I am traveling again this week: off to the ASPR meeting. This is part of my job, but this time the timing is sort of better: one son is with his mother, and the other is old enough — if he was a month older, he would have finished his first year of university.

Why am I leaving today when the meeting does not start until Wednesday? One word: flights. Flying from Dunedin to Australia generally takes an entire day.  And, to clarify, the photo is NOT in Australia: it’s Dunedin. And it was shot level: the street slopes.

Now, I’m not a Catholic, and I have tried to look up the teaching of the Saint Ann Banhardt rrefers to — who meditated on the Sacred Heart (which is superstition at best) but did purify the church of Northern France. But her comments resonate with the text.

What must be remembered in all of this, and what I have been saying since day one of the Franciscan pontificate is that we MUST understand and remember that Our Lord is ANGRY.  Very, very angry.  And as St. John Eudes told is in no uncertain terms, when God is angry with His people, we get bad clergy.  Given the unprecedented sins of the once-Christian world, it should be no surprise whatsoever that we now have not just bad priests, but a bad pope.  Hey, if we had the pope we deserved we would have Pope Snoop Dogg right now, so… yeah.  Sigh.

I’m going to come back to this. If a people cannot stand truth, they will sack the pastorate that give them truth. IF the people cannot stand the word, they will choose only those who preach lies. Amos says this has consequences: a society will lose its power, and fall, because we will offend the LORD Almighty.

And he is just. He does not play favourites. As it was for the Amorites, so it will be for us.

Amos 2:6-16
⁶Thus says the LORD: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals —
⁷they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way; father and son go in to the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned;
⁸they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge; and in the house of their God they drink wine bought with fines they imposed.
⁹Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of cedars, and who was as strong as oaks; I destroyed his fruit above, and his roots beneath.
¹⁰Also I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.
11And I raised up some of your children to be prophets and some of your youths to be nazirites. Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel? says the LORD.¹²But you made the nazirites drink wine,and commanded the prophets,saying, “You shall not prophesy.”
¹³So, I will press you down in your place, just as a cart presses down when it is full of sheaves.
¹⁴Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain their strength, nor shall the mighty save their lives;
¹⁵those who handle the bow shall not stand, and those who are swift of foot shall not save themselves, nor shall those who ride horses save their lives;
¹⁶and those who are stout of heart among the mighty
shall flee away naked in that day,

We cannot tolerate the truth. This is seen in the commercial world. When the CEO of Lulemon (who is known as “Chip” said that you should only wear his products when you are thin and fit because that is what they are designed to do.

His answer to the question was delivered in a sincere, gentle, almost eloquent fashion. His answer is one based in physics (i.e., if you wear tight fitting athletic clothing and you happen to be overweight, inevitably you will wear out the fabric). End of story. If you have an issue with this, take it up with the Gods of Alchemy. Of course, physical reality be damned when it comes to the hyper sensitive expectations of feminized culture. How dare a man have the tenacity to suggest that women purchase clothing that fit them! And to be fair, Chip did not even go that far.

Well, you see, being thin requires discipline. You have to get up with the alarm, you have to go to the gym or run, and you have to eat well. You cannot eat what you want: you have to watch that. You need to monitor this, and call the scales your friend.

This takes effort. Almost everything worthwhile does. And you cannot get there just by saying it will happen. You have to work at it. One of the things I think most men bring to marriage is the “just do it” attitude — that gets both of them eating better, on budget, and fit. Or not.

And we have been told, in spiritual matters, that we cannot lead.

Nearly all of the instruction to husbands and wives in the New Testament tends to make modern Christians very uncomfortable. There is for example a cottage industry to explain away headship and submission in Ephesians 5:22-27. This cottage industry has built a veritable tower of babel consisting of mutually exclusive rationalizations for why the Apostle Paul can’t possibly have meant what he very clearly wrote.

Now, I have said many times that I am not qualified to lead. I will not go into the ministry and destroy it’s integrity. I’m lay. But I can write. I can say this: that the true leaders of the church exist: they are not necessarily those who appear to be in control. For the Spirit will raise them, for our God is merciful. Unless and until we have offended him to the point of nausea.

Then he lets us have the pastors we want, and the preachers we deserve. It’s time to repent, reform, discipline ourselves, and pray fervently that we do not become one with the Amorites and Hittites.