In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The map above shows California's COVID status as of April 27, just two days ago. Most counties are now in the "orange" tier, and this covers nearly 90% of the state population. "Orange" restrictions are still stricter than in many other states, but they do allow most indoor activities at 50% capacity. What's remarkable is how quickly conditions have improved. The map at right is from just a month ago, March 30, with far fewer counties in the "orange" tier, most still "red" and three in "purple". Over the course of just a month, most of the state changed from "red" to "orange", with the three worst cases leaving "purple, while two more became "yellow". At this point, it appears that over the course of May, most of the state will move to "yellow", though this will still be more restrictive than other states like Florida or Arizona. But here's the continuing puzzle. I've alr...

There's been a stir about yesterday's updated CDC mask guidelines, but I think the takeaway is that they're largely semantic and at this point, without tattoos on people's foreheads showing their vaccine status, completely unenforceable, even by the most zealous Karens. With the chart above in mind, let's say an unvaccinated person decides to eat at an outdoor restaurant without a mask. Since there's no requirement that he wear a lanyard with his vaccine slip in a clear plastic holder, there's no way anyone can check if he's fully vaccinated or not and thus permitted to go maskless. Even it a Karen has her suspicions, if she confronts him in a huff, the unvax can simply huff back at her to mind her own business, and the other patrons more likely than not will shout her down as well. But the relaxation overall is pretty pusillanimous, and it's actually based on nothing new. At least in LA County, it was always OK to go jogging or bike riding without ...

The North American ordinariate began its life with several major disappointments, and it's never really recovered. It's now in a situation where the first generation of priests who came in with early groups has reached retirement age, but, as in the case of Fr Ousley, their replacements don't have equivalent background or experience. My regular correspondent from the old blog outlines the record as the ordinariate approaches ten years of age: We have frequently discussed the conspicuous failures among the Ordinariate communities: the small, struggling “continuing” groups which became small, struggling Catholic groups, the groups gathered as ordination opportunities for clergy who have subsequently retired or moved on to local diocesan posts or otherwise departed from the scene. But the apparently successful communities also reveal grave weaknesses. In ten years only eleven groups have achieved full parish status. Four of those were inherited from the Pastoral...

It's starting to look like vaccines, no matter how indifferently distributed, are the magic bullet that will solve COVID. But so far, governments to one degree or another are becoming disappointed that this is the case. I saw reports of a mass demonstration in London last Saturday : Videos posted to social media showed streets jammed with mostly maskless protestors. One marcher carried a sign reading “They did not isolate a virus. They isolated you.” Others said “No to vaccine passports” and “Lockdowns kill”. Some reports put the crowd size at 10,000. Lockdown measures have already started to lift in the UK with restaurants and pubs given the greenlight for outdoor eating and drinking on April 12. Gyms and hair salons were also permitted to open and further restrictions are set to be lifted May 17 at the earliest. Curious, I went to see the UK's COVID chart. To my surprise, it looks a great deal like California's, which is the best in the US. But California contin...

Anglicanorum coetibus and the complementary norms themselves aren't specific about how the groups that enter the Catholic Church as bodies of former Anglicans are organized, but explanations at the time of the constitution's promulgation generally assumed they were existing Anglican parishes that wouid enter with their Anglican clergy. This is at least implied in the constitution itself: §4 The Ordinariate is composed of lay faithful, clerics and members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, originally belonging to the Anglican Communion and now in full communion with the Catholic Church, or those who receive the Sacraments of Initiation within the jurisdiction of the Ordinariate. Early publicity focused on parishes that would enter, not only as continuing corporate entities, but with property and endowments as well as their clergy and people. Very few did this, and the attempt of the St Mary of the Angels Hollywood parish, which did h...

Jeffrey Steenson, who was Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande from 2005 to 2007 , was the third US Episcopal bishop to resign while in office in order to convert to Roman Catholicism. The first was Levi Silliman Ives, who was Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina from 1841 to 1852. The second was Frederick Joseph Kinsman, who was Episcopal Bishop of Delaware from 1908 to 1919 . The differences between Steenson and his predecessors are remarkable, in part perhaps reflecting Steenson's character, but also showing how times have changed. Both Ives's and Kinsman's resignations and conversions were moderately important public events, and in consequence, both Ives and Kinsman published detailed apologias, Ives in The Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism and Kinsman in Salve Mater . (Kinsman is highly underrated as a writer, and since the book is on line, it's worth the read.) Both of those bishops addressed a general audience with an understanding of broad ...

I keep thinking back to Fr Lengenecker's 2018 Lenten mission at our parish, where he gave very insightful remarks on Anglicanism that were actually just a brief digression in a much more extensive talk. One point that he made was that, given the wide spectrum of Anglican belief, after his years of experience in the denomination, if he listened to an Anglican for some minutes, he could discern roughly where the speaker stood in relation to the diagram above, but this would still be with only about 90% certainty. The odd thing for me is that, in my 30 years as an Episcopalian, nobody gave me anything like the explanation in the diagram above. In my confirmation class, there wasn't even mention of a high church-low church polarity -- it was just the XXXIX Articles were established so everyone could compromise, but they never even reviewed the Articles themselves, which are very Protestant. It didn't matter, because everyone compromised. It was only after I became Catholic ...