The previous article noted the difference between God-given authority and contrived human authority, and noted that the natural God-given authority of a husband, a mother, a pastor must be honored, both by those subject to the authority and by the one wielding it.

The most basic form of God-given authority is that of the natural family. The authority therein moves in a sort of chain of command: originating in God, flowing through the husband to his wife, and from both to their children.

I want to stress that the family is the most basic of all human authority, the beginning of all human governance, the very foundation of civilization. Period. Full stop. End of paragraph.

Is such authority absolute? Of course not. Naturally, authority given by God is subject to God. The husband, for example, may not tell his wife to do something contrary to the moral Law of God. If he does, his authority in that case is invalid, and the wife may have to disobey her husband so as to remain obedient to the higher authority of God.

One more point: The chain of command is a matter of order, not of superiority or inferiority. God is, of course, the Supreme Being. But the husband is not a superior being to his wife, nor are Mom and Dad superior to their kids. To rule does not necessarily mean true superiority; to obey does not mean inferiority. (This becomes theologically important in the next section, with regard to God the Father and God the Son.)

Chronologically later and of secondary importance is the ecclesiastic authority established by Christ. As above, there is a definite chain of command here. (Contrary to Martin Luther's Sola Scriptura doctrine, the Church built upon the foundation of apostolic authority is the true teacher and interpreter of Scripture, not vice-versa.)

As above, the human players in this chain of command are not autonomous, but are always subject to higher authority. Catholic pastors have an obligation to teach the Truth of Christ as handed down through the apostles. They may not change the teachings of the Church; that's not how apostolic authority works. Still less can they presume to second guess the older, more basic, more natural and more sacred authority of the family, nor redesign the structure thereof. And yet, that is precisely what many - perhaps most - bishops are wanting to do today: arrogate to themselves clerical power to grant ecclesiastic permission for easy annulments, divorce and re-marriage, contraception, even same-sex unions.

The Crisis

Beginning over 8 years ago, I began to acknowledge this crisis of Catholic authority: namely, the bishops' collective failure to remain true to Catholic teaching. Even wrote a few articles in my old Blogspot blog on that theme [1][2], culminating in an April 2015 article in which I puzzled over the apparent defection of Catholic hierarchy.

As mentioned above, a crisis of authority may arise in the family if the husband departs from his rightful God-given role. At what point does the father's failure amount to complete abdication and desertion of his duties? Is that what divorce means? Similarly, at what point does a pastor's apostasy amount to abdication and desertion? At what point does a massive, collective clerical desertion spell the end of Catholic unity? Have we reached that point?

Suffice it to say I am still puzzling over how we've arrived at this crisis, and what, if anything, to do about it. Perhaps these past couple blog posts have been my attempt to sort things out in my own mind by putting my thoughts into writing. Probably more blog articles to follow.

There is correspondence between the verbs 'depend' and 'obey'. In a give-receive relationship, the benefactor is normally in control; the dependent beneficiary is humble and obedient. The theme of the previous article is that Christian gift-service should normally involve self abnegation, helping others with a view toward weaning them of their dependence. Deliberately working to undermine one's own benefactor status.

This is often a time-consuming process, requiring years, decades, or longer to mature. In the meantime, nothing good is attained by shunning leadership where leadership is still needed. The abdication of God-given authority is often nothing more than a weak fear of rejection. The Christian parent or pastor who refuses to discipline or who says, "Who am I to judge?" is not truly humble, but merely lazy or cowardly.

The operative term in the above, I believe, is "God-given". The authority of mother and father is certainly God-given and may not be forsaken. Likewise, the legitimate pastor's duty to teach, sanctify and govern must not be abdicated.

By contrast, authority (or 'service') that is not established by God should be seen as a moral and spiritual plague, degrading both to those who would wield it and those who would be subject.

In many cases, the "Teach a man to fish" principle is appropriate. Charitable and well-meaning individuals or agencies that (figuratively) give a fish are fostering long-term dependence. Where there is no natural ecclesial or family relationship, such manufactured dependence may well be unnatural, even devilish, not true charity at all.

Can there be any doubt that virtually all governmental 'service' is such a fabricated contrivance? Never producing any real wealth, the bureaucracy's claim to benefactor status is illusory, a La-La Land fantasy. Nevertheless, the typical politician or bureaucrat, whose authority can never be considered natural or God-given, lives and works expressly for the acquisition of more control over people. It may be argued that as long as there are thieves, murderers and extortionists amongst us, we will need honest police and courts of law, i.e, civil government. But human government always tends to ascribe to itself more and more power, often in direct opposition to God's own Law. Over time, this results in more lawlessness and chaos, less harmony and peace. Not to mention the loss of eternal souls.

Now the question gets a bit stickier. If it is wrong for bureaucrats to acquire more power, is it alright for the honest Christian to submit to that power? Does the demand for humility and self abnegation mean that the Christian must always obey civil authority? Is that what Christ was commanding when he said "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's"? (Mt.22:15-22) Note that he had asked to see the Roman coin, which his detractors readily produced. Maybe he was saying, in effect, "Look, you're already playing Caesar's game. If you want to play his game, you gotta play by his rules."

Another possible interpretation would be to simply admit that, like it or not, civil government is the present reality, there's no use pretending otherwise. Perhaps Jesus was simply saying, "Do what you have to do, given the present reality." But surely it is absurd to suppose that obeying civil government is a Christian's religious obligation, that the King of kings would demand, as a condition of obeying him, unswerving allegiance to an ungodly and contrived human usurpation of divine authority.

That, at least, has become this blogger's sentiment. No more an ultra conservative religious duty to obey human authority. But have also lost much of my youthful energy to fight the ungodly arrogance of government bureaucrats. Am finding it harder to justify doing anything more than ignoring civil authority as much as possible. No longer see any reason to cast a vote; why should a child of the King sully himself legitimizing an inherently illegitimate process? I believe this to be a Christ-like attitude. Notice that Jesus had almost nothing to say to Pilate, absolutely nothing to say to Herod. His attitude towards worldly powers seems to be neither cooperation nor rebellion nor fear, but simple indifference. "Let the dead bury their dead."

If you need a pigeon hole for me, consider me a theocrat. Judges 21:25 is a triumphal verse, an ideal for which to yearn. Meanwhile, in the present: Do what we have to do. And hope for the literal fulfillment of the ideal.

Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven

(Note that it pertains to this world, not just a heavenly, spiritual theocracy.)

A good mother knows that hers is a temporary vocation, a duty of love that wanes over time. The baby in the womb needs her wholly, a matter of life and death. The infant at the breast may (barely) survive without the mother, but the physical and emotional need is still intense and constant. But as baby grows into childhood and adolescence, the child becomes less and less dependent. The wise mother's vocation is gradually fulfilled as her child gains the ability to thrive independently, without mother's constant care.

We all know of foolish and selfish mothers who don't want the child to grow up. The need to be needed is too strong, and this poor mother desires her child to be (read article)

After several years of development, testing, debugging, and improving the strategies, I am ready to proclaim that my Sudoku Analyzer is the best on the web, that it can analyze and give a step-by-step solution to even the toughest Sudoku. Please note that this does NOT entail simply giving a solution, but in providing a step-by-step analytical method to solve. And so today I am unveiling the great CyberJerry Sudoku Challenge.

To be sure, I am still discovering some rare Sudokus for which the CyberJerry Sudoku Analyzer cannot give step-by-step analytical hints. But for those Sudokus, neither can anyone else. Or so I claim. (read article)

Contrary to what the first post says, there seems to be no obvious need to write any more about the process of creating a blog from scratch. Oh, you may notice a few minor tweeks since that post: The color scheme now looks more like the rest of the CyberJerry web pages. Have converted completely away from mysql. Made a small collection of my favorite quotes to display at random on the top of the side bar. Mostly, the past two weeks have been spent testing and shaking out bugs, a process that will surely continue.

In concord with the first post, I believe Jerry's Blog has become pretty much what was intended: A simple tool that should run well on a variety of devices, with reasonable (read article)

Writing my own blog. No, that doesn't mean writing posts on a new Blogspot or Wordpress blog. It means creating the blog itself - designing server database tables, writing the webpages and blog scripts, debugging, re-thinking, re-working. . . the whole software development cycle.

What 'meta blog' means is that the first few posts of this new blog will probably be about the progress and regress of the above. Blogging about making a blog. And in this case, blogging about starting over again from scratch, on a new hosting server.

To begin, here are my initial design decisions:

• Simplicity. I have no interest in top-heavy 'features' as characterized in sites such

(read article)