Friday, July 18, 2025

All Lives Matter


Trayvon Martin's and Mr. Barranco's, who's fortunately not dead:

ICE facing an enormous lawsuit for attacking the father of US Marines
Rebel HQ | 17 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgktKDFyvGg


It seems, US is waking up to police violence being wrong.

Female Cop Pulls Out Pistol And This Happen
COP MANIA | 8 June 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JlQm8TsttQ


That was under Biden. Not Trump.

Cop SLAMS Teenage Girl... Then Her Dad Shows Up (Video)
Rebel HQ | 5 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV8hDNhtAN0


Not just the second of these was under Biden, i e 2022, but the main story, Vivian Augustus, the event was, according to camera signature 2024-01-24, so, 24th of January, not this year, after Trump took office, but last year, well before the election.

Trump has obviously pushed that some inches or yards or maybe even furlongs further, and in some cases maybe even miles, with ICE, and the US is fed up with this kind of violence. Maybe that was what Tom Zimmer meant, or maybe he referred to the first term, with the new justices and Dobbs, which I celebrate. Tom Zimmer thought Trump was going to bring America back to God. Now, as mentioned, this may involve by himself being a bit too far from God. Now, God's blessing to the Barrancos, to Rudy, to Vivian, and to the lady with the dogs who was not facing the actual eviction./HGL

PS, on the first publication of this, I was not quite straightforward, I had a problem with a BLM demo after the BLM riots in Kenosha and trying to stamp Kyle Rittenhouse as White supremacist, which he wasn't.

But I still thought that being against the police violence was, in and of itself, correct. And obviously, that a demo for Anti-Vaccers should have been authorised too./HGL

Grace Church Community* Taught Heresy (Plus Was Cruel)


New blog on the kid: John McArthur Has Died, I'm Not Invoking His Prayers · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Grace Church Community Taught Heresy (Plus Was Cruel)

A Woman Prosecutes the Church of John McArthur for Publically Humiliating Her for Wanting ...**
Friendly Atheist | 18 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Du9d2vXtQ


In Catholicism, she would not have had the right to divorce and remarriage, but she would have had the right to separation (and when a separation needs that, using civil procedures for divorce), but still need to stay faithful at a distance.

Also, Catholicism doesn't allow a divorce victim to remarry (unless the earlier marriage was between two non-Christians and the divorce happens from someone disgusted at a Christian conversion).

So, supposing she and her husband were both validly baptised, Grace Church Community encouraged him to commit adultery in God's eyes.

Note, a valid marriage is a valid marriage, can be dissolved only by either of them dying, and if both are non-Catholic but Baptised Christians, it still applies.

And it hath been said, whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a bill of divorce 32 But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery [Matthew 5:31-32]

And the Pharisees coming to him asked him: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him 3 But he answering, saith to them: What did Moses command you 4 Who said: Moses permitted to write a bill of divorce, and to put her away 5 To whom Jesus answering, said: Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you that precept

6 But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female 7 For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother; and shall cleave to his wife 8 And they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder 10 And in the house again his disciples asked him concerning the same thing

11 And he saith to them: Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her 12 And if the wife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery [Mark 10:2-12]


Note Mark 10:11.

Context of the verse that Kent Hovind so likes to cite for the (pretty obvious so not incorrect) implication of YEC in verse 6. I liked him better back when he said "this is not my wife. it's a picture of her" ... that was his first and real wife.




I don't want to drag through all of it, I'm only at 7:29 in. But this should come as a check to the people who believed (or in some cases still believe) that John McArthur was standing on the authority of the Bible.




* In the title, I mislabelled a denomination, it's actually Grace Community Church ... which is theological nonsense. The Church on earth is NOT limited to a community of people in the state of grace. Tares and wheat. My mistake shows, I was at least not an adept. That's how unfamiliar I was with what he stood for. Except the few sermons I heard.
** Unfortunately the title is translated to French and truncated, so I don't know if it said "a divorce" or "a separation"

Least Tolkien Line of Peter Jackson?


Why Lord Of The Rings Feels Like Tolkien (Even When It Doesn’t)
So Uncivilized | 19 July 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOAkx7WlTgE


Probably least Tolkien:

"you are Isildur's heir not 7:02 Isildur himself"

"the same blood flows 7:05 in my 7:08 veins"


Tolkien did hold that reluctance to take on power was a good qualification, perhaps not for a hereditary king, but in offices of a more elective type ("nolo episcopari"). So, Aragorn's reluctance to be king has some indirect support in Tolkien ... this line in Aragorn's mouth hasn't.

Tolkien was a Catholic, Peter Jackson wasn't.

Catholics don't believe that evil flows in the genes.

Thursday, July 17, 2025

In Defense of Jean Colson


Strong Evidence That John Wrote the Fourth Gospel
Testify | 23 Jan. 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jaLCzTrjJY


0:52 Jewish (or perhaps in his own terminology preferrably Israelite, after Jamnia) - also true if John was a Cohen (a nephew of the first hagiographer several generations down the line).

2:32 What are the five bodies of water?

You didn't list Sea of Galilee in the other video.

Ah, he calls it "lake Tiberias" ... sorry.

3:20 - an eyewitness : perfectly compatible with his being a lesser disciple than one of the twelve and his being a Cohen.

There is a textual reference saying all of the twelve scattered, but the eyewitness to the Crucifixion didn't.

His being a Cohen would also explain his knowing the High Priest and observing Peter, the one of the twelve who scattered a bit later than the rest.

Kearlan Ventures
@kearlanventures
These analyses are mostly “logic” exercises. We can’t (probably) ever know for sure. So the issue starts with: “does anything eliminate John the the apostle?” No. Do we have good reason to believe this was written by an eyewitness (likely via scribe)? Yes. Is John the apostle as candidate for being an eyewitness? Of course. Etc. So key takeaway is John isn’t eliminated.

Sure, none of that proves it wasn’t some lesser and latter eyewitness. Heck, doesn’t even definitively prove it was an eyewitness. Some could go as far as to say there could be no “eyewitness” because all of this myth. Etc. So the exercise isn’t about definitive proof*. It’s about when we line up everything we have: eyewitness details, reference to “*the disciple Jesus loved”(used as a “title”in 4 verses), 2nd century attestations, etc. AND we assume there was a Jesus, “what explanations fit the data?” and “what explanations fit the data the best?” A lesser priestly disciple fits but doesn’t fit as well as the theory of John. Just my $0.02.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@kearlanventures The one point against John one of the twelve is, he stood under the Cross, while a text says ALL the ones who had been in Gethsemane with Him fled, scattered.

Less cogently, but not by much, a man who survived dipping in boiling oil and who put himself down in a grave he had dug is credited with being the Gospeller, while in very old martyrologies, dec. 27 is for James and John, both dying as martyrs - and Christ said they would both die as martyrs.

Kearlan Ventures
@hglundahl I think you're referring to Matthew 26:56 (correct me if I'm wrong) which says "Then all the disciples left Him and fled." This, read literally, of course excludes any disciple, not just the 12. Yet John says at least one, the "beloved" disciple, was in fact at the cross (and we know it was a male --lmk if I need to clarify). One possibility is that Matthew is referring to the garden, but John is actually later at Golgatha and so it's not referring to the same event. John 18:15 suggests Peter and "another disciple" followed Jesus after Gethsemane. I think there is a similar reference in Luke IIRC too.This doesn't argue for John the apostle per se, it just doesn't exclude him vs any other disciple. I think John Mark could fit this too from what I recall (can't recall the rebuttals to that at the moment)...

☆𝕫𝕠𝕣𝕠☆
@zorokang067
Again, these books came out at a time where the people who wanted to refute the claims were alive to do that. Plus, a myth takes a lot longer to form than what it did, ESPECIALLY something as big as this.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@kearlanventures "This, read literally, of course excludes any disciple, not just the 12. Yet John says at least one, the "beloved" disciple, was in fact at the cross (and we know it was a male --lmk if I need to clarify)."

And Jean Colson reads it contextually as "all of the twelve" or "all who were there" (that is, the twelve).

Logically it can hardly mean that all five hundred witnesses fled even those who weren't there (or the Temple Guard would have been no match for them).

So, the Beloved Disciple was not there in Gethsemani. He did not flee. There is no contradiction.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@zorokang067 I don't think anyone on this thread has taken a mythicist approach, whom are you talking to?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@kearlanventures "John 18:15 suggests Peter and "another disciple" followed Jesus after Gethsemane."

Correct, but while Peter at first stopped fleeing with his feet, he then fled with his tongue, by denying.

Kearlan Ventures
@hglundahl This continues to presume that the events in garden and w/ high priest—where all the disciples fled—is the same as the events at the cross. They are not. They cannot logically be the same. So the “disciples fled” data point doesn’t add to our understanding here.

Also if we read “disciple” across these contexts to be limited to “the 12” then the reference to “ disciple who Jesus loved” should also be constrained that way. Again, we can remove that constraint throughout, or say the contexts are different and so it means different things in each context, but both of those approaches are less cogent than giving the word “disciple” a consistent meaning across these uses. And there’s no inconsistency in doing so once it’s understood these aren’t the same events.

☆𝕫𝕠𝕣𝕠☆
Hey! Sorry, I was talking to @kearlanventures. @hglundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@kearlanventures "This continues to presume that the events in garden and w/ high priest—where all the disciples fled—is the same as the events at the cross."

You forget that the Beloved Disciple was already not fleeing the very same night.

The 11 disciples at first, as we know from Mark, did not believe. They were still mentally in this flight.

Remember, for the Beloved Disciple to be among them, he need on Jean Colson's theory not be one of the twelve, since on his theory he was the host of them all, and was also hosting the Blessed Virgin since Good Friday.

"then the reference to “ disciple who Jesus loved” should also be constrained that way."

Not same passage, not same context. So, not so constrained.

Kearlan Ventures
@hglundahl Good discussion first of all. But I think you’re missing the point I’m making. I’m not arguing that the Beloved Disciple is in fact John the Apostle. Nor even John Mark, John “the elder,” or any “lesser” disciple. What I’m saying is that the passages you reference don’t exclude John the Apostle from candidacy. We’re all, including Colson, welcome to make assumptions but there’s nothing in the texts themselves that eliminate John the Apostle because the reference to the disciple at the cross is a different event, as you admit, from the reference in Matthew. (Notably, the extrinsic record, which we’re intentionally not looking at, also doesn’t exclude John the Apostle.)

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@kearlanventures The extrinsic record actually seems to have somewhat different fates for John and John, unless you limit yourself to mainstream post-Irenaeus.

John of Zebedee seems to have died as a martyr boiled in water. John the Beloved survived boiling in oil (even if it is in an account that identifies him with the son of Zebedee).

Jean Colson considers the martyrdom of John of Zebedee confirmed in the prophecy of martyrdom by Jesus (drink of the chalice that I drink of).

This differs from the life story (which Colson considered a novel, I disagree) where John the Gospeller dug himself a grave, stepped down, there was a light and after that one saw mannah.

Other argument, John the Gospeller had connexions with the priests and probably a house in Jerusalem or surroundings ("And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own." John 19:27).

Most prominent argument : if the Gospeller was the host and not one of the twelve, it very well explains why the First Eucharist wasn't described by him -- he had left his guests between them.

MaryG
@maryqwe1118
@hglundahl the fact that everyone goes away at the Getsemani doesn't mean they stayed away from Jesus till his death. In fact it Is also stated that Peter follows Jesus when he Denise him 3 times. Also if we consider what the gospel say tò be Truth they even Say that the 12 apostoles and Jesus were at the supper so the beloved one was probably one of them

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@maryqwe1118 The host was also present at the last supper.

The thesis of Jean Colson is, John the Beloved was actually the host.

MaryG
@hglundahl Oh I begin saying the least important concerns of mine about this theory: when John and Peter prepare for the supper it doesn't appear that they know the host, who also has a servant(why and apostole so close to Jesus is still that rich to own a servant and so on) I don't know, the disciple who Jesus love says to be a witness of the facts and it would be weird if he was talking only from the last supper on, he has to be one close to him that follows him from the beginning, so the disciples would have know him. The host is presented ( in other gospels) as one not particolarly known.

But , most importantly, why one should reject completly the idea that John the apostole wrote it when for decades it was believed so, and accepting more the idea that the witness is the host of the supper just because one or mabye two dudes from the last centuries theorize so? If you consider weak the things that lead to John being the witness, the clues leading to other specific people are way weaker. I mean Imagine if christian tradition would have say from the beginning that the host was the beloved disciple based on the same things, would't we be, even more, be saying that this thesis is absurd and based on basically nothing?

MaryG
@hglundahl also i night add, it is never stated that the disciple that follows Peter tò the yard of the Priest is the beloved one, some people just think it could be based I don't know on what ( After all It seems he always refers to him as the beloved one from last supper on, not some random disciple)

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@maryqwe1118 "when John and Peter prepare for the supper it doesn't appear that they know the host"

At all, or in advance of the meeting it would be him?

"who also has a servant(why and apostole so close to Jesus is still that rich to own a servant and so on)"

Why not?

Emotional or moral closeness doesn't necessarily imply closeness in everyday life, as for the twelve.

"The host is presented ( in other gospels) as one not particolarly known."

Wouldn't it make sense to keep still about him, while he was hosting God's Mother as his new Mother?

Like to keep Her out of persecution?

"the disciple who Jesus love says to be a witness of the facts"

I think that's facts in Jerusalem and about the Crucifixion.

Actual evidence would involve Asia Minor Fathers actually seeming to distinguish two John's (I fully accept the Beloved was called John, and that he was the prophet of ...

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to make known to his servants the things which must shortly come to pass: and signified, sending by his angel to his servant John
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 1:1]

Jean Colson didn't find one single Asia Minor father who identified John the Gospeller with John of Zebedee. Except St. Irenaeus who left Asia Minor at age 16, and who could therefore have brought a youthful misunderstanding along to the West.

Also, while he didn't believe the Apostle Life of St. John (Vita Ioannis Apostoli), he did agree with it that John the Gospeller died an old man, peacefully. He found both an implication in Christ's words to the twelve (Matthew 20) and a confirmation in an old Gallican martyrology that John of Zebedee was actually martyred.


3:28 As a Cohen, there would have been no problem in knowing Nicodemus, and the machinations of the Sanhedrin after the raising of Lazarus.

MaryG
As a Cohen he would have had a lot of problems of going and entire night fishing in lake Tiberiade thought (as the beloved disciple does), considering how the lake Is famous for strong and sudden storms and considering how dangerous was fishing back then even for Expert fishermen.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@maryqwe1118 First, we do not see that all Cohens were all the time in service. St. John the Baptist was certainly not in service when he served as a prophet.

But we do also not see any identification of any one at the see of Galilee with the Beloved Disciple.

Usually one goes with an indirect one, namely Fisherman = son of Zebedee = beloved Disciple.

However, if the Beloved Disciple was not the son of Zebedee, how do we know he was ever a fisherman in a boat on Genesareth?


3:41 A Cohen would have been very well familiar with how long it took the temple to get built.

Truth Be Bold
@truthbebold4009
I'm not familiar with Cohen. Could you give some clarification? Thanks

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@truthbebold4009 Cohen = Old Testament Priest, Descendent of Aaron.

Truth Be Bold
@hglundahl Ahhh thank you good sir 🙏


4:48 Would the 72 not have been told how the 12 were called?

Were only the twelve going along to Samaria or present at the feeding of the 5000?

4:50 All of Jesus' visits to Jerusalem - would equally apply if he was a Cohen who as disciple and house owner in Jerusalem hosted Jesus (yeah, the one who had two donkeys prepared).

5:36 "a few more than the twelve might have been there" - like, for instance, the host, the owner of the house.

Who, unlike the twelve, was not ordained Catholic priest that day and was therefore not present at the Eucharist.

5:51 If it's correct the Blessed Virgin was in her early years in the Temple, entrusting Her to a disciple who was also a Cohen would make sense.

And a lesser one than the twelve would give Her some well needed repose, rather than expose Her to dangers - the John who accompanied Peter in Acts 4 was arguably running risky errands, was one of the twelve. Could the one hosting the Blessed Mother be the other John mentioned there, who went with Caiaphas?

6:37 I think the first early Church Father who explicitly identified John the Beloved with John the Son of Zebedee was St. Irenaeus, while those back in Asia Minor didn't.

One says "we have known John, who has worn the golden head band" - why mention that in response to the Pope, if he could have said "who was one of the twelve"?

augustinian2018
@augustinian2018
I wasn’t aware Irenaeus ever identified the apostle John as John the son of Zebedee—do you have a reference, by chance?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@augustinian2018 The question is rather whether he attributed John the Apostle-Gospeller as John-one-of-the-Twelve-Apostles. It seems he did, I do not have references at hand, Fr Jean Colson in his 1968 work (nihil obstat and imprimi potest in Paris archdiocese) argued this was a misunderstanding, the Gospeller was actually a Cohen, and not one of the twelve, the actual meal of the last Supper happened in his house (hence the Last Supper Discourses recalled by him), but he was leaving his guests among themselves when God in the Flesh held Himself in His hands, hence no account of the Eucharist (the son of Zebedee being obviously one of those then present, but he wrote no Gospel, maybe his brother, rather than God's wrote the Epistle).

And Fr. Jean Colson obviously quoted with citations somewhere the place where St. Irenaeus considered the fourth Gospeller as one of the Twelve. His work?

L'énigme du disciple que Jésus aimait, appeared in print and bookshops April 1969, Beauchesne.

It's years since I read it, so this is the best I can do.

augustinian2018
@hglundahl I’m familiar with the thesis that John the Evangelist was not one and the same as John the son of Zebedee from Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. His analysis of Irenaeus was that the apostle John who taught Polycarp and wrote the Gospel is never actually identified as the son of Zebedee; the two people most frequently called apostles in Irenaeus’s works are Paul and John, and Bauckham argues that Irenaeus’s use of the word ‘apostle’ in reference to John carries the same meaning as it does in reference to Paul, as Paul was not a member of the twelve but was nonetheless an apostle. Bauckham built much his case on the fragments of Papias (early 2nd century bishop of Hierapolis) and Polycrates (late 2nd century bishop of Ephesus, the city where John wrote his Gospel); whether Papias refers to one or two Johns is ultimately ambiguous, though there is a strong case to be made that he refers to two (Eusebius seems to read him that way, though Eusebius harbors strong biases against Papias on other grounds). There is also a 5th century fragment of Papias (in a history by Philipp of Side) that says the sons of Zebedee were both martyred, seemingly contradicting other early tradition about John the Evangelist if we take him to be the son of Zebedee. Polycrates definitely identifies John the beloved (and by the extension, the Evangelist) as someone other than John the son of Zebedee—he identifies him as a hiereus/cohen/temple priest (which seems to be the source one of the authors you mentioned was drawing on; given Polycrates had access to local tradition about John from within a century of John’s death, I do give quite a bit of credence to him).

I don’t consider the case that John the son of Zebedee was not John the Evangelist to be conclusive by any means, but I do incline toward that view as a result of Bauckham’s argument. I sometimes quip that my son, John Polycarp, is named after John the Evangelist and possibly John the son of Zebedee. Nevertheless, I’m due to re-read the surviving works of Irenaeus sometime soon, so I’ll keep my eyes peeled for identification of Irenaeus’s John the apostle with John the son of Zebedee; I find it entirely plausible that Bauckham missed something explicitly linking the son of Zebedee to the Evangelist in Irenaeus.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@augustinian2018 I have not yet read Bauckham.

Thanks for mentioning the 500 and Andronicus and Junia and Paul are apostles but not of the twelve.

Good point.


6:40 "traditional authorship of John's Gospel" - if the tradition had been universal, as I hinted it wasn't, I don't think Fr. Jean Colson would have disputed it.

Another hint, John who dies in Ephesus never became bishop there. Why would one of the twelve not be bishop over others? They were the first bishops.

Council of Florence
@councilofflorence4896
The tradition was in fact, universal. John was a Bishop, but not of Ephesus. We see in Apocalypse that John orders multiple Churches. John did not live at Ephesus, he would travel there and preach. Paul was not Bishop of Corinth, but clearly he was a Bishop.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@councilofflorence4896 A prophet may certainly write to bishops without being their bishop.

He also adresses people as "sunpresbuteroi" which is easiest to explain if he was of the lower sacerdotium.

Metatron on Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, with Eske Willerslev in the Background


I had to look up "Eske" to find out if it was a male or female name. Male. I found Eske Bille on wiki. The name is probably rare in Denmark and probably not even used in Sweden (unless among Danish expats). Denmark has 490 Eske, all male, all main name, Sweden 4, 2 of each, plus another nine as middle name, 2 women and 7 men, Finland has 4 men as middle names, Norway 4 men as main name. Norway and Sweden have far more men named Eskil, but Denmark has only 387 Eskil, so, fewer than Eske, which is mainly a form of Eskil. Mr. Willerslev is probably a very decent scientist.


Vikings Were Muslims And Not White Say UK Professors
Metatron | 16 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzLn6dyc_Yk


0:23 You are aware that Vikings and Muslims did meet in modern day Russia (which by the way has over 10 % Muslims and those not recent immigrants)?

0:57 "writing the Coran with runes" ...

The Vikings on Ireland were fluent enough in Gaelic to give Dublin a Gaelic name.

The Vikings in Russia and Ukraine were fluent enough in Old East Slavic to become rulers of Kievan Rus.

I think you underestimate the fluency of Vikings in foreign languages if you think they would have been unable to pray the Salat in Arabic. However, I also think this is the kind of marginal event, why not feature the Icelandic Muslim who had been robbed from Iceland in Tyrkjaránið in 1627 and become a Muslim before she could return?

But even in her day Icelandic Muslims would have been fewer than one %. About as common as Austrian Bolsheviks in the 1920, if not even quite a lot fewer than that.

2:19 Denmark and Norway have a lot more gingers than Sweden.*

Reason? Irish and Scottish were abducted as slaves to Denmark and Norway (West-Ward Vikings) but not to Sweden and parts of Finland (East-Ward Vikings) and that obviously implies some Irish geneflow into Scandinavia.

2:29 In modern Scandinavia, 50 % have blonde hair and blue eyes.

I'm not surprised at the study, and the nobles would as usual have been more international back then than the rest (given Viking raiding habits, the genetic additions from elsewhere were not necessarily always voluntary)

3:18 Many may not be a scientific term.

But it is a common sense term. You could hardly use it of 2 % of a population or a sample. You could use it of 20 % of either. Or more.

In modern Scandinavia, only 50 % have both blonde hair and blue eyes. The combination of blue eyes with darker hair is the more common one outside those 50 %, or perhaps brown eyes with darker hair is more common than that. When I see someone with brown eyes and blonde hair I wonder if she coloured her hair or is a foreigner or both. It's the rarest combination, probably rarer than red hair and green eyes.

4:43 I'm totally adequate to expand on taking on Viking identities.

It's like the equivalent of a Frenchman in occupied France joining the German army, or of an Abyssinian back in the day joining the Italian army.

In the case of Vikings, not purely army, but "army, police, tax collectors, maffia and general jet set able to throw a big party" as that is a pretty fair description of nobility. The mafia part varying between different nobles, but clearly pretty strong in Vikings. (If I'm wrong on the mafia, correct me, that's more like your backyard).

Back when Vikings worshipped Óðinn and Þórr this would involve joining that cult too, but later when they became Catholics (happened to many even before 1066), it absolutely no longer would mean that. The Danish Vikings that were killes on St. Brice's day in 1002 in England were Catholics.

5:40 Not just more isolated from each other but also more difference in influx from elsewhere.

Viking age influx from elsewhere into Sweden would come from Finland, Russia, Gotland and via Gotland from Poland and Germany.

Into Denmark and Norway? From British Isles, perhaps to some degree from Greenland and Amerindians, but I don't think that was very common. Also, from France was less common, as the Viking descendants in Normandy were actually settled there and cutting ties with Scandinavia. And they came early and protected France from other Vikings. William the Conqueror was fifth generation after Rollo and not all the female sides hailed from Denmark. Precisely as Robert the Bruce was not all that much of a French Norman. So, mainly from British Isles and when it came to Irish, it shows in red heads.

6:18 If you have an Irishman who marries a Norse woman, he certainly took on Viking identity as much as 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne took on an SS identity. Vikings didn't come to Ireland via the equivalent of Statten Island, and their women were not offered to Irishmen for no good reason at all.

6:55 Classic Tortuga Pirates were also traders on occasion, not least slave traders.

But Viking is a kind of blend between trader and pirate. Offer him a good business deal, he shakes your hand. Offer him a bad business deal or none at all, he'll give you an offer you can't refuse. Or if you refuse it, shake an axe onto your head so someone else can't refuse it.

So, they had cities where they were welcome traders, fine, they could get gold or wine by offering seal tusks or whale blubber. They had other cities where they weren't welcome, and also monasteries, where the chanting reminded them of "seithr" (a hypnotic chant meant to produce magic or divination), they had other plans than peaceful exchanges. And if they saw a ship, they were attentive to see if it was friend, foe or potential new business partner.

7:10 No, Vikings were anyone travelling by ship, whether they traded more or plundered more, they usually did some of both.

It was one and the same line of trade. It was what younger sons did among Odin worshippers and somewhat still into Catholic times, like younger sons of Catholic nobles often joined the clergy.

7:20 Non-Scandinavian women were certainly empowered enough to get on the home journeys of Viking ships.

Scandinavian noble women were usually marrying oldest sons, inheritors of land, who were typically older brothers to Vikings.

7:44 The Vikings who had brown hair were certainly more numerous than the Vikings who were Irish or Scottish.

For these, Mr. Eske Willerslev was not using the term "many". 2 / 400 is not many.

If Vikings with brown hair were referred to as "many" they were certainly more numerous than 2 in that 400 + sample.

And I for one believe it. You don't see much blonde hair in Palermo, unless it's died or on the head of a tourist, so, when you notice Swedes, you'll notice the blonde hair most. As blonde hair and blue eyes are only 50 %, and blonde hair is more restricted than blue eyes, probably 45 % or more have other colours than blonde. Your mistake about Swedes is like my beginners' mistake in Latin when I wanted to translate every subsidiary clause depending on a verbum iubendi or volendi with an accusative with infinitive, just because that's very rare in Swedish. Cicero actually did quite a lot of subsidiary clauses with ut / ne + subjunctive in those cases, just like Swedish would, except Swedish would replace subjunctive with indicative.

"Jag vill att du kommer" would more typically be "volo (ut) venias" than "volo te venire" according to my memories of Latin stylistics (i e Ciceronian prose stylistics). Even if English has "you to come" as a direct translation of "te venire" ...

You expect more blondes among true Scandinavians, just as I expected more "A cum I" in good Latin.

7:53 The Vikings were typically from Scandinavia, the article says "not exclusively".

But Scandinavian does NOT mean majority blonde, unless you mean a very bare majority, and the nobility who made children with and sometimes freed and married women from Ireland or Spain would have a lesser percentage of blondes than the general poppulation, a higher percentage of red, brown or even black hair.

8:02 I have met a white Zulu.

A Lutheran clergyman whose other nationality is Swedish. He grew up among Zulus. His daugter, who taught at the same school as I, grew up among Cape English. So, she was a Swedish Rooinek, as the Boers call the English. Neither of them was Boer or Xhosa, though.

So "Zulus are not necessarily black" is strictly speaking true. They are very typically black and the article doesn't deny Vikings were very typically Scandinavian.

I don't think you have a real reason to complain about its wording.

8:33 Here we may be dealing with some real cause for concern. Other article. Not CNN.**

8:51 I look the article up.

The guidance urges tutors to consider that "some Vikings became practising Muslims" due to Islamic goods being found in the graves of some Vikings, thought to have been attained by trade


They also found a Buddha on precincts of some Mälar Viking burial, perhaps Sigtuna.

Doesn't mean the Vikings were sometimes Buddhists. And some crosses in graves might have more to do with pride in successfully plundering a monastery (nobody's perfect as you mentioned) than with Christian devotion.

Here I would say the methodology is bad.

9:09 I totally agree.

Sounds like departments of education and similar nasty anti-parents' stuff.

11:17 My point precisely.

On reconsideration, though. On the date of Lindisfarne, Vikings worshipped Norse gods. Perhaps not all on Gotland, but certainly those who went to Lindisfarne.

On the date of 1066, Vikings outside Scandinavia typically, Vikings on Iceland basically exclusively and Vikings in Scandinavia to a fairly large part were Roman Catholic Christians.

It is not impossible that the change of religion was helped by some underhand pluralism in personal belief, as also the Norse sagas, both Icelanding Sagas and from earlier times (back to the Völkerwanderung) do feature less than monolithic adherence to Norse gods. They may have had a kind of policy of public worship to these joined with agnosticism or foreign religious influences in personal belief and this may have helped to spread Christianity as a provider of certainty and of unity. Outside certain parts of Norway mostly voluntarily, but Norse kings notably Saint Olaf probably thought the Norse religion was too much of a promoter of feuds, so he forced people, especially high ranking nobles, to become Christian.

Isn't there a country you may know better than I do, where a man may be a shinto when he is enthroned as descendant of the Sun Goddess and a buddhist or a secularist or something when doing war inside or outside that country? (And how do you like my theory that both Amaterasu and Venus Mater were in fact Puduhepa, priestess of the sun goddess of Arinna, whom she identified with the love goddess ...?).

14:53 "other parts of Europe and what is now Russia"

British Isles and Southern Europe for Danish and Norwegian ones, Russia for Swedish ones.

Muslims were arguably already present in Daghestan at this point. Just noting, Ukraine is more purely Christian then the Russian federation.

18:04 There is nothing wrong with being ethnically Anglo-Saxon or culturally so ... as long as you stay out of an US American nightmare called "The Anglo-Saxon Club" ... (ask Danielle Romero on the channel NYTN about what that is).

18:49 LONG HISTORY?

The Anglo Saxon Clubs of America was a white supremacist political organization which was active in the United States in the 1920s and lobbied in favor of anti-miscegenation laws and against immigration from outside of Northern Europe. Founded in Richmond, Virginia, in 1922 by musician and composer John Powell and political activist Earnest Sevier Cox, the organization had 400 members in 1923 and 32 "posts" by 1925 and was open only to white male members.


If since 1922 is "long history" to those guys, what is Viking age? Prehistory? Come on!

18:49 bis. I found a rabbit hole.

Anglo-Saxonism is really a very dead ideology, even White Suprematists wouldn't be as anti-Celtic as those guys were. Tolkien certainly wasn't, and wiki credits him with being influenced by Anglo-Saxonism. I looked up a footnote.***

Helen Young says that the links between racism and the study of the Middle Ages date at least back to the 18th century.


So? The links between anti-racism and the Middle Ages date at least back to the Crusades. Yes, literally. The German version of Parzifal (no, not Wagner's, the Medieval German), credits him with having a brother "Feirefitz" who is checkered in white and brown skin because he had white Lancelot for father and a Sarracen as mother. That kind of jokes don't look like heavy racial prejudice to me at least.

22:45 Indeed°, their offspring is going to have genetic mixing, and this would more often have been the case in the nobility.

If so and so "bought a wife from Asia" not sure if this is a thing, is he likelier to be speaking Cockney or the dialect of Soho?

* Vikings weren’t necessarily blond. Or Scandinavian. Why everything you thought you knew about the Norsemen may be wrong
By Harry Clarke-Ezzidio, CNN | Published 11:00 AM EDT, Wed September 16, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/16/europe/vikings-blond-scandinavian-study-scn-scli-intl-gbr/index.html


** GBN: Vikings were 'not all white and some were Muslim', pupils to be told in effort to ditch 'Eurocentric ideas'
By Ed Griffiths | Published: 01/06/2025 - 11:17 | Updated: 01/06/2025 - 13:08
https://www.gbnews.com/news/vikings-non-white-muslim-eurocentric-ideas


*** How Can We Untangle White Supremacy From Medieval Studies?
David M. Perry | October 9, 2017
https://psmag.com/education/untangling-white-supremacy-from-medieval-studies/


° We're on a third article:

LiveScience: Vikings may not have been blonde, or Scandinavian
News | By Yasemin Saplakoglu | published September 17, 2020
https://www.livescience.com/vikings-were-not-always-blonde-or-scandinavian.html

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Sharing


Israel "will destroy you": a terrifying menace to the Attorney General of the ICC
Owen Jones | 16 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_bzbu68U24

Influencers are not clergy, scandals aren't reasons to change longstanding discipline


The Scandal of Catholic Influencers Calls for Reflexion
Brian Holdsworth | 16 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3c76-_vUU


1:12 A Catholic influencer SHOULD be unchecked.

Influencer is NOT a part of the magisterium or dicasterium or clergy or monastics.

Whether you do your influencing online or by radio, TV or printing press, you do your influencing at a distance. CSL had letter correspondences with readers, and two of the more famous are with the Gresham children (Catholics) and with a god daughter (I think) named Joan.

There are some things you cannot do at a distance of 100's of km or miles.

That a certain influencer lives a double life may be sad, but it does not in any way, shape or form mean he's abusing those whom he is edifying by his online words. I'm pretty happy not to know whom you are talking about. If it's me, I haven't heard those rumours.

Let's suppose a certain great Catholic Apologist were in fact secretly a Satanist, what's that to us? I mean secretly. If we found out, we might need to pray for him. I might want to renew prayers for JRRT after finding out, through an audio clip by his son Fr. John Tolkien that he was so cordial an ecumenist, friend and host that this led to omitting some basic protections for his own children. Those were not the exact words by Fr. John Tolkien, they are my conclusions from it.

If we were spiritually tainted by receiving instruction or other means of grace, like sacraments, from people not in the state of grace, Lollards would be right, we wouldn't be able to trust even a baptism by a priest who was in mortal sin, even unbeknownst to the parents of the child. And the Hislop crowd would be right, in principle, if a Pope honouring Mary were in the utmost secret of his heart intending to honour Semiramis, that would taint us all. This is obviously nonsense.

Now, I am very probably to a high degree a victim of the kind of thing you are proposing. I am a Catholic Apologist. I am unprinted, therefore outside busking and gifts unpaid, therefore impoverished, still on the street, still unmarried.

1) People have speculated on my not being Catholic, like never having converted. It is true I did not convert after the 1990 new profession of faith, I converted in 1988. While that was still in communion with Monseigneur Lefebvre and while there was no act of profession in "religious submission" even to non-definitive teachings of the merely authentic magisterium. Also 4 years before there was active promotion of Evolution and Geocentrism from the man you call "John Paul II"

2) People have speculated on my not being the author of my blogs, also not true. I'm not sure this has been put to rest.

3) People have pretended Apologetics is a kind of formal ministry which therefore needs approval from the bishop, not true.

4) People have pretended my blogs violate the Trentine discipline of "nihil obstat" and "imprimi potest / imprimatur", a procedure which first of all never meant to apply to blogs, because they are this democratic a medium, which 16th C. printing wasn't. Second, for those who accept the papacy of "Paul VI" this procedure was abolished. Third, I never got a disapproval from Pope Michael I when offering him a link to read. Fourth, I encouraged him to print and in that case he would have had occasion to give the imprimatur. Fifth, he said he hadn't time, not sure if he meant my enture corpus of posts or even just a selection for a printed book, and I replied, he did not contest, in that case I was not bound by the discipline.

5) People have pretended I pretend to be a monk or even to actually assess me as one, and have objected that my blogging doesn't comply with monastic obedience, I didn't wait for an abbot (which I don't have) or the local bishop to order me to write. I am not a monk.

6) People have pretended my blogs are not Catholic as to content. Well, the problem is, no one is stepping up to confront me on anything other than rejecting "John Paul II" through "Francis" and so far not accepting "Leo XIV". Since this concerns only few of my blog posts comparatively, I could have a good revenew from lots of posts that remain.

7) People have probably (I cannot look behind my back) pretended my blogs purport to be prophecy, they simply don't. I certainly do not need the vetting that the Fatima children or St Bernadette Soubirous got. Because I am not making a parallel claim.

8) People have pretended I intend to undermine the faith or funnel people into Islam or Judaism or Evangelicalism. My intentions are strictly irrelevant for the content of my blogs and its orthodoxy.

And NOW you come around, pretty certainly with the approval of your bishop or parish priest if not even on the actual initiative of them. And you say INFLUENCERS need to be checked.

NO THANKS!

[above disappeared on renewing the page.]

1:50 I have been an online influencer since 2001.

One very much fought back against.

I had always wanted to be a writer, not just novelist (which I'm not yet) and poet (which I am in shorter formats), but an essayist. Since my teens, before there was internet.

I got a chance while in a situation where I also had to defend my faith in the deeply un-Catholic and in fact anti-Catholic (though usually not overtly so) Sweden.

Those I were defending myself against have since then used what you would call "the Church" to help them keep me back.

So much for "sought after carreer" and "might want to" ... in my case.

But back to what you were saying about the youngsters ...

2:10 You have just insulted St. Justin Martyr.

An influencer, more precisely an apologist in writing. You have also insulted saints qua saints, except those who lived the most recluded and socially retired lives and those whose public influence was simply a function of office (emperors, popes and so on).

You have insulted the memory of Carlo Acutis, whom I find probable is a saint, even if he was in communion with the wrong Pope.

No, "Catholic influencer" is not contemptuous to Catholic ears.

And when it comes to Catholic influencers who are not canonised and didn't die that recently, you have insulted the judgement of Pope Pius XI who decorated Chesterton and Belloc with the order of St. Gregory the Great.

2:26 What do you mean by "aims of celebrity"?

Chesterton had no beef getting himself a celebrity by wearing cloak, broad hat, like Spaniards prior to Carlos III, and by making jokes about his corpulence.

If you mean rock star celebrity or film star celebrity, you may have to some extent a point, but that's not the exact kind of celebrity a Catholic influencer is looking for. I presume. I have not heard of Catholic influencers rocking and moving about like Elvis the Pelvis, not even myself as an adult. In fact one of my poems or songs contains the line "are you lonesome tonight" not as a pick-up line, but as an appeal by a divorce victim .... specifically as an act of reparation (for myself and the soul of Elvis Aaron Presley) where he used that line in a bawdier way.

2:37 "lifestyle brand" ... Belloc actually did show up Catholicism not just as a doctrine, but as a lifestyle, a subculture. He did promote "pilgrimages are a thing" in a time when Protestants and Secularists who dominate the Engish speaking world weren't doing them (Santiago de Compostela was revived later, starting under Franco actually, so Franco helped to reverse a totalitarianism initiated by Lewis XIV).
"not sceptical enough" (about self) ... mistrust of oneself is a good thing in the spiritual battle according to Scupoli, but as content providers may provide other content than spirituality, that's not a concern for for instance apologetics
"own narcissistic vulnerabilities" ... sorry, has your Church converted to the religion of Jordan Peterson?

If your priest regularly uses the word "narcissist" in order to endorse the kind of aura that clings to it, I suggest you treat him as a very discredited Catholic influencer. Narcissism as understood by shrinks and Pride as understood by Catholic moralists only very partly overlap. No one in his right mind can say Mozart didn't enjoy being a music star (though not Elvis the Pelvis!), but also no one can pretend his pride went beyond the venial sin of vanity. As far as we know, and apart from what corruption he suffered behind the closed doors of Masonic lodges.

3:04 Good works or good workmanship have always involved an opportunity for seeking fame.

And some have always been chosen by some because providing better venues for achieving fame.

I am not very familiar with the Kardashians, I can honestly say you are wrong about them, apart from reality shows, they have actually made TV, as in being producers or actors, not sure which, and design, and fashion models started with Marie Vernet, wife of the tailor Charles Frederick Worth, both of whom died before 1900 when my grandfather was born.

3:14 gaining influence over other Catholics

The saints are actually a fairly big bunch. And lifestyle promotion of devotion to certain saints is a thing since St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (we celebrate Our Lady of Carmel today!) promoted devotion to St. Joan of Arc who at this point wasn't even canonised yet. St. Joan was canonised in 1920, and St. Thérèse was influencing for her (if only in the Carmel to her own knowledge) at a date before WW-I, because in WW-I, she was already being invoked herself as protector of French aviators.

Congratulations to your nice attack on a very Roman Catholic habit that Protestants and especially Puritans (less so Pentecostals obviously) disapprove of.

3:27 Do you take the words in Matthew 26:52 as a ban on becoming military?

The Catholic Church doesn't.

Now, bearing arms is one way of getting fame, as d'Artagnan shows, and on that Saint Thomas says, if you want to become a general because a general is famous, that is wrong, but if you want to become a general because you have a good plan, that is not wrong.

In cases of mixed motives, Catholicism has not held that the mistrust of self needs to prevail at the expense of the good motive.

4:11 No, I don't think so.

An Apologist is not a pastor. As Apologist, it is my duty to give an objectively convincing argument and try to get it out, it is not my duty to evaluate if it would alienate some.

A pastor (from Pope to Father confessor for the youth group) needs to balance the opportunity of improving a soul with the risk of alienating it. An Apologist is, by contrast, concerned with the debate. He's not even a missionary. He is strictly speaking not exactly evangelising. He is removing obstacles to accepting or retaining the faith, insofar as those obstacles are of an intellectual, and sometimes of a cultural emotive nature.

The souls are God's business. Not mine. And God's appointed servants in clergy. Still not mine.

4:21 If you compare the surgeon to a father confessor or a missionary, compare the apologist to the guy who produces or washes the surgeon's tools.

A far smaller responsibility.

5:01 What was he saying, again ...

Be ye not many masters, my brethren, knowing that you receive the greater judgment
[James 3:1]
Nolite plures magistri fieri fratres mei, scientes quoniam majus judicium sumitis
[James 3:1]

In that culture "magister" meant someone who taught in the same classroom or sometimes privately.

If you are the person that young people need to have as a common reference, in order for the classroom situation not to break down, there are qualities you need that you do not need as a writer. I can teach up to 12 people, but not even 20, let alone 30.

And please note, my most natural carreere other than writing would be precisely teaching. I think St. James is counselling me to write. According to a Medieval opinion the actual same James who is celebrated on July 25 and who is buried in Santiago, as confirmed by Pope Leo XIII (the identification, like that of St. Philomena based on visions of Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù, is partly due to approved apparitions).

5:16 Search my blogs if you see scandal.*

If you do, tell me.

5:24 Morally upright is mentioned by St. Paul in the qualifications for bishop and deacon.

Whatever you may think or imagine about my life is less relevant than if I tried to be a bishop or deacon.

Again, an Apologist is not clergy.

5:55 should probably start applying to the laity as well

For catechist, fine. Again, does not apply to Apologist.

This is not an admission of living an abject life, though I could live better if I had money for my writing and a wife. But I mention this because some may imagine things about my life.

6:02 No, pastoral rule is NOT required reading for an apologist who is not even a speaker.

Could some profit from it? Sure. But is it needed? No.

7:02 Apologetics is not per se Exorcism.

7:41 As to preparation, certainly not for exorcism, but for apologetics.

After I quit as a teacher, no public scandal involved, just not renewing the contract that was anyway for one term, since I adn't gone teachers' academy, and since I was, as mentioned, useless in the classroom, and after a "to work" transition that didn't lead to work, by Summer 1996, I start reading St. Thomas Aquinas for some parts that recur in my Apologetics very intensively, and by end of 1999 or first half of 2000 I had read The City of God as well. I am a somewhat competent scholastic on Christian metaphysics, and I'm at least a decent amateur in Patristics.

If Chesterton was prepared, I am more so, on his actual admissions, when he wrote the biography of St. Thomas Aquinas.

8:03 Fine. You have anti-Catholic family members who are used by other anti-Catholics against you.

I have anti-Catholic family members whom I sometimes suspect of using what you would call "the Church" against me. And then "the Church" uses my colleagues including you.

8:26 First, I do not think marriage is a "vocation" in the normal sense of the word.

It's the default.

Second, you are offering me a catch 22. I cannot practically get married because I have no revenue from my writing. You say I shouldn't write as long as I'm not married.

I certainly don't even intend to get consecrated or ordained.

If some "Catholic authorities" in your Church are trying to foist that on me on account of my being an Apologist that is a very major scandal. In fact, an equal reason for me to not take them for the Church that Jesus founded, because they do not have the grace of their state or purported such.

10:19 Interactions were from start and remain the core or even heart of my Apologetics.

Some aren't very monetisable. These comments could probably not get printed, since understanding them takes watching your video. But interacting with your video has at least shown you are among my enemies, as to my plans of getting a decent life as I see it. In order to make them understandable in print, I'd need to borrow larger chunks of your video than copyright rules of fair use would allow, unless you allowed it. So, this post per se is not very monetisable.

But online (i e readable for free) it has its use as a debunking of your very full scale, though oblique attack.

10:30 "a narcissism factor which goes against every virtue the faith insists that we aim for."

So sorry, but the actual Catholic faith does not insist that we abandon all that Jordan Peterson could label narcissism.** Are you buying into his perversion of moral theology because you are Canadian, or because your priest and bishop have converted to his religion?

Again, the sin of pride does not consist in narcissism, of every shade. And narcissism does not destroy the virtue of humility or lead to mortal degrees of pride.

10:56 In my current situation, as homeless and unmarried man without income, I have lots of things that are even more overwhelming than social media.

The exact same guys who want to limit my exposure to social media have also hijacked log-ins for toxic debates that for three days, once even with two ladies for a whole month heaped abuse after abuse on my intellect and repeated points I had refuted. AND when I am offline, they have their methods of getting at me too.

My blog is actually actively marketed by me in the neighbourhood, and some who have no response to me on their own will consult a far wider readership I have abroad.

A girl I used to see sometimes, probably put up to it by someone with your views, required me to stay offline an entire day to be worthy to just maybe see her five minutes in the evening, while the other people going by do not necessarily respect either my sleep or my working on sewing or my reading. I have pricked my finger with the needle because of people passing by when I was sewing who surprised me with a loud "bonjour" just to take me "out of myself" or "out of my bubble" ... it's on social media that I find a relative coherence. See known faces. Hear discourses that fit in or don't fit in with what for instance yourself has said on other occasions.

11:57 The one thing you should really look for when searching instruction is "are they knowledgeable" ... I am that. Frankly, arguably more than you.

"Are they" or "is he" or "is she mature" is a question one should ask lots less, not just about social media figures, but about people in general.

Toxic and manipulative narcissistic networks feed on people being on the watchout against the immature, against the narcissists (namely when the word means vanity) and so on, that watching out helps to isolate people.

One should obviously be on the lookout against toxic and manipulative people insofar one finds warning signals going off. But not to the degree of every beggar or every business proposal being evaluated as a risk of manipulation. (I fall between the two categories, btw).

12:09 I have time to debate.

You seem bent on demonising that. Which frankly helps to keep me single because it helps to keep me poor. And of recently, helps to destabilise the kind of friendships I had with Catholics online.

They cannot reasonably be replaced by a sacristan who thinks I'm so immature that I need him as a kind of mentor or otherwise I need some other kind of mentor. Being around people with such plans for me is frankly very toxic. Especially as his approach to Catholicism involves pretty much dogmatising Evolution, gulping in the fake news that Church Fathers weren't Young Earth Creationist, pushing out Young Earth Creationism to Protestants, hinting at my insincerity of Catholic confession because I don't make a sign of the Cross every time I mention my mother who has died ...

He is a fairly stable man. So far he has also been pretty stably patronising to me, pretty stably avoiding subjects on my blogs, pretty stably very probably telling the youth in the nearby parish to do so as well. I don't feel a need for stable men at all costs, and especially not at the cost of being infantilised by them.

12:19 "healthy limits" "falling prey to" ...

You are presupposing kind of an entire moral theology about the use of social media. And I don't find it in the Church Fathers. Feel free to show me otherwise.

13:39 I'm not a speaker for audiences, and I don't offer personal advice.

14:43 Fewer conferences, perhaps?

When it comes to "unequal relation" it has been years by now that you, Heschmeyer, Lofton, Horn, Akin*** and probably a few more have been alterted to the fact that I consider myself your colleague, albeit so far less successful in making a living.

I have at times pointed out flaws in your apologetics, and proposed my own solutions as better. Instead of responding to the debate or to the colleague, you have kind of taken a response as if I were either:
a) a newbie needing your advice (negative to my carreere begun before you even began yours, except Akin)
or
b) an audience needing to take more emotional distance.

I'm neither. If I were pursuing a carreere in Academia, which I'm not, I would naturally try to stick around people in the Classics and Medieval departments. And especially with people who had a better position in the carreere, even if they had begun it later. Now, I'm pursuing a carreere in Apologetics. To me that suggests spending some time pretty substantially on online Apologists and sorry, you, Heschmeyer, Lofton, Horn and Akin are.

The sacristan who thinks I'm childish isn't.

14:43 bis
While my presence in the neighbourhood is being poisoned in ways I already described, I just noticed a shrink doing skype sessions (he mentions "vos symptomes" ...)

I think it's neither absurdly narcissistic nor paranoid to conclude some are actively trying to push me out of my sector. Or sectors. Like Chesterton I also do social commentary. Or cultural and historic commentary. And yes, I spend time on both adversaries and allies in those fields as well.

15:00 The Church cannot constantly be changing its rules in response to scandals.

Your suggestion suggests to me, what you belong to is not the Catholic Church.

15:00 bis

In fact, one of my major misgivings about Popes Michael I (departed in 2022) and Michael II is, noticing that social media is a way of influencing, a) they preach informally online (not bad in itself), and b) they seem to imagine the rest of Catholic online influencers shouldn't exist or should act like their employees. I say "seem to" because they have never in fact clearly said so.

"The Pope is chief responsible for preaching and teaching" - true.
"The Pope must use social media for preaching and teacning" - also true. But not quite the same sense.

I suspect they may have concluded, in their heart:
"The Pope is chief responsible for Catholic use of social media, other actors act on his behalf" - not true.

But if I entertained any hope of escaping that by going to "Leo XIV" you tend to dash that. Even apart from me doubting him being able to explain "John Paul II" ...

___________________

Now, I note that all my previous comments have disappeared.

I also note that apart from "having to subscribe" to guidelines, how would you even enforce them?

Suppose a "self proclaimed" Catholic influencer (influencers being by definition mostly self proclaimed, except those who for some reason need it to complement another job, like Donald Trump or Pope Michael II) were faced with these "guidelines" and said "no, I'm not signing this" ... how would anyone react?

By silent marginalisation? Chasing algorithms to bring down someone's viewers? Sounds like an act of piracy to me. Like the piracy I suspect you guys have been pretty involved with. Perhaps beyond passively obeying orders not to engage with me.

By excommunication? Becoming a media influencer is not consecrating bishops without an apostolic mandate.

By refusing to "accredit" an influencer? So far influencers have not needed accreditation in a formal way. Catholic Answers and yourself have probably profited greatly from some informal accreditation, which doesn't raise you to magisterial status, but Robert Sungenis has come pretty far without that from bishops. Perhaps he had it from networks. But perhaps some good content creators actually get things rolling around their work if not their financial affairs in my case, and it means they get along without accreditation.

In fact, there is no single law in the Catholic Church that, even if your Pope were the correct one, forbade my activity (other than occasional promotions of what would in that case be the wrong Pope). Or, if you think § 283 actually makes a total ban on Catholics supporting Young Earth Creationism and Geocentrism, it would be interesting to know if Kolbe Center and Sungenis got a dispensation.

_____________________

* The millstone is mentioned in connection with scandal in all three synoptics. Mt 18, Mk 9, Lk 17. St. John mentions one in Apocalypse, perhaps as application of the one mentioned by Jesus in the Gospel. Apoc. 18.
** The word has two very different uses. The one is is here, Brian refers to vanity, overestimating one's attractiveness. An egregious degree of this could be the song "everybody loves me baby, what's the matter with you" ... but below that degree, it need not be poison. Chesterton labels it a weakness, like overeating. He was aware of his weaknesses. The very different use is when narcissist comes in phrases like "surviving a relationship with a toxic narcissist" ...
*** I also don't disdain Robert Sungenis or Dimond Brothers. While differring from both on issues.