A Liberal Priest

  

                                    

 

On a recent visit to California my wife and I attended  Sunday Mass at a church where the celebrant was a visiting priest. I have been attending Mass for most of my 80 odd years and it didn’t take long to realize that the celebrant was a liberal priest. His casual manner and demeanor were a tip off, and his homily conformed my initial impression. 

A homily is supposed to be a reflection on the three major readings of the day, especially the gospel. In typical fashion, however, he ignored the readings and just used a word or two as a springboard into his own message. He asked us to consider our faults and shortcomings taking care never to call them sins, an old-fashioned word.

His homily contained a litany of liberal causes and by the time he concluded, I was asking myself if he could see any difference between Christianity and modern Liberalism. For example, what about self-sacrifice, humility, and gratitude: fundamental tenets of Christianity that have been rejected by modern liberals.

Instead, he mentioned the shooting of a doctor in Orange county, a so-called bastion of conservatism, white supremacy and racism despite the fact that 60 percent of its population is of Hispanic and Asian origin. The priest asked us to pray for the doctor but typically did not ask us to pray for the hundreds of young black men who are shot down by other young black men every year in nearby Los Angeles. He asked us to consider the plight of those who are designated LGBTQ, but never mentioned the plight of Christians in Moslem dominated countries who suffer almost daily brutal persecution at the hands of their neighbors. 

In a way, he seemed to be a little ashamed of Catholicism and found elements in its history that did not measure up to modern sensibilities. As an example he referred to colonialism, an issue especially relevant in California where the landscape is dotted with beautiful  mission churches built by Franciscan missionaries in the eighteenth century to protect Native Americans (Indians) from the depredations of settlers from Spain and Mexico. 

 

Junipero Serra, a Franciscan friar, built a mission system in California in the eighteenth century to protect the  natives from the brutality and rapacity of Hispanic colonizers. Only after the anti-Catholic Mexican government shut down the missions in the nineteenth century were the natives thrown to the wolves. For his efforts, the Catholic church has canonized Fr. Serra, but protestors now vandalize and tear down commemorative memorials. 

 

The efforts of Junipero Serra and other missionaries like him provide just one example of the efforts of billions of Christians, canonized and uncanonized, down through the ages to improve the life of their fellow man. Even today, their work goes largely unrecognized or appreciated. Below is an assessment of an earlier group of missionaries by an English historian written over 100 years ago.

 

 

Every traveller to South Italy should come to Montecasino only because of the immense influence it has had in the history of Europe and indeed of mankind. Fourteen hundred years ago and more S. Benedict founded here the cradle of that Order of monks which transformed Europe, cut down its impenetrable forests, drained its impassable marshes, educated its barbarians and made them Christians. It was the monks of S. Benedict who converted the English, supplied the country with statesmen, counsellors and bishops and presently covered England with mighty houses, Glastonbury, Reading, Durham, and the like, to be utterly destroyed  by a reckless and unhappy king, yet are now rising again, so that it is today possible to land at Dover, cross the country to the Atlantic, and sleep at a Benedictine monastery every night. 

Missionaries like St. Junipero Serra, and St. Benedict are just the tip of the iceberg. Millions and millions of uncanonized saints have worked from the dawn of Christianity down to our present time to follow the command of Jesus to love one another. Many of these unrecognized saints were sitting in the pews a few Sundays ago quietly enduring the priest’s “woke” homily. He was lecturing them but, in all humility, he should try to get to know them. 

 

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Inflation 2022

I got a real shock this week when I called my local oil company to set up my home heating oil pricing plan for the coming season. Every year it offers an option to set a price cap on deliveries for the coming year.  Under this option the price of home deliveries can not go higher than a set figure but can be lower if prices drop next winter.

 

Imagine my amazement when the company representative told me that I could lock in a maximum price of $6.50 per gallon.  That is an increase of $2.70 per gallon over the previous year’s price of $3.78, an increase of about 70%. In the previous year I had been able to lock in a price of $2.76 per gallon, largely due to the pandemic. In other words, if I use 1000 gallons per year, my maximum cost will be $6500 compared to last year’s cost of $3780. 

 

If you think that gas prices at the pump have skyrocketed, just wait till winter comes and you have to heat your home. One of the reasons I like to use oil is because I can set a maximum price and budget accordingly. If you use natural gas, you have no such option and will have to pay whatever the market demands throughout the winter. Of course, you can not use renewables like solar and wind to heat your home, even in sunny California. Electricity is an option but that has always been more expensive.

 

The  front page headline in today’s Wall Street Journal announced that “Inflation Hits Four-Decade High.” According to the Labor Department the consumer Price Index increased by 8.6% from May 2021 to May 2022. During the same period energy prices increased 34.6%, and groceries jumped 11.9%. an editorial indicated that eggs are up 32.2%, chicken 16.6%, milk 15.9%, and even soup was up by 13.9%. 

 

What has caused this record inflation? Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has finally admitted that she and Federal Reserve Chairman, Powell, erred last year in dismissing the obvious inflation as “transitory.” But neither she or anyone else in the administration of President Biden will admit that any of their policies or actions were in any way responsible. The President, who never takes the blame for anything, points his finger at Vladimir Putin. He will never admit that his determined efforts to limit the supply of oil and natural gas has taken the country from energy independence under President Trump to the point where he has to beg Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela to ramp up their production of fossil fuels. 

 

Economists disagree over the causes of inflation, but there is obviously a monetary component. A substantial increase in the supply of any commodity, whether it is coffee or oil, will inevitably cause its price to drop. Why shouldn’t the value of our currency decline, if the government substantially increases the printing of money, especially if it is deeply in debt to begin with?

 

The stimulus checks we received during the pandemic put dollars in our pockets, but the dollars we received were obviously a factor in the inflation we are now experiencing. After all, the Federal government did not have the stimulus money in some kind of rainy-day account. It had to print and borrow. In a way, it is like those people who max out their credit card, and then use another one to pay it off.  Instead of looking to the Federal government to deal with inflation, we should realize that the government itself is largely the cause of rising prices.

 

The multi-Trillion spending packages that Democratic and Progressive politicians promote inevitably lead not only to higher taxes, but also to more inflation, the most severe tax of all since it does not distinguish between rich and poor. By now it is clear that only a small percentage of these stimulus packages went to infrastructure improvements. A large amount went to shoring up the almost bankrupt pension funds of Blue states whose Democratic politicians have based their careers on pandering to the demands of public service unions, their main source of political contributions. 

 

Ironically, injecting billions of dollars in these pension funds may have avoided bankruptcy but the resulting inflation will eventually erode the spending power of the actual pensions these retirees receive. Last year every person on a pension has seen the purchasing power of their pension check go down by 8.6%

 

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Battle of Midway *

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, one of the greatest naval engagements in history. Below I repeat a blog post that I have posted almost annually featuring Samuel Eliot Morison's account of that battle that changed the course of WWII. At the end I add a link to an extremely well done documentary video that has received over 14 million hits on Youtube.

The anniversary of the Battle of Midway coming as it does on June 4, is usually overshadowed by remembrances of the Allied landings on the coast of Normandy on D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944. Nevertheless, if not for the American naval victory in the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942, D-Day might never have happened.

Nowhere is the story of Midway told better than in Admiral Samuel Morison’s epic history of United States naval operations during the Second World War. Admiral Morison was a rare combination of sailor and historian. Before the war he had written a magisterial biography of Columbus that still ranks with anything ever written about that great sailor. As part of his research Morison even used a sailing ship to cover the route Columbus had taken.

When the war broke out, the U.S. Navy asked Morison to be its official historian. The Navy took pains to put him on actual ships that were very likely to see action. He was not at Midway but his account reads like an eyewitness. Below are excerpts from his depiction of the pivotal two minutes of that epic battle.

First, a little introduction. After their stunning success at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the Japanese had rolled up one victory after another. By the spring of 1942 Japanese strategists thought that they only had to secure the tiny island of Midway in the central Pacific to completely solidify their hegemony over most of Asia.

They sent a huge naval task force including four of their best aircraft carriers and most of their best pilots to take the tiny island in the middle of nowhere. Even though the American navy had been battered at Pearl Harbor, it was able to send a carrier force to intercept the Japanese after code-breakers deciphered enough of the Japanese naval code to reveal that Midway was the target. 

The Japanese had already bombed the small garrison at Midway when the American carriers came into range. Admiral Raymond Spruance was in command of the American fleet and he followed the advice of Captain Miles Browning who shrewdly predicted the location of the Japanese force. Spruance launched an immediate attack and the American planes quickly found the Japanese. Unfortunately, the initial torpedo bomber attack was thwarted by Japanese fighters (Jekes). Not one torpedo reached its target and practically all the torpedo bombers were shot down. It seemed like all was lost for the Americans. Morison relates what happened next.

Lt. Commander McClusky

   

“The third torpedo attack was over by 1024, and for about one hundred seconds the Japanese were certain they had won the Battle of Midway, and the war. This was their high tide of victory. Then, a few seconds before 1026, with dramatic suddenness, there came a complete reversal of fortune, wrought by the Dauntless dive-bombers, the SBDs, the most successful and beloved by aviators of all our carrier types during the war. Lieutenant Commander Clarence W. McClusky, air group commander of Enterprise, had two squadrons of SDBs under him: 37 units. He ordered one to follow him in attacking carrier Kaga, while the other, under Lieutenant W. E. Gallaher, pounced on Akagi, Nagumo’s flagship. Their coming in so soon after the last torpedo-bombing attack meant that the Zekes were still close to the water after shooting down TBDs, and had no time to climb. At 14000 feet the American dive-bombers tipped over and swooped screaming down for the kill. Akagi took a bomb which exploded in the hangar, detonating torpedo storage, then another which exploded amid planes changing their armament on the flight deck—just as Browning had calculated. Fires swept the flagship, Admiral Nagumo and staff transferred to cruiser Nagara, and the carrier was abandoned and sunk by a destroyer’s torpedo. Four bomb hits on Kaga killed everyone on the bridge and set her burning from stem to stern. Abandoned by all but a small damage-control crew, she was racked by an internal explosion that evening, and sank hissing into a 2600 fathom deep.

Lt. Commander Leslie

The third carrier was the victim of Yorktown’s dive-bombers, under Lieutenant Commander Maxwell F. Leslie, who by cutting corners managed to make up for a late start. His 17 SBDs jumped Soryu just as she was turning into the wind to launch planes, and planted three half-ton bombs in the midst of the spot. Within  twenty minutes she had to be abandoned . U.S. submarine Nautilus, prowling about looking for targets, pumped three torpedoes into her, the gasoline storage exploded, whipsawing the carrier, and down she went in two sections.

…Never has there been a sharper turn in the fortunes of war than on that June day when McClusky’s and Leslie’s dive-bombers snatched the palm of victory from Nagumo’s masthead, where he had nailed it on 7 December.

Midway was a victory not only of courage, determination and excellent bombing technique, but of intelligence, bravely and wisely applied….it might have ended differently but for the chance which gave Spruance command over two of the three flattops. Fletcher did well, but Spruance’s performance was superb. Calm, collected, decisive, yet receptive to advice, keeping in his mind the picture of widely disparate forces, yet boldly seizing every opening, Raymond A. Spruance emerged from this battle one of the greatest admirals in American naval history.

Admiral Spruance

Admirals Nimitz, Fletcher, and Spruance are, as I write, very much alive; Captain Mitscher of Hornet, Captain Murray of Enterprise and Captain Miles Browning of the slide-rule mind have joined the three-score young aviators who met flaming death that day in reversing the verdict of battle. Think of them, reader, every Fourth of June. They and their comrades who survived changed the whole course of the Pacific War.”

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*Here is a link to the video or view it below. It is a remarkable piece of historical work and analysis.

Memorial Day 2022

This Monday is Memorial Day in the USA, a day when Americans pay tribute to those who gave their lives defending their country. It was originally called Decoration Day as towns and communities gathered together to decorate the graves of their sons who had died during the American Civil War. Civil War memorials still grace the center of many towns and villages today. In my home town of Fairfield there is a Memorial Day parade every year where thousands turn out to enjoy, celebrate, pay tribute, and perhaps remember.

I never served in the military. I was born right before the outbreak of WWII. I was too young for Korea, and exempt from service in Vietnam because I was married with children. I don't think I would have been good soldier but I have always respected those who did serve. One of those was Joseph Skrovanek, a client of mine when I was a financial advisor as well as a friend. I wrote this little memorial back in 2012 after he passed away at the age of 93.

                                            

Joseph Skrovanek was a true American hero. Like many others of his generation he was a son of an immigrant family who originally settled in the coal mining country of Pennsylvania. He served in the Army during World War II and was in the fifth wave to hit the beaches of Normandy on D-day. I knew him as his financial advisor and friend for many years. Like many other soldiers of his generation, he rarely talked about his military service. He was proud to be a veteran and marched with the VFW in the annual Memorial Day parade as long as he could, but that was it.

However, his real heroism came after the war. He came home to Fairfield, CT and married his sweetheart, Mary. He remained faithful to her through good times and bad for more than 70 years. They had two daughters who even after they had asserted their independence and did things that he could not understand, he continued to love them until the day he died.

He was by trade a plumber. I only met him after he retired but I cannot imagine that he ever cheated one of his customers or did shoddy work. Like many in his profession he was self-employed. He never worked for the government or a large corporation.  He had to buy his own insurance and fund his own retirement with regular monthly savings. Before he retired he made sure the house in Fairfield was free of any mortgage. 

Joe and Mary always lived very frugally. He loved to garden and make his own wine. Mary was a skilled homemaker and cook. They would never let me visit them without offering something to eat and drink. We would sit around the table in their kitchen and spend more time discussing family than finances. They liked to talk about themselves but always showed a keen interest in me and my family. 

Joe spent the last few months of his life in an assisted living facility. The day before he died Joe asked one of his daughters to drive him to visit his financial advisor and make sure all his affairs were in order.  They were.

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