Ely Cathedral, England

Excellence is never an accident.

It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution.

— ArchitectureRevival

Summer, Francesco Bassano; 1577

MEDITATIONS ON Good Shepherd Sunday by Father John Tauler, O.P. (Source):

Now let us ask why our Lord so often calls His friends sheep. Because sheep have two qualities that our Lord especially loves, namely, innocence and gentle meekness. We read in the Apocalypse that the pure and guileless “follow the Lamb wherever He goes” (Apoc 14:4). The meek and humble of heart are near to God, and they hear His voice; proud and haughty men never hear it.

When the wind howls and the doors and windows clatter, one can hardly hear the voice of man. As to the voice of God, that fatherly, whispered, secret word, uttered in the inmost depths of your soul—if you will hear it, you must be deaf to all the roar of the world without, and hush all the voices of your own inner life. You must yield yourself up like a meek and gentle little sheep, confess your sins, and, all humbly hushed and quieted, hearken to this voice of God; it is denied to all who are not thus made like unto sheep. It was to His sheep that the Lord spoke, as we read in the lessons of this night’s office: “I will give you a lovely land, the goodly inheritance of the army of the Gentiles. And I said: You shall call me Father and shall not cease to walk after me.” (Jer 3:19.)

And what is this lovely land which He has promised His chosen sheep, His beloved friends? That land is their own body. Our bodies are by nature full of concupiscence and rebellious, but He enables His friends to reduce them to obedience, and they find much joy in compelling them to do their will. What was once waste and barren is now become a fertile and welltilled land, in which one sows and reaps in all abundance.

JANICE KORTKAMP has studied the situation in Syria for years. In an interview with the website We Hold These Truths, she says, “The sad thing for me is that so few Americans know anything Syria.” She has talked to many Syrians and says they are almost unanimous in their view that the American government has orchestrated the terrorist revolution in order to take control of their country. “That is a very bitter thing for them because Syria never threatened the U.S.”

EXCELLENT analysis by Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams in this segment on the alleged gas attack in Syria. All the world’s a stage. Paul: “I don’t think we’re going to hear any more noise about bringing the troops home.” Read More »

THIS video tells you a lot about the new encyclical released by the juvenile delinquent in Rome. It’s called “Gaudete and Exsultate” (“Rejoice and Be Glad”), “joy” being a familiar sugar coating on the theological poisons of a cunning revolutionary.

The sublime has been replaced by social work, sin has been replaced by “injustice,” wisdom by slick, humanistic sentimentality. In short, God has been replaced by man.

All in all, it’s about as evocative of holiness and its internal combats as a life insurance commercial.

ALAN writes:

If an astronomer looked up one evening and saw that a bright star that had been there for ages is no longer there, he might say, “The universe has changed.”

That was approximately how I felt at the moment last week after I walked into a branch library in St. Louis and paused to look at an exhibit of railroad photographs in a display case.  One of the staff members came over to where I was standing and said he had something to tell me.  What he said was the last thing in the world I would have expected to hear: “Mary passed away…..”

It was one of those moments when you stand there, stunned, and want so much not to believe what you have just been told. Those few words caused my universe to change.

Mary had worked in that library for 28 years.  She died from natural causes at age 53, and her death, wholly unexpected, came as a shock to everyone who knew her.

In this age of outrageous excess and overstatement, the word friend is greatly overused and misused.  Mary and I were friends, in the proper sense of the word, for all those years. Read More »

THOUGHTS on ordinary singing by Webster Young:

An important part of the joy of song is that we use our own voice to make it. We need no machines– only our solitary voice, which no one can take away from us. This is part of the joy – the difference between one’s own voice, so natural and a part of us, and the juggernaut of modern industrial technology. When all the batteries have run dead, all the transistors and resistors worn out, when all the radios in the world are ruined and thrown away, you will still have your voice, the perfect human answer to oppressive technology.

If we find our own song, one that really uplifts us, we have a very effective weapon against the trials and tribulations of life.

NASIM AGHDAM, the woman allegedly involved in what appeared to be a comically staged shooting at Youtube headquarters, does squats joyfully and energetically before her national flag, and to the tune of “Hava Nagila,” in this video. Miss Aghdam is probably on an island beach somewhere right now resting up from her “suicide.”

“Hava de guns, Hava de guns, Hava de guns and we be happy.”

Family in Landscape, Franz Hals; 1648

AND as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

It is, of course, a commonplace to complain that men have hitherto used badly, and against their fellows, the powers that science has given them. But that is not the point I am trying to make. I am not speaking of particular corruptions and abuses which an increase of moral virtue would cure: I am considering what the thing called ‘Man’s power over Nature’ must always and essentially be. No doubt, the picture could be modified by public ownership of raw materials and factories and public control of scientific research. But unless we have a world state this will still mean the power of one nation over others. And even within the world state or the nation it will mean (in principle) the power of majorities over minorities, and {in the concrete} of a government over the people. And all long-term exercises of power, especially in breeding, must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones.

— C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

The Statue of Liberty, or the Statue of Oppression?

Is the cult of liberty the desire to free man from the excesses of government in regulating the lives of the citizens?

No, because the facts of history tell us otherwise. 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.

— “The Cult of Liberty,” The Most Rev. Donald J. Sanborn

ALEX WITOSLAWSKI responds to recent commentary by Jordan Peterson on Jewish influence and success in America. This is an excellent rejoinder to Peterson, who seriously damaged his intellectual integrity on this issue. Witoslawski writes:

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a fan of Dr. Jordan Peterson. His message about “cleaning your room” is spot on—everyone should seek to get their personal lives in order before they focus too heavily on activism. What he said about the power of speaking the truth helped forever change my life—it led me to embrace more radical ideas and advocate for them at great personal cost. And despite Peterson’s unverified claims about how he turned “thousands” of young men away from the alt-right, I know of several friends who followed a similar path from Peterson to more dissident right-wing ideas—and none who went the other way.

Regardless, the point here is that I have great respect for Jordan Peterson. But my respect for him did make his recent blog post about the Jewish Question so much more disappointing to me. Not because I disagree with Peterson on this issue—I can handle disagreement with others just fine, and to be honest I expect him to hold the views that he does because if he didn’t, he’d almost certainly get kicked off of Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and every credit card payment processor, lose positive coverage from Fox News, and probably get prosecuted for some kind of “hate speech” in Canada. In short, I don’t expect everyone to agree on the Jewish Question, and I don’t expect those who do to publicly come out and discuss it, because the personal cost of doing so is often too great.

No, it wasn’t my disagreement with Dr. Peterson that I found disappointing, but rather the unfair and, quite frankly, emotionally unhinged way that he covered the Jewish Question. Instead of giving his views in a fair and respectful manner, he was quick to poison the well by implying that anyone who disagrees with him is an evil pathological loser who believes in crazy conspiracy theories. Nothing could be further from the truth. [cont.]

(Disclaimer: As with all links at this website, this is not a blanket endorsement of content at the linked site.) Read More »

PHILIP GIRALDI writes for Unz Review:

If you want to understand what the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States really means consider the fact that Israeli Army snipers shot dead seventeen unarmed and largely peaceful Gazan demonstrators on Good Friday without a squeak coming out of the White House or State Department. Some of the protesters were shot in the back while running away, while another 1,000 Palestinians were wounded, an estimated 750 by gunfire, the remainder injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.

The offense committed by the Gazan protesters that has earned them a death sentence was coming too close to the Israeli containment fence that has turned the Gaza strip into the world’s largest outdoor prison. President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East negotiator David Greenblatt described the protest as “a hostile march on the Israel-Gaza border…inciting violence against Israel.” And Nikki Haley at the U.N. has also used the U.S. veto to block any independent inquiry into the violence, demonstrating once again that the White House team is little more than Israel’s echo chamber. America’s enabling of the brutal reality that is today’s Israel makes it fully complicit in the war crimes carried out against the helpless and hapless Palestinian people.

Pro-Israel spin

So where was the outrage in the American media about the massacre of civilians? Characteristically, Israel portrays itself as somehow a victim and the U.S. media, when it bothers to report about dead Palestinians at all, picks up on that line.  Read More »

THE CANADIAN author Michael O’Brien is an eloquent critic of the occult influences on children today, especially through fantasy literature. O’Brien is author of A Landscape With Dragons: The Battle for Your Child’s Mind (Ignatius) and Harry Potter and the Paganization of Culture (Fides et Traditio) . In a 2001 interview with Zenit.org, he summarized his objections to J.K. Rowling’s works. His points are relevant to much of popular culture:

Q: Many are critical of the Harry Potter books because they claim it is dangerous to expose children to witchcraft and the occult. What is your reaction to this?

O’Brien: I have read the four volumes of the Harry Potter series three times, and with each reading the serious defects of the novels appear in clearer light.

The most obvious problem, of course, is the author’s use of the symbol-world of the occult as her primary metaphor, and occultic activities as the dramatic engine of the plots. It presents these to the child reader through attractive role models, such as Harry and Hermione, who are students of witchcraft and sorcery. This has the potential of lowering a child’s guard—both subconscious and spiritual—to actual occult activity, which is everywhere and growing.

Rationally, children know that the fantasy element in the books is not “real.” But emotionally and subconsciously the young reader absorbs it as real. This is further complicated by the fact that in the world around us there are many opportunities for young people to enter the occult subcultures, where some of Harry’s powers are indeed offered as real.

Q: Critics of Harry Potter see a big difference between authors such as Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who, they argue, use magical elements in a Christian way, and the books of J.K. Rowling, where magic is presented in a Gnostic and pagan fashion.

O’Brien: The differences are great, I would say absolute. The resemblance between the works of Christian fantasy writers and Rowling is only superficial. Yes, there is “magic” in both. Yet Tolkien and Lewis repeatedly warn about the danger of magic throughout their novels. Read More »

Resurrection (detail), Andrea del Castagno; 1447

EASTER
— George Herbert

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day. Read More »