FROM a comment By Pete F. in 2014:

Men are naturally barbaric; left to their own devices, many males are perfectly happy to live in relative squalor. (Those disinclined to believe this are urged to hang out with a young single guy sometime). What prevents this from happening? In the traditional societies of the past, both the father and the mother (as well as other relatives and respected figures in the community) had important roles to play in civilizing boys and turning them into men.

It was the job of a father, an older brother, or perhaps a priest, drill instructor or coach to teach the boy what behavior and conduct was expected of him as a man. The mother’s role was just as vital, but different. Her job was to educate and civilize her son – not only by teaching him how a gentleman conducts himself around a lady, but by providing a comforting home and exposure to the things such as culture, manners, and all of the other habits great and small that comprise civilized behavior. Grace, beauty, decorum, kindness and all of the things that comfort us – these are the things that turn a house into a home, and into a refuge from a sometimes cold world outside that front door. Only a mother or a wife can provide those things. (more…)

"THIS truth that Christ died for us is so hard a truth that scarcely can our intelligence take hold of it. Nay it is a truth that our intelligence could in no way discover. And St. Paul, preaching, makes echo to Habacuc, I work a work in your days, a work which you will not believe, if any man shall tell it to you (Acts xiii 14). "So great is God's love for us and His grace towards us, that He does more for us than we can believe or understand." --- St. Thomas Aquinas, Meditations for Each Day in Lent  

“LUCIFER is not the rival, he is the slave of the Most High. (The same must be said of his sectarians.) The evil he inspires or introduces into the soul and the world, he cannot do without the permission of the Lord. And the Lord only allows it in order to punish the wicked or to justify the righteous by the burning iron of tribulation. In this way, even evil is transformed into good under the omnipotent command of God Who has no equal, either in power, grandeur or prodigy; the One Who is He Who is, and who has drawn all that is, apart from Himself, from the abyss of nothingness.” --- Juan Donoso Cortes (1809-1853)  

ALAN writes:

The city of St. Louis is now run by a loose coalition of “Progressives”, Communists, Feminists, thieves, and shysters.  Under their leadership, downtown St. Louis now looks as Bolshevik Russia must have looked in the 1920s-‘30s, replete with abandonment, degradation, vandalism, lawlessness, and splendid examples of the calculated ugliness called Communist “art”.

It’s been a short path from yesterday to today.

In mid-afternoon on July 11, 1932, several thousand unemployed men and women gathered outside City Hall in downtown St. Louis “to demand relief measures of some sort”. Doubtless many in the crowd were ordinary men and women who were lured into the event by typical Communist agitprop methods.  A few well-trained agitators incited the crowd to move forward and attempt to rush into City Hall against 50 policemen who were there to stop them.

The resulting confrontation included tear gas bombs thrown into the mob by police, shots fired into the air in an attempt to disperse the mob, bricks and clubs thrown at officers by some people in the mob, glass doors and windows broken, theft from a vendor across the street, some people injured and some arrested. A World War I-vintage hand grenade was thrown at police, but it did not explode.

(more…)

MASSACHUSSETTS taxpayers are fitting the bill for thousands of illegal immigrants to live in shelters, hotels and motels. Those without kitchen facilities receive catered meals worth $64 a day. The state's Right to Shelter law requires it to provide families with refrigeration and basic cooking facilities. But some of the accommodations do not have those appliances leaving the state to contract out for food and delivery. Spinelli Ravioli Manufacturing Company in East Boston, a full-service drop-off catering company with 30 years' experience in the industry was awarded a $10 million-dollar six-month no-bid contract to provide and deliver meals. State officials say they must spend more than $800 million to respond to the "crisis." It is an entirely manufactured crisis -- and these costs are just the tip of the iceberg of the immense costs in the years ahead. The solution to this "crisis" is mass deportation, not ravioli.  

FROM the renowned Cornelius a Lapide’s Commentary on 1 Corinthians xiv. 35:

“Ver. 34. Let women keep silence in the churches. Ambrose, and after him Anselm, say that even the prophetesses are to keep silence: (1.) Because it is against the order of nature and of the Law, in Genesis 3:16, for women, who have been made subject to men, to speak in their presence. (2.) Because it is opposed to the modesty and humility which befits them. (3.) Because man is endowed with better judgment, reason, discursive power, and discretion than woman. (4.) She is rightly bidden, says S. Anselm, to keep silence, because when she spoke it was to persuade man to sin (Gen 3:6). (5.) To curb her loquacity, for, as it is said, ‘when two women quarrel it is like the beating of two cymbals or the clanging of two bells.’ This might readily enough happen in the church if they were allowed to teach. About this silence enjoined on women, see notes on 1 Timothy 2:9 . How much is it then against the command of S. Paul, against all law, right, and seemliness, for a woman to be the head of a church! (more…)

"REFLECT frequently, therefore, that a single aspiration, an ejaculatory prayer, a genuflection, the least mark of respect for the divine majesty, is of greater value than all the treasures of the earth, and that every time a person mortifies his inclinations, the angels present him a crown of glory in recompence for the victory gained over himself. On the contrary, God withdraws his graces by degrees from the slothful who neglect them, and heaps them on the fervent who by their means, as faithful servants, may one day enter into the joy of their Lord, Mat. xxv. 21." --- Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat  

SHERLOCK arrives within minutes at the scene. The ambulances are empty. The bodies, strangely unreal, were never taken to the hospital. He is not permitted to inspect them. "Hmm, Watson. Something is amiss!" A candle-light vigil is already in the works. Piles of teddy bears miraculously appear. Witnesses to grotesque horrors smile and wipe away non-existent tears. The police are strangely unconcerned. The FBI is already involved. Press conferences with top state officials on the scene speak of "community," "fears" and "We will be strong!" The perpetrator has been killed and whisked away. Facts about his life are known without the slightest research needed. Hmmm, something is amiss. Sherlock has never seen so much activity at a murder scene --- and so little evidence of a murder.  

“PRIDE of complacency is commonly called pride of vanity. It is self-love demanding self-esteem or the esteem of others. Yet it is not so much the self-esteem that is sought as it is the craving for the good opinion of others. That is, one suffering from this type of pride is anxious to be well thought of in regard to things spiritual, mental, or physical, so he thinks or speaks or acts vainly. (more…)

THE TALMUD, the sacred text of  Judaism, is comprised of rabbinic commentaries that were written over a period of hundreds of years and contain the oral traditions that have shaped Judaism since shortly after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.

Americans, including many Jews, are generally unfamiliar with the Talmud’s content. While it is widely acceptable to criticize the intolerance of the Quran, the Talmud is off bounds for mainstream commentary. Thus many do not know just how intolerant the revered text of the official religion of the state of Israel is.

Benjamin Freedman was a successful Jewish businessman and Zionist activist who lived from 1890 to 1984. Later in his adult life, he became an outspoken critic of the Judaic mentality and eventually converted to Catholicism. He is said to have devoted much of his fortune to researching and publicizing the history of Judaism.

“The Talmud today virtually exercises totalitarian dictatorship over the lives of so-called or self-styled ‘Jews,’ whether they are aware of that fact or not,” he wrote in his 1954 work “Facts are Facts,” which is an extended letter to another Jewish convert. “Their spiritual leaders make no attempt to conceal the control they exercise over the lives of so-called or self-styled ‘Jews’. They extend their authority far beyond the legitimate limits of spiritual matters. Their authority has no equal outside religion.”

Not only does the Talmud, which includes more than 60 volumes of commentaries, regulate the thinking and daily lives of Jews, he wrote, it inculcates in them hostility toward gentiles, or non-Jews, in general.

Using the translation from the Hebrew by the Latvian priest and eminent scholar, the Rev. I.B. Pranaitis, Master of Theology and Professor of the Hebrew Language at the Imperial Ecclesiastical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church in Old St. Petersburg, Russia, Freedman proved his point by listing summarized Talmudic references for some of the specific laws regarding Christians, and gentiles in general. I list them below. They conform with many other translations of the Talmud. Please feel free to correct any of these summaries if you can prove they are faulty. Again, some of these references refer to all non-Jews, not just Christians. (more…)

"I DON'T care if women’s sports are completely eradicated by men in dresses. Women’s sports were never a benefit to women or society. Physical competitions between women build zero feminine virtues. "It was always just a sign of an unhealthy and decadent society." I completely agree with this short statement found on Gab.  

MY article, nearly ten years old, on Peter Schafer's 2009 book, Jesus in the Talmud, might interest readers.  

“I had hardly begun to take off my stocking when I heard the sound of wind, as in a storm. I turned towards the meadow, and I saw that the trees were not moving at all. I had half-noticed, but without paying any particular heed, that the branches and brambles were waving beside the grotto. I went on taking my stockings off, and was putting one foot into the water, when I heard the same sound in front of me. I looked up and saw a cluster of branches and brambles underneath the topmost opening in the grotto tossing and swaying to and fro, though nothing else stirred all around. Behind these branches and within the opening, I saw immediately afterwards a girl in white, no bigger than myself, who greeted me with a slight bow of the head; at the same time, she stretched out her arms slightly away from her body, opening her hands, as in pictures of Our Lady; over her right arm hung a rosary. I was afraid. I stepped back. I wanted to call the two little girls; I hadn’t the courage to do so. I rubbed my eyes again and again: I thought I must be mistaken. Raising my eyes again, I saw the girl smiling at me most graciously and seeming to invite me to come nearer. But I was still afraid. It was not however a fear such as I have had…

"HOW to Root out Hidden Faults" by Rev. James F. McElhone (1890-1963) is another great resource for Lent (and the rest of the year). Here he looks at the fault of gluttony --- caring too much about the quality or quantity of what we eat or drink: In our day the tendency is to think and speak much about things to eat and drink. Emphasis is placed on physical fitness. In fact, there are many who practice self-denial for the sake of physical fitness alone. Now there is no doubt that temperance is a help to health; but should not the spiritual idea come first? Temperance is a virtue; to practice it is to gain merit and grace; to practice it is a means of keeping well. Right reason should regulate our lives in regard to eating and drinking. We should think correctly in this matter; our state of mind should be spiritual. We eat to live; we should not live to eat. Excess is to be avoided, so is defect; to be over-fed or under-nourished is harmful and wrong. Prudence is the guide, for what might be too much or too little for one is not excessive or defective for another. Let reason determine the amount to be taken and the manner in which it is taken. [emphasis added]  

THE Seven Penitential Psalms were traditionally prayed every day in Lent. See here.  

THE word "meditation" is tossed around a lot today, but it often refers to empty and harmful practices. The highest form of meditation, the one for which we were all destined, concerns the events of the last week of the life of Jesus Christ. Please see my Lenten Reading List for suggestions. If you have a busy life -- there is no crime in having many obligations -- a few minutes a day devoted to this practice can make a huge difference, helping you to grow in wisdom and virtue. From Of Prayer and Meditation by Venerable Louis of Granada: Albertus Magnus saith, That it is more profitable for a man to meditate every day a little upon the holy passion of our Savior Christ, than to fast with bread and water all the Fridays in the year and to discipline and scourge himself until he shed blood, and to say all the whole Psalter from one end thereof to an other. At the least wise this is very certain, that this holy exercise is a passing great help to direct the soul in all virtue, and goodness. For considering that our Savior Christ is (as he himself saith) The way, the truth, and the life, there is none other exercise more fit and convenient to direct us to go unto God, to know God, and to enjoy God, than to fix always our eyes upon our Savior Christ. For though Christ be unto us…

"THESE clips are over 50 years old, yet the talking points are almost identical to those of today. The public's concerns over immigration have never been addressed, not once. The public has never supported immigration." Fascinating comment from one of the men who says people were never "prejudiced," but now they are. Racial harmony is the result of distinct homelands, not artificial and soulless multiculturalism.