Politics of yesteryear: “[Dividing the] national [map]” (left, 1860), “The abolition catastrophe….” (right, 1964).
A little over a week from now, November 5, I plan on going to Sauk Centre’s polling place. Then I’ll vote.
I’m not looking forward to that. But I’ll vote anyway.
That’s because I’m an American. Voting is part of being a responsible citizen.
Since I’m also a Catholic, voting responsibly involves comparing how we should behave to what the candidates have been saying and — perhaps more to the point — doing.
If one of the candidates struck me as an obviously-good choice, then I would cast my vote for that one: and maybe say that you should, too.
But I’m stuck with the reality we’re experiencing. So instead, I’ll —
Share links to resources that discuss the ‘should behave’ aspects of public life
Mention why I think voting makes sense
Look forward to not seeing election angst in my news feed
First off, two links: (1) to a booklet in PDF format, a bit over 50 pages; and (2) to a page recommending that we talk and act as if our neighbors matter, with links to resources that might help.
“Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship ” A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
“…Election seasons, therefore, should contain a sense of gratitude and hope. Our love for this country, our patriotism, properly impels us to vote.
“But increasingly, it seems, election seasons are a time of anxiety and spiritual trial. Political rhetoric is increasingly angry, seeking to motivate primarily through division and hatred. Fear can be an effective tool for raising money. The most heated arguments online often get the most clicks. Demonizing the other can win votes.
“We propose once more the moral framework of ‘Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship’ precisely as pastors, inspired by the Good Samaritan, with the hope of binding these wounds and healing these bitter divisions. This document is not based on personalities or partisanship, the latest news cycle, or what’s trending on social media. Instead, it reflects the perennial role of the Church in public life in proclaiming timeless principles: the infinite worth and dignity of every human life, the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity. Not sure what these mean? We invite you to read a copy of ‘Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship’ and learn more….”
The USCCB has a page on their website with the same title, and a link to the booklet, along with other resources:
“As a complement to Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the bishops also approved six new bulletin inserts (en Español) to help the Catholic faithful put their faith into action.
A hot button issue: “The abolition catastrophe. Or the November smash-up”. (1864)
It’s been 16 decades since decent Americans told Abraham Lincoln that his remarks about slavery were political liabilities.
They were, arguably, right. But so was he.
Slavery is a bad idea and we shouldn’t do it. People aren’t property. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2414)
Lincoln was re-elected, despite his divisive rhetoric. Slavery, as it existed before 1863, is no longer part of our culture.
But America still isn’t a perfectly perfect country.
On the ‘up’ side, I haven’t run across activists demanding reparations for families victimized by the Confiscation Act of 1862 and the Thirteenth Amendment. Or a candidate promising that, if elected, he or she will revoke the Emancipation Proclamation.1
That sort of thing lets me hope that 16 decades from now, most Americans will think that human beings are people. Even human beings who are too young, too sick, or too old, to defend themselves.
We do learn. Slowly, sometimes, but we do learn.
Obligations
On the whole, I like being an American. That’s partly because I think my country is a very great deal more than our politicians and bureaucrats.
I’m also a Catholic. I take my faith seriously, so how I see the world, and what I think is important, isn’t entirely determined by my native culture’s mores.
I’m also obliged to do what’s possible in public life. That includes recognizing humanity’s solidarity and respecting authority. Within reason. (Catechism, 1778, 1915, 1897-1917, 1939-1942, 2199, 2238-2243)
Loving my country is another obligation. Again, within reason. Letting love of country slop over into worship of country is a bad idea. A very bad idea. (Catechism, 2112-2114, 2199, 2239)
Loving my country doesn’t take much effort. Usually. I don’t even mind voting. I think it’s a pretty good way of getting citizen feedback.
But I do not think our system is the only ‘correct’ form of government. Different cultures and eras have different needs and preferences. That’s okay. Provided that the system follows natural law: ethical principles that apply to every time and place. (Catechism, 1915, 1957-1958)
Prayer and Perspective
Again, I think voting makes sense.
For one thing, it’s a fairly effective mechanism for getting citizen feedback.
For another, it encourages those in authority to keep folks like me in mind while they do their jobs.
And since I can vote, as a Catholic I’m obliged to provide feedback that may help the common good.
One more thing.
There’s a prayer in my daily routine — it’s in last week’s post2 — that mentions “…this most critical time…”.
Maybe whoever wrote the prayer meant “most” as a synonym for “very”. But I kept perceiving “most” as “surpassing all others” or “supreme”. So when it’s just me doing that prayer, I say “…this critical time…”.
I know there have been other “critical” times in my country’s history, and figure there will be more in our future. I’m not entirely convinced that today’s mess is the worst we’ve experienced to date. And I sure don’t know what will be happening next.
Maybe I’m being overly-cautious. And that’s another topic.
At any rate, I’ve shared what I believe, and why it matters, before:
So is what my Google News feed puts in my “Picks for you” section.
This morning (Thursday, October 24, 2024), I noticed an AP headline about Pope Francis denouncing something: “Pope Francis denounces a world ‘losing its heart’ in 4th encyclical of his papacy”.
I could have checked out what AP says the pope said, but long experience tells me that I’ll learn more about what a pope — or anyone else — said by reading or hearing what they actually said.
So I went to the Vatican website, and took a look at this new encyclical:
And, good news for me, Vatican.va has “Dilexit nos” in my native language, English.
The encyclical — no surprises here — uses scholarly language. It’s also, for my taste, on the long side. A quick check told me that it runs upwards of 27,400 words. Here’s a sample:
“Dilexit nos” [“He loved us”] Pope Francis (October 24, 2024)
“…WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘THE HEART’?
“3. In classical Greek, the word kardía denotes the inmost part of human beings, animals and plants. For Homer, it indicates not only the centre of the body, but also the human soul and spirit. In the Iliad, thoughts and feelings proceed from the heart and are closely bound one to another. [2] The heart appears as the locus of desire and the place where important decisions take shape. [3] In Plato, the heart serves, as it were, to unite the rational and instinctive aspects of the person, since the impulses of both the higher faculties and the passions were thought to pass through the veins that converge in the heart. [4] From ancient times, then, there has been an appreciation of the fact that human beings are not simply a sum of different skills, but a unity of body and soul with a coordinating centre that provides a backdrop of meaning and direction to all that a person experiences.
“4. The Bible tells us that, ‘the Word of God is living and active… it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart’ (Heb 4:12). In this way, it speaks to us of the heart as a core that lies hidden beneath all outward appearances, even beneath the superficial thoughts that can lead us astray. The disciples of Emmaus, on their mysterious journey in the company of the risen Christ, experienced a moment of anguish, confusion, despair and disappointment. Yet, beyond and in spite of this, something was happening deep within them: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?’ (Lk 24:32).
“5. The heart is also the locus of sincerity, where deceit and disguise have no place. It usually indicates our true intentions, what we really think, believe and desire, the ‘secrets’ that we tell no one: in a word, the naked truth about ourselves. It is the part of us that is neither appearance or illusion, but is instead authentic, real, entirely ‘who we are’. That is why Samson, who kept from Delilah the secret of his strength, was asked by her, ‘How can you say, “I love you”, when your heart is not with me?’ (Judg 16:15). Only when Samson opened his heart to her, did she realize ‘that he had told her his whole secret’ (Judg 16:18).
“6. This interior reality of each person is frequently concealed behind a great deal of ‘foliage’, which makes it difficult for us not only to understand ourselves, but even more to know others: ‘The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse, who can understand it?’ (Jer 17:9). We can understand, then, the advice of the Book of Proverbs: ‘Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life; put away from you crooked speech’ (4:23-24). Mere appearances, dishonesty and deception harm and pervert the heart. Despite our every attempt to appear as something we are not, our heart is the ultimate judge, not of what we show or hide from others, but of who we truly are. It is the basis for any sound life project; nothing worthwhile can be undertaken apart from the heart. False appearances and untruths ultimately leave us empty-handed.
“7. As an illustration of this, I would repeat a story I have already told on another occasion. ‘For the carnival, when we were children, my grandmother would make a pastry using a very thin batter. When she dropped the strips of batter into the oil, they would expand, but then, when we bit into them, they were empty inside. In the dialect we spoke, those cookies were called “lies”… My grandmother explained why: “Like lies, they look big, but are empty inside; they are false, unreal”‘. [5]
“8. Instead of running after superficial satisfactions and playing a role for the benefit of others, we would do better to think about the really important questions in life. Who am I, really? What am I looking for? What direction do I want to give to my life, my decisions and my actions? Why and for what purpose am I in this world? How do I want to look back on my life once it ends? What meaning do I want to give to all my experiences? Who do I want to be for others? Who am I for God? All these questions lead us back to the heart….”
I’m planning on reading the whole thing. Later.
Today, I just skipped down to the last few paragraphs:
“Dilexit nos” [“He loved us”] Pope Francis (October 24, 2024)
“…218. In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money. We are constantly being pushed to keep buying, consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs. The love of Christ has no place in this perverse mechanism, yet only that love can set us free from a mad pursuit that no longer has room for a gratuitous love. Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost.
“219. The Church also needs that love, lest the love of Christ be replaced with outdated structures and concerns, excessive attachment to our own ideas and opinions, and fanaticism in any number of forms, which end up taking the place of the gratuitous love of God that liberates, enlivens, brings joy to the heart and builds communities. The wounded side of Christ continues to pour forth that stream which is never exhausted, never passes away, but offers itself time and time again to all those who wish to love as he did. For his love alone can bring about a new humanity.
“220. I ask our Lord Jesus Christ to grant that his Sacred Heart may continue to pour forth the streams of living water that can heal the hurt we have caused, strengthen our ability to love and serve others, and inspire us to journey together towards a just, solidary and fraternal world. Until that day when we will rejoice in celebrating together the banquet of the heavenly kingdom in the presence of the risen Lord, who harmonizes all our differences in the light that radiates perpetually from his open heart. May he be blessed forever.”
Based on that very quick and superficial glance, I’ll guess that at least part of what Pope Francis is saying is that my heart — who I am, really, down past the “foliage” — matters: and that the latest software, movies, and slogans — aren’t nearly as important.
And, since the universe isn’t all about me, I figure that this is true for everyone else, too.
But like I said, I haven’t read the whole thing, much less studied it. I probably will, since my very quick and superficial glance was just that.
Although previous experience strongly suggests that I won’t find much more than a topical focus on what the Church has been saying for the last two millennia. Which I boil down to ‘I should love God, love my neighbor, and see everyone as my neighbor’.
I’ve talked about what the pope says, what I read in the news, and making sense, before:
A man asked Jesus “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” in last Sunday’s Gospel reading. That’s what Fr. Greg talked about — our Lord’s answer is simple, by the way, and can be boiled down to ‘be prudent’.
There’s an election looming in our country, so Fr. Greg also talked about acting as if love matters, and making prudent choices. Then he shared a prayer that I’ve had in my daily routine for a while. But (more than) enough about me. Here’s what Fr. Greg said:
Well, he answers by saying he keeps all the commandments. That’s good.
And then Jesus — okay: ‘just one more thing. Go sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow me’.
Sounds like three things to me, but Jesus says ‘one more thing’.
Definitions and Choosing Wisely
I think we could in essence boil it down to this: be prudent.
To inherit eternal life, be prudent.
So one of the definitions of prudence by St. Thomas Aquinas is this: ‘love chooses wisely, love that chooses wisely’: that’s prudence.1
So if love chooses wisely, guess what: you’re going to honor your father and mother; oh, you’re not going to kill, you’re not going to commit adultery, you’re not going to steal, you’re not going to do all these things.
Love chooses wisely, and our first reading, from the Book of Wisdom, tells us, ‘I prayed, and prudence was given to me’. ‘I prayed, and prudence was given to me’.2
He who is the source of love — is so eager to answer our prayers. So eager to inspire us to choose wisely: that’s our God, a God who loves us and helps us to love as well.
Love, Choices, and Wisdom
Our second reading, at the end, reminds us that we have to make an account for everything at the end of our life — to Jesus, who is our judge, at the end of our life — and how is he going to judge us?
Lord, send our spirit of prudence, a double portion of prudence, to us: in our family lives, in our personal lives; and in the life of this election, huh? Oh, my gosh. Our world could use more prayer, our nation.
So, I have a prayer for our country.4 Right here, it’s got the Blessed Virgin on the front. There are some in the back. You’re welcome to take one on your way out if you like. I’ll do this at the end of my homily.
I’ve been just thinking about some of the topics, some of the things that are going on in our election. I’ll address a few this week and probably a few next week.
Just some of those issues.
Judges, the Constitution, and Freedom
The first one I want to start with, though, is Supreme Court justices. Right?
Boy, if we want anybody to be prudent, wouldn’t it be a judge? And a judge who judges over large things, like our nation?
And so, a Supreme Court justice, that’s one of the jobs of the president, is to recommend Supreme Court justices.
So we pray for the president to be prudent in choosing, and we also pray for those judges to be prudent. And if they’re really doing their job, it’s really not about being conservative or liberal. That’s not the job of a judge.
The job of a judge is to interpret the Constitution: that’s their job; to intercept the Constitutions, and to interpret it as much like the original writers meant it. That makes a good judge.
So when you go to the election poll, think about who you want selecting the judges. Okay? Think about that.
One of the things that they end up judging a lot on are things like our First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of religion.5 We might extend that a little bit to freedom of conscience. Right?
I was just thinking of just a couple things in the past the Supreme Court had to make some decisions on: and depending on who’s on the court could go different directions, right?
So it depends on how they interpret the Constitution.
A Wedding Cake
One was the wedding cake company. If you remember that?
And they were being asked by two people, I don’t remember if it was two men or two women, I don’t remember, but they were asking for a wedding cake with the two men or two women on the top.
And the wedding cake company says: you know, we’re happy to make cakes and stuff, but we’re not going to put that on the top. We don’t do that.
And they went, had a case against them, they said they were being discriminatory, blah-blah-blah.6 I don’t even remember how the case turned out, to be honest.
But those are the kinds of things.
Were they able to practice their conscience as business owners, even while letting somebody else practice their conscience in who and how they get married?
Man, do we through (!) that stuff. We gotta have some wisdom, right?
And wouldn’t you want people to choose wisely, with love.
Artificial Contraception
And one of the other things was: remember the religious sisters, they were being pressed by the government of all places (!), that they have to provide contraception to their workers in their insurance packages. Right? It had to be one of the things.
And the government was imposing that on the sisters, and obviously, religious sisters — wherever you stand is one thing — but where the religious sisters were standing, their conscience was being pummeled by the government.
And so the Supreme Court justices, they made a decision on that as well: like, let it go government, they’re sisters. Okay. Get over it. That’s my language, I don’t remember all the details.7
So, we want people in the court who will judge wisely, with love, on those kinds of things.
Second Amendment and the Right to Defend Myself
And I was thinking, you know, there’s an awful lot of controversy over guns. Right? And wherever you sit and stand on guns, that’s its own thing, but sometimes they have to decide if the Constitution is being interpreted rightly.
And I don’t remember this last case, somebody said it was a win for the NRA, I don’t even know what the case was. But that’s the Second Amendment. The right to bear arms.
When I hear ‘the right to bear arms’, what I hear is ‘the right to defend myself’.
It’s not the right to go out and shoot whoever or whatever I want, it’s the right to defend myself when my life, or my family, or my property, is being threatened. Do I have the right to defend myself? That’s what I hear.8
But again, things like that go to the Supreme Court.
Abortion
And then of course we can always talk about abortion. Right?
And I think the Supreme Court got it right. I really do.
So, the Catholic Church would say that the right of life is the most fundamental right of all.
I have this brochure here from the — all of the United States bishops, the USCCB, the United States Bishops — put together a short, little pamphlet on — what’s the name of it? “The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church” .10 Okay?
I like the tone of this. The tone here is one of compassion, but also instruction. Right?
And so I’ll just read some of this for you today, and kind of just give you a teaser. There’s some of these in back of church. There’s not enough for everybody, but there’s some of these in back, if you’re interested.
And they write:
“All persons, not just Catholics, can know from scientific and medical evidence that what grows in a mother’s womb is a new, distinct human being. All persons can understand that each human being merits respect. At the very least, respecting human life excludes the deliberate and direct destruction of life.
“Throughout her rich tradition, the Catholic Church has always been pro-life. As Saint John Paul II reminded us, we believe that ‘all human life is sacred, for it is created in the image and likeness of God.’ Aborting an unborn child destroys a precious human life which God has called uniquely into existence….” (“The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church ” 10 People of Life, the pro-life action campaign of the Catholic Church in the United States)
And so it goes on further:
“…Our Faith also obliges us to follow … Jesus Christ….” (“The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church ” 10 People of Life, the pro-life action campaign of the Catholic Church in the United States)
Oh, that was the command Jesus gave that young man today in the Gospel: ‘go sell what you have and follow me’. Obviously, Jesus himself is pro-life.
This is why, as a church, we are pro-life.
It’s got a nice tone to it, it’s got some quotes from some Saints and different things in here, if you want one of those, it’s a good read.
And I was thinking about abortion from a different angle this time.
Choice: and Responsibility
I was thinking, you know, people who say ‘I’m pro-choice’ — right?
They have good hearts, they have good meaning, too, you know — Wherever they’re coming from, whatever experience they have.
The problem is the premise on which they found their reasoning. The premise. That is, the beginning point from the reasoning.
So, one of the slogans that I keep hearing over and over again is “my body, my choice”. That makes a lot of sense.
It makes a lot of sense: “my body, my choice”. If I want a haircut, I go get a haircut; if it’s time to clip my fingernails, I go clip my fingernails; if I’m feeling ill or injured, I go see the doctor.
“My body, my choice” — that makes a lot of sense.
The problem is the premise. When they say “my body, my choice”, they’re forgetting that it’s actually a second body. There’s a second person. It’s that person from the embryonic state up through nine months of gestation and infancy in the womb.
That is another person that God himself brought into existence at that moment of conception.
Oh, my gosh: that’s where our faith helps us so much.
And so the premise can’t be that it’s just your body. It’s more than just your body. There’s two of you now.
And then the question becomes: do we have the right, over somebody else, living inside of us?
That’s the fight, right?
And as Catholics, we would say ‘they have dignity, and they have the right to life’. That’s where our slogan comes from.
Bodies and Rights
A second way I was thinking about this issue was “my body my choice”: well, even though I agree with that premise, it’s not always right.
If you’ve ever had somebody in your family, or a neighbor, or somebody who’s thinking about or planning suicide; do you think you should do whatever you could do to stop them?
Or do you think you should just say, ‘yeah, no big deal, go ahead, pull the trigger’.
Right?
So even though there’s a certain sense of “right” to our own bodies, you’re not going to just stand by while you watch your best friend say ‘you know, I am so tired of my left arm, I’m going to cut it off’.
No, you’re going to do something to say ‘wait a minute, let’s think about this: let’s think about this, let’s talk it through, cause from what I can tell, that left arm is pretty important’.
Now, I mean it’s different if it’s gangrened and it needs amputation.11 I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a health arm, right?
So, the premise: the premise is “my body, my choice”, but it’s wrong, because there’s two bodies. There’s two bodies when we’re talking about pregnancy.
Which brings us back to the Supreme Court.
Roe v. Wade, the Constitution, and a Eureka Moment
They have this case, the Dobbs case I guess we call it now. And they had to address abortion.
And after they reviewed the first decision, of Roe versus Wade, and as they reviewed the Constitution, what they decided and realized was: the Constitution itself doesn’t say anything about abortion.
It doesn’t.
And so, as a Supreme Court, they decided ‘we need to not uphold Roe v. Wade, we need to kick it back down to the states’.12 And boy are there battles in the states. Right? There’s a lot of work to be done at the state level.
But that was the decision.
Let Love Choose Wisely
And so, as you go to the ballot box, as you go to pull the lever, or mail it in: just ask you (!), choose wisely. Let your love, let your discernment, choose wisely those things that most align with God.
Because Jesus says, ‘give up everything else, and follow me’.
I think Jesus is happy he doesn’t have to cast a vote. It’s like, ‘whoo! Escaped that one!’
But he’s there to help us.
So let’s go to this reading from Wisdom: let’s pray: “…I prayed, and prudence was given [to] me”. [Wisdom 7:7]
Let’s pray that prudence would be given to us, and also to our nation, as we go to the ballot box. Let love choose wisely.
And I’m going to end with this prayer. Again, this pamphlet and this prayer are in the back if you’d like one.
I’d invite you to close your eyes and bow your head with me:
O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy, at this most critical time, we entrust the United States of America to your loving care.
Most Holy Mother, we beg you to reclaim this land for the glory of your son. Overwhelmed with the burden of the sins of our nation, we cry to you from the depths of our hearts and seek refuge in your motherly protection.
Look down with mercy upon us and touch the hearts of our people. Open our minds to the great worth of human life and to the responsibilities that accompany human freedom. Free us from the falsehoods that lead to the evil of abortion and threaten the sanctity of family life.
Grant our country the wisdom to proclaim that God’s law is the foundation on which this nation was founded, and that He alone is the True Source of our cherished rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
O Merciful Mother, give us the courage to reject the culture of death and the strength to build a new Culture of Life. Amen. (“A Prayer for Our Country”,4 from Men of the Sacred Hearts)
Video: Gospel Reading and Homily at St. Paul’s, Sauk Centre, MN; October 13, 2024
Gospel reading for Sunday, October 13, 2024; the video should start playing just before the start of this reading:
“As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
“Jesus answered him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.”‘
“He replied and said to him, ‘Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.’
“Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, ‘You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
“Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ The disciples were amazed at his words.
“So Jesus again said to them in reply, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through [the] eye of [a] needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, ‘Then who can be saved?’
“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.’
“Peter began to say to him, ‘We have given up everything and followed you.’
“Jesus said, ‘Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come. But many that are first will be last, and [the] last will be first.'” (Mark 10:17–30)
Acting as if love and neighbors matter isn’t easy, but it’s a good idea anyway:
O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy, at this most critical time, we entrust the United States of America to your loving care.
Most Holy Mother, we beg you to reclaim this land for the glory of your son. Overwhelmed with the burden of the sins of our nation, we cry to you from the depths of our hearts and seek refuge in your motherly protection.
Look down with mercy upon us and touch the hearts of our people. Open our minds to the great worth of human life and to the responsibilities that accompany human freedom. Free us from the falsehoods that lead to the evil of abortion and threaten the sanctity of family life.
Grant our country the wisdom to proclaim that God’s law is the foundation on which this nation was founded, and that He alone is the True Source of our cherished rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
O Merciful Mother, give us the courage to reject the culture of death and the strength to build a new Culture of Life. Amen.
O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy, at this critical time, I entrust the United States of America to your loving care.
Most Holy Mother, I beg you to reclaim this land for the glory of your son. Overwhelmed with the burden of the sins of this nation, I cry to you from the depths of my heart and seek refuge in your motherly protection.
Look down with mercy upon us and touch the hearts of this people. Open our minds to the great worth of human life and to the responsibilities that accompany human freedom. Free us from the falsehoods that lead to the evil of abortion and threaten the sanctity of family life.
Grant this country the wisdom to proclaim that God’s law is the foundation on which this nation was built, and that He alone is the True Source of our cherished rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
O Merciful Mother, give us the courage to reject the culture of death and the strength to build a new Culture of Life. Trusting in your most powerful intercession I pray —
[The Memorare]
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided.Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother, to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.
5 Freedom of expression, a persistently pesky proposition:
Homosexual and other disordered behavior is a bad idea and I shouldn’t do it, and folks who experience such tendencies/urges must be shown respect. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2357-2359)
Human sexuality matters, so does using our brains, and love. Human beings, children included, are people, and shouldn’t be treated as property. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2331-2391: particularly 2378)
8 The situation is not, putting it mildly, simple:
Preserving my life is okay, if I use the least possible force. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2263-2267; “Summa Theologica”, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 64, Article 7; Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1270))
Preserving the lives of their citizens is okay, with the same conditions, so national leaders may use military force (Catechism, 2265-2269, 2307-2317)
Human life is sacred, a gift from God: every human life, each human life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2258-2317)
Each human being is a person, no matter how young he or she is; killing an innocent person is a bad idea and we shouldn’t do it. (Catechism, 2270-2275)
10 Valuing human life, and knowing why we value human life:
USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
USCCB Committees: Pro-Life Activities “We proclaim that human life is a precious gift from God; that each person who receives this gift has responsibilities toward God, self and others; and that society, through its laws and social institutions, must protect and nurture human life at every stage of its existence.”
“The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church ” Pamphlet by People of Life, the pro-life action campaign of the Catholic Church in the United States, under the direction of the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities
11 Life, health, responsibility, and not despairing:
Human life is precious, sacred, a gift from God (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2258)
Staying alive and healthy, within reason, is a good idea. (Catechism, 2288-2289)
Deliberate mutilation, unless done for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, is a bad idea and I shouldn’t do it. (Catechism, 2297)
Killing myself would be, in effect, murder; with no time later for me to repent. (Catechism, 1021-1022, 2280-2283)
However:
“2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.” (Catechism, 2283)
There’s still an election looming, so I’ve been seeing more twaddle than I like.
But that’s nothing new. Election season or not, a few of us can be counted on for declarations of doom and gloom. Like this selection, from about a decade back:
About that last item — “…God’s Judgment on America” — sure enough, someone’s making the usual claims about God’s wrath and the current calamitous crisis. This one’s coming from a different quarter, but the sentiment is all too familiar:
Hurricane Milton wasn’t more than a “disturbance” when that op-ed popped up, so I can’t fault the author for missing the ‘double feature’ angle.
The headline’s “killing dozens” may either be masterful understatement, journalistic caution, or something completely different.
Helene’s death toll is much worse: well upwards of 200, with at least that many folks still missing as I write this.
Many of Helene’s victims weren’t in Florida.
North Carolina got hit hard, mostly in the state’s western Appalachian region.
Some of the twaddle I mentioned earlier involves where Helene’s rain fell. Apparently the storm’s involved in some sort of conspiracy. Allegedly.1
Now, about God’s alleged wrath.
I’m a Christian. But I’m not the sort of Christian who sees God’s wrath — directed at ‘those sinners over there’ — in every storm. I’ve spent the bulk of my life in the Upper Midwest, and that’s almost another topic.
Basically, I think God does not have anger management issues. I also think storms happen: and that part of our job is dealing with them. Maybe even planning ahead.
“Up, Up and Away”: Weather Modification and the Montgolfier Brothers
The Cape Sable hurricane turned back to the Atlantic coast after a weather modification experiment. (1947)
Helene MIGHT be the tool of some mysteriously malevolent campaigning conspiracy — but I seriously doubt it.
Weather modification is real; and has been possible, in a limited way, since around the mid-20th century.
But diabolical masterminds, aiming a storm at America’s Last Hope? That’s more what I’d expect from Ming the Merciless, malevolent monarch of Mongo.
On the other hand, there was a time when it looked like we were on the threshold of a world with no storms, gentle rains coming at exactly the right time, with blue skies and buttercups every summer weekend.
Then researchers modified a storm, which destroyed more than 1,335 homes and killed 238 people.
That was in the summer of 1972. As I recall, the courts eventually decided that there wasn’t enough evidence linking the experiment to the deaths and destruction.
But I very strongly suspect that the 1972 Black Hills flood, and memories of the 1947 Cape Sable Hurricane, put a severe crimp in those shining hopes for large-scale and reliable weather modification.
Comparing weather modification’s current status to aviation technology, I’d say we’re a little past the Montgolfier brothers’ balloon: but not by all that much.2
Tenants of Tampa Bay
Discover Florida Tours St. Pete: Tocabaga Village, the Jungle Prada Site.
Folks were living around what we call Tampa Bay at least as far back as the days when other folks were installing those huge sarsen blocks at Stonehenge.
Tampa Bay background, briefly:
Several as-yet-unlabeled cultures ca. 7000 B.C. – ca. 500 B.C.
Manasota culture 500 B.C. – ca. 900 A.D.
Weeden Island culture 500 – 1000 A.D.
Safety Harbor culture ca. 900 – 1700 A.D.
About a half-millennium back now, the folks living around Tampa Bay convinced explorers that they had no gold (true), but that there was lots of gold north of them (unlikely).
The explorers left, and we think the Tampa Bay residents got sick. Possibly caught something from the explorers. At any rate, there’s a two-century gap when pretty much nobody called Tampa Bay home.
Before 1824, there had been a mound — built by someone, we’re not sure who — with a big hickory tree growing on it, at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. It was on the north side of Hillsborough Bay, where the Tampa Convention Center is now.
The tree, and the mound, are long gone. So are many or most of the other earthwork mounds folks had been building and maintaining in those parts.
The mounds that remain range from maybe a dozen feet to more than 20 feet in height.
Interestingly enough, storm surges in the 1848 Tampa Bay hurricane were about 15 feet high at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. That’s the area’s highest recorded storm surge: the highest since we started keeping such records.
I won’t insist on this, but I suspect that the folks who built those mounds did so partly because they wanted to survive the next big storm.3
Leveling those mounds probably made sense during the Florida land boom of the 1920s.
Economic good times seemed like they’d never end, the 1848 storm was history. Folks who hadn’t experienced the 1921 Tampa Bay hurricane were eagerly spending money on their very own tropical paradise.
The 1926 Miami hurricane served as a reality check, and so did the 1929 Wall Street crash.
But when good times rolled around again, folks with tropical dreams came back, and now we’ve got whole neighborhoods built on barrier islands.
Barrier islands are good at absorbing storm-driven waves. And, although they’ll shift around as wind and wave work on them, they’re very durable.
They’re basically sand dunes with the occasional coral reef. And since a barrier island may not be in exactly the same spot it had been before a storm, they’re really bad places to build neighborhoods.
That hasn’t kept folks from building neighborhoods on barrier islands. I can see their appeal: gorgeous views, lovely sand beaches, and maybe the risks aren’t obvious. I hope folks living in municipalities like Venice, Florida, got out in time.4 Or found shelter.
Customary Protocols, Private Citizens, and Pinellas County
Dump site in Pinellas County, Florida. (WFTS photo, via ABC Action News, used w/o permission.)
I figure just about everyone who understands English and has an Internet connection knows that another hurricane has been heading toward Florida. And that its projected course would bring it very close to Tampa Bay.
That brings me to Pinellas County, part of the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area. It’s west of Tampa, on the Florida coast, and home to just shy of one million folks.
I can see why the people running Pinellas County need to be perhaps a bit more regimented than we are, out here in central Minnesota.
However, with a major hurricane bearing down on them, folks scrambling to clear debris from Helene, and Florida’s governor signing off on an order to keep landfills open5 — I’d have hoped that whoever was in charge would have shown more good sense.
Even if the some of those who were hauling debris were not the usual persons.
“… ‘When we did the executive order, we said 24/7 debris pickup and being able to have these landfills be open. We did the executive order on Saturday and what happened over the night? It was closed. So what did we do? We cut the locks and we let people bring the debris. Overnight yesterday, what did we have? We had hundreds of cars, not just state vehicles, not just private contractors, we had private citizens loading up their F250s with debris to bring it — that’s helping, that’s a public service for them to do that and the gate was closed and there was no one [redacted] it. So we opened it.’
“DeSantis said they need all hands on deck and that the state has helped to make a huge dent in the debris. But there’s still more work to do.
Under normal circumstances, I can see how locking a landfill’s gate at the appointed hour makes sense.
But folks in the Tampa Bay area have not been experiencing normal circumstances.
So my sympathies are more for those private citizens who ignored the ‘normal circumstances’ rules, and helped their neighbors anyway. As well as the private contractors, city employees, and everyone else who was lending a hand.
Flamingos and Being Human
Flamingos kept safe during Hurricane Andrew. (1992) Photo by Ron Magill.
An ‘up’ side I’ve seen this week is how many — most, I’m guessing — folks in positions of responsibility have been behaving responsibly.
Take zoos, for example. I gather that most in Florida include metal and concrete ‘bedrooms’ for their critters. The bunkers are part of their enclosure, the animals use them every day, so going inside during a storm isn’t more than a slight break in routine.
Others, like flamingos, normally stay outside.
Folks at Zoo Miami kept their flock safe in a men’s restroom during Hurricane Andrew (1992), Hurricane George (1998), and Hurricane Floyd (1999).
I figure it was a good choice: no windows; tile floor and walls, so cleanup wasn’t a huge problem; and — gross, but practical — after a thorough cleaning, the toilets gave them a water source.
Getting flamingos into a restroom with minimal fuss and stress takes planning.
“… Similarly, the animals need prepping. Flamingos, for instance, live outside and must be moved to hurricane shelters during storms, so several times a year, zookeepers at Palm Beach Zoo, Florida, train the birds to follow them to shelter.
“‘We’re not sure if the flamingos think they are shorter humans or they think that we’re really pale flamingos, but because of that relationship, they want to hang out with us, and so we just ask them to walk with us,’ says Mike Terrell, the zoo’s curator of animal experiences. They practice this regularly by strolling around the zoo on clear days, so when the emergency time comes ‘it’s just part of their day’, he adds. …” (“‘We’ve used hallways, we’ve used bathrooms’: How zoos protect animals when hurricanes hit” , Sofia Quaglia, BBC Future (October 9, 2024))
Sometimes even the best planning doesn’t keep bad things from happening. That’s been the case before, and it’s a near-certainty that this year’s hurricanes won’t be an exception.
But I see what Florida zookeepers have been doing as an example of folks acting like humans — the way we should behave.6
Making Sense: It’s an Option
Getting back to a Pinellas County landfill, chaos running rampant and anarchy unleashed — I do not see a problem with folks who haven’t received formal authorization through proper channels lending a hand when there’s an imminent disaster bearing down on the county.
Double negative there, but I’ll let it stand.
And I have noticed what could be considered a disturbing trend, regarding unofficial and unsanctioned responses to recent natural disasters.
In many cases, the hoi polloi have been extracting victims from dangerous situations, clearing streets, and aiding their neighbors — without permission, and before the proper authorities and functionaries arrived on the scene.
Some even had the temerity to start hauling supplies to stricken regions.
Now, I realize that well-intentioned folks can cause trouble: slowing or blocking traffic on already-damaged roads, bringing material that can’t be used or stored, maybe even ‘rescuing’ folks who’d have been safer where they were.
But I think folks doing what we can, before the proper authorities can get around to us, is a good idea.
Even if does disturb others, who may sincerely believe that we should sit on our hands until someone comes to make decisions for us.
I’ve talked about making sense when things go wrong before.
“…I figure that whatever happens to me, pleasant or otherwise, what matters most is what I do about the experience. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1704-1707, 1730, 1852-1869) …
“… If I take my faith seriously, I’ll at least try to love my neighbors — and see everyone as a neighbor, no matter who or where they are. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:25–37; Catechism, 1706, 1776, 1825, 1849-1851, 1955)
“I should be promoting truth and justice, contributing to the common good and getting involved as best I can. Acting as if mercy matters is another good idea. (Catechism, 1915, 2239, 2447, 2472, 2475-2487)
“I can use suffering, joy, any experience, as a reason to pray and rejoice. (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18; Catechism, 2648)
“None of that is easy. But it’s still a good idea. …
“… I don’t see calamities as ‘God’s judgment on those sinners over there.’ On the other hand, I don’t think they’re meaningless. They’re opportunities to practice charity: which is a virtue. (Catechism, 1813, 1822-1829) …” (“Disasters, Deaths, Decisions” (September 17, 2018))
Wednesday Evening: Hurricane Milton Arrives
Someone riding out the storm in Tampa, waiting to help. (October 9, 2024) AP photo, used w/o permission.
There’s going to be a lot of news like this, coming from Florida:
“Hurricane Milton crashed into Florida as a Category 3 storm Wednesday, pounding the coast with ferocious winds of over 100 mph (160 kph), heavy rain and producing a series of tornadoes around the state. Tampa avoided a direct hit.
“The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (205 kph) as it made landfall at 8:30 p.m. near Siesta Key, the National Hurricane Center said. Siesta Key is a prosperous strip of white-sand beaches home to 5,500 people about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Tampa.
“More than 1.5 million homes and businesses were without power Wednesday night in Florida, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. The highest number of outages were in Hardee County, as well as neighboring Sarasota and Manatee counties….”
Bad as the situation is, it could have been worse. Looks like Milton’s center is missing the heavily urbanized part of Tampa Bay.7 Which is cold comfort to those who are losing loved ones and homes.
But people work in downtown Tampa, and if that area comes through the storm more-or-less intact, many survivors may at least have jobs. And therefore be able to keep paying bills: which, I’ve found, is a good thing.
It’s late Wednesday night now, I need sleep, and I still haven’t talked about the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Milton in Context: Numbers and a Little History
Hurricane Milton (October 2, 2024 – October 10, 2024). Map by Tavantius, used w/o permission.
Hurricane Milton had been a Category 5 storm during its approach to Florida, and was Category 3 when it hit Siesta Key.
I’ve talked about hurricanes before, but not the Saffir-Simpson scale: which is where those Categories came from.
A Handy Hurricane Wind Scale
Depending on who’s talking, the Saffir-Simpson scale is the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale (SSHWS), Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale (SSHS): or just plain Saffir-Simpson scale.
There are other systems for describing hurricanes/typhoons/tropical cyclones, but it’s the one used by the US National Hurricane Center / Central Pacific Hurricane Center.
Back in 1969, the United Nations had civil engineer Herbert Saffir study low-cost housing in hurricane-prone areas.
The idea was to give folks in areas without hurricane building codes a fairly simple and practical system for thinking about hurricane strengths.
By 1971, Saffir and meteorologist Robert Simpson had developed a scale that combined objective wind speeds with somewhat-subjective damage estimates. The general public heard about it in 1973, or maybe 1975, and the Saffir-Simpson scale got traction in 1974.
Anyway, it’s been in use since then. Some experts aren’t satisfied with it: because it’s too simplistic, or because it should be like the Richter scale.
They’re probably right, at least partly so, and I’m pretty sure the Saffir-Simpson scale isn’t the last ‘how bad is that hurricane’ system we’ll use.
But for now, I think it’s a good-enough system.
Here are those categories, leaving out TS (tropical storm) and TD (tropical depression:
Category 1 — 74-95 mph Very dangerous winds will produce some damage
Category 2 — 96-110 mph Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage
Category 3 — 111-129 mph Devastating damage will occur (including no power or water for several days to weeks)
Category 4 — 130-156 mph Catastrophic damage will occur (including no power for weeks, maybe months)
Category 5 — 157 mph or greater Catastrophic damage will occur (including no power for months) (Affected area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months)
The National Hurricane Center gives more detail about ‘very dangerous’, ‘extremely dangerous’, ‘devastating’, and worse, winds.8
Just How Bad Was It?
NHC map: Atlantic tropical cyclones and disturbances. (4:35 p.m. EDT October 10, 2024)
By Thursday evening, Hurricane Milton had crossed Florida, and I started learning how bad the storm had been.
“Although Milton has moved on, at least 8 are dead and millions remain in the dark” Julio Cortez, Kate Payne, Haven Daley; AP (Updated 9:11 PM CDT, October 10, 2024) “…Arriving just two weeks after the misery wrought by Hurricane Helene, the system also knocked out power to more than 3 million customers, flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off a baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.…” (emphasis mine)
“Three million still without power in Florida, DeSantis says” BBC News live coverage (13:41 British Summer Time, October 10, 2024) “DeSantis continues by saying there are still 3.1 million accounts without power in the state, with 635,000 restorations completed since Hurricane Milton hit.” (emphasis mine)
Friday morning, no surprises here, the number of known dead had gone up.
“Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, Wednesday night as a Category 3 storm.
“At least 16 people died from the storm, officials confirmed to CBS News.
“Milton moved across the Florida peninsula Thursday and over the Atlantic Ocean.
“Nearly 2.5 million customers were without power in Florida on Friday morning, according to utility tracker Find Energy….”
(emphasis mine)
Part of the good news is that Hurricane Milton is still heading east. And it’s not as strong as it was.
More than three million customers/accounts without power isn’t good news. But having 635,000 restored a day after the hurricane hit — that’s not bad.
And three million without power becoming two and a half million the day after that: also not bad. Technicians and engineers working on Florida’s power grid have been busy.
Sadly, I’m pretty sure that the number of known dead from Hurricane Milton will keep going up. There’s a lot of wreckage in Florida that’ll take time to search and clear.
After Milton — St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, left; St. Pete Beach, right. (photos: E. Hasert, T. Wheelock)
But there’s been good news. Or ‘on the whole good news’, at any rate. Like that AP article’s “toppled a construction crane”.
The thing was on a construction site near the Tampa Bay Times building. Although the crane cut a divot out of the Times building, nobody got hurt. Seems that Milton blew down other construction cranes, too.9
With several days of weather forecasts showing that Milton was coming, I have no idea why those construction cranes were still standing Wednesday night.
How long it takes to disassemble the things, what they cost, and how much damage they can cause when they collapse — are questions I don’t have answers for. I’m just glad nobody got hurt when one sliced a corner off the Times building.
Memorable Hurricanes
Surface weather, 1935 Labor Day hurricane. (September 4, 1936)
Superlatives, like “strongest”, “most intense”, or “worst”, can be tricky.
Or, rather, they involve picking some particular aspect of an event or entity as the part that’s most important.
For example, the “Hurricane Milton” Wikipedia page has a table of the top 10 “Most intense Atlantic hurricanes”. Milton is in fifth place: between Rita (2005) and Allen (1980). Helene doesn’t appear on that list.
The “Hurricane Helene” Wikipedia page’s “Strongest landfalling tropical cyclones in the U.S. State of Florida” is another ‘top 10’ list. It ranks “strongest” by wind speed at landfall. “Fourth” and “seventh” rank storms each had the same recorded wind speed.
Helene is on the ‘wind speed’ list, since the storm had sustained wind speeds of 140 miles an hour on September 26, 2024, when it hit Florida. But its lowest air pressure was 938: not low enough for the ‘intense’ pressure list.
Milton had sustained winds of 180 miles an hour on October 8, but didn’t reach Florida until the next day. By then, its winds were down to 120 miles an hour: again, not enough to make that list.
The 1935 “Labor Day” hurricane was arguably worse than either of 2024’s famous storms, killing at least 485 folks.10
Now What?
Cypress Gardens at Legoland Florida. (February 4, 2012) Photo by NathanF.
“Here comes the first round of what the National Weather Service describes as ‘conversational snow’ in Minnesota this fall.
“What is conversational snow, you may ask? The NWS Duluth didn’t provide a definition, but it’s easy to surmise that it’s not that serious, but it’s fun to talk about anyway….”
The “conversational snow” won’t be much: maybe a quarter-inch in far northeastern Minnesota, what I call arrowhead country. The nickname comes from my state’s shape on the map, not actual arrowheads, and I’m drifting off-topic.
Our climate is very different, but Minnesota’s lake country looks like much of Florida: at least on maps. We’ve both got an overabundance of lakes, ponds, marshes: seriously damp land, that is.
More seriously, Florida is still at the top of my news feed: which is seldom if ever a good thing for the folks involved.
I did, however, find a bright spot or two.
Looks like many folks have been getting their part of the world back in good working order, which won’t be easy.
Folks running Legoland Florida had the good sense to close down during the storm, along with other theme parks in the area. Since they reopened Friday, I figure there hasn’t been overly much damage there. Which I see as a good thing.
I was also glad to see that Cypress Gardens, a theme park that’d been where Legoland is now, is still there: in a sense. A Cypress Gardens is just southwest of the Lego Wave Pool, Joker Soaker, and Splash Safari.11
None of which I’ll be talking about this week: or, probably, next. But I was happy to see that Cypress Gardens is still (literally) on the map: as a small botanical park.
I’ve never been to Cypress Gardens, and won’t visit Legoland. This household, economically, is on the upper end of lower class or low end of middle class; and we haven’t prioritized visiting theme parks.
But they can be fun for families and individuals: and that’s yet another topic.
Something I Can Do
I can’t offer much help, in what my culture calls practical terms, for the folks recovering from Helene and Milton.
Something I can do, however, is pray.
Some time back, I signed up for my parish’s intercessory prayer chain.
(Intercessory prayer: that’s one of the main categories of prayer: blessing or adoration, intercession, petition, praise, and thanksgiving. (Catechism, 2623-2643))
Anyway, my daily routine now includes a quick prayer for folks whose situations have been brought to my attention — usually with a level of anonymity that’s culturally-appropriate.
Thursday, I added an intercessory intention of my own: on behalf of folks who weathered the recent storms, and will be dealing with varying degrees of loss. I don’t see that as a big deal: but like I said, praying is something I can do.
I’ve talked about disasters and making sense before, and probably will again:
“Labor Day 1935 Hurricane Monthly Weather Review Article” (“The hurricane of August 31 to September 6, 1935”, Mon. Wea. Rev., 63, 269-271.), W. F. McDonald, Excerpts courtesy of the Monthly Weather Review (September 1935)
We’ve known about “black hole jet systems” for some time, but never one as big as Porphyrion: a 23,000,000 light-year giant.
I’ll be talking about that today, along with how astronomers have been studying it, a plausible explanation for its extraordinary length, and a quick overview of how we’ve been thinking about this universe.
Cosmology: From the Cosmic Ocean to the Cosmic Web
Hubble’s view of galaxies in the constellation Fornax. (2003-2004)
One of the problems — or needful decisions, take your pick — I deal with when I write these things is figuring out where to start.
On the one hand, I could start talking about radio galaxies, cosmic walls, and active galactic nuclei.
On the other hand — I’ll try starting with stories folks have told about the universe. I’ll be covering nearly four millennia in a few hundred words, so this’ll be concise.
Mesopotamian Musings
Around the time Ahmose the First put Egypt back under Egyptian management, folks in Mesopotamia were spinning tales involving a flat, circular Earth surrounded by a cosmic ocean.
If that sounds familiar, it should.
It’s imagery we see in the Old Testament.
“Then God said: Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other. “God made the dome, and it separated the water below the dome from the water above the dome. And so it happened. “God called the dome ‘sky.’ Evening came, and morning followed—the second day.” (Genesis 1:6–8)
Instead of being shocked, horrified, and upset about Genesis including cultural references that folks living near the eastern Mediterranean understood — I’ll accept that descendants of Abraham lived there, and move on.
About a millennium later, folks like Anaximander and Democritus were thinking about the universe in what we’d call “scientific” terms. In other words, they were making sense of reality by considering what we can observe, without mythic elements.
Parmenides generally gets credit for showing that Earth is spherical, not a cylinder; and we’re still not sure about Anaximander’s multiple universes.
Fast-forward again, this time about two millennia. European scholars were overly-impressed by Aristotle, but folks like Galileo Galilei started using what we’d call a spyglass.
In the half-millennium since then, we’ve been developing technologies that let us see more: and make more precise measurements. That’s led to new ideas about how this universe works.1
Quite a few new ideas, actually. And, so far, each time scientists got their hands on more data; the universe they’ve been describing got bigger.
William Herschel, “Our Sidereal System”, and Finding Galaxies
William Herschel’s “Section of our sidereal system”. (1785)
A musician and composer, Frederick William Herschel, fled to England in 1757. There’s a story behind that, involving the Seven Years’ War, and that’s another topic.
Somewhere along the line, Herschel got interested in astronomy. Serious, professional astronomers were mostly interested in studying the planets, but not Herschel.
He was interested in stars, and planets, and the Moon, and sunspots — and building telescopes. Lots of telescopes.
He also thought he’d worked out a method for mapping the universe. Making not-unreasonable assumptions, like the sun being pretty much in the center, and stars being evenly distributed.
Seriously: that made sense. Observation told us that the sky is more-or-less equally crowded with stars in opposite quadrants, no matter which pair we’re looking at.
About “quadrant”: despite the name, the sky’s been divided into eight quadrants. When, and why, that happened: I don’t know. Mercifully, I don’t have to say “celestial quadrant” all that often.
Anyway, Herschel mapped “our sidereal system”, publishing his results in 1785.
By that time, Fr. Angelo Secchi had shown that our Sun is a star, or the stars are suns. Take your pick.
Astronomers, including William Herschel, had been studying nebulae: those fuzzy patches that kept getting mistaken for comets. William Huggins analyzed their spectra. He learned that about one out of three nebulae were luminous gas, while the rest were massive collections of stars.
By 1924, with 20-20 hindsight, we see that Edwin Hubble had proof that the Andromeda Nebula was huge, made of stars, and far outside our galaxy. By the time I was in school, a few textbooks talked about “island universes”.2
Galaxies, Clusters, Superclusters, and the Cosmic Web
Meanwhile, physicists were working out how the sun made light and heat. Astronomers were making increasingly accurate — and puzzling — measurements of distant galaxies.
Working together, they learned that this universe is right around 13,787,000,000 years old: give or take 20,000,000.
Probably.
The Big Bang theory, with tweaking, has been a pretty good match with observations for nearly a century. My guess is that it’s an essentially-accurate model for how this universe has been working.
But I figure we’ll keep learning, and develop a more-nearly-complete model.
Just over 40 years ago, the Center for Astrophysics finished charting around 2,400 galaxies, out to a distance of approximately 600,000,000 light-years: their first 3-dimensional map of our cosmic neighborhood.
Margaret Geller and John Huchra spotted CfA2, ‘the Great Wall’, in 1986. It’s (very) roughly 300,000,000 light-years wide, 15,000,000 light-years thick, and at least 500,000,000 light-years long. Probably longer, but dust in our Milky Way galaxy blocks our view.
We’ve been learning that, on a large scale, this universe is bubbly.
Galaxies, galaxy clusters, and superclusters, are concentrated along vast sheets and filaments; separated by even vaster voids. NASA calls it the cosmic web, focusing more on the filaments than on the walls.3
We’ve also been learning that this universe is big. That awareness can be unsettling.
“…The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. … The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age….” (“The Call of Cthulhu” , H. P. Lovecraft (1929); via WikiQuote)
As it happens, I like living in a vast and almost-unthinkably ancient universe. But even if I didn’t, my opinion wouldn’t change reality. Besides, I wasn’t consulted when this place was planned: which is just as well.
Porphyrion and Cosmic Scale
Artist’s illustration of Porphyrion, the longest known black hole jet system.
“A pair of plasma jets powered by a supermassive black hole span far beyond their host galaxy — potentially affecting the cosmic web around it.
“The supermassive black hole at the center of a massive galaxy has powered a giant pair of plasma jets, spanning 23 million light-years long from tip to tip. That’s almost 10 times the distance between our Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
“Astronomers have nicknamed the record-breaking system Porphyrion, after the king of the giants in Greek mythology. And the giant is indeed the king of many: A new catalog of such radio-emitting giant jet pairs tallies more than 11,000 of them, each spanning more than 2.3 million light-years.
“‘Giant jets were known before we started the campaign, but we had no idea that there would turn out to be so many,’ says Martin Hardcastle (University of Hertfordshire, UK), coauthor on two associated studies. Porphyrion’s discovery is published in Nature; the accompanying catalog will appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics….”
Black holes — good grief. If I start talking about those things, and what we’ve been learning about them, I’ll still be working on this next week.
Backgrounder: Black Holes, Accretion Disks, and Relativistic Jets
Short version: black holes are parts of spacetime where gravity is so strong that light — or any other electromagnetic radiation, or matter — can’t escape.
Some black holes are as massive as big stars: which they used to be, before the star ran out of fuel, collapsed, had one spectacularly bright moment as a supernova; and collapsed again.
Other black holes are bigger — they’re called supermassive black holes, which isn’t a particularly imaginative name, but is quite descriptive.
There’s a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way: and very probably one inside every large galaxy.
Stuff falling toward a supermassive black hole ends up orbiting it in an accretion disk. That’s a disk — more like a flat doughnut or Saturn’s rings, actually — where stuff whips around the black hole until it falls across the event horizon, or gets shot off into space.
The accretion disk gets hot, very hot. Physics happens — it’s complicated — and then ionized matter goes shooting out at right angles to the accretion disk.
That ionized stuff isn’t just hot, it’s clipping along at a fair fraction of the speed of light. Which is why such things are called relativistic jets.4
Radio Galaxies and Porphyrion’s Position
LOFAR radio telescope image: the longest-known pair of black hole jets, spanning 23 million light-years.
Depending on who’s talking, Porphyrion is a Fanaroff-Riley class II radio galaxy. I’ll get back to Fanaroff-Riley classes, briefly, in a bit.
Radio galaxies look bigger in radio frequencies than they do in the visible spectrum. That’s because they’ve got “energetic radio lobes”, lit up by jets from an active galactic nucleus.
Sometimes you’ll see radio galaxies called “black hole jet systems”. That’s supposed to be less confusing than calling them “radio galaxies”, but I have no idea why.
“…The term ‘radio galaxy’ is often used to refer to the entire jet system, rather than solely to its host galaxy. Some scientists consider the term ‘black hole jet system’ more accurate and less confusing. Radio galaxies that reach the size of around 0.7 megaparsecs or more, are commonly called ‘giant radio galaxies’….” (Radio galaxy, Wikipedia)
One more thing. A megaparsec is 1,000,000 parsecs.
A parsec is about 3.26 light-years. “Parsec” is short for “parallax of one second”. Astronomer Herbert Hall Turner coined the term in 1913. Astronomers and astrophysicists use it because it makes working with their data easier.
I talk about light-years, because that’s what pretty much everyone else says.
Getting back to Porphyrion, it’s a radio galaxy that’s about 7,500,000,000,000 light-years out, in the general direction of Iota Draconis. I put a red circle around its location in that sky chart.
Iota Draconis is a star in the constellation Draco, with at least two planets. It’s just over a hundred light-years away, and that’s yet again another topic.
Porphyrion’s host galaxy is J152932.16+601534.4, which is about 10 times as massive as the Milky Way — as I keep saying, don’t try memorizing these names and designations. Unless you feel like it, of course.
It’s the biggest radio galaxy/black hole jet system in what Sky & Telescope called a “new catalog of such radio-emitting giant jet pairs”. I think it’s the LoTSS Data Release 2 (DR2).
I’ll wrap up this bit with a three minute, 37 second video.
Black Hole Jets and the Scale of the Cosmic Web
And there you have it.
Up to now, the longest know black hole jet was Alcyoneus, a Fanaroff–Riley class II radio galaxy that’s 3,5oo,000,000 light-years away, in the constellation Lynx.
The giant jet pairs qualify as “giant” if they’re more than 2,300,000 light-years long. That new catalog lists upwards of 11,000 of them.
The point is that Alcyoneus is big, Porphyrion — 23,000,000 light-years long — is bigger, and both are on the scale of features in the cosmic web.
Comparison time.
A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. That’s 5,879,000,000,000 miles. Multiply it by 4.25 and you’ve got the distance to the nearest star.
The Solar System is a few dozen light-years ‘north’ (GNP in that illustration) of the Milky Way galaxy’s central plane, and 27,000 light-years from our galaxy’s center.
Since we’re inside the Milky Way, we’re not sure about its size, but it’s right around 80,000 light-years across.
The Milky Way, where we live, is the second-largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is 2,500,000 light-years away.
The Local Group is 10,000,000 light-years across. We’re also in the Virgo Supercluster, which is something like 110,000,000 light-years across.
I checked, and sure enough: Porphyrion’s length is “on the scale of the cosmic web”, as that video said.6 Within a power of ten, at any rate.
To Milky Way center
27,000 light-years
Across Milky Way
80,000 light-years
To Andromeda Galaxy
2,500,000 light-years
Across Local Group
10,000,000 light-years
Alcyoneus length
16,000,000 light-years
Porphyrion length
23,000,000 light-years
Across Virgo Supercluster
110,000,000 light-years
Grus Wall length
300,000,000 light-years
Perseus-Pegasus Filament length
1,000,000,000 light-years
Sloan Great Wall length
1,300,000,000 light-years
To Prophyrion
7,500,000,000 light-years
A Sampling of Cosmic Distances
Radio Telescopes: LOFAR and —
The LOFAR (Low-Frequency Array) core, in the Netherlands. (2010)The LOFAR core, detail: a road and parking lot, from upper left of larger photo.
The radio telescope image of Porphyrion isn’t all that eye-catching. As my oldest daughter said, news services had obvious reasons for using an artist’s impression for their main graphic.
Even so, I think that grainy green-and-sort-of-yellowish image is impressive.
It was made with LOFAR: the Low-Frequency Array that’s mostly in the Netherlands, but — as of 2019 — spreads out onto seven other European countries.
It’s a phased array of about 20,000 dipole antennas, where signals get combined in analog electronics, digitized, recombined — eventually ending up at a central station. There’s a mind-boggling amount of math involved, but all that equipment lets us “see” things like Porphyrion.
The LOFAR image lacks the pizzazz of artistic interpretations, but it’s an actual image of something that’s longer than the Local Galaxy Group is wide — and is an image from a radio telescope.
I remember when the Arecibo Observatory and Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex were putting radio astronomy on the map. Getting decent-resolution images from radio telescopes — it impresses me. A lot.
LOFAR uses interferometry to make images, still another topic. topics, actually.7
— GMRT
Part of the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope near Narayangaon, Pune, MaharashtraIndia, India.
Okay. These scientists spotted Porphyrion, a “radio galaxy” or “black hole jet system”, but still hadn’t found the galaxy those jets came shooting out of.
So they teamed up with folks in Maharashtra and Arizona.
“…The giant black hole jet system was named after Porphyrion, a Giant from Greek mythology, by co-discoverer Aivin Gast from the University of Oxford. “To find the galaxy from which Porphyrion originated, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India was used along with ancillary data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument in Arizona….” (Porphyrion (radio galaxy), Wikipedia) (emphasis mine)
And that explains why “black hole jet system” is less confusing than “radio galaxy”. I still think “radio galaxy” is easier to say, write, and — arguably — remember; but the folks have a point.
Data from the the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) showed that Porphyrion’s host galaxy is J152932.16+601534.4: which doesn’t, as far as I know, have a catchy name yet.
GMRT uses interferometry to make images, but it’s an array of 30 parabolic radio telescopes, each 45 meters. 49 and a fraction yards, across. I’ve read that it’s “the biggest and most sensitive radio interferometer in the world at low frequencies”.
A little checking showed me that LOFAR ‘sees’ wavelengths of 30 to 1.3 meters and is effectively 1,000-plus kilometers across. GMRT ‘sees’ at wavelengths of 6.00 0.2 meters, or upwards of 0.299 meters; with an effective diameter of up to 25 kilometers.8
Maybe I’m comparing apples, oranges, and the price of peanuts. In any case, sorting out which, if either, of those radio telescopes is the bigger and more sensitive would take more time than I’ve got this week.
What is important, I think, is that they’re both very effective scientific instruments: and that scientists are using both. I remember when this level of cooperation was as newsworthy as the latest research papers.
— and DESI?!
The other observatory, DESI: these names! I’ve gotten the impression that scientists — particularly those involved with physics and related fields — have gotten a whole less stuffy, and I mentioned that a couple months back.
DESI stands for Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument; and as far as I know has nothing to do with Desi Arnaz.
DESI isn’t a radio telescope. It’s sensitive to wavelengths between 360 and 980 nanometers: a unit of measure that’s handy for describing things on an atomic scale. That range runs from the short end of infrared to the long end of ultraviolet.
DESI Isn’t particularly big, either, but it does have 5,000 fiber-positioning robots on its focal plane, with a bank of spectrographs fed by those fibers. It’s been used by scientists making surveys of distant galaxies.9
Fanaroff-Riley Classification
Emma Alexander’s illustration: Fanaroff-Riley classification of radio galaxies.
Back in 1974, an astronomer and an astrophysicist noticed that they could sort 57 radio galaxies out into two groups. One subset was brighter near their sources than at their ends, the other were brighter at the ends.
The bright-in-the-middle bunch is Fanaroff-Riley Class I (FR-I), while a bright-at-the-ends radio galaxy’s label is Fanaroff-Riley Class II (FR-II).
Porphyrion is brighter at its ends, so it’s a Fanaroff-Riley class II radio galaxy.10
There’s probably a reason,or reasons, why radio galaxies fall neatly into those two categories; but either scientists don’t know yet: or, at least as likely, I didn’t find the reason(s).
That’s Odd: Porphyrion’s Size, and an Explanation
Illustration: the Porphyrion jets compared with a Milky Way-size galaxy. (CNN/Caltech/NASA)
What’s really odd about Porphyrion isn’t so much being brighter at its ends than its middle, as it being so cosmically long.
Material in “black hole jet systems” is moving fast.
The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability — wave-like billows like the ones we see in clouds, Earth’s ocean, and the Solar corona — should have slowed or stopped Porphyrion’s jets before they got to be some 23,000,000 light-years long.
That didn’t happen.
I was going to talk more about this, but suboptimal time management and a couple household tasks got in the way. So I’ll highlight parts of this Sky & Telescope article, which covers most of what I was going to say.11
“…’Although [Porphyrion] is certainly an extreme and curious case, the reason why [its] jets are so long is related with the position of the galaxy in the cosmic web,’ explains Manel Perucho (University of Valencia, Spain), who was not involved in the study.
We’re seeing the jet and its massive host galaxy as they were when the universe was half its current age and, generally, about 10 times denser than it is today. But the environment around this galaxy is unusually sparse. As the jets exit the galaxy, they penetrate millions of light-years into a cosmic void, where the galaxies and even the gas between galaxies is much more spread out. There, the Kelvin-Helmholtz effect is weaker, Perucho says: ‘With these ingredients, a long and fantastic trip is ensured.’
“The circumstances are unusual not only in the surroundings but also in the black hole itself. ‘My interpretation is that we need an unusually long-lived and stable accretion event around the central, supermassive black hole to allow it to be active for so long — about a billion years,’ [University of Hertfordshire, UK’s Martin] Hardcastle [coauthor on two associated studies] says. What’s more, the jets have to be pointing in the same direction for the duration, so that means the black hole has wobbled very little on its spin axis during that time….” (“Black Hole’s Colossal Jets Pierce the Cosmic Void” , Monica Young, Sky & Telescope (September 18, 2024)) (emphasis mine)
“…The Heavens … Like a Tent to Dwell In”
The Hickson Compact Group 40 (NASA, ESA, STScI), and Wisdom 11:22.
As I said earlier, I like living in a vast and ancient universe.
Maybe that’s because I grew up during a time when we were learning a great deal about this cosmos. Or maybe it’s just me and my personality.
H. P. Lovecraft also lived during a time when science was opening “terrifying vistas of reality”, and he wrote “The Call of Cthulhu”.
Whatever explains personal preferences like this, we’ve known about cosmic scale and “our frightful position therein” for a long time.
Me? I’m okay with it.
“The one who is enthroned above the vault of the earth, its inhabitants like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a veil and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” (Isaiah 40:22)
“Raise your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth below; Though the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies, My salvation shall remain forever and my victory shall always be firm.” (Isaiah 51:6)
“Indeed, before you the whole universe is like a grain from a balance, or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth. But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook sins for the sake of repentance.” (Wisdom 11:22–23)
CfA Redshift Survey (Center for Astrophysics (CfA) Redshift Survey was the first attempt to map the large-scale structure of the universe. First part completed in 1982.)
“The Large Scale Structure of the Universe” ASTRO 801 – Planets, Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe; The John A. Dutton Institute for Teaching and Learning Excellence; Penn State University
4 Stuff that’s real, and how some of us think about stuff that’s real:
Lucille Ball (Part of the Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz media team.
Lucy Does a TV Commercial (Vitameatavegamin health tonic: “Well, are you? The answer to all your problems is in this little ol’ bottle, Vitameatavegamin.” (IMDb))
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
![Left: '[Dividing the] national [map]', political cartoon by John Cabell (1860). Right: 'Political caricature. No. 3, The abolition catastrophe. Or the November smash-up', political cartoon (1864) see https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.33122/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3a12905/](https://i0.wp.com/brendans-island.com/blogsource/20240813ff/20241021-DividingTheNationalMap1860-TheAbolitionCatastrophe1864-PoliticalCartoons-658.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
First off, two links: (1) to a booklet in PDF format, a bit over 50 pages; and (2) to a page recommending that we talk and act as if our neighbors matter, with links to resources that might help.
On the whole, I like being an American. That’s partly because I think my country is a very great deal more than our politicians and bureaucrats.
Again, I think voting makes sense.
My interests are eclectic.
