WANDA SHERRATT writes:

A controversy has arisen in our city over the decision of the Ottawa Archdiocese to limit eulogies at Catholic funerals.

The press release points out that eulogies are not a Catholic tradition, and indeed they seem to be borrowed from the sort of free-form procedure at some Protestant funerals, where a line of people take turns talking about the deceased.  This sort of thing can easily get out of hand, but even where it doesn’t, it distracts from the sacramental aspect of a Catholic funeral, and turns it more into a sort of community sharing event.

The reaction in Ottawa has been very negative.  Yesterday, our biggest paper, “The Citizen” published an op-ed piece on the subject which specifically refers to the “therapeutic” aspect of the eulogy, and makes no reference at all to God or eternity.  The final paragraphs were the most telling, where the lady states that she hasn’t gone to mass for years (despite the innovation she approves of, which is eulogies at funerals).

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THE white dove is one of the most beautiful birds in the animal kingdom. In Christian symbolism, it stands for the Holy Ghost, who appeared in both the form of the dove and as tongues of fire. From Matthew 3:16:

And Jesus being baptized, forthwith came out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened to him: and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him.

The Holy Ghost, which strengthens and enlightens mankind, is also known as the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete and the Spirit of Truth.

The dove is a modern secular symbol too. It stands for universal brotherhood and peace, and has been widely used by Communists and peaceniks. Everyone has seen the famous white dove on a bright blue background.

Given his belief in a universalistic Pan-Religion, it is safe to assume that for “Pope” Francis, this second meaning of the dove is important. And it is this second meaning that was intended when two doves were released by Francis and two children in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday in celebration of the annual “Caravan of Peace,” which strives for world peace. However, things did not go as intended.  The doves were viciously attacked by a seagull and a crow. See the report at Novus Ordo Watch. 

It seems strange that two birds from different species should join together to tackle the doves. We might read meaning into this. The seagull, white and less aggressive, is an apt symbol for the invisible forces that seek to deny the truths of the Church. These forces, as the Rev. Denis Fahey taught, lie in the heart of every man. The crow, much more belligerent, is an apt symbol for the visible, organized forces that seek to destroy the Church.

These two forces lie in constant wait. And no matter how many gestures of peace this non-Catholic “Pope” makes, they are eager and willing to destroy his phony Church of Peace and Love. 

By the way, see this mind-blowing photo of Francis with the children. Now, tell me, dear reader, is this the true Pope?

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THERE were reportedly people willing to adopt the baby of Marlise Munoz, the pregnant Texas woman who was removed from life support yesterday after a judge ordered that the hospital where she was being treated was not required to keep her barely alive to save the child. Now there is no baby to adopt. Her husband, Erick, had argued for termination, stating that his wife did not wish to be sustained ever on life support. We can never know whether she would have ended the chances for her child, and it doesn’t matter what she would have done. That’s not the issue. The issue is whether the State should protect the weak and diseased. The answer that has been given is, no.

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N.W. writes:

I came across something of the America we are fighting to save, and I thought you’d appreciate seeing it. Tired of what the music industry had done to Country music, Melody Williamson wrote a song, calling out Music Row for being the classless, greedy creeps they are. I think you’ll greatly appreciate the sentiments expressed in this simple song.

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  AT the website Early American Gardens, there is a recipe from the first cookbook published in America.

  GRETCHEN D. writes: The naiveté of most Western (white) women is just breathtaking. I suppose they are are all just trying to "be the change" they wish to see in the world? I can't decide whether they think that if they behave as though non-whites are the same as whites, as if men are the same as women, it will just become so, or if they have been so relentlessly propagandized that they genuinely believe that there is no difference. Here is yet another woman, a 51-year-old Danish tourist, who found out otherwise two weeks ago. This woman was walking by herself in one of the poorest cities in the world (New Delhi) and in a country that has recently been in the news for the rising number of incidences of gang-rape (India) - when she got lost, and approached a group of local men to ask directions. None of your readers, and no person with any degree of sense, will be surprised by what happened next.

DIANA writes:

America’s liturgical calender begins on February 3rd, with the Super Bowl.  This year we also get the Winter Olympics, then the Oscars.

First, the Super Bowl on February 3. Gay* exhibitionist actor Neil Patrick Harris is doing Super Bowl ads. Conservative outlets are doing their usual best to look stupid, criticizing the ads because they supposedly mock Christianity.

You have to read the linked article to appreciate how stupid and screwy the logic is. The mockery, of course, is not towards Christianity, but towards the masculinity that football used to represent. Can you imagine, for example, using Paul Lynde, or some obviously flaming actor, to advertise the football championship in 1964?

Onto the Winter Olympics.

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  THE GOP loves to break new boundaries when it comes to feminist family values. Thus the choice of Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers to respond to the President's State of the Union address is no surprise. Rodgers gave birth to her third child two months ago and has two other young children, whom she also gave birth to in office. Take that, all you forward-looking Democrats. The Stupid Party loves equality too! Maybe one day, a woman can give the address from the actual maternity ward! Rodgers is of course going to deliver a speech that emphasizes the importance of family. Aw, shucks. How moving that magic word "family" is. I bet she will tell us how much she understands "working families," as if her life is anything like that of the schlep who picks up her children at daycare every day and then feeds them left-over pizza. How much longer will the women of America put up with this nonsense? Even so-called conservatives gleefully destroy the social institution of motherhood while avowing their commitment to family.

LAURA E. writes:

I am a millennial wife. I adore your site. I wonder if you read the article in this week’s Wall Street Journal on love’s new timetable for millennials: WSJ Love and Work on a Timetable.

The story focuses on the inherent geographic and temporal challenges of maintaining dual careers for modern couples.  I think the more interesting, but scarcely remarked on angle is the couple’s lengthy courtship.  I identify with this story because if there is one signature feature of my generation’s courtship rites (and I am limiting my analysis to my relatively privileged circle of college-educated professional peers) it is the long road from the first date to the altar.

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THE murder trial of a black convicted felon who had once been sentenced to over 90 years in prison for armed robbery and kidnapping and who is accused of stabbing the middle-aged, divorced white woman who took him in to her home and her bedroom, began this week, almost two full years after Sarajane Hakopian was found dead of stab wounds. This long delay is common even when there is very little doubt of who committed a crime. The case is part of an apparent minor trend of divorced or unattached middle-aged white women who become involved with nonwhite men who later kill them. In December, Nedenia Post Dye, the 46-year-old granddaughter of Marjorie Merriweather Post, was murdered on the Caribbean island of Roatan, where she operated a luxury spa. A 25-year-old musician named Lenin Roberto Arana was found in bloody clothes in Dye’s car after the murder and is charged with the crime. According to The Daily Mail, Arana told local reporters, “I’m innocent. Nedenia was like a mother to me. She protected me.”

As with Hakopian, Dye’s case seems to have been some merging of sexual and maternal roles, with the white woman attempting to nurture her black lover into normalcy. With its denial of race differences and its push for the independence of women, leaving middle-aged women alone and looking for love, the modern world encourages such delusions.

The case of Hakopian was discussed at VFR in February, 2012. Lawrence Auster wrote:

When I began reading the below article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, I hadn’t noticed the small captionless photo of a man at the top of the article and was not sure if the race of the suspect was known. Then, as the article unfolded, telling me, bit by intensifying bit, in a kind of liberal self-parody, more and more about the obviously dangerous nature of the man whom the good-hearted hippie-like divorced 44-year-old mother-of-two Sarajane Hakopian had welcomed into her life, I figured he sounded like a black man, except that his name, Brian Mallory, didn’t sound at all black. So, believe it or not, I wasn’t sure that he was black, even though the reader who had sent me the article had said he was black (it’s easy to be wrong about these things, and I try, most of the time, not to jump prematurely to conclusions). (more…)

KARL D. writes:

I thought you might appreciate this article. It’s about a subculture of people into Rockabilly music who live as if it were the 1950s, without those pesky traditional 1950s morals. I have known some Rockabilly folks like the ones pictured in this article, and while they are perfectly nice people, they are almost all howling liberals. They surround themselves with all the fashions, furnishings and gadgets of the 50s and will even use the lingo. But that’s where it stops. It is all done with a sense of irony. (more…)

  OBAMA has made a habit of delivering an address praising Roe v. Wade on the anniversary of the decision. Today, on the 41st anniversary, he said that abortion helps women "fulfill their dreams." It's amazing that people think of Obama as pro-woman. Since Roe v. Wade, black illegitimacy alone has skyrocketed to over 70 percent. Marriage is almost every woman's dream. Abortion has not exactly been empowering for women. The most powerful thing a woman can do is give life to a human being. What dream could exceed that? The abortion movement has always denied that women have other options, the chief of them today being adoption. America will only see an end to the well-funded, legal, government-supported machinery of abortion, and the coming pharmaceutical age of abortion, when it rejects the idea that elected politicians or appointed judges or the people themselves should govern morality and that God has no political rights at all.

ARS ORANDI, a Catholic website devoted to art, the Holy Mass and liturgical contemplation, was one of the most beautiful blogs on the Internet. It sadly vanished a couple of weeks ago. There has been no public word from the author, David Werling, to explain its disappearance. The archives from December 8th and earlier are available here. I am very grateful to Mr. Werling for creating and maintaining his site, a lovely tribute to the highest form of prayer that exists. It must have been extremely time-consuming to keep the site running.

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  IF you were the very first black First Lady in America, you would think you would at all times stress and foster the dignity of the black woman. After all, the dignity of black women -- their dignity as mothers and wives -- is far more important to the health of children than whether they eat vegetables -- or rather a normal and healthy life for children inevitably flows from the dignity of the mother. And even a poor woman can possess dignity. Michelle Obama has not done much to help the ordinary black woman acquire a sense of her own vital importance.

WHEN OBAMA said he would bridge the racial divide, he apparently meant that he would introduce a whole new level of racial bullying. A recent case is that of Ally Bank, which was accused by Eric Holder’s office of discriminating against blacks in auto lending. According to Investor’s Business Daily, the case against Ally was shockingly weak. Prosecutors never documented or researched the creditworthiness of loan applicants who were allegedly overcharged. “That’s right, they never looked at credit scores, down payments, debt or other key risk-related factors banks consider to set interest rates. Not for blacks, or for supposedly “similarly situated” whites.” (more…)

BOB L. writes:

Today, the news out of Virginia is that former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife have been indicted on 14 federal corruption charges and face decades in prison (although will probably get away with far less.)

Gov. McDonnell was a popular, well-liked governor. When he ran for Governor, the media publicized his university thesis, which spoke intelligently (although I have only skimmed it) about issues facing the family. Most controversially, he criticized Griswald and argued for an end to no-fault divorce, alongside more standard Republican proposals like ending abortion and promoting school vouchers. He won in the 2009 landslide by running away from his original positions on these matters and instead, speaking about bread-and-butter issues like relieving traffic congestion.

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 ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

The almost hilariously over-the-top narcissism in the way Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis speaks about herself, and the passivity of her ‘husband’ who paid her way through Harvard Law School and was then left holding the bag with two children to take care of – she left him quite literally the next day after the tuition loan was paid off – is a scathing indictment of the qualities liberal women admire and seek to cultivate in themselves, and how liberal men have been conditioned to accept that their role in life is to enable supposedly self-empowered women who in reality use men to achieve their ambitions.

Davis is being challenged for discrepancies in her life story. In the article at The Dallas News, a political colleague of hers is quoted as saying:

“She’s going to find a way, and she’s going to figure out a way to spin herself in a way that grabs at the heart strings. A lot of it isn’t true about her, but that’s just us who knew her. But she’d be a good governor.” (more…)