A friend of mine recently sent me this, related to the topic of "Sedevacantism". Sedevacantism is a school of thought, or perhaps better described as a political movement, within the Catholic Church which holds the position that if a heretic rises to the role of Pope, then in fact the Papal Seat is empty-- and even in the absence of a Pope, the body of the Church continues to live on, because Jesus is its immortal head: a Pope is not requisite for the Church to function.
Apparently this is an extremely hot-button topic among people who follow the Catholic Church very closely, with the Sedevacantists occupying the role of "radical extremists" in the eyes of many. To me, I don't get what the fuss is about: the Pope is just the head priest; when an individual priest teaches heresies, there is no existential crisis for the Church as a whole-- rather, it's simply acknowledged that the priest was a bad apple, and he is censored accordingly. It's not any different in my eyes with regards to the Pope: individual parishes should simply ignore his heresies and follow the Catechism and Scripture otherwise.
I think the hang-up comes from the syllogism which says that God is perfect, the Church was created by God as His body on Earth, therefore the Church can not err-- how then could it make a mistake in selecting a Papal heir to St. Peter?
The piece missing from that analysis seems simple to me: God's plan is so complex that we can not fathom even one tiny fraction of one trillionth of it. Presuming to judge whether the Church has "erred" is presuming that one knows better than God what "the plan" is. Francis teaches many heresies, but axiomatically we must assume that his presence in the Church is serving some larger, more ultimate purpose which only God knows. Again, there is nothing here to give me pause, or paint me into any sort of contradiction.
Other than that bit of studying, I haven't had much worth posting on this blog. I've sort of run my course on so many of the topics I've spent the past nearly thirty years discussing on the various web sites and "blogs" I've maintained over that period: I've "solved" the question of economics so-to-speak, gaming is sort of limping along in a never-ending stasis, football and Lazio-related posts seemingly don't age past a week, I've thrown in the towel on the day-to-day theater of politics and am simply waiting for the meat of the revolution to start, while the automobile industry is about to go off of a cliff which will see me never buy a new car again as soon as I get either the GR Corolla or GR Supra hopefully this year.
About what should I write? Maybe I will discover some new topic and have a kind of "writing renaissance"-- but my rate of posting here will probably continue to be off of my old pace, at least for the foreseeable future.
As for my personal life I've just been working, watching anime with the kids-- we're working through "Hunter X Hunter", which has probably the best anime opening I've ever seen-- and playing video games for a few hours a week. I'm also exploring an alternative living arrangement for myself, as I've basically concluded that I won't be able to live here with my in-laws without going insane; this will take the form of either an apartment, or the purchase of a manufactured home near my current house, which is on the market for a very low price.