The Virtual Abbey

One of the television shows I watch regularly is the SciFi channel's Ghost Hunters.

The premise of the show is simple. Two friends, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, work as Roto-Rooter plumbers by day. At night, they investigate the paranormal.

The show is interesting on a lot of levels. First, Jason and Grant are regular guys from Rhode Island. They approach ghost hunting with the same straightforward simplicity that they do plumbing. You think your house is haunted? They come in with a bunch of gear, stay in the house for a night, and see what they can find out.

They look for a rational explanation where it can be found. Not surprisingly, a lot of houses simply have issues with their plumbing and with their electrical systems. If you feel spooked or paranoid in certain places in your house, it may be as simple as a poorly grounded electrical outlet throwing off large amounts of electromagnetic energy. Knocking on the walls, ceiling, or floors is sometimes the result of loose pipes.

What is unusual, though, is what they cannot explain or debunk. They occasionally catch on film an object moving by itself, or on their voice recorders what sounds like voices from another world. They occasionally find cold spots in rooms that come and go, or weird spikes in electromagnetic energy that have no obvious explanation.

They offer theories about these things, based on their experiences. There is a basic metaphysical or supernatural framework they have worked out for explaining these things. Cold spots are sometimes believed to be from spirits taking energy from the air to manifest themselves. They offer a similar theory for equipment whose fully charged batteries suddenly run low. EMF, or electro-magnetic field disturbances are sometimes caused by spirits. And voices that sound on tape are spirits attempting to communicate. Some haunts are "residual," where a ghost repeats the same action over and over again. Some haunts are "intelligent" and appear to interact with people. While Grant and Jason accept all of these things as working theories, they are always ready to believe that places with "activity" usually have a physical explanation.

The show is also amusing because of the characters themselves. Grant and Jason have a team, which is known as The Atlantic Paranormal Scoiety, or TAPS. This team is composed of technical guys who set up, run, and monitor the equipment, and investigators, who try to interact with the ghosts. The personalities of the team and their occasional infighting or personal issues provide a set of subplots for the show when the ghosts aren't cooperating.

But my question is, what is it these guys are catching? Clearly there are phenomena that occur, and that they seem to be able to capture. If we live in a purely materialistic world, these things undoubtedly have physical explanations. It may be natural for there to be traveling cold spots and wide EMF fluctuations within a house. There may be all manner of background noises too sensitive for the human ear that travel across a vast distance due to anomalies in weather and terrain. There may be ground vibrations from nearby roads or underground seismic activity that can cause a door to open and close itself, or an object to move across a table. It could all be a profoundly cynical act of fakery, done to provide interesting television, though it doesn't seem that way.

I know as a Catholic I believe in the immortality of the human soul, and the realm of the angelic and demonic. Catholic theology, while as far as I can tell not explicitly ruling out ghosts, doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for them either -- one dies, receives one's individual judgment, and joins the realm of the blessed, spends some time in purgatory, or is sent to hell. One of three possible places for a human soul after death. But could souls in purgatory be allowed to send messages to Earth? Could a demon force a condemned soul to accompany it on its travels making trouble on the Earth? Could ghosts be a simple trap set up by the demonic to lure people away from the church into the false beliefs of spiritualism or as a means of tempting souls to open themselves up to the influence of the demonic?

I have occasionally lived in places that were, well, odd. The house I grew up in seemed to have a certain character that manifested itself in the occasional odd noise or sense of a presence in various rooms. All of my siblings had experienced the house's "soul" or peculiarity in different ways. I once, while reading the rather unusual book by C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, had, at the very moment he was discussing the phenomenon of loud knocking in a cabinet, a china cabinet next to me produce two very loud knocks, which was a very disturbing thing.

I also had a strange experience when I began to recommit myself to my religion. I had purchased a crucifix for my second floor study, and the moment I took it out of the box, all the fuses on the second floor of my house blew and the lights went out -- needless to say, the next three words out of my mouth were "Sancta Michael Archangele . . . " I occasionally feel things in prayer that suggest the angelic or demonic are close at hand; a few times I have felt what I describe as "interference" in my prayers, where when I pray the words, I hear a kind of "crosstalk" as if someone is praying against me, which feels a little like when you are trying to hear a radio station and there is another station too close to its frequency that breaks in and muddles the sound. Occasionally, in praying for others who have serious problems, I feel an overwhelming sense of despair, as if someone is trying strongly to suggest that my prayers for that person are of no use.

I have no rational explanation for any of these things, unless it is a simple diagnosis of mental illness. I do not believe I am alone in these expereinces, and neither do I believe that I am in any way a "sensitive," as the New Age term has it. If anything, I would describe myself as an "insensitive."

But outside the context of religion, and assuming the mantle of science, I wonder precisely what is it that the Ghost Hunters are encountering? I've read a fair amount of skepticism about the show, but I don't see anyone in the scientific community trying, in a systematic way, to account for the phenomena as purely natural occurrences, or demonstrating that the equipment they are using is faulty, or that the ghost hunters are frauds. Science, it seems to me, is all too dismissive of the paranormal. The scientific response seems to be 'It isn't ghosts, whatever it is," but that is hardly an answer to the question, "Well, then, what is it?" The tentative explanations of the ghost hunters and their conceptual framework for understanding what they are experiencing are not scientific theories, but they seem like a reasonable starting hypothesis given that science refuses to engage them on the merits.

At any rate, it's an entertainnig show.

Domenico Bettinelli linked this, and I have to admit, it's pretty cool.

It is interesting to me in another context, too. I've been reading Robert Hugh Benson's Come Rack, Come Rope about the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics. One of the minor characters in it is a cabinetmaker who specializes in making secret bolt-holes and passages in houses to hide priests and sacred vessels in.

Not that I think it will come to that. Not in my lifetime, anyway.

I do think we will see a renewed effort to drive Catholics from the public square, though. I am particularly concerned about three areas where the Catholic church does good works: hospitals, orphanages, and schools. On the subject of hospitals, the church faces pressure in some states to provide abortion services, abortifacients, or referrals to abortion providers, none of which are ethically permissible for Catholics. On adoption agencies/orphanages, the church faces pressure to give children over to gay couples, which is a lifestyle of which the church does not approve. On schools, the church faces pressure to "not discriminate" against teachers who neither believe nor practice lifestyles in accordance with Catholic teaching. It would not surprise me to see, in all three areas, the church driven out of the public square, in my lifetime.

I don't think the religion will be formally outlawed for some time -- hopefully, never. But it might be time to consider those bolt holes and secret hiding places, just in case.

Plus, they're just way cool.

An excellent post on higher education from Stephen H. Webb:

The central dogma of higher education goes by many names, but its basic thrust is as easy to grasp as it is hard to miss. Whether it is called multiculturalism, social constructionism, or left-leaning liberalism, the bottom line is that higher education in America these days promotes cultural relativism. Colleges do not advertise this fact for obvious reasons, but look closely at what they say in their promotional literature. Colleges talk about broadening your perspective, expanding your horizons, and offering you new experiences, but they do not talk about teaching you how to make moral judgments, how to distinguish the beautiful from the ugly, and how to seek the truth. That is because secular liberal-arts colleges and public universities do not believe you should make moral judgments, contemplate the beautiful, or acknowledge universal truths. And they don’t believe these things because they do not believe there is something called human nature.

The college you have chosen to attend is no worse, and probably a little bit better, than most colleges when it comes to multiculturalism, but it is always wise to be prepared when you go to school. What you most need to know is that the “higher” in higher education no longer refers to the high culture of the greatest works of Western civilization. In fact, higher education has been trying to dismantle this culture for decades. Higher education today is all about lowering the great books and great ideas of the past to the same basic level. Rather than ask you to climb the great heights of the classics, professors these days will ask you to tear them down. Rather than ask you to test your intellectual strength by pitting yourself against the greatest thinkers of the past, professors will teach you the intellectual equivalent of etiquette and manners. You will learn how to talk without embarrassing yourself in polite, educated company. You will learn what to say, not how to think.

I have been peering into Aquinas's Summa Theologica lately because of a paper I am writing. One thing that strikes me about it is that Aquinas is a) consummately fair to his opponents, and b) assumes a level of philosophical skill and knowledge in his readers that is considerable. In other words, Aquinas makes two assumptions that virtually no college professor does today: first, that his opponents are reasonable, even when they are wrong; and second, that his opponents and students are knowledgeable. Today, the modern university assumes the opposite of both propositions: it assumes its adversaries are criminals, and it assumes no degree of literacy in its students. Why study Aristotle (a dead white male)? In the medieval university, knowledge of Plato and Aristotle was an assumption; one can hardly follow Aquinas's arguments without a good knowledge of the works of his philosophical predecessors. Aquinas took Plato and Aristotle very seriously. He took the writings of St. Augustine and the church fathers very seriously. Why? Because he troubled himself to become educated before he wrote. He assumed that some of the past was valuable.

It has been apparent to me for some time that we live in a barbarous age. The universities are partly to blame for this, because they start with no core philosophical beliefs or assumptions. If it is, intellectually, equally valid to read in a library or to burn the library down, is it any wonder that the libraries are, in a sense, being burned down? Everyone likes a bonfire.

Actually, though, the universities are more subtle than that. They are carefully burying the intellectual heritage of the past under mounds of debris and silt, the writings of lesser men and women obscuring the writings of the great.

On Vacation.

On a boat. The Enchantment of the Seas, on a Western Caribbean cruise.

Key West and Cozumel.

I'll keep you posted.

And so much more.

A bit uncharitable, you say?

Wait five years. You'll be calling me a prophet.

Seriously, what are the barriers to any of these things? If the gay lifestyle is normal, then who are you to deny any of these things to those who desire them?

Who are you to stand in the way of true love?

I have been thinking about the California Supreme Court ruling and its larger implications on society.

First of all, I see this as an issue that will soon be turned against the church, if it is allowed to stand.

1. If gay marriage is legal, and has the same legal rights as traditional marriage, then the church will soon be forced out of the orphanage and adoption business. The church will get sued by the first gay married couple it refuses to give a child to. It will likely lose that lawsuit. As a result, the church will have to get out of this business entirely.

2. Catholic schools will likely have to hire married gay teachers -- because it is only a matter of time before it gets sued for refusing to pay benefits to a gay teacher's partner. As a result, the Church will be forced out of the parochial school business.

3. No Catholic will be able to be a justice of the peace in California. Not that a Catholic justice of the peace can perform a sacramentally valid marriage anyway (if I were a Catholic JP in California, I would refer them to a Protestant JP and would not marry a couple, because as a JP I would have no standing with the church); but it is another area of the public square where a Catholic would have to recuse himself. I do not know if the simple solution of "I'm a JP but I do not perform marriages" will be tolerated for long; my guess is the first JP to refuse to marry a gay couple will be sued.

4. I really see no ban on polygamy or polyamory lasting long, if this stays in place. Honestly. I speak, of course, of non-Muslims and non-LDS offshoots, because it goes without saying that some traditional Muslims and breakaway Mormon groups practice polygamy secretly. I wonder who the last Muslim to be prosecuted for polygamy was (anywhere in America). At any rate, if marriage is a fundamental human right, and there is no procreative purpose to marriage (from the state's point of view), then I really don't see how the court can prohibit polygamy.

The Cardinal Newman Society has a list of this year's commencement speakers at Catholic colleges whose views are diametrically opposed to the views of the Church.

Some are particularly shocking:

College of Saint Rose (NY), May 10, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: New York Governor David Paterson. Paterson is an advocate for abortion rights; he received a 100 percent rating from NARAL and the 2004 “Margaret Sanger Award” from Family Planning Advocates of New York State. Paterson proposed a bill providing $1 billion in taxpayer funding for embryonic stem cell research, and he has endorsed cloning stem cells for research purposes.

Governor Paterson is, as far as I can tell, a thoroughgoing immoralist. He should be nowhere near a Catholic college.

In my home state, Regis College also has picked a real winner to address its graduates:

Regis College (MA), May 18, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: Massachusetts State Rep. Lida Harkins (D-Needham). Harkins has supported abortion rights, including public funding for abortions, and opposed a two-parent consent law for minors seeking abortions. She supports gay marriage and was a key leader in the defeat of a state constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

My own alma mater's graduate school is also on the list:

University of Notre Dame Graduate School (IN), May 17, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: Marye Anne Fox, chancellor of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). As UCSD chancellor, Fox is an architect and leader of one of the nation’s foremost initiatives in embryonic stem cell research, the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, which will open its $115 million facility at UCSD by 2010. UCSD research is partly funded by California’s $3 billion grant program for embryonic stem cell research, independent of ethical restrictions that President George W. Bush has tied to federal funding.

It is one thing to engage in dialogue with a world which is increasingly hostile to Catholicism. It is another to let that world advise your young. The world is not a petting zoo, and the sooner these Catholic colleges define themselves as Catholic first and colleges second, the better. Despite their much-vaunted "pursuit of the truth" (which always curiously seems to be defined in mocking or denigrating truths which the Catholic church holds to be revealed), the schools should remember that a college degree is not necessary for salvation. Their work, though useful, is in no way comparable to the work of Christ on the cross. They can add no truth necessary for the salvation of souls; if Catholicism is the meal, they are merely the gravy.

When you think our culture cannot become any more depraved, it surprises you.

In Britain, they are debating whether to restrict abortion to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, rather than the current 24. Spiked magazine offers their reasons why abortion should continue until week 24.

For sake of clarity, I think if you read the article and replace the word "abortion" with "murder", you'd get a clearer view of the many fallacies they list.

1. Women need access to safe, legal abortion. History tells us that women with unwanted pregnancies will try their best to end them, sometimes with severe risk to their health. The 1967 Abortion Act was a humane piece of legislation, borne out of the understanding that women need and deserve to control their fertility, not be penalised because of it (2).

Women can control their fertility by three means. The first, is by abstinence. The second, is by only having sex during infertile periods of their monthly cycle. The third method is, though legal, illicit -- by using widely available methods of birth control. There is no obvious need for abortion.

2. There is no right number of abortions. Nadine Dorries’ campaign cautions that there are 200,000 abortions per year in Britain, and that it is ‘time to slow down’. But what is the right number of abortions for anti-abortion activists: 100,000, 100, one? For the anti-abortion movement to haggle over what might be a more acceptable number of abortions is as nonsensical a stance as it is unprincipled.

Well, the author has a point here -- I can no more justify 200,000 murders than I can one. But I'd suggest that while an individual murder is a grave moral crime, mass murder is certainly worse. It is worse for those who are murdered. And, of course, there is an absolutely correct number of abortions that should be performed each year. That number is zero.

3. There is no right time to have an abortion. Women never set out to have abortions – they are always the least bad option at a difficult time. While earlier abortions are easier, safer and less unpleasant than those in later gestations, there are a multitude of reasons why women may not have accessed abortion earlier on. None of these make that woman’s abortion any less necessary, or her any less deserving of it. Women need abortions when they need them, not when somebody else thinks is the right time to have them.

I think it is easier to simply end this paragraph at the first sentence. But there here is indeed a reason to limit the number of weeks -- the scandal involved is less.

4. Women should not be pushed or panicked into having abortions before they have made their decision. Developments in early abortion techniques and provision are progressive because they expand choice for women, giving women seeking abortion the option of having it sooner rather than later. A reduction in the time limit would reduce choice, and risk pushing women who are agonising over whether to continue their pregnancy into making a decision to terminate it before they have definitely decided that that is what they want to do – as well as forcing other women to continue an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Of course, this is an excellent argument for a mandatory waiting period before an abortion is carried out. Does the author support that?

5. There is no right reason to have an abortion. Among the many reasons cited by women as to why they had an abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy, a 2007 study found that ‘I was not sure about having the abortion, and it took me a while to make my mind up and ask for one’ was one of the most important (3). Women can be deeply ambivalent about their pregnancies, and think very carefully before seeking abortion. Research shows that women do not take their abortion decisions lightly, and that these are personal decisions based on complex circumstances that policy cannot even begin to prescribe.

Again, simply end the paragraph at the first sentence. The reason it takes so long for some women to make up their minds is because they recognize what they are doing is gravely immoral and it takes a good deal of time to rationalize it.

6. Women often make their abortion decisions based on their desire to be good parents. It is a common misconception that women seeking abortion do not want children. Yet almost half (47 per cent) of women who had abortions in England and Wales in 2006 had had one or more previous pregnancies that resulted in a live or stillbirth (4). Research shows that an important factor in women’s decision-making about abortion is how well able they feel to be a good parent to a baby, or another baby, in the context of their particular family circumstances (5). In a social context where there is a great deal of pressure to take parenting very seriously, why should women be penalised for understanding that they cannot do that at a particular moment in time?

I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Because one wishes to be a good parent, one ought to be allowed to murder the child. In other words, because I recognize I am potentially a poor parent, I'm allowed to murder my child instead. Better that the child be dead than I learn to love?

7. Changes in women’s circumstances can mean that a wanted pregnancy becomes unwanted. Women who have wanted to be pregnant, or reconciled themselves to pregnancy, may find themselves seeking abortion when something in their lives goes badly wrong: the death or desertion of a partner, the discovery of fetal abnormality, or a major change in financial or other personal circumstances, to name a few reasons. For these women, the option not to have to go through with a pregnancy conceived in very different circumstances is crucial to retaining their reproductive autonomy and some control over their lives. To be told that she is ‘too late’ on the basis of spurious arguments advanced by the anti-abortion movement is insensitive and inhumane.

Of course, this argument could be used to justify child murder outside the womb, as well. You've become inconvenient, Timmy.

I'll let you work through the rest of the list. There is not one good excuse in there. It is impossible that there could be, for a very simple reason -- there is no good justification for murder.

Hat tip to Carl Olson.

I am slogging through a term paper for my theology class on the nature of divine Justice and Mercy. I was tasked with writing twelve pages, and am about 20 pages into it right now, mainly due to long quotes I am pulling from the Summa Theologica and the Gospel of Matthew.

My doorbell rings.

At the door, two Jehovah's witnesses. Their question to me, after introducing themselves:

"Have you noticed that almost no one talks about the Bible anymore?"

"Oh, indeed I have."

I'm sitting at a table in which I have the New American Bible, the Revised Standard Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Compendium of said Catechism, and three volumes of Aquinas' Summa Theologica (the Secunda Secundae, which includes his treatise on the virtues). For backup, I have Etienne Gilson's The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Peter Kreeft's Summa of the Summa and Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth. I am knee deep in the four Gospels.

Come into my lair, said the spider to the fly.

Actually, I told them what I was up to and explained to them that I was involved in writing a paper on how Christ exemplifies the cardinal virtue of Justice. And that, unfortunately, that my paper was late, and I was deep into the Gospels of Luke and Matthew at the very moment. But perhaps we could talk some other time.

I'm not sure if they'll come back.

On my old blog, I ran, for a few months, a serialized novel I was writing. My method was to write about 1500 words and excerpt it, once a week, on the blog. The story was an exercise in writing without any pre-planned structure, just letting it go wherever it would.

It was fun, but I lost patience with it, and ended up, 80,000 words in, somewhat less than halfway through what was needed to complete it.

I'm thinking of writing a new one. Same basic premise -- just write what comes to mind, and serialize it here.

Naturally, in that this is a religious blog, it would be a religious story. But a frightening one, involving a good deal of horror, as my protagonist would be a Catholic priest who is somewhat down on himself because his work is giving him problems. Problems of a supernatural kind.

It might be entertaining.

Well here we go. The first part of the story.

It is my habit, when I am able, to go to confession on Saturdays. It's a habit I formed a few years ago, because it was necessary for my work.

But I haven't worked for some time. It's been, what? Three months now. Three months since I was put on administrative leave.

Three months and a week since I killed the girl.

And three months and six days since my last confession.

I wouldn't have carried around her death on my soul for three months. I asked to see a priest as soon as I woke up in the hospital; about five minutes after I learned she was dead.

The confession was insufficient. I know this. I can feel it in my soul, feel it whenever I try to open the breviary to pray, feel it whenever I say mass, alone, in private, for I would not dare in my current state to say it in public. I can feel that my five minutes spent with Father Mark, the assistant hospital chaplain, a cheery young priest of twenty-eight years old, his face radiating goodness and the love of God, fresh from the seminary, were in no way sufficient.

I spared him the worst, and simply told him that I had let the girl down, had failed her, had failed the church, and she was dead. He'd heard of the circumstances, of course -- the story made the rounds throughout the diocese in a matter of minutes, priests being as fond as anyone of gossip. He gave me absolution; he tried to cheer me up as best he could. But it was pro forma, my heart was not in it; and I hadn't begun the process of self-examination, the terrible trial of self to fully understand where I failed, how I failed, and how my own sinfulness prevented me from giving the girl what she needed. The book Fr. Ricardo had given me explained it clearly enough; the book that had been handed down for centuries, the book which began in the See of Milan, crossed the sea to Baltimore, and which had been in our own diocese for over a hundred years, since our own little New England mill town became important enough to receive a purple hat and a coat of arms all its own. The book explained it in simple Scholastic logic.

The ritual never fails. The failure belongs to the priest.

The failure was entirely mine.

The logic behind it was simple enough; the faded scribblings of an Italian priest in the chapter on Failures referenced the Bible passage clearly enough; it was a verse I had long committed to memory.

"Hoc genus in nullo potest exire nisi in oratione et ieiunio."

Mark 9:28-9. The first recorded failure of an exorcism by the Church.

Father Ricardo had pointed out to me that the newer translations of the Bible missed the last part, the ieiunio. He brought out the NAB translation which we used in Mass every Sunday, which simply translated the phrase as "This kind can only come out through prayer."

"They footnote it of course," he added. "They mention in a footnote that the variant on the text includes the part about fasting. I would simply tell you to remember that St. Jerome did not footnote it. And I will also point out to you what our book tells us, which is that the failure of a priest to observe proper fasting is one of the principle causes of failure. If you fail at an exorcism -- and I pray to God each day that you do not fail, for it will haunt you all your days in ways I cannot make you understand with words -- it will not be because you missed a sentence in the Rituale, recited the wrong psalm, forgot St. Bartholomew in the litany of saints, or ran out of holy water. It will because your own preparation in the days leading up to the battle was insufficient. And that failure of preparation in most cases will not be due to insufficient prayer. It will be because of a lack of fasting."

I was never any good at fasting.

I had thought about Fr. Ricardo a lot in the last three months. How when I came to work for him he was almost completely blind, and walked with a cane in a terrible, crouched shuffle. He had refused assistants for years, and those whom he took on invariably quit after a few sessions, asking the bishop to be reassigned to work that was more congenial. Running a soup kitchen or being the new guy in a parish rectory was not fun work, but it was relatively free from terror, and not so austere as the demands Fr. Ricardo put on us.

When the bishop had assigned me to Fr. Ricardo, he made it seem that I had been specifically requested. He mentioned how well I had done in the seminary in Latin, and that he had an old priest who still did work in Latin, whose eyesight was bad, and who was in need of a young priest to help him with his readings. I didn't realize at the time that I was being sent to Fr. Ricardo principally because the bishop did not like me.

I figured that part out after I was told by Father Ricardo exactly what his ministry was.

That was eight years ago.

Today was a Saturday. I was in civilian clothes, as I was still on leave. I suppose, though, technically, I was not on leave, since the bishop had told me to take a few weeks, and I had not reported in to the chancery. I was not in my own parish, but was in the parish of St. Edward's, an old stone church on the outskirts of the city, built when the neighborhood was still rural. I checked my Rolex and saw that I was on time; it was nearly three thirty, and I'd be coming it and the tail end of Fr. Tim's confessions.

I know what you're thinking. Why do I own a Rolex?

It isn't because I have forgotten my vow of poverty. It's because the Rolex is a Swiss watch, a mechanical watch. It has no electronics in it. This one is more than fifty years old, beat up, scuffed, and probably the cheapest one they ever made.

I wear it because people in my line of work have bad luck with electronics. You set a digital alarm clock, it never goes off. You use a GPS to give you directions to a house, it puts you in the wrong county. You write down your to-do list on a computer, and the next time you open up the file, it's gibberish.

We don't know exactly why that is. I have my theories.

We have even worse luck with cars. Which is why I had walked to St. Edward's.

I came into the church, crossed myself with Holy Water, and genuflected toward the tabernacle. I kneeled in a pew, and said a few prayers while I waited for the light on the wooden confessional stall to indicate that Fr. Tim was free.