SOLANGE HERTZ, the formidable and inspiring Catholic author who wrote some two dozen books and many magazine articles on culture, history and the Church, died on Oct. 3 at the age of 95. A trenchant anti-feminist in the age of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, Mrs. Hertz was the mother of five children. Her husband, Gus, was captured by Vietcong while working for USAID and died a prisoner of war. The family was living in Saigon at the time and she returned home with their children. She later supported the family in part through her writings. Here is an obituary in The Remnant newspaper. Mrs. Hertz is survived by 19 grandchildren and 50 great grandchildren.

Mrs. Hertz, I suggest, was virtually unknown to mainstream culture precisely because she was such an eloquent critic of it. Feminist trash fills the shelves of every public library while one must dig to find Mrs. Hertz’s works. She would never pass the censorship of our cultural commissars. Here is an excerpt from one of her many memorable essays, “The Housewife as Guerrilla:”

Whereas man has been entrusted with government, his wife has been entrusted with society.  His the state, hers the family.  To his sophisticated professionalism she brings the happy pragmatism of the dedicated amateur.  ”Whenever you have a real difficulty…when a boy is bumptious or an aunt stingy, when a silly girl will marry somebody, or a wicked man won’t marry somebody, all your lumbering Roman Law and British constitution come to a standstill.  A snub from a duchess or a slanging from a fishwife is much more likely to put things straight.”

To woman, “almost certainly, are due all those working traditions that cannot be found in books, especially those of education; it was she who first gave a child a stuffed stocking for being good or stood him in the corner for being naughty.  This unclassified knowledge is sometimes called rule of thumb and sometimes motherwit.  The last phrase suggests the whole truth, for none ever called it fatherwit” (G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World).

Motherwit is the very stuff of guerrilla warfare, at which woman excels to the degree that she remains at Adam’s side where God put her.   To fight with Adam is not to fight Adam.  Each must face, not the other, but their common enemy.  In this confrontation Eve’s position is that of the guerrilla in relation to the regular army, which is her husband’s.  Like every guerrilla’s hers is ancillary and presumes the existence of the regular; but, again like the guerrilla, she must be prepared to continue the fight alone when routed regulars fall back to regroup.

I daresay this is woman’s unenviable task today, when authority is crumbling all around us.  Man has all he can do to restructure it and regain control.  Luckily, as Chesterton also remarks, “Government is only one side of life.  The other half is called society, in which women are admittedly dominant.”  While man reforms his ranks, she must keep the resistance going, lest everything fall to the enemy.  Unfortunately many women alert to the current emergency have been seduced for the first time in history into abandoning their most impregnable positions without a fight.

I am saddened by the death of this powerful voice of sanity. May more people discover her writings in the years ahead. (more…)

MICHAEL R. writes:

You always have interesting posts.

I was particularly  encouraged by the one titled “Courageous Women.” I checked out the link which relates to the French group Les Brigandes.

What’s not to love?  One might not agree with all they believe but to realise all Europe has not rolled over is a breath of fresh air. They bring out their message in a very accessible way.

One of their other songs, “How we become an American,” has a powerful message. One  line made me think of you:

When you get into your car
And fasten your seat belt
To go and get a pizza
Right around the corner

Please accept the usual disclaimers I am not anti-American but as I think you would agree, Americanism is an attempt to submerge us all. (more…)

Doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda was a beautiful, 16th-century Spanish aristocrat who regrettably lost her eye in a sword fight with her father’s page. You see, even before the Age of the Internet, women had fun with swords.

See more portraits of this interesting woman here. (more…)

DON VINCENZO writes:

There is a recent bit of news, overlooked by the majority in our national media, that may have serious repercussions for many throughout the civilized world: divinely-inspired pasta is declining in use as a result of people now counting the number of calories in every meal, and this drop also includes the denizens of Italy, surely a sign of stagnation and decay in their society.

On September 3, The Washington Post ran a story with the title, “Around the world, even in stronghold Italy, pasta is starting to lose its gusto.” Based on projections of an organization called the Mintel Group, “…U.S. pasta decline will continue through at least 2019,” and in that we are not alone. In nations as diverse as Australia, where the market for pasta has declined 8% since 2010, and Germany, where pasta sales have dipped 12% since hitting its peak in 2008, the trend is unmistakable. But by far the greatest surprise and decline, according to the Mintel report, occurred in Italy, “Where sales of dried pasta have plummeted …more than 25% since 2009…” (more…)

  IN this video, Brother Michael Dimond, O.S.B., of Most Holy Family Monastery does a fine job of analyzing "Pope" Francis's scandalous meeting with a homosexual couple in Washington D.C. The private audience with a former student and his much younger "boyfriend" was arranged by Francis himself -- no act of charity or beautiful "inclusiveness," but another display of gross intolerance by the pseudo-pontiff. It was, in effect, an endorsement of sodomite marriage in America. Francis never once publicly condemned the Supreme Court ruling in Oberfegell vs. Hodges during his junket. His appalling lack of mercy and love for homosexuals, who are pressured everywhere to become the lonely slaves of their compulsions, and his failure especially to protect children, whom he smothers with random kisses during his public parades but does not love enough to defend from harm, have no foundation whatsoever in the Catholic Church. To add to his message, Francis distanced himself from the courageous Kim Davis, a Protestant woman of true Christian charity whom Francis should have openly praised and graciously urged to enter and embrace the one true Church. And you call this man "pope," dear Catholic? Think again. All this is the inevitable unfolding of the false religion of Vatican II, which has deprived even highly virtuous Catholics of illuminating graces and veiled their minds from the truth. There is nothing in Catholic dogma that requires a Catholic to accept a non-Catholic as his spiritual leader. The very…

“POPE” FRANCIS may not be an actual Freemason, as these handshakes — similar to those used by members of the secret society — suggest, but his principles are Masonic. Freemasonry is the formidable anti-Christian movement that under the guise of a benign and  philanthropic organization seeks to abolish nations and bury the Catholic Church. See relevant links at Novus Ordo Watch.

See Pope Leo XIII’s 1884 encyclical on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus, in which the pontiff wrote:

Candidates are generally commanded to promise — nay, with a special oath, to swear — that they will never, to any person, at any time or in any way, make known the members, the passes, or the subjects discussed. Thus, with a fraudulent external appearance, and with a style of simulation which is always the same, the Freemasons, like the Manichees of old, strive, as far as possible, to conceal themselves, and to admit no witnesses but their own members. As a convenient manner of concealment, they assume the character of literary men and scholars associated for purposes of learning. They speak of their zeal for a more cultured refinement, and of their love for the poor; and they declare their one wish to be the amelioration of the condition of the masses, and to share with the largest possible number all the benefits of civil life. Were these purposes aimed at in real truth, they are by no means the whole of their object. (more…)

THE public is bathed 24 hours a day in stories of mass shootings, while soldiers killed and maimed in foreign military theaters are given no attention. Peter Van Buren at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity writes: Sustaining America’s state of post-9/11 perpetual war requires skillful manipulation of the public at home. The key tool used for this purpose is the bloodless narrative, a combination of policy, falsehoods and media manipulation that creates the impression that America’s wars have few consequences, at least for Americans. How can the American government sustain its wars in the face of dead soldiers coming home? Why is there no outcry among the American people over these losses? The answer is the narrative of bloodless war.

MY apologies for this disgusting photo, but it says a lot about a man the media have elevated to hero status. See the report at HenryMakow.com about Chris Mintz (in the bed), the alleged hero in the Oregon shootings who was supposedly shot five times. Here are Mintz and his friends in the hospital where he is recovering from what appears (see video at link — warning: crude language) to be hernia surgery, not bullet wounds. They are flashing the satanic sign of Baphomet. Mintz has raised hundreds of thousands in donations from comatose Americans who would walk off a cliff if the anchors at Fox News or CNN told them it was safe. (more…)

TODAY, Oct 7, is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira wrote this essay on the occasion:

What is the rosary? The rosary is a series of mediations on the mysteries from the lives of Our Lord and Our Lady. These mysteries are simultaneously prayers that one says vocally and meditations that one makes mentally. This mixture of vocal prayer and meditation is a splendid thing, because while the lips pronounce a plea, the mind concentrates on a point of the mystery. It is a dual activity that intimately unites one with God.

The practice of praying the rosary to beg a grace from God supposes the theological truth that Our Lady is the Universal Mediatrix of all graces. It is, therefore, a small masterpiece of spirituality and Catholic doctrine as they should be understood. The rosary is not a religious custom relying on emotions, but rather a serious, solid, and meditative pious practice, which explains why the rosary has obtained so many graces. (more…)

DYING PEOPLE are exploited by the assisted-suicide movement, which presents their tearful testimonies to make it seem as if it’s all about preventing suffering and pain. It’s not. Matthew Archibald writes about the approval earlier this week of an assisted suicide bill in California:

California became a crueler place today. Proponents of the law argue that people in terrible pain can opt out. But palliative care has never been better. That’s not what this is about.

This is about California running a cost/benefit analysis on life. If you’re old or disabled and not contributing maybe an early departure is best for everyone else.

Chuck Donovan, president of Charlotte Lozier Institute, called the law’s passage “tragic.”

“Legalization of doctor assisted suicide is like a forest fire. The practice has become so permissive in the Netherlands, for example, that doctors are now routinely euthanizing adults, infants, and children – sometimes without consent,” he said. “That the most populous state in the union has now enshrined this practice in law is a warning sign for the rest of the nation.” (more…)

IN 1787, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson: “All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in the Constitution, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” This downright ignorance is probably worse today. The vast majority of Americans do not understand that the consortium of private banks that constitute the Federal Reserve System create money and charge interest for it. Instead of money being a token of exchange, it is a profit-making instrument in the hands of a few. This system of what the author E. Michael Jones calls "state-sponsored usury" necessarily leads to debt slavery, centralized government and monopolistic control of the press. The American colonists went to war to protect their right to make and control the money supply. That freedom was later relinquished by the American government. “In the Colonies we issue our own money," said Benjamin Franklin. "It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.” Here is brief history of banking in America by Alain Pilote, which I offer as a primer on the subject. Pilote wrote in 1985: The bankers' dictatorship and their debt-money system are not limited to one country,…

DONALD Trump's statements on Russian intervention in Syria are excellent: “It is not even a contest!” Donald Trump said in response to an NBC News presenter’s question about whether it had been better when Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were in power. “Iraq is a disaster… Libya is not even a country,” he explained. “You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there – it’s a mess. If you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there – it's a mess.” Trump said that Washington is “destroying our country” by wasting too much money on Middle Eastern policies that do not seem to work: “We have spent $2 trillion in Iraq, probably a trillion in Afghanistan…” “[Syria] is going to be the same thing,” Trump said, criticizing US support of so-called moderate Syrian rebels.

THE Trans Pacific Partnership includes clauses that call for censorship of Internet journalism. See a report on this here.

HERE is an interesting and informative article from the Weston Price Foundation about cod liver oil, an ancient food supplement that is supposedly especially good for children (they love it!) and women of child-bearing age. Anything that tastes this bad must be good for you, don't you think? Note the recommendations for specific brands. In other news, a reader sent me this highly enticing and delectable photo of a slice of Cheese Steak Pizza, which was available in Philadelphia during the recent visit of the international pop star from Rome. This photo is a modernist still life. It belongs in a museum.  

DAVID JACQUES, publisher of the Roseburg Beacon, has reportedly spoken out against Obama’s planned visit to the area to promote gun control in the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting:

We haven’t even identified bodies, we’ve still got incident command trying to contain the scene, and he’s holding a press conference 3,000 miles away from here, telling — almost implying that he could have single-handedly prevented this if the Congress would have listened to him.’

‘I think he admitted it himself.

‘His visit here isn’t a re-election campaign stop, but it is a campaign stop for an agenda that he and his associates believe is important. (more…)

A professor of "crowd science" estimates that there were as few as 80,000 people at the "papal" mass in Philadelphia last week, not the 1.5 million people widely reported.

  AS the conclave known as the Synod on the Family opened in Rome yesterday, the Vatican of the international pop star, "Pope" Francis, gave more strong and unmistakable signals of support for the normalization of homosexuality. It distanced itself from Kentucky clerk and civil resister Kim Davis when a spokesman stated that the pope's private and initially unpublicized meeting with her during his U.S. visit last week must not be construed as support. (At the most, to a modernist in the Vatican II Church, it would have been only a matter of respecting her freedom of conscience, not defending her opposition to an unjust law.)  The news also broke that Francis met with a male homosexual couple in a special private audience during his visit to the United States. Finally, a priest with a position in the Congregation for the Doctrine and Faith announced that he was homosexual and introduced his partner. He was fired, but .... why was he there? Pull up a chair. The Great Apostasy continues.