Today’s Leftist Extremism and ‘Cancel Culture’ Was Baked Into ‘Liberal Democracy’ From the Outset November 15, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, catachesis, cultural marxism, different religion, disaster, error, General Catholic, history, Revolution, scandals, secularism, sickness, Society, the struggle for the Church.comments closed
One of the most disturbing trends in American, and broader Western, culture today, is the fact that any deviation from leftist orthodoxy, from ‘woke politics,’ can get one’s life destroyed in a matter of minutes. An offhand joke made waiting on the tarmac for a flight can lead to a reaction that means no job, no friends, and no home by the time one lands at their destination. Holding to beliefs that were completely unremarkable and widespread a mere 5 or 8 years ago can do the same. Merely standing in a public space waiting for a bus and minding your own business can, with the right kind of propaganda, lead to a nearly life-destroying episode before one’s life has even begun.
Most people wonder what in the heck has happened. How have we gone from the free speech extremism of the 1960s to the totalitarian speech policing of today? I might argue that all have been part of the same overarching movement, a movement intended to destroy Christendom, that uses different tools at different points of its long march through the institutions, and which has no problem at all in contradicting itself, or spouting literal double-think almost constantly.
Still, most would conclude that there was a sunny, happy time in liberal democracy, a golden age we’ve somehow lost. Many people believe the closer one gets to the roots of today’s liberal free market state’s founding, the closer one is to an ostensible ideal.
But this may not be the case. In fact, many of the intellectual framers of today’s liberal state, from back in the time of the endarkenment, realized some of the tragic implications of the godless, at-war-with-the-Church system they were proposing. In fact, several of the most key “enlightenment” thinkers realized that what they were doing was proposing a contrary religious-cultural system to the then-existent Christendom, and that they looked forward to war with Christendom, and that to the hilt. Some of these thinkers were very explicit about this, as you will see below.
From Rousseau’s The Social Contract, an exegesis on how those who rebuffed the new order would have to be treated, and that quite savagely:
While the civil profession of faith (in the civil authority) can compel no one to believe them, it can banish him, nor for impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing at need his life to his duty. If anyone, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behaves as if he does nto believe them, let him be punished by death: he has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law. [These same liberals supposedly hated blasphemy laws, and yet here is one of their leading lights publicly calling for death for blasphemy against the “sacred” state’s “sacred” laws!]
The dogmas of civil religion ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded, without explanation or commentary……..Its negative dogmas I confine to one, intolerance, which is a part of the cults we have rejected……Now that there can be no longer an exclusive national religion, tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothign contrary to the duties of citizenship. But wheover dares to say: “Outside the Church there is no slavation,” ought to be driven from the State, uless the State is teh Church, and the prince the pontiff.
So much for the tolerance of the new religion! Let no one think to be joined to Christ who is not prepared to be crucified under Pontius Pilate, for the godless state is ever satan’s arm.
And the revolution made clear from the beginning that any deviation from it’s orthodoxy, no matter how slight, would eventually be brutally punished, even with death. It was politic for the revolution, for a time, to pretend otherwise, to pretend open-mindedness and magnanimity, but no longer. As it nears its Omega point, the revolution drops the mask, and even schoolchildren can be crushed and destroyed – and that, for doing nothing at all wrong – solely for the ease of the revolution.
It was the same, of course, in the Soviet Union, and Maoist China, and Ortega’s Nicaraugua, Venezuela, etc., etc.
The only force capable of resisting this always advancing secularist onslaught is Catholicism – traditional Catholicism, since there are so many fake varieties today.
The Episcopate of the United States Catholic Church Has Always Been Americanist, Indifferentist, and even Heretical November 15, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, catachesis, Dallas Diocese, disaster, episcopate, error, General Catholic, history, Immigration, priests, Revolution, scandals, secularism, sickness, Society, the struggle for the Church.comments closed
I mentioned recently I have been reading books by Solange Hertz. They are very valuable and enlightening reading, providing great insight into how the almost universally rock-solid Church of the 18th century became the structurally modernist, indifferentist, and leftist body that it is today.
Reading Hertz has been part of a broader study I’ve been blessed to make over the course of much of 2019, reading histories of the Church over the period 1800-1950, principally in the United States but also Europe. This is history that is almost entirely forgotten, and deliberately so, as it reveals the means and methods by which the Church was first penetrated, and then overtaken, by revolutionary forces. While many faithful Catholics today point to AA-1025 and communist penetration of the Church in the first half of the 20th century, to be frank, that analysis misses the mark. In point of fact, most of the damage was done in the 19th century, and came not from European revolutionaries (they more or less took advantage of an already existing situation), but from American ones.
American, ahem, Catholics, were responsible for much of the most destructive beliefs that burst into open view, with apparent approbation of the institutional hierarchy, at Vatican II. Indifferentism (rejection of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus), almost a maniacal focus on both materialism and ecumenism, the exaltation, if not practical worship of, democratic forms of government and the free market, tacit endorsement of blasphemy and sacrilege under the guise of “freedom of speech” and “freedom of expression”………..all these ideas came primarily from the United States and, it must be said, mostly Irish-lineage bishops and priests, though they did find fertile ground for these ideas throughout much of Europe.
A few datapoints to illustrate. The first American bishop, John Carroll, was a thoroughgoing Americanist, practically seeking to create an Americanist Gallist Church (a national church free from Rome’s influence). He practically worshipped the US Constitution and the American state and was influenced, to an almost unbelievable degree for a man who called himself Catholic, by the liberal wing of the protestant sects in the United States. He was also extremely close with the freemasons who dominated the American elite. He insisted, for instance, on the election of bishops, and even wanted election of priests, to go along with a vernacular liturgy and many other items protestants/masons would like to see changed regarding Church Doctrine. He was only just prevented from doing this by intervention from Rome, and his death.
Carroll also did all he could to upset and frustrate attempts by the constant waves of immigrants to maintain their traditional Church structures and parish lives within their own communities. Carroll and his disciples waged constant war against German, Polish, Italian, and other priests and lay people who sought to maintain the traditions of the Faith from Europe. They insisted all immigrants should be swiftly and thoroughly “Americanized,” bowing to the unique genius of the Constitution and the American(ist) way of life.
Thus, the tragic situation we see today, where the US episcopate demands unconstrained immigration in order to make up for the falling away of tens of millions of Catholics, has persisted throughout the Church’s history in this country. In the latter half of the 19th century, 25-30% of recent Catholic immigrants fell away from the Faith within 25 years of arriving in the US. Most became some flavor of protestant. This has been the regular reality of Catholic life in these United States, save perhaps for the brief period of the 1920s to the 1950s when the Catholic Church appeared much more orthodox, reliable, and robust compared to its rapidly collapsing mainline protestant counterparts. This was about the only period in US history when, subtracting immigration, there was a net inflow of converts into the Church, as against Catholics falling away.
The following quote sums up the situation in Amchurch circa 1900 rather nicely, from The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism, pp. 186-188 (I add comments):
…[D]efenders of the Faith had little difficulty linking Americanism to communism, not to mention Semitism, Protestantism, Masonry, and outright Satanism. A Catholic paper in Paris accused Cardinal Gibbons [I haven’t even touched on Gibbons, but he is perhaps the principal villain in the Americanist story] of partiality to masonry on the basis of his persistent defense of such organizations as the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias……….all condemned by Rome, and of secret societies generally in the States. The French Canadian Jules Tardivel dubbed America “the eldest daughter of the sect,” and Leo XIII’s Belgian biographer stated its true center was located here.
In 1899 Leo XIII was finally forced to write Testem Benevolentiae condemning Americanism specifically as a heresy. In the face of the threatened withdrawal of American support for Peter’s Pence, however, [the American Church, like the German Church today, routinely used its massive financial resources to threaten Rome with denial of funds – and this, at a particularly critical time when the Papal States had been stolen by Garibaldi and the Church was in desperate financial straits] none of the heretics was designated by name, although everyone knew who they were and had expected them to be formally excommunicated. Robert Cross relates that one Roman periodical, referring to the “satanic spirit” of America, exclaimed: “Put the mask aside, O Monsignor Ireland: bow down before the Vicar of Jesus Christ, Cardinal Gibbons, and deny the blasphemous theories of the heretical sect which are embodied in you!” Civilta Cattolica dubbed the heresy:
…….purely American…….employed at first to indicate in general the ‘new idea’ which was to rejuvenate the Church, and in particular the ‘new crusade’ against the uncompromising position of Catholics of the ‘old creed.’
All the heresiarchs loudly disclaimed being tainted by what they termed a ‘phantom heresy’ existing largely in the minds of the Curia or at best in a few French dioceses, and they continued on as before. [Indeed – an encyclical sent to the lead American cardinal, talking only about the United States, only applied to a few foreign dioceses, and those strangely French. But do we not see the exact same kinds of dissembling tactics today, especially in the US episcopate?] The American flag was displayed ever more prominently at altar-side, as if also intended for worship, despite the frowns of Rome, which steadfastly refused approval for the tricolor within the sanctuary. Episcopal progress in socialism was steady. At the close of the First World War the American bishops under the leadership of Msgr. John Ryan became so convinced that “so-called ’socialistic’ measures were practically synonymous with Catholic moral principles” – to quote a popular Catholic history textbook – that they boldly embarked on their own social program. Advocated were minimum wage legislation, unemployment and old age insurance, prohibition of child labor, legal protection of unions, national employment service, public housing for workers, control of monopolies, curtailment of ‘excess’ profits, participation of labor in management and wider distribution of stock ownership. Christ was now harnessed to the Revolution as to His Cross. [These efforts were through the “National Catholic War Council,” supposedly set up to help fight WWI, but then extended after the war as the National Catholic Welfare Conference. The first permanent episcopal conference in Church history, it was banned by Pius XI but later, of course, was given approval at Vatican II, where the Church awoke and groaned to find itself Americanist. Of course, episcopal conferences have turned into charnal houses of sex abuse, graft, larceny, and radicalization political agendas, along with constantly reducing the Faith to the lowest possible common denominator, in concert with ‘right democratic principles.’]
……[I]n 1928 indulgent America permitted a Catholic, Al Smith, to run for the Presidency for the first time in the nation’s history. Ten years later in Madrid the anti-Catholic writer George Seldes was able to say in The Catholic Crisis:
‘The future of Catholicism may lie in America because of the growing Catholic population, the large increase of bishoprics, the financial support of the Church which is said to be larger than that contributed by the rest of the world. But it may lie in America because America is the stronghold of democracy. American Catholicism is the Catholicism of the famous credo of Al Smith……which states that the Syllabus of Pius IX which is anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and in a way anti-American, has ‘no dogmatic force’ as Cardinal Newman said long ago……..[I hope Cardinal Newman did not say that. I don’t know]
By the Smithian system of dialectics no Catholic need fight Socialism, or Communism, or pay any attention to Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, Casti Connubii, Lux Veritatis, or the late Pope’s utterances in favor of Franco’s Spain, if he individually disagrees. The American Catholic, according to its most important spokesman, can take it or leave it. [The primacy of the individual conscience, circa 1930!] However, no Catholic outside the United States has ever expressed the same views and remained in the Church.
Thus, the Americanist heresy is at the root of the crisis in the Church, and contrary to the relatively conservative body most Americans are propagandized to believe it is, has been one of the key driving forces behind the revolution against the Church conducted principally by those given sacred trust to promote and defend the authentic Faith. Unfortunately, Americanism is deeply rooted in the basic patriotism of the United States, and so constantly finds new adherents. It’s a difficult and tragic thing to find one at odds with one’s country, but that is exactly the position thinking, informed, believing Catholics find themselves in. That this nation has produced so precious few of that group only demonstrates how insidiously effective that propaganda is.
They have now. Apparently, As Bishop O’Gorman once wrote his friends from Rome, “Americanism, which was supposed to be our defeat, has been turned into a glorious victory. We are surely on top.” The lucrative waters of the Potomac were now flowing freely into the Tiber. Only a faithful few in the US today recall that their Lord “suffered under Pontius Pilate,” after Pilate and the “religious” Herod became friends. “If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you…….The servant is not greater than his master.” And “no man can serve two masters” (Jn xvi:20).
Mindful of this difficulty, Hilaire Belloc predicted the “necessary” conflict between the civil state and the Catholic Church in America. He said in so many words, of course, “the Catholic Church in America.” He was not referring to the star-spangled “American Catholic Church” which is after all only a modernist sect of long standing, with a large growing membership. No conflict with Pilate should arise there. [Since, after all, for Cardinal Gibbons and most current and historical American bishops, their greatest fear was and is that they might ever give offense to the protestant majority, and especially the formerly protestant but now thoroughly secularized and leftist political-cultural elite.]
————End Quote————-
This post is already very long, and I hope to get out one much shorter post today, but I’ll conclude with this: it is a profoundly unsettling realization to make, that one’s Faith, and one’s country and culture, are totally at odds. It is even more discomfiting to realize that, in many ways, only one can ultimately survive. It was, of course, fear of this realization that drove the thoroughly American bishops and priests (again, most all of them, strangely enough, Irish) to attempt to posit a typically American ‘new and improved’ church, one that fit in fine with the surrounding culture and political landscape, one that wouldn’t make any waves, and one that would rarely, if ever, expose its practitioners to persecution.
But Our Blessed Lord told us that if we love Him, the world will hate us, and that if we are faithful, it will persecute us like it persecuted Him. This is the narrow path of salvation. The Church in the US, by and large (there were numerous countervailing elements, especially German), chose the wide, soft, easy road.
We all know how those two stories end.
Our Lady of Good Success Warned (and reassured) Us About This Sin-nod October 21, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, episcopate, fightback, Francis, General Catholic, history, Our Lady, Restoration, Revolution, Spiritual Warfare, the struggle for the Church, Tradition.comments closed
A nice and brief cartoon via reader TT, which reminds us that Our Blessed Mother has prophesied and warned of these days, but also given us reassurance as to the ultimate outcome of this war for the soul of Holy Mother Church:
Excellent Video Series on Antonio Salazar September 26, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, Christendom, General Catholic, Glory, history, Restoration, Society, the struggle for the Church, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was the leader, some would say dictator, of Portugal from 1934 until his death in 1968. Unlike Franco’s Spain, his Catholic corporatist Estado Novo (New State) survived him by several years, finally being wrecked by a coup of mid-grade hard leftist officers of Portugal’s military in 1974.
Salazar and the Estado Novo offer an interesting, and much more Catholic, alternative to what the predominant culture tells us are possible viable forms of government since the mid-20th century – hard leftism or liberal/libertine capitalism. I’ve never been fully on board with such corporatist/distributist economic systems as outlined by Chesterton and Belloc (among many others) in the first half of the 20th century, as they seemed a bit too utopian to be practical. But Salazar’s Portugal probably came the closest of any deliberately Catholic state (deliberate in the sense of being constructed to comport as closely as possible to the Church’s social and general magisterial beliefs up to that point in time) in achieving a reasonable mean – being Catholic, but also relatively prosperous, relatively free, and relatively non-tyrannical. Some of my primary complaints against distributism is that it seemed a fine system for the late 18th century, but probably not too well suited for the 21st century. Salazar’s Portugal serves as probably the best argument against that complaint.
Regarding a tyrannical state, Salazar’s Portugal was much less violent, as a government, than was the corollary next door in Franco’s Spain. Of course, the Estado Novo had the incalculable benefit of not being founded in the midst of a brutal civil war. Even still, however, there was a very powerful leftist faction in Portugal, which had held power several times in the decades preceding 1934, and remained a serious threat through much of Salazar’s time in power. However, by judicously practicing Catholic Doctrine, the Salazar regime only put about 5 souls to death throughout it’s nearly 40 year existence – a far cry from the tens of thousands that died, or were killed, in Spain, even after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Now, I’m quite sympathetic to Franco’s government and think its hand was forced by the radical, unyielding leftists it had to deal with – these leftists started the Civl War by attacking the Catholic Faith and massacring hundreds of priests and religious – but it is still an impressive achievement. Salazar had very nearly as divided and fractious a country to manage as did Franco, but managed to do so with far less bloodshed.
Unfortunately, the quite-detailed video series I post below is not complete. It only goes until about World War II. Many of Salazar’s greatest social achievements – the economic rebuilding of Portugal along Catholic corporatist lines – had to wait until after World War II. The author of the series promises that some new uploads will be coming this fall and winter – I will be sure to share those when they become available.
For now, you can learn a great deal about an important, but deliberately forgotten, leader on the world stage for much of the 20th century. I say he was deliberately forgotten, because Salazar’s Portugal, like (to varying degrees) Franco’s Spain, and Dolfuss’ and Schussnigg’s Austria, and a few other locales, truly do serve as contrary examples to what we are told was the “only sane choice” in the “inevitable” liberal capitalist state. Not just contrary examples, but examples that, in many ways, are more just, more moral, and – it can be argued – much more conducive to the good of souls than the decaying, decadent, corrupt states we find ourselves in throughout the West today. In terms of tyranny, how many people does the United States kill each year, either here at home or abroad? I’m no opponent of the death penalty, but it does make for an illuminating contrast.
I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I have. Since these videos are difficult to find on Youtube, and since, for some reason, many do not show up on the channel’s playlist, I post them all below. I knew comparitively little about Salazar’s Portugal before watching these, and most of what I had learned was harshly critical, so these videos will hopefully prove enlightening for you as well. I know you’ll think, there’s too many, it’ll take too long, history is boooring!!! Do yourself a favor and watch these, at one sitting or over several months, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, especially if you have any interest in Church history:
Watch Michael Davies, William F. Buckley, and Malachi Martin Completely Dismantle Post-Conciliar Amchurch August 26, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, General Catholic, history, Latin Mass, Restoration, Revolution, the struggle for the Church, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
The video below was recorded in 1980. Michael Davies, God rest his soul, was a young and very charismatic man who had already written several books defending Archbishop Lefebvre and exposing the protestantizing changes in the Mass. He had also developed ample evidence that the changes were deliberately made to change the belief and practice of believing Catholics in order to turn the Catholic Church into something other than the entity Christ founded our Holy Mother to be.
That evidence comes to the fore repeatedly as a certain Father Joseph Champlin repeatedly tries, in true post-concliar fashion, to so parse and muddy the Faith that not even licentiates in sacred theology could make heads or tails of what the Church was supposed to believe, what the current pope was promoting, or how the Church fell into the general post-conciliar mess. Certainly it is true that there were a number of factors at work in, for instance, the total collapse in vocations in historically Catholic/Christian countries (lumping the US in that group for convenience), but to pretend that the loss of 50,000 priests and nearly 100,000 religious in a mere 10 years after the close of Vatican II had nothing, or very little, to do with the massive changes imposed on the Faith in the wake of that council is laughable, as Davies and Buckley repeatedly demonstrate. Fr. Champlin, who was part of the disastrously liberal Dioceses of Rochester and Syracuse in New York, repeatedly had to engage in what I found to be deliberate obfuscation and attempts to so parse matters of theology that virtually no one could rightly claim to know what the Church believed, at least beyond what the most recent pope had declared. He had to do this because both the Council and the post-conciliar popes at various times and places made declarations in open conflict with the well defined, long-declared solemn Doctrine of the Faith.
This was a regular modernist ruse, reducing the Faith to meaningless or practical indeciperable nonsense that no lay person could hope to comprehend, in stark contrast to the clear belief of the pre-conciliar Church.
Anyway the debate is well worth your time and is a helpful time capsule in understanding how the battle over the mind and soul of the Church was fought in its early days. I would say that traditional critiques of the Council, and more particularly, that false “spirit” that came in its wake, have only sharpened and improved since then.
It is also interesting to point out how even at this point – more than 10 years after the implementation of the Novus Ordo – a large majority of Catholics polled indicated their preference in returning to the Mass of the ages.
Flightline Friday: Charlie Duke Took Country Music to the Moon July 19, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Flightline Friday, fun, history, Society, technology, true leadership.comments closed
During these celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 flight, here’s a quick post about the man who was the CAPCOM during the famous landing of Lunar Module #5 “Eagle” at Tranquilty Base, Apollo 16 LMP Charlie Duke. Charlie Duke was always one of the most affable and likable of astronauts, and he still is today. He is a convicted protestant, but has some very interesting things to say about evolution in the final video. I love what he wore to the 50th anniversary gala of the Apollo 11 landings at the Reagan Library two nights ago:
Captain Duke lives in the New Braunfels area. Love the cumberbund and tie.
SSPX to Build Huge New Parish in St. Mary’s, Kansas July 14, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in Art and Architecture, awesomeness, Christendom, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, history, Latin Mass, Liturgy, Restoration, SSPX, Tradition.comments closed
Two things immediately come to mind after viewing this video on Rorate Caeli – 1. I’ll have to check this place out, I’ve never been to St. Mary’s, and 2., St. Mary’s is way, way bigger than Mater Dei. 6 Masses a day with one in a gymnasium seating what looks like close to 600 people, the video sort of vaguely mentions 4000 people attending St. Mary’s. I don’t know if that means every Sunday, but with Mater Dei averaging about 1500 on a Sunday St. Mary’s is much larger. And, I am not surprised, it is in a sense SSPX-town USA, and has been around 13 or 31 years longer than the FSSP parish in the Dallas Diocese. I had long suspected that if there was a TLM parish with higher attendance on Sunday than Mater Dei, it would be St. Mary’s.
Well, God bless them, and may He bless this work. Whatever one thinks of the SSPX – and I for one am very grateful for Archbishop Lefebvre and the priestly society he started and maintained, since without it the TLM and the entire traditional practice of the Faith would probably have been expunged from the Church – this is a huge step forward for the entire traditional movement. This is a cathedral-class building being built for the sole use of the Traditional Latin Mass and the traditional practice of the Faith. It’s a huge undertaking and requires at least $30 million (construction budgets have a tendency to go up as construction advances, but this crew looks like they are really focused on keeping a lid on expenses). And, I must say, it looks like this new church when built will be architecturally and artistically significant. I do pray it has outstanding stained glass and other aspects of liturgical art – there is a great deal available on the market these days, with so many ancient and beautiful churches being razed in Europe and parts of the US.
It looks less and less likely that we will have anything similar (certainly not on such a scale) locally. The funding just isn’t there. Well, a new church will happen in God’s good time. If you feel inspired to help bring a substantial new traditional Catholic parish to fruition, you can donate here.
Solemn Vespers of the Dead for the Centenary of the Conclusion of WWI at UD Nov 6 November 5, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, awesomeness, Dallas Diocese, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, history, Latin Mass, Liturgy, Tradition.comments closed
I hope I can attend this tomorrow night. Solemn Vespers for the Dead in the traditional Rite will be offered Nov 6 on the campus of the University of Dallas at 7:30 pm at the Church of the Incarnation. All details below:
Check out the generous confession times at the Church of the Incarnation, too – 45 minutes a day or more Mon, Wed, Fri, and Sat.
I heard the Catholic Action for Faith and Family Conference was a big success. My daughter was there yesterday to sing in the schola for the solemn pontifical low Mass Cardinal Burke offered on Sunday morning. Many other events over the weekend were sparsely attended because so many other folks were off at the big conference at the Irving convention center. Bishop Burns was there. I’ve heard some other good things about Bishop Burns in the last several days on other fronts. Even though he is closely associated with the sad triad of Wuerl/McCarrick/Farrell he seems cut from a bit different cloth.
But the opening of the diocesan records on priest boy rape is a nothingburger. It’s all been carefully checked over in advance but there may be a few belated revelations.
All that aside, I have a small but growing pious hope that in Bishop Burns Dallas has finally gotten someone a bit virtuous as bishop.
Flightline Friday: The Awesome A-7 April 13, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, awesomeness, Flightline Friday, fun, history, non squitur, silliness, technology.comments closed
For nearly 40 years, my current house would have been very nearly directly under the flight path for Naval Air Station Dallas and the co-located Vought/LTV plant. Thus, from 1955 to the early 90s, Vought F-8s and later A-7s would have been in the air most every day, flying over my home (OK, the home didn’t exist for most of that time, but you get the point). Of course, by the time we moved into that house Navy Dallas was closed and Vought was out of the prime contractor business, no longer building whole airplanes, but that’s how it goes.
At any rate the A-7 was the result of a quickie project to build a replacement for the excellent Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, intending to greatly increase the range/payload capability of US Navy light attack assets. The project was a hallmark of the US aerospace industry at that time, roughly showcasing an industry at its historic peak, resulting in a program that went from conception to flying hardware in just about 4 years. Heck, they can’t even get half the specs for a bomb written in 4 years today, let alone those for a whole airplane. Vought responded to the Navy’s request for a new Light Attack aircraft – the VAL competition – with a modified version of its epochal F-8 Crusader fighter, basically a shortened F-8 with a wing modified to carry heavy payloads. Vought won that competition, and between December 1964 and early 1967 crafted the A-7A. This aircraft represented a quantum leap not in speed, because it wasn’t very fast, but in accuracy. The A-7 was the most accurate tactical bombing platform in US service until the introduction of the F-16 in 1978. Especially in its Air Force A-7D variant and subsequent US Navy E model copy of the D, the A-7 set radically improved standards in terms of bombing accuracy and range/payload capability, being able to carry the same payload as the A-4 twice as far, or twice the payload the same distance.
Prior to the A-7s arrival in Southeast Asia, virtually every Air Force tactical mission “up north,” whether launched from Thailand or South Vietnam, required air-to-air refueling. Even the long-legged F-105 required refueling after taking off with a heavy bomb load. As the first video below indicates, however, the A-7 was able to fly almost all missions over North Vietnam, with a heavy payload of about 9000 pounds of ordinance, pylons, and ammo, without air-to-air refueling. Now refueling was still pretty frequently done, but more to give the A-7 ridiculous loiter time up North – often over 2 hours – than because of basic necessity. Navy A-7s, operating much closer to their targets, virtually never required refueling.
The A-7 got its impressive accuracy through a combination of some of the first digital computers, embedded and computerized navigation systems (INS, Doppler, and a very accurate attack radar), and newly developed software algorithms that determined, electronically, a continuously computed impact point (CCIP) means of bombing that was a radical advance for its time. Later perfected to a much greater degree in the F-16 and F-18, the A-7’s CCIP system improved basic bomb-dropping accuracy by more than a factor of ten, from hundreds of yards down to about 20-30 yards, average mean miss distance. The second video, an absolute gift of an upload of a film from the old British firm of Elliot, which built some of the very first Heads Up Displays ever made, subsequently installed in the A-7D and E. Man how some like minded enthusiasts and I would have practically wept for joy to have seen truly excellent footage like this, showing exactly how complex, innovative systems were used tactically, 20 or 30 years ago. Great stuff.
I’m out for the weekend. Sorry for lack of posts, it was one of those weeks. Long live the memory of the great Vought Aircraft and its many excellent products! Built just about 5 miles from my home, they were in every respect Great Planes:
Now that the “multirole” is cheaper experiment has been tried and quite possibly proven a bad concept – especially when the roles are far too numerous and diverse – perhaps it’s time to return to some lower cost single mission types, for the vital roles like CAS and BAI? That is to say, Air Force and Navy jocks, just because it doesn’t have an “F” in front of its name doesn’t mean it’s second rate! Bomber pilots may make history, fighter pilots may make movies, but attack pilots make the boots on the ground very, very happy.
So How Would You Like This For a Pope? April 6, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, Art and Architecture, General Catholic, history, Papa, Tradition.comments closed
The HBO one season uncompleted series “The New Pope” ran a little over a year ago. It’s got an interesting premise – an ultra-conservative, highly traditional young American gets elected pope (choosing the name Pius XIII) by a confab of corrupt cardinals who think he will be a mere figurehead. There is much Machiavellian drama in little bits of the series I’ve seen, including numerous attempts by the corruptocrats in the Curia to get some dirt on the new pope and thus compromise and control him. This culminates in a young woman trying quite hard to seduce the pope, and failing.
At any rate, at some point in the series, the young pope who has held himself aloof not only from the world (refusing to perform public homilies or activities of any kind, or even to show his face) but even from the Curia, finally holds a little meeting with the cardinals, wherein he lays out his new program for the Church. In this, you could say, he proposes to turn the post-conciliar ethos on its head and set the Church on a radical new, but in many ways a very old, course.
The new pope is very mysterious to all, even, perhaps, to himself. He posits a return to Tradition and is loved by all the traditional priests, who form a sort of new coterie around the pope displacing parts of the existing bureaucracy. Most of these priests are quite young and devout, and make a marked contrast to the many corrupt bureaucrats occupying positions of power. Also dealt with are the infestation of sodomites deep into the heart of the Church.
The pope intends to use his aloofness, the mystery surrounding him, and his youth and physical attractiveness to the benefit of himself and the Church. There are intimations that he is saintly and can work miracles, and intimations that he might be insane. Or, perhaps, his mental prowess and sanctity cause him to behave in ways that people cannot comprehend?
Note the return of the sede gestatoria, fanon, and a sort of papal tiara, though one not nearly so grand as the old photos indicate.
Not sure if anyone’s seen this series, but late on a Friday afternoon when I have almost no time to post, I thought I’d give at least a little bit of Hollywood’s version of what a hardcore trad pope might mean. Let me know what you think from this little bit, and anything else you’ve watched.
Should I say, this guy looks positively dreamy compared to the current occupant? He sounds perhaps a bit severe and unyielding but after 50+ years of yielding to everyone and everything, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing? I can imagine such a pope as this might wind up like John Paul I.
I don’t think popes ever rode in the sede gestatoria standing like that.
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