iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 20h

What’s a post that has entered your speech patterns? I regularly say “four eels” instead of “for real”

joshh O)))
@JNalv
I'm sorry Ms. Jackson (Oooooo)/ 1 am four eels/ Never meant to make your daughter cry/ I am several fish and not a guy

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Hanna rode in the bike bus on her own bike for the first time today!! (And Annie took her, bc she’s the best mom ever)

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Hard to choose, honestly, but this one of Millie mid-blink leapt to mind

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The flip side of this coin, as laid out by Lonergan in a late-1950s lecture:

"A religious background, for one example, is a great help in bringing one's Welt into harmony with the universe of being. It enables one to accept a reality that is not seen or felt—immortality, soul, God, and so on-giving reality to what otherwise would not be 'real for me.' But while it confers an inestimable aid in the process of development, it can in the concrete work out as a hindrance: namely, if religion does not keep pace with other development. Thus, the faith of a child requires development into the theology of an adult. If development remains childish—on the level of 'Sister told me'—this can be dangerous in the life of the cultured adult, who will decide, not only that such faith is outmoded, but also that religion itself is childish. At best, religion will cease to have much influence in adult life. History gives us material to ponder in this connection: The church in Europe lost the workers in the nineteenth century; but would the church have lost the workers in the nineteenth century if she had not lost the intellectuals in the eighteenth?"
Bernard Lonergan, Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on Insight, p. 183-4.

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

“Is that…?” The Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory coaches jacket? Yes, it is.

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It’s a 2-Birthday-party Sunday in the Maldonado Heaps house:

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

lol looking for old photos of the kids, I stumbled across this classic from 2019

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Last thing on Condon/The Pillar take re: Pecknold/DHS: the below starts out reasonably enough with a middle way in which Pecknold gives up his “missio canonica” but remaining on civil degree programs. But the idea he could then recover it after his leave to support *this* DHS is preposterous

But, as a devoted Catholic U. alum, l'd urge an amicable, quiet rethink of the dangling missio canonica in this story by the professor and the university, just to ensure it never becomes the story. If you see what I mean.
Especially since, for example, the professor volunteering himself to hand back the missio for the duration of his time in government service, to be reissued upon its completion, wouldn't have any impact on his tenure in the meantime.

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Condon is also able to provide more details regarding Cardinal McElroy’s past views on US immigration policy/enforcement than I was able to bring to my piece.

That having been said, last year McElroy described the administration's immigration policy as "a comprehensive governmental assault designed to produce fear and terror among millions of men and women who have through their presence in our nation been nurturing precisely the religious, cultural, communitarian and familial bonds that are most frayed and most valuable at this moment in our country's history."
Earlier this year, the cardinal co-signed a statement in response to ICE enforcement actions in Minneapolis, saying that "we are witnessing a grave departure from our nation's deepest moral commitments and from the values of human dignity, restraint, and accountability that our faith traditions uphold. When the power of the state is exercised without regard for life, justice, or the common good, the foundations of democracy itself are put at risk."
This being the case, the cardinal apparently considers government immigration enforcement to be a matter of truth and morals, if not necessarily a matter of faith in the academic sense. So, while the chances of McElroy deciding to make Prof. Pecknold personally the locus of some future standoff between the Church…

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

We managed to get out the door in time this morning to join the weekly bike bus and the whole thing made me so happy, I could cry

A selfie of me, looking a little bit like a Renaissance prince in a bicycle helmet, riding with the bike bus

A picture from behind my handlebars of riding with the bike bus

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This is a sub-optimal night for our AC to go out

My wall thermostat set to 68 Fahrenheit but the interior temperature reading is 80 Fahrenheit

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Pecknold talked a lot of shit about the quality of the argumentation in the USCCB's amicus in the birthright citizenship case, but then managed to both A) assert certitude in the absence of evidence and B) drop two eye-popping non sequiturs in a row: americanmind.org/salvo/birthr...

- It seeks to show that restricting birthright citizenship would be “unconstitutional,” yet by making such a logical mess of that argument, it shows that the government’s textualist interpretation of the 14th Amendment should be considered within constitutional bounds.

- Similarly, by making such a moral muddle of the claim that any restriction or denial of birthright citizenship is “immoral,” constituting an affront to human dignity, Matthew Martens ironically and unintentionally proves that there is no natural right to birthright citizenship at all.

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The 2026 Fall Lonergan Symposium at @setonhall.bsky.social "Mysticism & Method" Presentations by Mary Frohlich, RSCJ, Amy Maxey, & a response from Kevin Hughes Thursday, Oct 8, 9:30am-12pm Register at the link below. Streaming will be available. events.shu.edu/event/49665-...

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Our kitchen table is a mess & we’re eating on paper plates bc we couldn’t possibly wash another dish (sorry, mom; sorry, God), but my son made this pasta from scratch. It’s amazing! I’m very proud & grateful.

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

On October 24 at @setonhall.bsky.social, the Center for Catholic Studies (of which my Lonergan Institute is a part) is hosting an event called "Magnifica Humanitas & Our Shared Future" as part of its "Ethics and Values in the Era of AI" series. QR code in image takes you to registration page.

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

On a plane to TX, where the weather does not disappoint

An airplane seat back screen that says, “Welcome
JONATHAN
Thunderstorms with highs of 102°F”

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

From Lonergan’s “Moral Theology & the Human Sciences”

A second but allied suggestion is a distinction between external and internal criticism. The external critic draws, not on the science he is criticizing but on some distinct source. So the obligation to pay a family wage may be concluded from evident moral principles. But the de tacto operative economic theory may be that of a market economy, so that any employer that does pay a family wage sooner or later goes bankrupt because his wicked competitors do not pay a family wage. The de facto result is that a family wage is not paid and, indeed, cannot be paid until a modification of the market economy is brought about either by recurrent legislation on minimum wages or by a more radical criticism of the market economy itself.

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Ack! I just realized the essay I mentioned below isn’t in Bob Doran’s festschrift, it’s in *perspectives on psychic conversion*! The essay i have in *intellect, affect, and God* is also good, but a very different vibe…

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I fed my neighbors’ cats while they took a trip to Chicago and this is how they thank me…

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Happy Sunday Evening Wind-Down from Fuego

An orange cat looking alert while reclining on an empty duffle bag because of course he is

An orange can schlumpfed down, resting his dumb little head on his front legs, with his little white-socks’d paws crossed in front of him

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Co-signed. This, from Boyd, is characteristically excellent.

This obviously raises questions for the present moment: What is intellectual excellence for us? What is our definition of intellectual virtue generically, and what specific intellectual virtues should be cultivated for their own sake?

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

My latest in @commonwealmagazine.org is featured on their homepage today: www.commonwealmagazine.org/conquering-d...

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Jonathan Heaps @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I took students to Rome earlier this Summer & at the end of our trip they bought me this sweet little moka pot charm bracelet. I thought I had misplaced it, but I found it while tidying up our bedroom today.