O FOOLISH world, will you ever pay attention? Will you ever wake up? Today is the Feast of Our Lady of La Salette, who appeared to two shepherd children on September 19, 1846 on a mountain near Grenoble in France. This is from Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s essay on the meaning of the apparition to the two shepherds, who in their photos radiate that same innocence and profundity seen on the faces of the children of Fatima:

There have been three major apparitions of Our Lady in the last 150 years: La Salette, Lourdes and Fatima. In all of them the Church accepted the authenticity of the apparitions and endorsed them by making special feasts to commemorate them. In each of those three apparitions Our Lady left a secret.

In all of them, Our Lady manifested herself as profoundly sad because of the state of mankind, and predicted an enormous chastisement that would come at a chosen moment. Therefore, in the last 150 years Our Lady has adopted a position very similar to that of counter-revolutionaries.

You all know members of the High and Low Clergy as well as Catholic lay people who are very happy, who think that everything is going very well. If you tell these people that a chastisement is being prepared for mankind, they respond that it is absurd. They affirm that Religion is experiencing an extraordinary progress.

Next to such persons, we look gloomy and sad. We play the role of the pessimistic hypochondriacs who do not fit into the joyful, carefree atmosphere of our days, which always disseminates an optimistic and positive opinion about everything. (more…)

THIS ESSAY was written by an anonymous correspondent:

I took the train up to New Haven yesterday to admire Yale’s architecture, which I haven’t done in nearly ten years. It was a lovely day and everything looked perfect.

I was lying on the grass in the main court of Branford College just as the late-afternoon sun was pinking the towers, wondering how anyone could fail to be inspired by such beauty to defend the culture that had created it. Then the answer came to me: modernism, whose true significance is that it destroyed people’s emotional, aesthetic attachment to existing society.

It was also crystal clear to me, wandering about Yale (and I walked all the way from the train station to the Divinity School), that this is the architecture of a specific race and culture. Modernism, of course, which used to be called quite frankly the International Style, is the opposite. Yale’s architecture is far more specific in this regard than the Italian Renaissance campus of Columbia University, which alludes strongly but vaguely to the general Western humanist tradition. Yale is unmistakably Anglo-Saxon and Christian, and frankly, certain human types just look ridiculous wandering its campus, as if you had planted a palm tree in front of Stirling Library. Such aesthetic harmonies should be part of our instinctive emotional equipment, and I suspect they once were. (more…)

ARTHUR H. writes:

I have a question about something that really bothers me and makes me feel very threatened and ashamed.

What is it about white women who go after black men?

I live in Chicago, and the stereotype is that black men chase after the white women, but what I see in public is that white women have this stare, this gaze at black men. I am white and have a good job. I am a blonde and blue-eyed athlete. When I pass a white woman walking by, chances are she won’t even look at me because she is already staring at the black man walking behind me. The multiculturalist and feminist advertising has created a really bad mixture in Chicago; it’s in commercials, billboards, on buses, and ads everywhere, even public service announcements. There’s this encouragement and social pressure for people to date interracially, especially the white female and black male pairing. In TV and movies, black men are always hypersexualized and depicted specifically as sexy and always in the presence of white women. The advertising agenda targets toward the younger crowd under 18, but it’s had an influence on the older crowd 18-30 which is my demographic. (more…)

  JOHN G. writes: I just finished reading The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera, and I thought it was excellent. Just the sort of thing you might write if you went in for light fiction instead of essays. The author is clearly a traditional Catholic, which makes it even more notable that the book has become an international bestseller. I wonder if that is a sign of a yearning for traditional values among the generation of young women? I think your readers would enjoy reading the book, and in addition it might come in handy as a fun and not heavy-handed introduction to traditional Catholic values for secular friends and acquaintances who find our way of thinking and of life incomprehensible.

A RIVER of migrants flows into the towns of Sicily. So far this year 120,000 people from Africa and the Middle East have been picked up by Italian ships in the Mediterranean and 2,800 people have died in transit in poorly equipped, overcrowded boats.

(more…)

STARTING at minute 25 in this interview in New York, Alice von Hildebrand, the Catholic author, teacher and wife of the deceased German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, refutes the premises of feminism. “Feminism is the greatest enemy of femininity,” she says. At the age of 90, von Hildebrand remains a woman of great charm and eloquence.

(more…)

JOE A. writes:

This story of a “transgendered” boy who was elected homecoming princess at a Colorado Springs high school is a farce and I can’t believe governments are playing along with “modified” birth certificates and such.

A note on the language of perversion:  They call it “gender” while everyone else calls it “sex.”

Sex you see is a matter of chromosomes:  Male and female he created them, XY or XX, or a variety of freakish mutations that “prove the rule.”

People are of one sex or the other. (more…)

SUZANNE writes:

I read your recent post on the transgender person, Kyle, and just thought you may be amused in hearing my thoughts.

I have long believed that, generally, when a man joins a group of women, the conversation will either revolve around what he finds interesting or else will zone out entirely. So, it was telling last week when I had coffee with a group of women and a transgender man (so it was a man dressed as a woman) was there. This man was totally bored unless the topic was something that he was interested in and then he dominated the conversation. And I just thought, no matter how you try to hide it, nature will out.

I love your blog, and visit most days.

(more…)

“We are the NEW face of hope. I will bear the brunt of the attacks. I will wear the scarlet letter. I will change America.”

—- Mary Carter

UPDATE: Fortunately, this story appears to be a hoax or a joke. Thank you to the readers who emailed me to inform me of this.

I am not surprised that it is a hoax, nor would I be all that surprised if it was true. Nothing much surprises anymore. When fully licensed doctors are offering to freeze any woman’s eggs before she “transitions to a man” so that she can have children with another woman, well, is there any limit to the insanity out there?

(more…)

That which proceeds from God begins with a salutary fear and finishes with peace of mind. That which comes from Satan begins with calmness and ends in storm, indifference and apathy.

— Padre Pio

(more…)

  THIS entry from December, 2012 about purportedly objective studies of children in same-sex "marriages" is worth re-reading. See the relevant quotes from G.K. Chesterton and this comment from Lawrence Auster: The Muslim says, “If Allah wills it.” The Christian says, “In Jesus’ name.” The liberal says, “Studies have shown.” These are the sacred words that establish the authoritative truth of whatever ruinous mischief the liberal is about to propose. “Studies” are one of the principal means by which the liberal regime maintains and extends its power. Years ago I attended a conference of Swiss academic types in New York City. Their subject was Swiss immigration and multiculturalism policies. They maintained that multiculturalism and diversity was the way for Switzerland to go, because “studies” showed that it worked. Though I was just the guest of a guest at this event, I interposed: “So Switzerland has existed as a successful society for seven hundred years, and you want to change it radically—on the basis of “studies“? They didn’t get my point. Humorlessly they maintained that their studies were the best authority.

JEANETTE V. writes:

Even Woman’s Day magazine, the simple little homemaking magazine I grew up with, is pushing the normalization of sexual confusion. One woman uses “Christianity” to justify a daughter’s delusion that she is really a boy:

As he grew older, Kyle made it clear that he badly needed to transition to living as a male, including hormone therapy and possibly surgery. “In order for me to survive, I need to be true to who I am,” he told us when he was almost 18. We spoke to a therapist, and she explained that Kyle, like many transgender people, needed to align his body with his spirit. I’d wanted Kyle to wait, but I came to see that living a false life would be hell on earth: More than 40% of transgender people attempt suicide. Strong family relationships dramatically reduce that danger. (more…)

  UNDER Jorge Bergoglio, a.k.a. the Argentine Bomber and the Man Who Would Be Pope, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is becoming more and more like a Las Vegas wedding chapel. Today the faux pontiff married 20 couples, including some who had violated Church teaching on marriage. Bergoglio does not fulfill the criteria to be an altar boy in the Catholic Church, let alone a pope. Altar boys are required to be Catholic. So are popes.

AN interesting report from last year about a proposal to sell a French church in Vierzon (the church is the ugliest and most recently built one in the town) to a Muslim group. The pastor of the parish argues for its sale, but a local group resists. 

THE victims include an elderly couple who was beaten to death and three others who were shot.

(more…)

  SAGE McLAUGHLIN writes: The phenomenon you describe in your "Madness in Michigan" post is so common it deserves a name. I suggest "Separation of Church and Church."

HENRY McCULLOCH writes: