Monsignor Gänswein appears to be sold...

This may be my "just-when-I-thought-I-was-out-they-pull-me-back-in" blog post.

But I'm gonna let all y'all do the conversing in the comboxes. I'm verklempt.

How Gators Can Save Your Life During Lent

A lot of people think we Catholics are complete idiots. And there are other people who know we are not, but like to go along with the crowd and pretend we are idiots, accentuating our idiocy as they do with our other faults. We are indeed painted as being so idiotic that we could easily starve to death if we thought we couldn't eat something we caught out in the swamp, for instance, because our imperious and hypocritical leaders might not let us.

Gee whiz. What would people who are still #Catholic do without @roddreher to tell them what reptiles they may eat during #lent . #SillyMe

— Ⓔⓢⓣ⋅Ⓠⓤⓞⓓ⋅Ⓔⓢⓣ (@estquodest) February 22, 2015

Not that he can let a drop of gator gumbo touch his goozlepipe as he informs us here.

As I've suggest several times, I agree with Casella; he sure talks and acts like he is still basically a Catholic. He's angry at the Church, he's obsessed with the Church, and he's obnoxious and condescending toward any Catholic not sucking up to him. Just like a lot of lapsed Catholics. The Orthodox who are repulsed by him aren't put off because he comes across like a Catholic but because he comes across like a Protestant minister.

Imagine that you are Rod Dreher, and you have one life to live...

In a post entitled What Would Flannery Do?, Rod Dreher muses

Imagine that you are Marc Juris, and you have one life to live, and you get to the end of that life, and you survey what you’ve done with what you’ve been given, and you see … Sex Box.

Certainly a fair question from someone who has made a professional career out of minding other peoples' business, particularly if his bloodhound nose picks up the prurient tang of sex. But, surely, turnabout is fair play, and so it's imminently fair to muse in turn

Imagine that you are Rod Dreher, and you have one life to live, and you get to the end of that life, and you survey what you’ve done with what you’ve been given, and you see …

Well, what do you see? What has Rod Dreher done with his life?

Because my co-bloggers here have far better archives than I do, I'm going to encourage them to take the lead in filling in the timeline for our new anonymous fan Anonymous.

I will kick things off, though, by starting arbitrarily somewhat in the middle and asking, how did that Templeton Fellowship turn out for you, Rod? People do recall that Rod did win one of these rare opportunities, don't they?

Most people would kill for the chance to score one of those research fellowships. What became of your Templeton-Cambridge research, Rod? Was it notable? What was it even about? Did it lead to further career opportunities, perhaps with the John Templeton Foundation itself? How did you leverage that even more rare gift in turn?'

As I said, I jumped in somewhere in the middle. To be scrupulously fair, though, we should start at the beginning and see what Rod has done with what he's been given and then judge, as he himself feels free to do, whether he has managed to turn his God-given apples into apple pie or whether he has somehow lost them on the road of life as just so much squandered applesauce instead.

Oh, I can hardly wait.

Per a tweet pointed out to me by Pikkumatti, Rod Dreher is returning to the blogosphere. Maybe he got tired of having internet searches on his name return Est Quod Est and R. S. McCain on the first page, mainstream conservatives that we are. So rah, rah, yay team.

Update: Picture change.