down. We don’t need bishops. We need honest priests. Priest who honor their vows. These fat, gay, predatory, comfort-laden bishops, in their million dollar apartments with their servants and drivers and whatnot, get out of my Church! Repent and lead a life of penance worthy of St. Anthony the Great – or get the hell out!

Yes I am angry. And yes, I have not given a penny to the Church in the past two months. Just a drop in a vast sea to them, but I am at peace with my conscience. Yes, my bishop, Tobin, or anyone on his staff, has not responded to my letter last month. Tobin has been implicated in the letter by Archbishop Vigano last week. He is also the one of the infamous, “Nighty-night Baby” mistaken tweet. Two weeks ago I sent the letter via email to two directors of fundraising at the archdiocese. I received a generic, “we received your email and will forward it per policy” response, but nothing else. I guess Tobin has a lot more on his plate right now, like assassinating the character of Vigano instead of addressing the archbishop’s accusations point by point.

The Church will prevail elsewhere. Africa, I understand, despite Islamic persecution, is flourishing. As is the underground Church in China, despite Francis’s efforts to sell it down the river to the Chicom government. And in the United States, we just need to keep our heads down, protect our children, and stay as close as possible to Christ.

How to do the latter? Well, as I said, a priest’s words never brought me closer to Christ, save when uttering the sacraments, such as Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick. No small measures, those. So we need to find faithful priests for the sacraments. Find a priest in a parish that holds a regular Latin Mass. Find an SSPX or an FSSP church and attend. There the odds are much, much greater the hands that give you the Eucharist will not have sinned with another man the night before.

What brought me to Christ? I returned in 1992. I quit my sinful lifestyle – drinking, drugging, smoking. Hanging with the wrong crowd. Quit it all, abruptly. Read some self-help books, but found them all unfulfilling until, in February of that year, I started to read the Bible. Began at Genesis, chapter one, verse one. Two months later I finished. That was Easter Sunday, April 1992. Don’t know exactly what happened, but it felt like a heavy lead vest, like the kind the dentist puts on you when you’re x-rayed, it felt like Someone had lifted that lead vest off of my chest, my shoulders, my head. I felt free, lighter, calmer, less anxious, less nervous, less fearful. Didn’t last long as I immediately resumed sinning (asking a girlfriend to move in with me two months later, for example), but it never quite went away.

I suggest a careful reading of the Bible. Cover to cover, slowly. It’s not a race. Pray. Fast. We don’t do that in consumerist America. I’ve fasted perhaps a dozen times over the years. I think I should do more. Also, learn about the faith. Read the Saints, particularly pre-Vatican II saints. The exception to this is Padre Pio. Read of his life. A holy card of his appeared in one of my hospital rooms those many years ago, and I took it for a sign.

Hopefully more accusations will come forth. This boil needs to be lanced. The pus needs to flow out for true healing to begin. Bergoglio – be gone! McCarrick, Wuerl, Cupich, Tobin, McElroy, Zubick, O’Malley, Martin – be gone, all of you! All of you infesting the Vatican – leave! There desperately needs to be a #Metoo movement in the Catholic Church. Good priests need to tell their stories, and name names. Be gone, all of you, and repent … or be very aware of Luke 17:2 –

It would be better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones

Vacation All I Ever Wanted

Ah!

Back to civilization a few days ago after nine days’ vacation, mostly spent 850 miles south in gorgeous Hilton Head, South Carolina, former stomping grounds of a younger Mrs. Hopper. In a nutshell, those nine days were the perfect mixture of activity and relaxation, and, I must admit, I am wholly recharged for what new adventures may come upon us, or just the old, recurring ones (back-to-school, birthdays, holidays, and the night time tax job in the new year).

Again we rented a villa for about $40 a day more than your typical chain hotel. This is the third one time we’ve done that over the past year, and this recent one ranks just slightly lower than last summer’s villa, only because it didn’t have a spiral staircase and a balcony with a water view. What it did have was an extra bedroom, a spacious desk and reading room, and a patio overlooking a golf course where I spent four or five hours reading. The beds were humongous, and each of us got our own private shower.

We consciously did more than we did last year, activity-wise, now that the girls are growing older (nine-going-on-ten and thirteen-going-on-eighteen). We rented bicycles for an afternoon – Little One and I roaming about on a tandem, a bicycle-built-for-two, and we must have clocked thirty miles in four hours. Another morning we went out kayaking, to more adventure: we spotted a bald eagle, ospreys flying about with live fish in their talons, and a dolphin that nearly flipped into the wife’s kayak. I walked every morning for an hour, and spotted gators in the lagoons four times. Once the wife and I walked the a.m. beach, which felt like SEAL training to me. And, of course, there were two afternoons in the pool and one at the beach (the ladies ventured out again on our last day while I chilled in the AC). The Atlantic just off Hilton Head was incredibly warm, sauna-warm. Despite an attack by seaweed on my leg, no wildlife was spotted.

It was also super relaxing. As usual, I had a used book store (actually a thrift shop where my mother-in-law volunteers) scoped out; one afternoon I purchased a paperback Lincoln and His Generals and Book Five of Churchill’s six-volume history of WW II. But I was reading a long tome detailing the economic miracle of communist China. It’s what all the kids are reading nowadays, I know. Actually, every Fall I like to read something economics-oriented to chat with my co-workers and clients in between tax returns. All in all, I finished the 435 page cinder block in the week allotted, in many different comfy chairs in many different locations.

We also ate like royalty, as we always do when visiting the in-laws. True, my father-in-law, the gourmet’s gourmet, had passed on three months ago, and his presence was missed, but my mother-in-law is just as amazing in the kitchen. We had everything from shrimp and rice to home-made pizzas, and I loved just about everything. One night we treated her by taking her out to a new Italian eatery on the island. I had Bolognese, which I enjoyed, and both girls, normally culinary complainers, found their seafood dishes delicious.

The vacation was bookended by two long, uneventful car rides. The trip down there is a solid fifteen hours, with the wife and I alternating driving duties. My parents dog-sat, and we got the old boy Sunday morning (much to their sadness and regret, despite the bloody bruises on their arms from Charlie’s overly zealous affection and, uh, overly sharp nails). Patch had a scrimmage Sunday night versus an older girls team, which kicked their butts and signaled that it’s time for sleeve-rolling-up and getting back to work for the upcoming soccer season. I started reading Bruce Catton’s Never Call Retreat, being in a Civil War phase, and before I knew it, two weekdays speed by and it’s now Tuesday evening.

And the past two days that Go-Gos song is still echoing in my head …