As anyone who’s extremely online knows, the most longstanding internet holiday tradition is web sites – in particular gaming magazines – posting annoying fake stories on April Fools’ Day.
But the second oldest internet holiday tradition is unqualified bloggers making baseless predictions about the year ahead at New Year’s. It makes for a fun parlor game in the comments and provides a ready source of material to compensate for the slowing of the news cycle during the great feasts.
Yesterday being the actual holiday, I’ve put off making a prediction post until the day after. It’s not like I missed much yesterday.
With the preamble out of the way, it’s time to dust off my trusty orb and get to pondering what’s in store for us in 2024.
Pope Francis’ Health Worsens
But to the frustration of MadTrads online, the Supreme Pontiff will hang on despite intensifying medical woes. Perceiving their window of opportunity closing, the subversive elements within the Church’s hierarchy will attempt to ram through a magisterial document that advances their agenda.
They will succeed – partly – in passing the kind of reversal the fake news media and Catholic Twitter thought Fiducia supplicans was. However, the dimming of their intellects due to sin will provide a resolution to the crisis. The turgid Church-Speak in which it will be written will make the document unintelligible, unenforceable, self-contradictory, or all three. These deficiencies will be compounded by the fact multiple older and higher magisterial decrees overrule it, making the new doc null and void.
Look for this doctrinal mess to pivot away from the gay stuff, which flopped last year, for yet another attempt to get a foot in the door on the women’s ordination front. As others have observed, no one has cared much about the womynpriest – AKA cosplaying witch – issue since the 70s. But with a dwindling yet still powerful contingent of the hierarchy still stuck in that decade, look for them to approve “deaconesses” or some such anachronism.
Folks like Bishop Barron and Jimmy Akin will clarify that the expanded liturgical role for women is a lay ministry separate from Holy Orders. They will be right, but high-profile sacramental abuses will happen anyway. Most bishops will just ignore the document’s guidelines, and life in most parishes will go on.
The Housing Crisis Gets Better
Before it gets worse.
Rents and home prices will finally trend downward in the first quarter of this year. Millennials who’ve been clawing to get into the housing market will get some relief. But heartless megacorps like Black Rock will take advantage of the better rates to swoop in and scoop up even more once-privately owned land.
Because in the words of Lex Luthor’s dad, “It’s the one thing they’re not making any more of.”
The GOP Keeps Control of Congress
Congress’ job approval ratings may be at historic lows, but if the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that public opinion doesn’t matter in a democracy.
After blowing what should have been a red wave election by their obstinate refusal to give their voters what they want, the GOP was left clinging to a congressional majority by its fingernails. Despite lurching from one politcal disgrace to another, Republicans will keep or increase their control of the legislature this November.
How? Simple math, for the most part. Constituents win reelection close to 90% of the time. This year, about twice as many Democrat lawmakers are retiring as Republicans. Many of those seats are expected to flip, which should drag the GOP across the goal line.
If you want to get even more cynical, those who follow the Global American Empire’s foreign meddling warn that the war machine has been put in standby mode till after the elections. Since the GOP’s main role in the two-faction ruling class is to be the War Party, expect them to consolidate their majority so they can bomb some goat country on behalf of the powers that be.
That’s about all I can stomach for now. Keep your eyes peeled over the course of the year to check my orb’s accuracy.
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“Perceiving their window of opportunity closing, the subversive elements within the Church’s hierarchy will attempt to ram through a magisterial document that advances their agenda.”
I suspect this has precedent: Traditionis Custodes, which was pushed through just after the Holy Father’s surgery in 2021 and bears the marks of a rushed document.
Good point.
I highly recommend reading the cover letter to Traditionis Custodes. Traditionis Custodis doesn’t make much sense without it. The cover letter in my mind really belonged as the introductory explanatory section of TC proper. I suspect Pope Francis has been struggling with getting good help.
Anyway, in my corner of the world, TC seems to be working as planned. That is, the largely below the mainstream media shut down of a liturgy that is much more a first world indulgence than about saving souls. Nothing happened immediately in my diocese after TC. Then quietly, during the normal summer re-assignments, some TLMs got shut down. We down to one now. I have heard of other shut downs, which sounds like in the same pattern.
I was on board with with a lot of traditionalist thinking until recently. My experience online (less so in person) matches the observations in the cover letter of TC. We’re really well overdue to get everyone in the Roman Rite in the same liturgical boat. The current Ordinary Mass really is better, in the way that cars with fuel injection are better than those with carburetors. That the mass of ordinary pewsitters and the implementation are/were less than perfect are to be expected.
Historically, uniformity of liturgy in the Western Church is more the exception than the rule—it’s the fruit of the Catholic Reformation, and even that admitted of numerous exceptions.
Unfortunately, inside of Western Catholicism people are using “Anything but the current Roman Missal” to a)rebel Vatican II/the papacy or b) indulge in some undercover Phariseeism regarding ordinary Catholic pewsitters all the way up to the Pope.
I have for real, seen a Catholic convert online claim that the Ordinariate was a preferred liturgy over an ordinary Ordinary Mass*, with the later(!) being decided Protestant. Yes, really. There is no amount of facepalms for the thinking. I think it’s safe to say that’s not what Pope Benedict intended when he authorized the Ordinariate for use in the Roman Rite.
Diversity in and of itself is not problem. There’s plenty spread across all the rites and even within a 30 minute drive of my house in the same rite. It becomes one when when people start with “I follow Paul” (1 Corinthians 3) sorts of thoughts, which I can find in spades online in traditionalist circles.
If people need to attend McMass in order to get rid of that sort of thinking, then that’s preferable. While neither online nor the extremes it attracts should be used for judging the situation as a whole, it does appear that there is enough to have been raised to an issue to that needs addressing. Again, in cover letter to TC, Pope Francis surveyed the bishops before issuing it. It’s not just a few online crazies problem.
*In fairness to him a reverent Ordinary Mass was “okay”
Concur that the Latin rite should get on the same page liturgically.
Setting up our annual game of Cheat The Prophet, eh?
Formally this time!
Happy New Year!
Might be off-topic, but wanted to ask:
When you suggest that aspiring writers read at least 100 books within their genre, does that count for the overall genre as a whole? Or does that only apply to their specific subgenre.
As an example, should a prospective space opera writer zero-in solely on other space opera stories or should he read science fiction in general?
First we have to define what we mean by “genre”. Some lit critics hold to strict definitions, but more and more these days, especially with the rise of Amazon, genre’s main use is as a sales category.
That’s one reason why I advise prospective writers to read 100 books in *and out of* their genre. After all, the pro authors whose tricks you want to learn know no genre boundaries.
And before I forget, Happy New Year!
May we be ready to make the best out of this year, regardless of how quiet or eventful it will be.
Ugh. I am rooting for a big housing crash, 2008-style or better. But I am deeply afraid you might be right about the big corps continuing to swell themselves like giant ticks on the blood of the working classes, while the suckers who’ve been hanging out at real-estate investing seminars get left holding the bag. No sign yet of rents coming down in the local market.
There’s a “stop predatory investing act” bumbling around congress the last I heard, that seeks to take away the tax immunity on mortgages, for anyone who owns 50 or more rental homes. It’s a step in the right direction, but I think it has no chance of passing, and like many things that seem nice on first blush… if I’m not mistaken it will only hurt the smaller parasites, because the Blackrocks and vanguards aren’t using mortgages to hoover up real estate. Perhaps I’m wrong? How *do* they finance their piracy?
Last night I got around to watching The Big Short. Fruit fly editing, childish condescension, and blatant blame-shifting (onto the Chinese? Really?) aside, it made two solid points.
1) Our elites run the economy and politics like a con game with a combination of stupidity and malice.
2) They always pull out all the stops to outrun reality – and they’re powerful and ruthless enough to make it work. For a while. But reality always catches up.