In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Intrigued by the news of a "trraditionalist" Methodist denominaion breaking away from the UMC, I couldn't help but revisit the experience Anglicans had with the Anglican Church in America, which initially endorsed the terms of Anglicanorum coetibus but in practice actively discouraged parishes that wanted to enter the Catholic Church, and in at least one case, it sued to prevent the exit. What puzzled me was why anyone would accept the promises of an in-group in charge that those who wished to leave the denomination would be given safe passage under some sort of plan yet to be finalized or approved. I'm especially puzzled given the apparent timeline of Methodist events: in 2019, the UMC appears to have followed established canons whereby its overall governing body voted to retain its traditional definitions of marriage and sexuality. But by 2020, a body, or group of bodies, not constituting the governing body, somehow determined that this was unsatisfactory, and a ...

Over the past several weeks I've run into occasional references to something called the Global Methodist Church, which Christianity Today recently explained is the object of a proposal now scheduled to be taken up by the United Methodist Church's General Conference in 2022, Delegates are expected to take up a proposal to split the denomination called the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation. The proposal, negotiated by 16 United Methodist bishops and advocacy group leaders from across theological divides, would create a new conservative “traditionalist” Methodist denomination—that’s the Global Methodist Church—that would receive $25 million over the next four years. Individual churches and annual conferences could choose to join the new entity; otherwise, they’ll remain in the existing denomination by default. As might be expected, the potential split reflects differences over marriage and sexuality. The Britannica site says : In 2019, at a special s...

The late-night comedian Bill Maher the other day made one of his routine critiques of politicall;y-correct society : On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher lamented that “woke kids on campus decided to be all the worst parts of a Southern Baptist,” and the left has become “the party of speech codes and blacklists and moral panics and demanding some TV show had to go.” . . . After listing some examples of people on the right being more permissive on sex and drugs, and other examples of the right being morally strict, Maher stated, “We need to restore the natural order of things. I don’t want to live in a world where liberals are the uptight ones and conservatives do drugs and get laid. Once upon a time, the right were the ones offended by everything. They were the party of speech codes and blacklists and moral panics and demanding some TV show had to go. Well, now that’s us. I don't normally follow Maher, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. It turns out th...

California is currently thouight to be the most-improved US state for COVID, having reversed the late 2020 surge soon after the new year, with no new third surge as happened in the US northeast and Canada. But since Los Angeles County accounts for a quarter of the state's population, much of this success is attributable to LA County's performance. Although Los Angeles and San Francisco Counties are both in the least restrictive "yellow" tier, San Francisco's population is less than a million, while LA County's is over ten million. The chart above shows cumulative totals for LA County cases and deaths, as well as case mortality rate, since the start of the pandemic. While the numbers, being cumulative, don't go down, they do show how the spread of the disease has been mitigated. More important, the dark curve at the bottom of the graph, reflecting cumulative deaths, shows a much more gradual curve than the light pattern at the top, which is cases. The ov...

As of this past week, both Los Angeles and San Francisco Counties fell into the state's least restrictive "yellow" tier of COVID restrictrions. The counties currently in "yellow" are otherwise sparsely populated and rural, but LA County alone, with over 10 millon people, accounts for about 25% of the state's population. As I've noted, other counties are likely to follow LA into the "yellow" tier within weeks. I have lots of questions. The first is that LA County's aggressive vaccination program has led the state, putting a quarter of California's population in the least restrictive tier. But it's done this with about 40% of the county's population "fully vaccinated" , two weeks after their final dose. It would seem that LA County, one of the hardest-hit areas of the state, is approaching herd immunity. But received opinion, as in the New York Times , is dismissing such ideas: “People were getting confused a...

The other day, Washington, DC Mayor Bowser imposed a new control as part of her "reopening" protocols: no dancing at weddings. Two things immediately struck me. First, her poorest constituents, those who keep her in office, tend not to have weddings at all. Second, those who most notably do dance at weddings are the Jews. Thus do decrees cut across the social order. We actually know next to nothing about how COVID is transmitted, and banning dancing may have no effect. There must now be plenty of Jewish weddings in Texas and Florida, and I read of no new outbreaks there. But this actually illustrates another of the points Edward Feser makes in the essay I linked Wednesday : Gnostic moral practice veers between the extremes of puritanism and libertinism. Initially this might seem puzzling, but it makes perfect sense given the Gnostic’s other commitments. On the one hand, given the Gnostic hatred of the created order and of conventional moral and social life, what th...

It should be no surprise to regular visitors that I'm on several of Bp Barron's e-mail lists. Last week I received this announcement from his Word on Fire Institute: Meet the new Venerable Fulton J. Sheen Fellow of Popular Culture at the Word on Fire Institute Oxford and Yale Educated Former Episcopal Priest Andrew Petiprin Contemplates Catholicism and Popular Culture for the Word on Fire Institute Petiprin, the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen Fellow of Popular Culture, analyzes media through the lenses of philosophy and theology [Irving, TX] – The Word on Fire Institute, the arm of Bishop Robert Barron’s apostolate focused on educational and evangelistic formation, is pleased to highlight the work and accomplishments of its Fellows. Each Fellow brings unique gifts and a track record of noteworthy service in the fields of theology, apologetics, cultural renewal, and more. Andrew Petiprin’s work is shaped by his pastoral heart and his admiration for great art as found i...