Do Tell: What James Martin And Other Gamblers Think

Players around a poker table try their best to conceal their tells, those subtle ticks that reveal to others what kind of hand they possess. The astute person is able to figure out their opponents' tells while concealing his own.

A tell in poker is a change in a player's behavior or demeanor that is claimed by some to give clues to that player's assessment of their hand. A player gains an advantage if they observe and understand the meaning of another player's tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable. - WP

Life Around The Synod Card Tables

For the record: this blogger does not hold that every Synod attendee marches to the beat of an ignominious drummer.

Father James Martin showed his hand this past week when he expressed his disappointment that the alphabet soup he so wants the Church to adopt was not included in the published Synod documents. To have included the maimed rainbow acronym would have been to jam ideology into the vocabulary of the Church, which would then allow conversations to take place which, to the minds of the usurpers, justifies approval of fantasy, of disordered inclinations and of self worship. Which is to say, the thinking goes, "If we can get them to use our vocabulary, we can get them to adopt our way of thinking!" Universities fell for revisionist language some decades ago, and now administrations and faculty are pulled at and pushed around by anyone with an irrational axe to grind.

Words are powerful. Indeed, he or she who owns the sentence owns the narrative these days, or so it seems. We live in an era when language terrorists, like gunslingers of the ol' West, win by being faster on the draw. Said contemptibles have inflicted incalculable damage on others by badgering their audiences and shaming others into believing that their opponents are the threat and must be silenced by any means necessary.

We must remain vigilant, but avoid becoming vigilantes like those who police words but take no account of intentions nor reason.

The James Martins of the world are clever enough, but they misuse their brains by pushing at the Church to adopt false narratives. They are cut from the same cloth as Arius, Photius and Luther. They - clan Martin, that is - assume they can make a better world by softening the edges, by removing anything that threatens to expose man's disordered inclinations and that upsets them, that makes them feel "unsafe". We cannot make the world a safe place, a paradise. However, like Saint (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta, we can bring the love of Christ to each person through our loving kindness and willingness to walk with each soul the path to repentance and redemption.

Of course, any kind of synod - true or false - is never a game. Yet, there are always those who try to make a game of things. The conniving types who grease conversations with half-truths in an attempt to slip in dark hues of heterodoxy - in former times Hans Kung, Matthew Fox, Leonardo Boff, John Dominic Crossan, et al. - are adept at enticing others into their deceptions, into their disordered meanderings that have little intellectual merit and certainly contain a bag full of malice toward Christ and His Church. Those who strive to "free" the Church from the tyranny of Jesus' commandments have been trained at the feet of the devil. Only the minions of a fallen angel could learn from such an entity to present darkness as light.