Inane Ramblings - Tea Time in Excelsis

On being terminally online

It has been 5 days since I got back on social media and I can already see that I was better off when I had them uninstalled and blocked.

Catching up on current affairs and seeing all the horrible developments in the world got me emotionally invested, and I was starting to engage in public discussion of these issues once again. I was writing a rant on Instagram until I started questioning why I was even doing this. Life went on as usual when I had no knowledge of any of these developments and just focused on work and the people around me.

Throughout my schooling years, I was encouraged to read up on global affairs as much as possible. The idea of being a global citizen, informed and engaged in the affairs of the wider world was drilled in me by the Singaporean education system. But is the human brain designed to consume this much information and commit to matters of such a wide scale on a daily basis? For most of history, the average person only had to think about his family and his immediate community. But now we are expected to invest our commitments to abstract causes in relations matters happening far away, with new information constantly being fed to us at such a rapid pace.

Maybe the world has gone insane because all this rapid access to information and artificial online communities are driving us all mad.

Is it a good thing for me to be informed of these things? On one hand, it is not good to bury one’s head in the sand, retreating to a delusional cope like the trads who idolise the medieval peasant oblivious to the daily scandals of the papacy in his day. If every decent person refused to concern themselves with wider affairs and not involve themselves in public discourse of any kind, obviously you will see that the malicious ones will take power, like we see the woke having seized control of key institutions like academia because the right spurned and retreated from them. On the other, one can be so consumed by them that they end up like the schizo orthobro on twitter prattling about how the Filioque is the root cause of the debauchery of the West.

I think, once again, the doctrine of vocation has a lot to do with the answer to this question.

Why Protestant converts to Traditional Catholicism are LARPers

Protestants who swim the tiber and adopt a Traditionalist form of Catholicism are inconsistent and worse off than when they embraced sola scriptura, especially when they actively rebel against Rome by disregarding all its current developments. If you truly were convinced of the need for a living Magisterium, you would readily submit to it and be content with your local Novus Ordo priest, abolishment of the death penalty, and theistic evolution, not cope by saying you’re only going to submit to what the Church has definitively taught.

Vatican II literally teaches in Lumen Gentium that all Catholics are bound not only to definitive and infallible teachings, but they owe the Pope’s non-infallible statements a religious assent of mind and will. You’re no better than a Protestant if you’re going to larp in a TLM or cry about modernism or whatever. Submit to Rome means Submit to Rome, not cherry pick non dogmatic teachings you agree with.

“Among the principal duties of bishops the preaching of the Gospel occupies an eminent place.(39*) For bishops are preachers of the faith, who lead new disciples to Christ, and they are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice, and by the light of the Holy Spirit illustrate that faith. They bring forth from the treasury of Revelation new things and old,(164) making it bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors that threaten their flock.(165) Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.”
Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium #25

This is why I don’t see Protestant converts to
a traditional form of Roman Catholicism any more than larpers.

You will embrace the liturgical reforms of Vatican II
You will go to papal clown mass
You will work for the abolishment of the death penalty worldwide
And you will be happy.

A Christian take on Spy x Family

Spy x Family has resumed airing, and I’m enjoying the visuals for the opening and ending. I think what makes Spy x Family so widely loved is because of its central theme on family. Most anime these days explore the themes of romance and friendship, but not so much on the family, at least in the sense of the household.

If you follow the historic lectionary, this week’s epistle reading mentions that all families are derived from the fatherhood of God:

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
Ephesians 3:14‭-‬15

The world we live in today props itself up against the family, emphasising the identity of the individual over that of the household. Single parents, divorces, cohabitation, and the ridiculous notion of “furbaby families” are celebrated and normalised. The prevailing message is that families are a nuisance; children hold down career progression, living with your parents is a bad thing as opposed to moving out and living on your own, etc. Many seethe at the Christian notion that the noblest thing we can achieve in this life is to find a spouse, start a family, be fruitful and multiply.

However, the wide appeal of Spy x Family shows that deep down, everyone knows that the household is a good thing. Beneath the facade of the strong independent woman, or the austere MGTOW hedonist, lies the innate desire to participate in this structure that God has built into the world.

The family is the building block of civilisation, managed by the father, or patriarch. As it grows, it builds societies, and develops cultures. As more and more households multiply, the role of the patriarch who keeps them together extends into government. It’s how kings came to be.

The faith is kept and lived through the family. Before the Scriptures were written, the faith was taught and passed down by oral tradition through the Patriarchs, who served as bishops to their descendants. The Church today is also called the household of God, of which we are born into by Baptism.

This show can be a great meditation on the Fourth Commandment, and a reminder of how all authority comes from God, which starts from the family.

Why it is generally a bad idea to be friends with the opposite sex

“Wow who hurt you incel?”

In today’s world, the practice of establishing cross-sex friendships is almost a given, that anyone who questions the practice is almost immediately dismissed as someone projecting his lack of social interaction in real life. However, I do think that there are legitimate reasons against this, which we would be exploring in this blog post.

Idol Worship: The religious character of simping

If you have not been involved in internet culture for the past few years, the notion of giving money to a person streaming behind a computer just to get their attention would be utterly foreign to you. Who would pay for such a thing? Yet this phenomenon has become a large part of the internet for awhile now. While we live in a world that is becoming increasingly irreligious, it is not as if anyone has progressed beyond their natural tendency to worship things. They simply take on a different form instead of your conventional gods.