“SOME think they are merciful when they are bitterly unmerciful; think that they are kind to their children when they let them behave as they please. That is not mercy. Mercy is not idle sympathy in an emotional sense, feeling kindly towards someone. Mercy sometimes has to be severe, strong. The hands of a nurse dealing with her patient are merciful hands, not less merciful because they are firm! The poison may have to be pressed out of the wound. Then it is not mercy not to hurt the patient. That is not merciful. That is unmerciful. It looks unkind; it seems unkind; he winces under her action. The body quivers because she will not let him go. She presses the wound to expel the unclean matter. It must be expelled, by strong pressure if there be no other way. To be tender, compassionate, full of mercy is the very profession of the nurse. Yet that must not undo her firmness. A doctor, again has strong hands, and merciful, because of the very strength of them. His cutting of human flesh is mercy. Mercy must be wise.”

— Bede Jarrett, O.P., Our Lady of Lourdes, 1954

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ON the morning after the 12th apparition of Our Lady to the simple girl Bernadette Soubirous in a grotto in Lourdes in 1858, a Paris newspaper reported:

“That little actress, the miller’s daughter at Lourdes, collected round her again on the morning of the 1st of March, beneath the Massabieille rock, nearly two thousand five hundred boobies. It is impossible to describe the idiocy and moral degeneration of these persons. The visionary treats them like a troop of monkeys and makes them commit absurdities of every kind. This morning, the pythoness was not inclined to play the seer, and to make a little variety in the exercises, she thought the best thing was to play the priestess. Assuming a grand air of authority, she ordered the fools to present their Rosaries and then blessed them all.”

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OUR Lady of Lourdes, who appeared to the sickly girl Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 in Lourdes, France and who is honored today on her feast day, came into a society in which skepticism and revolutionary thinking were commonplace.  In Saint Bernadette Soubirous, (1844-1879),  Abbé François Trochu describes this atmosphere:

At St. John’s Club, conversation on the subject had just taken a livelier turn. Its members used to meet in a room of the Café Français near the church — and here were to be found the notables of the town, independent gentlemen, doctors, lawyers, magistrates, officials of all ranks.

The frequenters of St.John’s Club were not anti-clericals: not one of them would have passed the parish priest without greeting him or, on occasion, shaking hands with him. Moreover, no one in authority could have taken any exception to their convictions or their conduct. At this period, the Imperial government showed itself favourable to Catholics: The Revolution had not as yet had time to ‘recapture Napolean III’ on the morrow of his attempted assassination  by Orsini on January 14th of this same year, 1858.

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1.For they have said, reasoning with themselves, but not right: The time of our life is short and tedious, and in the end of a man there is no remedy, and no man hath been known to have returned from hell: 

2.For we are born of nothing, and after this we shall be as if we had not been: for the breath in our nostrils is smoke: and speech a spark to move our heart, 

3.Which being put out, our body shall be ashes, and our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist, which is driven away by the beams of the sun, and overpowered with the heat thereof: 

4.And our name in time shall be forgotten, and no man shall have any remembrance of our works. (more…)

“IF you completely conquer yourself, you will more easily subdue all other things. The perfect victory is to triumph over self. For he who holds himself in such subjection that sensuality obeys reason and reason obeys Me in all matters, is truly his own conqueror and master of the world.

“Now, if you wish to climb to this high position you must begin like a man, and lay the ax to the root, in order to tear out and destroy any hidden unruly love of self or of earthly goods. From this vice of too much self-love comes almost every other vice that must be uprooted. And when this evil is vanquished, and brought under control, great peace and quiet will follow at once.

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“THE Americanist faith is evoked on every ceremonial occasion by each political faction in its own distinct fashion. It is inscribed on national monuments and in patriotic legend. The conservative cult of the Constitution as a God-given document reflects it. So does the Monroe Doctrine, which establishes the New World as an American sphere of influence, not on the grounds of self-interest, but as a means of carving out a “truly free” segment of the globe. The symbolism of the Statue of Liberty, the adulation of unrestricted capitalism and the spirit behind the American Civil Liberties Union are all different manifestations of the same religious definition of the meaning and glory of the United States. Moreover, the fideistic way in which this American Religion is taught, one which permits no investigation and discussion of the principles upon which it rests, is as classically Puritan as the historical influence of “preachers”—ministers, and then, in secularized form, professors, psychologists, journalists, etc.—in the interpretation of the true will of the supposedly autonomous individual. (more…)

“I HAVE been amazed that some are utterly in doubt as to whether or not the Holy Virgin is able to be called the Mother of God. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, how should the Holy Virgin who bore Him not be the Mother of God?”

— St. Cyril of Alexandria

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“THE cross, therefore, is always ready; it awaits you everywhere. No matter where you may go, you cannot escape it, for wherever you go you take yourself with you and shall always find yourself. Turn where you will — above, below, without, or within — you will find a cross in everything, and everywhere you must have patience if you would have peace within and merit an eternal crown.”

— Thomas à Kempis

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THE docent began the tour by taking us to the second floor landing of the museum. Snow fell gently on the famous lawn outside, beckoning with its placid rhythm and its complete lack of artifice.

The guide stopped at a large glass case. In the case was a mannequin clothed in a hooded, faceless suit made from what appeared to be old, knitted afghan doilies, the sort of things that sit around on sofas and tables for many years in humble homes — not bad in the right place, but not treasured by anyone as visual masterpieces.

The artist, we were informed, had created similar suits for museums across the country (another way of saying he was a millionaire.) He was inspired in this work by his desire to create a second skin for himself — a protective suit that would magically enable him to escape “racism” and the evils of “class and gender.” He wanted a suit that would entirely insulate him from these scourges and that also would make interesting crinkly sounds because he was a “multimedia artist” and performer.

We stood speechless before this afghan-covered shaman. I felt reverence and awe — awe for the immense power of propaganda. I was not surprised the enthusiastic female guide chose to take us here first. I didn’t know what the other participants were thinking, if they were thinking at all, but I was fantasizing about what it would be like to make lots of money collecting old, cheap doilies in thrift shops and creating suits out of them. It couldn’t be that hard to do and might make for a very comfortable and happy life, but no one would make lots of money doing this unless he fell into a certain privileged racial category and class. Our artist had the proper biological credentials. So the suit, as it turned out, was not only not pleasing to the eye, it did not insulate anyone from the scourge of racism.

Oh, racism! How you plague the museum curator! On the one hand, she must bow to the dogmas of equality because that is her religion and the whole reason she took all those boring courses to get this job. On the other hand, she is surrounded in the museum’s vast and stunning collections with proof that equality does not exist. That’s a terrible bind, you have to admit.

To escape this dilemma, she and her volunteer guides, her fellow deacons at the altars of art, resort to piety and hoaxes.

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MEN are, in general, motivated to take on the hard work of supporting families by feminine women. It is worth repeating this fact again and again because so many are taught that men and women are essentially the same. Given this fact, the more power women accumulate in society and the more career success they achieve, the less happiness both men and women find in marriage and the more demographic decline a society sees. Civilization and the feminist imperative are wholly incompatible.

This comment by a reader from 2014 never grows stale:

Men are naturally barbaric; left to their own devices, many males are perfectly happy to live in relative squalor. (Those disinclined to believe this are urged to hang out with a young single guy sometime). What prevents this from happening? In the traditional societies of the past, both the father and the mother (as well as other relatives and respected figures in the community) had important roles to play in civilizing boys and turning them into men.

It was the job of a father, an older brother, or perhaps a priest, drill instructor or coach to teach the boy what behavior and conduct was expected of him as a man. The mother’s role was just as vital, but different. Her job was to educate and civilize her son – not only by teaching him how a gentleman conducts himself around a lady, but by providing a comforting home and exposure to the things such as culture, manners, and all of the other habits great and small that comprise civilized behavior. Grace, beauty, decorum, kindness and all of the things that comfort us – these are the things that turn a house into a home, and into a refuge from a sometimes cold world outside that front door. Only a mother or a wife can provide those things. (more…)

“WHEN Jesus is near, all is well and nothing seems difficult. When He is absent, all is hard. When Jesus does not speak within, all other comfort is empty, but if He says only a word, it brings great consolation. Did not Mary Magdalen rise at once from her weeping when Martha said to her: ‘The Master is come, and calleth for thee’? Happy is the hour when Jesus calls one from tears to joy of spirit. How dry and hard you are without Jesus! How foolish and vain if you desire anything but Him! Is it not a greater loss than losing the whole world? For what, without Jesus, can the world give you? Life without Him is a relentless hell, but living with Him is a sweet paradise. If Jesus be with you, no enemy can harm you.”

— Thomas á Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

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DREW TREGLIA investigates this question by engaging in conversation with Jews at a festival in Arizona.

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“THEY’ve tracked Epstein’s activities and operations back to the 1970s.

Former head of MI6’s Russia desk, Christopher Steele, says it appears to him that, as early as the 1970s, Epstein was “effectively involved in Russian organised crime.” (more…)

“THE citizen by himself is no match for the city. There must be balanced against it another ideal institution, and in that sense an immortal institution. So long as the state is the only ideal institution the state will call on the citizen to sacrifice himself, and therefore will not have the smallest scruple in sacrificing the citizen. The state consists of coercion; and must always be justified from its own point of view in extending the bounds of coercion; as, for instance, in the case of conscription. The only thing that can be set up to check or challenge this authority is a voluntary law and a voluntary loyalty. That loyalty is the protection of liberty, in the only sphere where liberty can fully dwell. It is a principle of the constitution that the King never dies. It is the whole principle of the family that the citizen never dies. There must be a heraldry and heredity of freedom; a tradition of resistance to tyranny. A man must be not only free, but free-born.”

— G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce, 1920

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THE housewife-humorist Erma Bombeck raised three children and churned out newspaper columns from this suburban house in Centerville, Ohio, a house which was considered modest then but is probably out of reach for most young couples today. Bombeck wrote the column below, “Are We Rich?,” for publication on June 3, 1971. She eventually did become rich from the hundreds of humorous pieces she wrote about her domestic world. She neither romanticized nor disparaged her way of life. It was a world where men were still men and women were still women. Having started them in 1964, her columns were syndicated to 900 newspapers by 1978. Though she unfortunately would later go on to campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment, she was not initially enthusiastic about the feminist movement, once saying of Betty Friedan and her fans, “These women threw a war for themselves and didn’t invite any of us.”

“Are We Rich?” by Erma Bombeck

The other day out of a clear blue sky Brucie asked, “Are we rich?”

I paused on my knees as I retrieved a dime from the sweeper bag, blew the dust off it and asked, “Not so you can notice. Why?”

“How can you tell?” he asked.

I straightened up and thought a bit. Being rich is a relative sort of thing. Here’s how I can always tell. (more…)

[Reposted from Sept. 30, 2016]

ALAN writes:

I recently came across a passage in a 2003 essay by Gary North about how it was once common in America for strangers traveling on Greyhound buses to sing during the ride. [“The Way We Were”, Aug. 18, 2016]

North wrote:

There is a scene in “It Happened One Night” (1934), where Clark Gable is riding in a bus. The bus is lighted inside, and everyone is singing.   For years, I thought that scene was filler. My friend and master journalist Otto Scott, age 85, tells me that singing on Greyhound buses was common in those days, though with lights off.  Strangers sang on buses. I cannot identify with such a world.

Try a little harder, Gary. Singing on the bus is the kind of thing you get when people have heritage, culture, and values in common.  It is not the kind of thing you get in a “multi-culture.” (more…)

“PURSUIT of achievement in literature, science and the arts is a single-minded ambition that will never be restructured … men are right when they say that the required expenditure of time and effort leaves little room for life’s other rewards.”

— Feminist author Susan Brownmiller, Femininity (Ballantine Books, 1985)

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