The western world, the United States included, is about as secular, agnostic, and atheist as when Christianity was spreading across Europe. It has been over a millennia since society at large did not share a Judeo-Christian moral foundation, including a general belief that death was not the final word. Now? Now it is fairly common for people who self proclaim as rational to declare they know oblivion is the only rational reality after death, never mind they can't explain the reasoning behind such a conclusion other than not believing in “fairy tails.” Nor can they name a “first cause” prior to the Big Bang, to explain the existence of the mega-dense matter of all the universe that ... goes bang. But they declare two certainties as rational: there can be no God, and death is the end. How terrifying, death without faith!

Many countries, the United States included, have culturally turned away from multi-generational living. COVID-19 is exposing some of the weak spots in this change. Among the weak spots is young families with rent/mortgages who just lost their jobs and have no family nearby. Chances are, we will emerge from this with more young families living with their parents or aunts and uncles. Elderly parents/grandparents often live in a retirement community of some sort. COVID-19 prompts separation and two-weeks quarantine if one leaves. This can leave a grandparent suddenly alone if their spouse needs medical attention, regardless of if it is coronavirus related or not, and hard choices regarding to stay on their own, or stay with family for the duration.

Families together in a whole new way may revel understandings taught your children that are counter to our Catholic faith.

Think about the hours of exposure your kids have to moral and formative teaching from others outside the Catholic Church. Public school system? 8 hours a day. Shows and movies and social media and video games and books? 4-8 hours a day by some measures. How many hours do you talk with them about faith and morals in a given day? A given week?

Now, all of a sudden, families are thrown together close to full time, and conversations about when life begins, how many genders there are, climate change, just be you, and you can be anything may collide with a new awareness in parent's minds that what their kids understand is different than Truth. It may be time to step up as your children's primary educators.

Various and sundry dry good thoughts that may just be me.

• “Unprecedented” is being used at globally unprecedented levels.
• Being so unprecedented means no one knows much of anything, because, how could they. This virus is unprecedented. This near simultaneous global shut down is unprecedented.

Every ad agency in the world knows if you want to sell, a woman’s sillouette ends all thoughts and demands the attention of whomever sees it. Why? Men are hardwired to notice a woman’s silhouette and doing so immediately triggers a number of arousal mechanisms in brain and body chemestry. Women are hardwired to compare themselves with the competition with various and immediate changes of they clay for them as well. If you want your (car, cigar, bar, jeans, soda, straws, cows, etc.) noticed clad it with a woman’s silhouette. But don’t just take my word for it, Saints and Science say the same thing.

(This is a letter I sent our Bishop on the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 25th, 2018)

I am the lowly servant of the Lord, appointed by my bishop to the blessed ministry of praying for our Church, a calling given each of us in our own way. This is a time of painful clarity and a call for examination of conscience and penance. Like St. Peter, the waves of fear swallow us and bash our most holy Church. I see my own failings as shepherd. Though we may not have individually committed them, we each bear responsibility for the sins that occur in the body of Christ. There is deep sin from within the body of Christ. Our corporate betrayal of the Good Shepherd cries to heaven condemning our sinful abuse of earthly power and falling for pride, sloth, and cowardice instead of wielding God’s loving authority with those entrusted to us.