— Fr. Ronald Knox (more…)

S.K. writes:

Once again, you’ve touched on a powerful topic. Tattoos, which I am not in the slightest a fan of, are ubiquitous. I don’t like them on women especially; none at all. Find a woman (young, mature or even old) that doesn’t have at least three – if you can. I remember when they started becoming popular with all social classes in the 90’s. Prior to that I only noticed former military, bikers, hoodlums, etc., to have tattoos and even with them they were usually kept to a minimum of one and and kept out of sight. Then the yuppies, the college kids, everybody and their mother basically started getting tattoos.

You wrote:

“A young woman who sliced some bread I bought yesterday was wearing a nose ring. She seemed a nice, polite girl, but I wondered, was she afraid to seem ordinary? Why? Does she take some weird pleasure in shocking and repelling?”

She is mindlessly following her peer group, or she feels small in a big world and wants to signal that she is here too, and that she matters and should be paid attention too as well. I recently chatted up a lovely young woman that had a nose ring. I had not noticed it at first but once I did it sort of bothered me. She was so down-to-earth and sweet, and yet this thin strip of metal was jarring me. (more…)

THE OVER-USE of the expression “I love you” reduces its powerful meaning, writes Dr. Marian Horvat:

These words signify one of the highest and noblest sentiments of man. Love is an act of the will that indicates that he desires the best possible for the person who benefits from his affections and is willing to sacrifice himself for that end. Scriptures speaks splendidly of love as charity and poets make grandiloquent verses in its honor.

It used to be that these words, which have a deep significance, were not spoken lightly. They were reserved for very special occasions and said only for particular persons and relationships, parents and children, husbands and wives, etc. When the suitor first spoke them to the young lady he was courting, it was a moment to be remembered and cherished. (more…)

IN CASE YOU MISSED this story:

Abortion workers might have delivered babies alive and then killed them in order to harvest their body parts, the House Select Panel on Infant Lives revealed in an interim report on the one-year anniversary of the release of the Center for Medical Progress videos. (more…)

THE NOTION that all income must be earned is not just.

That’s because even earned income is a result of gifts that are unearned: natural resources and a cultural inheritance of technological innovations, law and language.

Everyone, by virtue of being human not by virtue of being a hard worker, is rightfully entitled to some monetary share of these gifts.

But how can such a thing be? Money can only be earned.

Not so. In a monetary system such as that proposed by Social Credit theorists, everyone receives some part of this communal legacy in the form of money. M. Oliver Heydorn explains it:

For ideological and no doubt political reasons, orthodox economics has tried to bury the gift, to exile it from the sphere of economics with the mantra, endlessly repeated like a form of Chinese water-torture, ‘There is no such thing as a free lunch!’

     In direct opposition to the teachings of economic orthodoxy, Social Credit theory affirms the existence of the ‘unearned increment of association’. In sober truth, the much maligned ‘free lunch’ is a reality that is operative in all spheres of activity with which we are familiar, including the act of production.

     Being, that is, reality or nature, is constructed in such a way then when two or more different elements are brought into the proper relationship or association with each, the power which these elements then have to be or to effect change in the world is greater than the mere sum of the component parts. That is, power or output can be multiplied by the apparent ‘magic’ of association, with the surplus (i.e., that which exceeds the isolated contribution of each element) supervening on the association as whole as a superabundant gift. The surplus is not the exclusive property of any one component, nor is it in any way earned by them. It is a something for nothing, or a free lunch.

     One of the simplest examples of the unearned increment of association is that of a lever. A lever is a mechanical device that consists in the association of a beam or plank with a fulcrum on which the beam may pivot. By applying force at one end of the beam, levers allow human beings to move weights on the other end with less effort than a direct application of force would require. The effort saved, or alternatively, the movement of an object that could not otherwise be achieved with the force on hand, is the unearned increment of association that accrues to the human being who is intelligent enough to make use of the lever. (more…)

  FROM an essay by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, "Be Wise as Serpents and Simple as Doves:" Harmonious in line, simple in color, graceful in its flight and movement, "affable" with other animals, pure and candid in its whole being, the dove has nothing in itself to suggest the idea of plunder, aggression, injustice, intemperance or impurity. It is, therefore, most appropriate that in the words of Our Savior, it is a symbol of innocence. But it lacks something: the qualities that assures its survival in the struggle against adverse factors. Its perspicacity is minimal, its combativeness zero, its only defense is flight. That is why the Holy Spirit tells us, “Imbecile doves, without intelligence!” (Os 7: 11). This reminds us of certain Catholics deformed by Romanticism, for whom virtue consists only and always in hiding, in submitting in receiving blows, in retreating, and in allowing themselves to be trampled underfoot. * How different is the serpent – aggressive, venomous, deceptive, astute and agile! Elegant but repugnant, fragile enough to be crushed by a boy yet dangerous enough to kill a lion with its venom. His whole shape and way of moving is adapted for a veiled, treacherous and lightning fast attack. So bewitching that certain species mesmerize its victim but it emits and spreads an aura of terror. Thus it is the symbol of evil, with all the sorcery and all the treachery of the forces of perdition. However in all…

BRITISH composer John Tavener (1944-2013) had “a profound sense of silence.” In his book Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music (read an excerpt here), Robert B. Reilly, who made this comment, says Tavener was one of three influential composers who have laid the atonality of modern music to rest. “The tyranny is now gone and tonality is back,” Reilly writes.

The words to Tavener’s choral composition, Mother and Child:

Mother and Child

Enamoured of its gaze
The mother’s gaze in turn
Contrived a single beam of light
Along which love may move.
Hail Maria!
Hail Sophia!
Hail Maria! (more…)

NBC reports: A husband and wife from Queens have pleaded guilty to enslaving two children from Korea, forcing them to do housework, provide massages, and turn over pay from outside jobs, prosecutors in New York said Wednesday. The Flushing couple — 54-year-old Jeong Taek Lee and his wife, 50-year-old Sook Yeon Park — were charged on two counts of labor trafficking. Lee was sentenced to five months’ probation, while his wife faces six months in prison followed by five years’ probation.

  DID you ever hear a plumber say, "I hate unblocking pipes. I hate it! I wish there was no such thing as the sewer line?" Did you ever hear an electrician say, "I can't stand wiring houses! Oh, I just hate electricity and wish it didn't exist?" Or how about a construction worker? Have you ever heard one say, "I hate nailing. I wish we all lived in grass huts so I didn't have to nail anything together ever again?" Probably not. For it is only the modern woman, under the influence of the Great Home-Hating Feminist Psy-Op, who goes about saying how much she hates, hates, hates the menial labor she has to do, as if she were a forest-clearing slave in the Siberian gulag rather than an independent domestic boss surrounded by nifty home-cleaning innovations that would be the envy of pre-industrial peasants. Frances Gabe (1915-2016) was a housewife who detested and resented housework. She became especially ticked off when her children got fig jam on the walls. Jam on the walls! Oh, how boring, tedious and totally beneath the "educated" (or miseducated) woman! Gabe reportedly was so fed up that she decided to invent and build a self-cleaning house (we don't know whether she tried to teach her children how to clean instead). She invented one over a long period. The result was entirely impractical and necessarily ugly due to the need to encase everything in plastic or other waterproof coverings to withstand cleaning…

THE “editorial board” of this website does not recognize the heretical, modernist Vatican II Church as the Catholic Church. But in the eyes of the world (and many sincere Catholics), it is the Catholic Church, and thus allegations of crimes by its clergy are publicly imputed to the Catholic Church. The media coverage of sex abuse charges, when that coverage is slanted or false, and the prosecution of false allegations, constitute a war against the Catholic Church.

The headlines recently announced that Australia’s “Cardinal” George Pell had been formally charged with “sexual assault.” This was a big, big story. People all over the globe were told, in so many words, that Pell was an evil scoundrel.  But in the first few days, the stories were uniformly and glaringly scanty on details, leaving the public to assume very ugly deeds. Here’s a typical story by ABC. It made note at the top that Pell was the “most senior Vatican cleric to ever be charged in the Roman Catholic Church.” The New York Times managed a lengthy, soberly-alarmed report with no mention of the actual events that allegedly occurred or anything about the accusers.

If it had been more explicit, readers might have been suspicious about why this story made top headlines. You see, the accusers are both criminals and the accusations do not involve actual sex acts but allegedly inappropriate touching under water in a swimming pool 40 years ago. All sex abuse of children is heinous and extremely serious. Let me repeat: sex abuse, including fondling, of children, is serious criminal activity. But these accusations of foul waterplay are highly suspicious. A full interview with the details left out by so many reports can be found here. Judge for yourself.

LYNDON MONUMENT: He’d play games like throw the kids out of the water, like, and you’d put your leg in his hands and he’d, “One, two, three,” and then he’d throw you out of the water. But it was only ever with boys.

DARREN MOONEY, FORMER ST. ALIPIUS STUDENT: There was never any girls flying off his shoulders or playing with him in the pool, it was always boys.

Monument says that Pell touched his private parts under the water. Damian Dignan says the cleric was very rough and grabbed him in the wrong places when he was throwing him in the water.

According to TheMediaReport.com, a website covering the sex abuse scandal as reported in the press: (more…)

AMY writes:

I am a longtime blog reader and appreciate your unique website dearly. Your entries are always thoughtful and challenging, compelling me to ponder a multitude of important topics.

I was recently pursuing your archives on beauty after a rather shocking experience. I saw a facial tattoo in person for the very first time, and on a woman no less. Tattoos have always repulsed me but with their prevalence in our culture, they no longer shock me. This facial tattoo left me speechless and frankly I was thankful my young child was not present to witness this disturbing sight. It seems almost demonic to alter one’s face in such a way and I cannot begin to imagine what convince a person such a body modification is a good idea.

I’ve noticed body modifications of all kinds being more grotesque in recent years and am terribly disturbed to consider why these trends are happening. It seems to suggest a wicked bent in our culture, one wholly out of touch with all that is beautiful, good, and right. I loathe the idea that we must all accept such ugliness and pretend as if it’s a mere aesthetic choice and not indicative of something being very wrong.

What are your thoughts on the ever more disturbing tattoos and so-called “body modifications” that becoming frighteningly mainstream these days? (more…)

FROM Tumultuous Times: Twenty General Councils of the Catholic Church and Vatican II and its Aftermath by Fr. Francisco Radecki, CMRI and Fr. Dominic Radecki, CMRI (St. Joseph’s Media, 2004):

In 1534 St. Thomas More and a relatively small number of faithful Catholics refused to sign King Henry VIII’ s Oath of Supremacy because it amounted to a denial of the Catholic Faith. “If More had sworn the oath as it was presented to him. . . he would have concurred the forcible removal of the Pope’s jurisdiction and the effective schism of the Church in England. This he could not do, even at the cost of his life.”

When St. Thomas More stood before Parliament he was taunted by Audley, Duke of Norfolk:

‘Indeed, Master More, you wish to be held wiser than all the bishops, all the nobility, all the realm entire!’ It was the old sneer he had heard so often, and now he flung back challenge for challenge in a voice ringing with the glory of belonging to Christ’s Mystical Body. ‘My lord, for one bishop of your opinion I have a hundred saints of mine; for one Parliament of yours, and God knows of what sort, I have all the General Councils of a thousand years; for one kingdom I have all the Kingdoms of Christendom! ’

Unafraid of the violent death awaiting him, the saint joked with the executioner as he mounted the rickety scaffold: “I pray you, sir, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.”

More’s last words portrayed his deep faith and courage: “I am dying in the faith and for the faith of the Catholic Church, the king’s good servant and God’s first.”

It would be a mistake to claim that traditional Catholicism is false simply because it is not what most people now believe.  … [T]he Catholic Church is distinguished by the purity of its doctrine, not defined by the number of followers. In the fourth century, such multitudes of the faithful were seduced by the Arian heresy, that it appeared to be Catholicism’s great defender “(St.) Athanasius against the world.”

Catholicism is not defined by the possession of church buildings. During the sixteenth century hundreds of Catholic churches were occupied by “Catholic” priests who were, in fact, subtly replacing the true Faith with Protestantism. Catholicism is not guaranteed by those who bear titles of authority; during the Western Schism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, several of the men who bore the title of “pope” were not popes at all.

The New Church created by Vatican II is not the Catholic Church. Because its “popes” are illegitimate, there is no moral obligation to follow such men or their new religion. On the contrary, we are obliged to follow the doctrines handed down by  Christ and His Apostles and to avoid this New Church as we would any other false religion. (more…)

  READERS WHO enjoyed Alan's terrific essay on a long lost St. Louis drugstore might also enjoy "The Bluff of the Big Shops," by G. K. Chesterton. Doesn't everybody hate big retail? Then why do we put up with it? There is no physical law of evolution that demands stores get bigger and bigger or that colossal retail chains exist, as opposed to many more independent stores. Chesterton argued that big stores are not better stores. They also lead to the concentration of wealth. Thus he wrote in 1926: Twice in my life has an editor told me in so many words that he dared not print what I had written, because it would offend the advertisers in his paper. The presence of such pressure exists everywhere in a more silent and subtle form. But I have a great respect for the honesty of this particular editor; for it was, evidently as near to complete honesty as the editor of an important weekly magazine can possibly go. He told the truth about the falsehood he had to tell. On both those occasions he denied me liberty of expression because I said that the widely advertised stores and large shops were really worse than little shops. That, it may be interesting to note, is one of the things that a man is now forbidden to say; perhaps the only thing he is really forbidden to say. If it had been an attack on Government,…

  Call Me Jorge writes: Francis says that the biggest expenses in life are the essentials: food, medicine, and clothing.  After that follows cosmetics (beauty products) and then pets!  Don’t believe him?  Francis says he has the statistics! His answer AUSTERITY!!! Francis conveniently omits usury, rents, insurance, automobile costs,mortgages, taxes, regulation, children, and education!  This is telling as it shows truly who his bosses are.