Saturday Morning Musings: The Francis Effect ON US Trads...Whiskey...Blue Hole Spring Daytrip.

It's starting to get HOT here in the Sooner State, which calls for a day trip today to COOL off, at what I consider an almost unknown verifiable Oasis tucked away in the foothills of Eastern Oklahoma.  More on that later.


The Francis Effect ON US Trads:

What an interesting week.  Canon 212 has been extra saturated this week with its lately Top-Heavy headlines about the evil "PervFrancisChurch" enough to make many of us reach for the whiskey bottle, perhaps one too many times.  

But C212 is the default primary Trad News Source right now, which accompanies my morning constitutional, so we lovers of peace and sanity have to skim through the swamp of toxic headlines from the world to find something more sustaining, fruitful, edifying, and truly newsworthy.  That is according to a few commentators here.  Yet there is much that is offered daily on its pages of high caliber.

If you're reading this Frank, I hope you'll not take personal offense to my yes frank critique this week of the most current tone of your site.  On behalf of daily readers like myself, who rely on 
your tireless, thankless, behind-the-scenes daily work of, who knows how, sifting through who knows how many hundreds of daily news sources and commentary...THANK YOU.  I should buy you a steak dinner one day.....

So you're saying Okie the Trad Blogosphere isn't Real?? 

Huh...

But as I sit here after an eggs and bacon breakfast (thx wife) I ponder the underlying frustration that fueled the online backlash to my singular blog post the other day, as in Frank's polemical re-writing of the topic of my post which he posted smack dab at the top of his website (thanks for that), his v-blog comments later, and a few defensive trad bloggers reflexively questioning my...let us put it in PG language..manhood and state of my soul.  

What's the deal, Okie Trad?

He thinks Frank you should stop the anger about Pope Francis, it seems.

Oh no guys.  My blood sugar is just low.
But seriously...

I Like You Pooh Bear...I mean
Okie Traditionalist!

From personal experience in those said trad parishes and chapels, verified by many equal observations from fellow trads online, the Francis Effect on us trads needs to be addressed.   

The infighting, intra-trad fueds, needless divisions, obsessions with ideological differences on open questions, the growing bitter zeal and untempered snark, the ruin of friendships and collaborations (for example, for years weekly headlines at C212 and at 1P5 demonstrated a clear Walker-Skojec alliance;  now turned on its head with ongoing sarcastic headlines) among fellow traditional Catholics, who are truth be told in the trenches together, is a serious scandal to all who encounter it. 

The First Rule of Trad Fight Club:

Win the Argument at All Costs

On one hand, the Francis Effect has fortunately caused a certain paradigm shift in the Church for those Catholics who already have been espousing orthodoxy and pious practice, where conservatives are shifting to the right towards Catholic Tradition, the Traditional Mass, with growing numbers of motu proprio Masses, and trad parishioners and apostolates.



On the other hand, the very same Francis Effect has unfortunately caused a new phase or form of fomenting division among trads, brawling online and in the flesh over whether or not Francis is the pope, or Benedict XVI still is, or taking iron-fisted sides about online feuds between say Church Militant and Michael Voris VS. The Remnant and Michael Matt, or Frank Walker vs. Steve Skojec.

Ideologies giving rise to sub-ideologies giving rise to individualized micro-ideologies, made into quasi-dogmatic schisms between traditional Catholics themselves. It must be giving our traditional pastors grief how to manage the scandal.

In my opinion...



Whiskey:

Combined with soda water, or not, it makes for an excellent tonic in many cultures.  I love it, truth be told.  Our budget doesn't allow weekly purchases of Jack Daniels, which is oh so smooth, but it does of a fair substitute of Jim Beam.  One of my just-got-off-from work Friday night purchases for the weekend.

Which calls to mind a post I'm proud of wherein I argued trads--me included--need to drink more alcohol!   LINK   Proves I am snarky too on occasion.  All things in moderation, and all that.

Our sphincter muscles are constricted, serotonin levels out of wack, cortex's shocked by endless traumatic events from both secularist society and the apostate New Church.  We've been demoralized, humiliated, gas-lighted, banished to the "peripheries" where Francis the Merciful himself avoids, and even worse:  mentally and spiritually raped, murdered, cannibalized, cremated and set to be erased entirely from creation.

So yeah something has to give.  We have to laugh at ourselves, be open to above the belt criticisms of each other, commit to civil debate about the multitude of issues--including the problem of a heretical pope destroying the Church--and yes drink more spirits.


Blue Hole Spring:

In a few moments I'll upload this Saturday morning reflection, for what its worth to you--and start loading the trunk.  Soon I'll be bbqing brats and jalapeno poppers, while sitting under a day tent, feet from Blue Hole Spring near Locust Grove.  A beautiful, peaceful, blue body of water, fed by a spring, 55 degrees F (brrr), on private land, with picnic spots.  Will swim, fly-fish, hike, eat, drink, converse, and check comments here!  I highly recommend my fellow Okies checking it out.

Love this Video

And Wanda the owner--at end of video

Blue Hole Spring

Near Locust Grove, OK

Happy Weekend Fellow Okie Trads and Beyond!