This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 29 March 2015 to 14 April 2015.

The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I also post at Jimmy Akin’s The Weekly Francis. Jimmy Akin came up with this idea when he started “The Weekly Benedict” and I have taken over curation of it.

General Audiences

• 8 April 2015

Homilies

• 2 April 2015 – Mass of the Lord’s Supper
• 11 April 2015 – Celebration of First Vespers of Divine Mercy Sunday
• 12 April 2015 – Mass for the faithful of Armenian rite

Messages

• 29 March 2015 – Message for the 52nd World Day of Prayer for Vocations 2015
• 12 April 2015 – Message of His Holiness Pope Francis on the occasion of the centenary of Metz Yeghern and the proclamation of St Gregory of Narek as Doctor of the Church

Regina Cæli

• 6 April 2015 – Regina Cæli, 6 April 2015, Easter Monday

Speeches

• 3 April 2015 – Way of the Cross at the Colosseum – Good Friday

Papal Tweets

• “We can bring the Gospel to others only if it has made a deep impact in our lives.” @Pontifex 10 April 2015
• “The Lord never tires of forgiving us. It is we who get tired of asking for pardon.” @Pontifex 14 April 2015

My genesis as a constant reader really came into full bloom just before high school. Before that I enjoyed reading, but wasn’t constantly reading. What really changed that was the discovery of the genre of Science Fiction. The Apollo program and the landing of the moon had me convinced we were living in a new age and SF fed that for me. The books of Isaac Asimov were my first real book-love and from there moved to all the other authors of the golden age of SF and beyond. I actually skipped classes to read books from Asimov and others. I don’t regret that at all as no doubt I probably made out on the deal. For decades the likelihood of the current book I was reading being SF was almost certain. It was only much later that I branched out into Fantasy, mystery, military fiction, thrillers, etc.

So I certainly consider myself a SF fan. While a fan though, I have never been much involved in fandom. I am sure I would love to go to one of the conventions and converse with other fans. Well at least I like the idea of it. I would describe myself as a gregarious introvert. I really like being around others and hearing what others have to say. If perhaps I have spent six months among such a group I might even be comfortable contributing to conversations. I mean other than making comedic cracks since for whatever reason being the class clown was the more gregarious part of my nature. Although this aspect I have found is not uncommon among introverts and jesters.

Mostly when it comes to fandom I find it interesting, but mostly would just rather read than participate in fan sites and other fan related activity. When I read someone as knowledgeable as Maureen at Aliens in This World on conventions and other aspects I wish this was otherwise for me.

So mostly I was unaware of much that was going on in the SF/Fantasy world in regards to political correctness. Still I was picking up more regarding this from some publishing site blogs along with the limited number of author blogs I read. In the last year the nonsense has been much more apparent to me. Last year there was this article on Tor.com Post-Binary Gender in SF: Introduction. The introduction gives you a taste of the this:

I want an end to the default of binary gender in science fiction stories.

What do I mean by “post-binary gender”? It’s a term that has already been used to mean multiple things, so I will set out my definition:

Post-binary gender in SF is the acknowledgement that gender is more complex than the Western cultural norm of two genders (female and male): that there are more genders than two, that gender can be fluid, that gender exists in many forms.

As far as I am concerned this is total idiocy. All I want to do is read is a good well-written SF story. I have certainly read very good SF where such topics were explored and was never put off if alien reproductive abilities were totally different than humans. Just as long as it was a good story. But now I have seen more and more of articles of this type demanding agenda driven message fiction.

Then there were articles like I Challenge You to Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors for One Year. This article which included a picture of the finger-waving author would have been awesome if printed by the Onion. Although I guess self-parody is a form of parody.

I thought: What if I only read stories by a certain type of author?

Well I thought knock yourself out if that is what you want to do. Strangely I couldn’t care less about the race, sex, or political persuasion of an author. There have been many times after reading a book I happened to find out more about an author and that they held views contrary to my own. This never stopped me from buying another of their books if I enjoyed their previous ones. Sure there is a special delight to find that an author you love does share your views. If I decided to boycott authors with different views then my own I would save a lot of money and Amazon’s stocks would probably slide.

Today I saw Maureen had written a response to a study coming out about author Lois Mcmaster Bujold.

Acclaimed science fiction scholar Edward James traces how Bujold emerged from fanzine culture to win devoted male and female readers despite working in genres–military SF, space opera–perceived as solely by and for males.

She puts the idiocy in context regarding all the women writers who have written both military SF and space opera. Not just written in this genre, but creating classic books in these SF sub-genres.

Bujold is remarkable because she is a Darned Good Writer.

Exactly. I’ve read 22 of Bujold’s books in the last two years and look forward to more.

Last year I picked up Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia due to a recommendation by a Facebook friend. I really enjoyed his first book and soon read everything he has written. I enjoyed that series along with totally loving his The Grimnoir Chronicles. The audiobook versions with Bronson Pinchot are phenomenal. I knew nothing about him other than I really liked his books. I started finding references about him and that apparently he was pissing off all the right people (in my opinion). So I added his blog to my small selection of author blogs.

One author blog I have followed for several years is that of SF author John C. Wright. Mark Shea had once linked to a post of his critiquing the so-called technological singularity when AI will surpass human intelligence. I enjoyed that post and picked up his Golden Age trilogy which was already on my wishlist to read. He quickly became another author where I quickly read everything they had and whose new books were instant preorders. Plus his blog posts are a wonder to behold in their rhetoric and philosophical discussions. His back and forth with readers of his blog and especially critiques keeps me coming back for more. Instead of the “shut up” of the left he engages in more of a “explain yourself” and questioning tone. Certainly polemical, but the target is always ideas and not persons.

I was rather thrilled when Larry Correia started linking to John C. Wright’s posts and vice-versa. Three years ago Larry Correia was fed up with Hugo nominations that were all agenda driven and tongue-and-cheek started the Sad Puppies campaign. He attempted to get his own book nominated along with books from other authors. Such campaigns were not nothing new to the Hugo’s, just that a hated conservative would are to do the same thing. This is the third year of the campaign and this time it is being run by Brad R. Torgersen. I read his book The Chaplain’s War last year and highly recommend it. He also came up with the sample slate of books for Sad Puppies 3. What caught pretty much everybody by surprise is actual Hugo nominations announced was obviously heavily influenced by the Sad Puppies sample slate.

Not surprising is the freak out over this and the total slandering of the campaign. Would you be surprised to find that the Sad Puppies campaign was orchestrated by right-wing conservative, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, straight white men? Yes the typical punch-card of epithets was invoked. Funny how the actual sample slate was actually politically and racially diverse along with including both men and women. While last years winners were hardly diverse at all. There has been some truly awful reporting on this. Typical agenda journalism with no fact checks or even attempts at talking to members of the campaign.

Larry Correia was not personally involved in the campaign this year and he also turned down a Hugo nomination when called by the committee. He has a great post on the subject. A post I admire a lot since it was funny, self-deprecating, and addressed the common criticisms about the Sad Puppies. I especially liked how he was actually reaching out in this post and spelling out areas where disagreements are just fine. John C. Wright has also been writing a good deal on the topic and his post In Which a Morlock Chides Me gives a very good overview of the lack of quality in previous nominations that were hardly even SF. There is also a lot of outrage over the number of nominations that he received. In my opinion the stories of his that were nominated are well-deserved and his novella One Bright Star to Guide Them is easily one of the best things I read last year.

The best thing about the Hugo nominations this year is that I have actually read some of them and others look well-worth reading. It is hard to believe that Jim Butcher has never even been nominated before. His latest book Skin Game part of the Dresden Files series has almost 3,000 reviews with the large majority being five stars. It is not as if the previous books were not as popular.

But as I said in the title of this post, political correctness ruins everything. Everything it touches is lessened – The Minus Touch. PC did not give us better SF and Fantasy, it promoted approved message driven propaganda over storytelling.

Sorry for the long post which I doubt few will read. It is that when you try to mess with my beloved genre I get my dander up a bit.

Oh by the way one of my absolute favorite podcasts is A Good Story is Hard to find with Julie Davis and Scott D. Danielson. They discuss books and movies and whatever else interests them and this week they discussed Isaac Asimov’s classic SF book “Foundation”. Their tagline:

Two Catholics talking about books, movies and traces of “the One Reality” they find below the surface.

From an article originally published by the Catholic News Agency.

WASHINGTON — The editor of Religion News Service has denied that a grant from a wealthy LGBT advocacy funder has biased its coverage of traditional religion, which includes a recent controversial story on Cardinal Raymond Burke.

The Arcus Foundation dispenses millions of dollars in grants every year to support LGBT activism. Its 2014 grants included $120,000 to the Religion Newswriters Foundation, the owner of the widely syndicated Religion News Service.

The Arcus Foundation’s grant listing said the one year of support was intended “to recruit and equip LGBT supportive leaders and advocates to counter rejection and antagonism within traditionally conservative Christian churches.”

The foundation’s Sept. 23, 2014, announcement said the grant aimed at “fostering a culture of LGBT understanding through the media” by funding the production of feature stories and blog posts “about religion and LGBT peoples of color.”

Kevin Eckstrom, RNS editor in chief, told CNA that receiving money from the advocacy group did not influence editorial choices.

I believe Kevin Eckstrom’s statement is totally accurate. RNS would have given us biased coverage in support of LGBT activism regardless of the grant. Their awful coverage of the Church was not affected at all by this grant. David Gibson would have written stupid stories on the Church regardless of the grant.

No the grant was just an honest acknowledgment of the work RNS has done in the past and will do in the future.

The best thing about the RNS byline is that I know it will be not worth my time reading and not even worth fisking.

John Allen Jr. in his latest column writes An Easter reflection on what Christians and atheists have in common.

This week, Holy Week no less, two stories broke that together illustrate a towering irony about the rise of violent Islamic extremism: In a growing number of places these days, nobody has more in common than Christians and atheists.

In Kenya, the militant Islamic group Al-Shabaab launched an assault on Garissa University College, beginning by shooting up a Christian prayer service. The gunmen then moved on, leaving Muslims unharmed while killing or abducting Christians. All told, 147 people are believed to have died.

It’s not clear if the militants deliberately chose one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar for the assault, though Christmas and Easter tend to be periods of special risk for Christian minorities in many parts of the world.

In Bangladesh, a blogger passionately opposed to religious fundamentalism named Washiqur Rahman was hacked to death in Dhaka by two men wielding knives and meat cleavers. It followed the eerily similar murder of Bangladeshi-American atheist blogger Avijit Roy in late February. Roy was assaulted by two men with machetes.

Reports out of Bangladesh assert that over the past two years, several other atheist bloggers have either been murdered or died under mysterious circumstances.

Both these Kenyan and Bangladeshi victims were targeted not just for being non-Muslims, but a specific kind of non-Muslim.

Among Islamic radicals incensed with the West, no two groups stir rage like Christians and atheists. Christians symbolize the perceived sins of the Western past, while atheists embody what Islamists see as the decadence and apostasy of the Western present.

He goes on to write about how a coalition of Christians and atheists could evolve concerning an agenda of some shared goals along with some give-and-take. That also Pope Francis would be a key in putting such a partnership together.

Ideally such a coalition makes sense because there certainly is overlap in countries where Christians are a minority in how they and atheists are treated. Still I see little chance of this happening on any major level. The so-called new atheists emerged more into the public after the terrorist attack on 9/11. Making distinctions has never been a strong point for them. While this movement has been extremely anti-religion from its start, it has also mostly played out as anti-Christian in practice. The new atheists at times will criticize Islam, but much of their thrust has been anti-Christian in the amount of critique.

There is also a lot of overlap with the new atheists and secularism in general with a heavy dose of political correctness. They are natural allies and once again the thrust is anti-Christian with what should be a strange bend towards the defense of Islam. Strange indeed the secular apologists for Islam when it is so contrary to so much they profess. It only makes sense in light of the fact that these groups are primarily anti-Christian. As Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy “..any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with.”

There are of course notable exceptions to this with some atheist commentators making distinctions and seeing the threat as it is. But figures like Oriana Fallaci are few. I would love to see common cause in this where our goals do indeed intersect and that my own pessimism about this being totally wrong.

Note: The fuller quote is “This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves?” — G. K. Chesterton. “Orthodoxy”