[W]e live in the midst of a diabolical trap, the likes of which were described so accurately by Father Edward Leen, S.J., sixty-three years ago…. The devil continues to raise up men and women who are so completely committed to evil that anyone, including those who support the sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, which can never be the foundation of making any nation “great” or “safe,” no matter the protestations of the man who believes that he “alone” can “fix” problems that have been caused by this nation’s promotion of sin and many of citizens’ unrepentant persistence in it, are said to look “better” by comparison.

Believe what you want. This diabolical trap remains what it has been since July 4, 1776, no amount of projecting one’s fondest [hopes] onto secular saviours can make them into instruments of justice when they are, objectively speaking, unjust in their own lives and supportive of injustice [to] God and the good of souls in the public realm. This is simple truth. Those who reject it prefer to believe in an illusion of their own making as there is no semblance of rationality to believe that men will be different once elected to office than they had been beforehand.

Alas, the problems that we face are supernatural, not merely natural, which means there is no merely natural solution for them.

— Thomas Droleskey, July 25, 2016

THE “I-am-personally-opposed-to-abortion,-but-support-legalization-of-it-for-others” position held by many Catholic politicians, including Tim Kaine, the vice presidential choice of Hillary Clinton, has been explicitly condemned by a pope and is contrary to Catholic moral theology. Pope Pius IX stated in 1930:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother’s womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 30, 1930.)

Dr. Thomas Droleskey gives a detailed history, ugly as it is, of how this casuistic position came about and captivated Catholic voters. It originated with the Kennedy family in the 1960s, as Catholics sought to maintain their allegiance to the Democratic Party at all costs:

The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting [between the Kennedys and theologians] in his book “The Birth of Bioethics” (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion.

Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that “distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue.” It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians “might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order.”

Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: “The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion.”  ( See WSJ.com – Opinion: How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma. David Paterson, a pro-abortion Catholic, ultimately chose another pro-abortion Catholic, Kirsten Gillibrand, who has been the junior senator of the State of New York since January 26, 2009. For a review of David Paterson’s moral corruption, see Little Caesars All (Pizza! Pizza!)

FROM an essay by the Most Rev. Donald Sanborn:

The world has never known more oppressive governments or bigger governments than those which profess the cult of liberty. No governments have meddled more in the lives of their citizens. Since the abolition of the monarchies and the rise of democracies, the common man, the family and business have been subject to tyrannical oppression, emaciating taxation, as well as economic and social “engineering” which affects every aspect of life. The democracies of the past two hundred years make the most dictatorial monarchical regimes look like liberty fests. With democracy have come both liberalism and socialism, two sources of oppression for hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, over the past two hundred years.

This fact tells us that the liberty which the cult of liberty seeks is not the freedom of the common man from big, oppressive, and tyrannical governments. It is a freedom from something else which the cult of liberty seeks.

ALAN writes:

One day last week I went into a store that sells old records and movies.  I made a small purchase.  When the lady behind the counter saw that I had selected some of the 1930s-‘40s B-Westerns of Hoppy, Gene, and Roy, she told me she had just watched an episode of the TV series “The Lone Ranger.” Like me, she was old enough to remember that series from the 1950s.  But the thing that struck her most when watching that episode, she said, was “how racist it was.” It was disgraceful how townspeople in the story treated the Indian Tonto, she said, and such disrespect would not be permitted in entertainment today. Read More »

DON’T worry. It’s all fake gunfire, with staged videos and photos. (Mild profanity.)

A MOVIE based on the book Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer is going to be released on the Internet for free this weekend. (I assume it is funded by Republicans.) Between 2001 and 20015, the Clintons made about $200 million, most of it one form of bribery or another, Schweizer contends. The vast sums the Clintons took in, much of it through the Clinton Foundation, is undisputed. Contributions to the foundation, the author contends, were often given in exchange for political favors, and for much of that time Hillary was secretary of state.

“You can go from Columbia, to India, to sub-Saharan Africa, to Europe, to Asia, and wherever there’s somebody that needs a deal, the Clintons are there to monetize access,” Schweizer says.

This documentary about the book alleges they profited from NGO work in Haiti after the earthquake.

THE GOP platform calls for a free exchange of ideas at America’s universities — well, almost free. Every idea should be discussed openly, says the platform. Except one idea. That should not be permitted. The one idea? Condemnation of Israel.

The platform states:

Improving Higher Education

Our colleges, universities, and trade schools, large and small, public and private, form the world’s greatest assemblage of learning. They drive much of the research that keeps America competitive and, by admitting large numbers of foreign students, convey our values and culture to the world. Their excellence is undermined by an ideological bias deeply entrenched within the current university system. Whatever the solution may be in private institutions, in state schools the trustees have a responsibility to the taxpayers to ensure that their enormous investment is not abused for political indoctrination. We call on state officials to preserve our public colleges, universities, and trade schools as places of learning and the exchange of ideas, not zones of intellectual intolerance or “safe zones,” as if college students need protection from the free exchange of ideas. A student’s First Amendment rights do not end at the schoolhouse gates. Colleges, universities, and trade schools must not infringe on their freedom of speech and association in the name of political correctness.We condemn the campus-based BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) campaign against Israel. It is anti-Semitism and should be denounced by advocates of academic freedom. [emphasis added]

Does this make any sense? Read More »

A CHINESE woman in a wealthy Minneapolis suburb has been formally charged with labor trafficking, imprisonment and assault in connection with her employment of a nanny, also from China:

[A]ccording to authorities, hidden behind the white columns and red brick of Lili Huang’s $539,000 house on Wellington Lane was the most heinous of abuse.

The nanny, who has not been named, began working for the wealthy Huang family in Shanghai, where she took care of Huang’s minor daughter, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The Huangs treated her well in China, the nanny told authorities, so she agreed work for them in the United States. Read More »

The Artist’s Garden at Vethueil, Claude Monet

THE Garden of Eden was perfect. Every garden since has been on the brink of obliteration.

The garden is always in need of tending. If you give up on it even for a short time, it goes to weed or disease or overgrowth or drought. The garden is a lesson in not giving up in the face of constant hostile forces.

The soul is also always in need of weeding. God is the gardener. We are not. We can assist him, but he’s in charge and every action — all the daily drudgery of weeding — is as nothing without his graces.

“Let us now return to our orchard, or flower-garden, and behold now how the trees begin to fill with sap for the bringing forth of the blossoms, and then of the fruit — the flowers and the plants, also, their fragrance. This illustration pleases me; for very often, when I was beginning — and our Lord grant that I have really begun to serve His Majesty — I mean, begun in relation to what I have to say of my life, — it was to me a great joy to consider my soul as a garden, and our Lord as walking in it. I used to beseech Him to increase the fragrance of the little flowers of virtues — which were beginning, as it seemed to bud — and preserve them, that they might be to His glory; for I desired nothing for myself. I prayed Him to cut those He liked, because I already knew that they would grow the better.'”

——-   St. Theresa of Avila

And, St. Francis de Sales wrote of the mystical role of plants, which help us to know God:

Men have forgotten that God’s thoughts find expression in the visible, as well as in the invisible, world, and that inner and secret harmonies bind the natural and the supernatural together. The things of beauty which God has bidden arise on the earth lose half their grace, because men do not mount by them to the better understanding of the supernal beauty of the operations of that world which Faith reveals to our gaze.

The God who writes his thoughts in the Book of Nature is the same who writes in the Book of Scripture.

THE British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams composed this work, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. It is based on an English folk song version of the biblical parable.

THE NICE terror event involved dummies, fake blood, the standard I.D. left behind by the perpetrator; bodies left unattended by emergency personnel, in violation of all standard protocol (fake bodies — always covered with sheets — must be used to convey the scene; that’s why they are not taken to hospitals); an absence of independent cell phone video footage in an area where phones are commonplace and the usual calculated, emotionally-charged imagery, such as the heart-wrenching image of a covered body with an intact baby doll next to it. Read More »

CLIFF KINCAID writes at Tradition in Action:

Transvestite and cross-dresser are terms that used to refer to Corporal Klinger wearing dresses and women’s hats as a character on the comedy show M*A*S*H. It was his attempt to get discharged. Today, in real life, Obama’s Defense Secretary Ash Carter has announced the transgendered can serve openly without fear of being discharged.

Under the Constitution, the Congress is supposed to make the rules and regulations for the Armed Forces. Article I, Section 8, clause 14 says, “The Congress shall have Power To …make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces….”

Our media reported the policy change without explaining on what basis, legal or constitutional, the change was made.

CNN simply said Carter had removed “one of the last barriers to military service by any individual,” and that he “had been studying the issue for almost a year.”

There is another term for this change. It’s called totalitarianism. By forcing that part of the population most likely to resist the homosexual agenda to accept it, this rule makes the military an accomplice in the Revolution which seeks to wipe every last trace of Christian civilization off the face of the earth. Most people cannot even conceive of the preternatural hatred that lies behind this.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel of Tunja Protecting Saint Teresa and Saint Simon Stock, Baltazar Vargas de Figueroa (attire.); 1700 c.

TODAY is the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel:

“According to the most ancient Carmelite chronicles, the Order has its origins with the disciples of the prophets Elias and Eliseus. They lived in caves on Mount Carmel. They honored the Queen of Heaven as the Virgin who is to give birth to the Saviour. When the reality replaced the symbol, the pious ascetics of Carmel were converted to the Christian Faith. In the 12th century, many pilgrims from Europe who had followed the Crusaders came to join the solitaries. A rule was established and the Order began to spread to Europe.

Amid the many persecutions raised against the Order of Mount Carmel, newly arrived in Europe, Saint Simon Stock, General of the Order, turned with filial confidence to the Blessed Mother of God. As he knelt in prayer on July 16, 1251, in the White Friars’ convent at Cambridge, She appeared before him and presented him with the well-known brown scapular, a loose sleeveless garment destined for the Order of Carmel, reaching from the shoulders to the knees. It was given as an assurance, for all who died wearing it, of Her heavenly protection from eternal death. An extraordinary promise indeed, but one requiring a life of prayer and sacrifice. Read More »

MONIKA SHAEFER has been accused of a hate crime in Canada for making this video. More about Monika here.

Germany has paid an estimated $89 billion in reparations to Holocaust survivors.