This may be the first Presidency in US History where the President simply resigns not because he's being impeached but because no one listens to him, pays attention to him, or carries his golf clubs anymore.

#PotDamagesYourExecutiveBrainFunction

#Heh!

Instead of welcoming this overture, the Muslims were insulted

Must be Wednesday.

Frustrated with the ways in which the Crusades have been used and distorted, a few historians are now attempting to close the yawning gap between the academy and general readers. Among the new crop of histories are Thomas Asbridge’s The First Crusade: A New History, Jonathan Phillips’The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, and Christopher Tyerman’sFighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades. All three of these writers are distinguished historians. All three seek to bring the fruits of decades of scholarship to a popular audience. And all three are keenly aware that in the process they are smashing many cherished myths.

Every word of this is wrong. Historians of the Crusades have long known that it is wrong, but they find it extraordinarily difficult to be heard across a chasm of entrenched preconceptions. For on the other side is, as Riley-Smith puts it “nearly everyone else, from leading churchmen and scholars in other fields to the general public.” There is the great Sir Steven Runciman, whose three-volume History of the Crusades is still a brisk seller for Cambridge University Press a half century after its release. It was Runciman who called the Crusades “a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.” The pity of it is that Runciman and the other popular writers simply write better stories than the professional historians.
So we continue to write our scholarly books and articles, learning more and more about the Crusades but scarcely able to be heard. And when we are heard, we are dismissed as daft. I once asked Riley-Smith if he believed popular perceptions of the Crusades would ever be changed by modern scholarship. “I’ve just about given up hope,” he answered. 

Regrets? Like LaCosaNostra, they've got a few:

(1) President Obama? The #ChairIsStillEmpty and TotusIsTheRealPower

(2) Journalism school isn't training; its an affliction. 

(3) Benghazi was a womb with a Planned Parenthood flag atop it.

(4) President Obama acts like a man who's never had any executive experience in his life. Oh, right.

(5) Hillary Clinton? Only the cattle have futures in her administration. The rest are just meat on the grill and they're looking increasingly rare.

(6) Rules for Radicals is now Tools for Tattlers. Its tool time at the White House and this group of keystone cops couldn't break into their own executive washrooms without a Navy Seal team to break down the door for them.

The only possible explanation? The President is a Belieber.

The Northern Crusade was a bit of  absent mindedness?

The "internet in my pants" began to vibrate and the signal alerted me that someone, somewhere on the internet mentioned the Crusades, so its National Review Online, Thomas F. Madden and the Batman to the rescue.

So, what do the medieval crusades have to do with all this? After all, doesn't the Muslim world have a right to be upset about the legacy of the crusades? Nothing and no.

The crusades are quite possibly the most misunderstood event in European history. Ask a random American about them and you are likely to see a face wrinkle in disgust, or just the blank stare that is usually evoked by events older than six weeks. After all, weren't the crusaders just a bunch of religious nuts carrying fire and sword to the land of the Prince of Peace? Weren't they cynical imperialists seeking to carve out colonies for themselves in faraway lands with the blessings of the Catholic Church?

Tally Ho!

And the Broadway Show Tunes, the endless Musicals, reruns of Glee with a hint of Febreze.

“I adjure thee, unclean spirit, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost to depart and remain far away from this servant of God… And so, accursed spirit, give heed to the sentence passed upon thee. Give honor to the living and true God, give honor to Jesus Christ His Son, and to the Holy Ghost… And this sign of the Holy Cross, which we put upon his (her) forehead, do thou, foul spirit, never dare to violate.”

....

“I adjure you, each and every unclean spirit, in the name of God the Father almighty, in the name of Jesus Christ His Son, our Lord and our Judge, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be gone from this image of God N., whom our Lord in His goodness has called to be
His holy temple that he (she) himself (herself) may become a temple of the living God, and the Holy Ghost may dwell in him (her).”

Carter had been a Governor. Barack had voted present in the Illinois State legislature.

The book Interview with an Exorcist is very well done, and someone has put together a quick video. The book is here. The movie The Rite is ridiculous but the book by Matt Baglio is very good, too.

Christ was the most excellent exorcist, wasn't he?

I was just at an Extraordinary Form baptism this weekend and there were several prayers of exorcism during the baptismal rite.

Homophobia?  Really?

But under Obamacare won't it be more difficult to buy the medication required to treat this tragic affliction? Already I'm breaking out in hives and feel so sleepy...

And, of course, the next step after Augustine was St. Benedict and the "Dark Ages".

Could never happen. Could. Never. Happen. Do you hear me? Never.

The Romans made the same argument against the Catholics of Augustine's day. Catholics are still here. The Romans? Not so much.

Variety is the spice of life.

In a few weeks I will be reading a book that Pope Francis has read: Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson. I recommend the Baronius Press edition:

Lord of the World was described by no less an authority than Fulton Sheen as one of the three greatest depictions of the advent of the demonic in modern literature – the others being The Brothers Karamazov and Solovyov’s Three Coversations. In some respects Lord of the World represents a departure for Benson, whose religious novels are almost evenly divided between historical and contemporary studies: Lord of the World is a futuristic fantasy—but it is science fiction with a twist, for it is about the coming of Antichrist.

The novel is set in the twenty-first century, mostly in England. The West has succumbed to a sort of international socialism. The forces of secular materialism, relativism and state control are everywhere triumphant. ....Euthanasia has become an instrument of the state, Esperanto the universal second language. Nevertheless, although organised religion has largely collapsed in the face of institutional secularism, a vague, humanistic religiosity—militantly hostile to the exclusive and supernatural claims of the Church—is everywhere present.

Nothing to see here.