Hocus pocus dominocus ...

 

 Hocus pocus domi-nocus,

a devil scratched my back,

or a late Jurassic Diplodocus,

who drank all my cognac!

 

-- Johnny 

 

Well, Tucker did say that it happened to him in bed lol

 

 

 And friars, that through the wealthy regions run,

Resort to farmers rich, and bless their halls,

And exorcise the beds, and cross the walls.

 

-- John Dryden 😏  

Don't stare Rod Dreher lolol

 

The Unidentified Flying Objects in the air over New Jersey a year ago were supernatural only to the impressionable

 

 New Jersey drone and ‘UFO’ scare solved? Private contractor unveils strange aircraft, takes credit for sky mystery 

 A private company at a high-powered Army conference demonstrated a unique aircraft at the event — and allegedly took responsibility for setting off last year’s drone and “UFO” pandemonium in New Jersey, a source told The Post. ...

“You remember that big UFO scare in New Jersey last year? Well, that was us,” an employee of the unnamed contractor claimed to a small group after the demonstration, according to the source who was invited to the summit. ... 

The rash of supposed drone sightings in New Jersey began on Nov. 13, 2024 over Army base Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County and continued across the state through early December. ...

Mystery behind New Jersey UFO scare last year solved by private company

...The drone sightings have sparked online conspiracy theories that they might be connected to 'Project Blue Beam.' This outlandish theory proposes that NASA plans to establish a new world order through a fabricated religion led by the Anti-Christ. To make this believable, supporters claim a technological simulation of the 'Second Coming' would be orchestrated....

Gnosticism alert: Get in touch with R E A L I T Y . . . just by reading . . . about sacraments . . . in one easy sitting!

As often as we mention a sacrament, it is improperly understood [poor thing!] ... our restraint of the word to some few principal divine ceremonies, importeth in every such ceremony two things, the substance of the ceremony itself, which is visible; and besides that, somewhat else more secret . . ..

-- Richard Hooker 

So you missed The Rapture, again

 The general root of superstition is, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

 

--  Francis Bacon

There isn't that much daylight between the superstitions of Orthodox Christianity and American charismatic Christianity except the former has way cooler outfits

 

Beni Johnson soaking up something from the grave of C. S. Lewis in 2014

If God's love is so miraculous why is he still dead?

Very superstitious: Rod Dreher's demons posing as UFOs obey the FAA lol

 

Rod lives in another land.

 Northeast drone sightings surge again after FAA lifts restrictions

A brief lull in activity that coincided with flight restrictions imposed by the feds has ended, now that the Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ban. ...

The uptick came after sightings plummeted by 43% following the FAA flight restrictions imposed on Dec. 18, Kim said.

On that same day, Enigma received nearly 50 sightings. A week later, only four sightings were reported.

The restrictions were lifted Jan. 17, and since then, Enigma’s received 22 reports of sightings.

People are credulous

 

 Wise judges have prescribed, that men may not rashly believe the confessions of witches, nor the evidence against them. For the witches themselves are imaginative; and people are credulous, and ready to impute accidents to witchcraft.

-- Francis Bacon

Deeply spiritual Joe Biden and Kamala Harris really like the OT books written by priests of the NT church and the practitioners of palmistry lol

"That's not in Ecclesiastics" in minute 37:00

 

The Shroud of Turin dates to the time of Jesus . . . IF it was kept around 20-22.5 degrees C and relative humidity of 55-75% FOR THIRTEEN CENTURIES OF UNKNOWN HISTORY

https://nypost.com/2024/08/22/world-news/ai-recreates-possible-face-of-jesus-from-turin-shroud/

 

LOL, C'mon man.

Turin Shroud Study Claims Controversial Cloth Does Date to Time of Jesus

The authors said the results of their analysis were "fully compatible" with analogous measurements obtained from a linen sample whose dating, according to historical records, is A.D. 55-74, and consistent with the hypothesis that the Shroud is a 2,000-year-old relic.

The authors note that the results are only compatible with this hypothesis under the condition that the artifact was kept at suitable levels of average temperature (around 20-22.5 degree Celsius, or 68-72.5 degrees Fahrenheit) and a relative humidity of 55-75 percent for 13 centuries of unknown history, in addition to seven centuries of known history in Europe.

Head of Christ, Warner Sallman 1940

 

She's still dead, Jim

 

 Many of the monastery’s visitors said they believed Sr. Wilhelmina’s body to be miraculously incorrupt. ...

“Sister Wilhelmina's body was not embalmed, nor was there anything to preserve her in the state in which we buried her,” [the abbey’s superior, Mother Abbess Cecilia Snell] explained. “There were bugs eating at the foam under her, but none had touched her body or her habit - the latter’s failure to deteriorate being a phenomenon just as miraculous as her intact body!” ...

Many visitors to the abbey since the discovery of her intact remains have voiced belief that their preservation is “miraculous,” and noted incorruption after death is a sign often associated with saints. ...

In De Cadaverum Incorruptione, written in the mid-1800s, Pope Benedict XIV stated that an incorruptible body should only be considered miraculous when its lifelike condition is maintained for a great period of time.

More.

Vatican issues new norms to try to keep phenomena like Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina from getting out of hand again

Christopher R. Altieri for The Catholic World Report tends to think "Our Lady" made no appearance in Medjugorje in 1981, but will believe it if the church ever says he must.

 

He notes that the (phony) miracle is a hard case, which has, however, helped millions become better Catholics. (No word is offered on how many millions the superstition has driven away from the faith).

Altieri doesn't tell you that by 1983 the local bishop had decided that the apparitions were Franciscan fabrications, but by then it was too late because the hysteria for the site had already become a worldwide phenomenon.

On the new Vatican norms for the discernment of supernatural phenomena :

Much of the talk last week was about the new Vatican norms for the discernment of supernatural phenomena—apparitions especially, but not exclusively—presented at a press conference in Rome on Friday. ...

Under the old norms, local bishops had to talk with Rome but were free to make their own determinations. Also, and more importantly, the locals had to keep mum about their consultations. Local bishops, in other words, couldn’t say what Rome said to them about the thing(s) the locals were examining.

Local bishops, in other words, bore all of the public responsibility for judgments that were theirs only in part (if they were really the locals’ judgments at all). ...

Under the old disposition, a local bishop could issue a judgment: Constat de supernaturalitate. A judgment of constat de supernaturalitate does not quite say that a phenomenon is certainly of supernatural origin, but only that “it [clearly] evinces [signs of the] supernatural.”

The opposite of constat under the old scheme was—you guessed it—non constat (de supernaturalitate), which simply meant that there were lacking sufficient grounds for agreement on the origin of the phenomenon.

A judgment of constat de supernaturalitate did not compel an assent of faith, in other words, but only proposed its object as worthy of belief. The point is that it did propose something.

The new norms, on the other hand, borrow from bureaucratic argot to create a new category: Nihil obstat, which does not propose anything as worthy of belief but only says that there is nothing standing in the way of believing in the supernatural origin of a given phenomenon. That’s nice to know, but it really only tells us something about what isn’t there. ...

On the one hand, it is now unmistakably clear that the Vatican not only gets the final word but is involved in the investigation and adjudication of purportedly supernatural phenomena from the start. On the other hand, the Vatican will henceforth refrain from proposing even thoroughly vetted phenomena as worthy of belief and will limit itself to saying that nothing stands in the way of believing a given phenomenon to be of supernatural origin.

The Athenian general Nicias in the history of Thucydides was not the superstitious man scared by a lunar eclipse in the biography of Plutarch

Thucydidean Nicias is presented as a rational general and tactician ... he has no relation to Plutarch’s fearful and superstitious character. ... Nicias’ decision to side with the seers may have been a rationally based choice with the aim of avoiding mutiny in his army – a mutiny which would have proven fatal to their survival. ... the historian shows profound admiration of Nicias in a funerary epigram in which he praises the latter as a man of exceptional arete. ... Nicias’ partiality to the manteis was considered a weakness by the historian, but it was a tiny part of his overall positive presentation: we might call it a mere parenthesis, rather than a judgment long held back, as the authoritative commentator [Hornblower] puts it.

-- Nanno Marinatos, A NOTE ON THE THEIASMOS OF NICIAS IN THUCYDIDES, C&M 70 (2022) 1-16.

 

America's amusing smorgasbord of religious, social, and political beliefs according to Real Clear, ranked, annotated

Percent who believe in, believe that, say that, are, et cetera, per Real Clear Opinion Research, here:

 

Religious freedom is a fundamental human right 93.8 (this idea was foreign to ancient Israel, Greece, Rome, Christian Europe, and the era of the Muslim conquests, to name just a few)

 

God 85.4 (name not indicated)

Heaven 84.7 (John Lennon most hurt)

Healthcare is a fundamental human right 83.7 (the propaganda of the ObamaCare era worked)

Miracles 83.0 (Justin Amash fooled the people 5 times, Peter Meijer only once)

"In God We Trust" 83.0 ("In Fiat Money We Trust" was too long)

Jesus is God or Son of God 80.3 (thanks to not being aborted by the Holy Virgin Mary)

 

Hell 72.4 (San Francisco, New York City, Portland, et cetera)

The Devil 70.3 (yeah baby, drugs, sex, and rock and roll)

 

A woman and her doctor should get to decide whether to have an abortion 63.4 (vaccination highly recommended)

Ghosts 61.4 (unstated whether they are tiny baby ghosts or not)

 

Aliens 56.9 (oddly explains the southern border)

God is male 50.0 (Jesus is shocked, shocked, I tell you)

 

Reincarnation 47.7 (belief in Hinduism is dead last 0.5% ha ha ha ha ha, see below)

Witches 45.8 (strongly believed in Michigan methinks)

Prejudice against Jews is a very serious problem in the US 42.6 (because the Jews run everything)

 

2020 Joe Biden 38.6 (voting by mail multiple times or in person not specified)

Protestant 36.3 (prejudice problem 17.3)

2020 Donald Trump 34.6 (not everything deserves a comment)

Democrat Party 33.6

Republican Party 32.8

 

Never attend religious service 29.2 (makes sense given these results)

Prejudice against Muslims is a very serious problem in the US 29.1 (because of what they did on Oct 7)

God is neither male nor female 27.5 (0.9% of respondents also neither male nor female)

2020 didn't vote 24.8 (thank God) 

Catholic 22.0 (prejudice problem 14.9)

Independent party 21.4

 

Attend religious service once a week 19.5 (as good as it gets for category)

No religion 19.4

Prejudice against Evangelical Christians is a very serious problem in the US 17.3

Prejudice against Hindus is a very serious problem in the US 16.2 (but, but reincarnation)

Prejudice against atheists is a very serious problem in the US 15.7

Prejudice against Catholics is a very serious problem in the US 14.9

God is female 14.1

Not registered to vote 12.1

Atheist 3.8 (prejudice problem 15.7)

Agnostic 3.7

Other religion 3.3

Islamic 3.2 (prejudice problem 29.1)

Mormon 2.9

2020 voted for other 2.0

Judaism 1.9 (prejudice problem 42.6)

Buddhist 1.6

Orthodox 1.3 (Rod Dreher)

Hindu 0.5 (prejudice problem 16.2)

 

People clearly believe that some groups, to paraphrase Barack Obama in 2012 about the Danes, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Irish, and the Filipinos, seem to get punched far out of proportion with their weight in the culture. 

 

Results discussed here, where this is surely wrong, leaving out the little word "not" in a crucial spot at the end:

Most Americans also remain deeply respectful of the country’s religious roots. A strong majority of respondents – 83% – believe the phrase “In God we trust” should remain on U.S. currency and coins, compared to 17% who back the phrase’s removal.

“Republicans felt more strongly that the phrase should remain compared to Democrats, with 91% believing the phrase should [not] be removed, compared to 78% of Democrats,” Kimball said.     

In 2011 former Republican Justin Amash (MI-3) joined eight Democrats to vote against "In God We Trust", which in his first term was a sign of things to come in his last.

 

 

The credulity of Rod Dreher is one thing, the insufficiency of Christ's sacrifice to save is quite another

 *'Get Me Out Of Here!'

How Danny called out to his family from beyond the grave -- and they responded

 

And we did what we could to help his soul to reach heaven.

OMG hardly ever springs to my lips anymore, and then I stumbled over this

 

IVP used to be a respectable evangelical publisher, now also gone the way of Eerdmans.

... helpless man, in ignorance sedate, rolls darkling down the torrent of his fate.

Run for your lives.

Young people are falling for the disproven science of astrology in record numbers, think birthdates and celestial objects determinative of their lives

 

 The astrology business has boomed by 482% since 2018, now valued at $12.8 billion and rising:

. . . more Americans know their zodiac sign than their blood type, and likewise, as many as 70 million Americans check their horoscopes daily.

More.

The numbers rival American Catholicism.

The reason?

Today's young are the most unchurched yet. Having given up on one superstition, they have simply fallen for another:

 In terms of identity, Generation Z is the least religious generation yet. More than one-third (34 percent) of Generation Z are religiously unaffiliated, a significantly larger proportion than among millennials (29 percent) and Generation X (25 percent). Fewer than one in five (18 percent) baby boomers and only 9 percent of the silent generation are religiously unaffiliated. ... Less than half of millennials (45 percent) and Gen Zers (40 percent) say they attended church weekly [during childhood].

In the Catholic Church, God does miracles from time to time which just coincidentally validate its central Eucharistic rite

 

“One of our eucharistic ministers was running out of hosts and suddenly there were more hosts in the ciborium. God just duplicated himself in the ciborium,” an emotional Crowley told the faithful. ...

“They were running out of hosts and all of a sudden more hosts were there. So today not only did we have the miracle of the Eucharist, we also had a bigger miracle. It’s pretty cool,” the priest said.

There's even a traveling Eucharistic Miracle Road Show which promotes the Eucharist, not unlike the traveling Protestant revivals and camp meetings common in America where powerful moves of God produce dramatic conversions at altar calls, miracles of speaking in tongues, divine healings, and the like.

A Vatican-endorsed exhibit “Eucharistic Miracles of the World,” featuring documentary evidence of 152 such miracles, has visited over 3,000 churches on its international tour.  

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

More.

Russell Moore lol