Child Feeding her Pets (1872) by Gaetano Chierici

“CHARACTER is the expression of the personality of a human being …. A man’s character is the resultant of two distinct classes of factors; the original or inherited elements of his being, and those which he has acquired. On the one hand, every human being starts with a certain nature or disposition — a native endowment of capacities for knowledge, and feelings, and tendencies towards volition and action — which varies with each individual. This disposition is dependent in part on the structure of the bodily organism and especially of the nervous system which he has inherited; in part, perhaps, also on his soul which has been created … The transmission from parent to offspring of hereditary dispositions, therefore, involves no conflict with the doctrine of the creation of each human soul.”

— Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908 Read More »

“YOU know how large a group they are, and how influential they are in politics. I will lower my voice and speak just loudly enough for the jury to hear me; for there are plenty of individuals to stir up those Jews against me and against every good Roman…”

— Cicero, in testimony before a Roman jury

“THE topic of Jewish involvement in the Atlantic slave trade remains a contentious and often avoided subject within the academic community. The very mention of this issue can provoke accusations of antisemitism, creating a significant barrier to open and objective historical inquiry. This article seeks to address this issue by presenting a comprehensive examination of Jewish participation in the transatlantic slave trade, relying predominantly on scholarly sources authored by Jewish historians and academics.”

—- Jews and the Atlantic Slave Trade: Analysis of the Jewish involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade

                                                  The first American slave ship, the Desire

“IT HAS been contended that the colonists, in first introducing the negroes into this country, were to some extent inspired by religious motives, and that the ‘soul-saving’ proposition was at the bottom of it; but in course of time the cloak became woefully threadbare, to be finally converted into a shroud in no way concealing the cadaver that might fitly stand for the emblem of this disgusting traffic. Slavery at first prospered in the colonies, and, seeing this, not a few attempts were made to enslave the indigenous redmen; but it was an utter failure.

“At an early date the British entered the field as slave traders, and they succeeded in this undertaking from the very start. Royal Companies were formed, treaties were drawn and ratified, and British slave trade soon became a powerful institution (1713). “In those days,” says an authority at hand, “the shipchandlers of Liverpool made special displays in their windows of such things as hand-cuffs, leg-shackles, iron collars, short and long chains, and furnaces and copper kettles designed for slavers’ use. Read More »

“COLOR problems are permanent problems. They will die only with the obliteration of the color line. If the white man is to remain white, color problems must persist. As long as there is a color line, there will be a color problem. Our future is clouded by such problems. They will not grow less, but ever greater, and our children’ s children will bear them as intensified burdens.

“The history of higher cultures will reveal that all those which are popularly called ‘civilizations’ may be traced in origin to the white race, while the history of the contact of races will reveal that the civilizations of the white man have never survived contact with the colored. We need and must have this knowledge if we are to reverse history.”

— Earnest Sevier Cox, White America

“WE the people” is now “we the children.” Whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, what difference does it make?

The over-the-top Disney phenomenon is illustrative:

Disney is sleazy creepy. So are the commercials/ads with cartoon characters, calling everyone by their first name, adult underwear with cartoon characters, bachelorette parties that last entire weekends and involve riding around drunk in limos, over-exposed women, the entire influencer-programmed “I deserve it!”, “culture” of feeeelings and “experiences” is freakish. (Source)

Democracy is a mass of indulgent children weaponized against adults.

Read More »

FROM The Importance of Silence by St. Alphonsus de Liguori:

In the first place, silence is a great means of acquiring the spirit of prayer, and of disposing the soul to converse continually with God. We rarely find a spiritual soul that speaks much. All souls of prayer are lovers of silence that is called the guardian of innocence, the shield against temptations, and the fountain of prayer. For by silence devotion is preserved, and in silence good thoughts spring up in the soul. St. Bernard says: “Silence and the absence of noise in a certain manner force the soul to think of God and of eternal goods.”  Hence, the saints fled to the mountains, to caves, and to deserts, in order to find this silence, and escape the tumults of the world, in which, as was said to Elias, God is not found. (3 Kings, xix. 11) Theodosius the monk observed silence for thirty-five years. St. John the Silent, who gave up his bishopric and became a monk, observed silence for forty-seven years before his death; and all the saints, even they who were not solitaries, have been lovers of silence. Read More »

“IT is often said that celebrities are the new gods, attributed powers and abilities beyond the gods of Mt. Olympus. But they are phony gods, gods sought by us to fill the many voids in our own lives. They are the creatures of our collective wishes, beings who populate the country of our popular imagination. They can even acquire cultic status, functioning for us as surrogate saints and martyrs. James Dean’s hometown and burial site (Fairmount, Indiana) is a pilgrimage site, where the faithful come to ‘worship’ at the grave of the departed but curiously immortal youth, now immune from time. Marilyn Monroe has become a feminist icon, the girl goddess who was martyred by the system of exploitation that made her into a celebrity in the first place but could not make her happy. She was a victim of the phony love transacted between her and her fans, which brought her much lust and notoriety but no real love. In death, Elvis Presley has become a cult figure, and the tabloids regularly report the latest sightings of “St. Elvis,” including his intervening to comfort the troubled and heal the sick. These extremes suggest that celebrity worship is a phony religious experience, an idolatry of fame that leads ordinary people to seek sacred experience.

“The confusion of religious and celebrity worship stems from the fact that the famous exist in a kind of status of transfiguration. They live in ‘the context of no context,’ a mass-mediated world of play, figurative rather than literal existence. Celebrities do not work, they play; they do not live out textual lives, they romp in contextual limbo, the never-never land of nowhere. The celebrated country of Nowhere is their true home, the elysian fields of fame to which only the gods of celebration are admitted. (Michael Jackson built a fun park, complete with merry-go-round and miniature railroad, on a ranch he named Neverland.) But it is a phony world full of phony creations, all of whom are anxious about enhancing the one thing that differentiates them from other and unheralded human beings, their claim to fame. We should remember the fundamental concept of celebrity epistemology: if we the people do not see them, they do not exist.”

— James Combs, Phony Culture

BELOVED yesterday. Beloved today. Beloved forevermore.

Beloved by peasants. Beloved by kings.

Beloved by the wretched. Beloved by saints.

Beloved by the Father. Beloved by the Only Begotten Son. Beloved by the Divine Dove.

And so it has been — a continuous, wondrous, irrepressible devotion through the rolling centuries to the Immaculate Queen of heaven and earth.

Thomas catches the belt (Detail), by Matteo di Giovanni, c. 1474.

“SING,SING, ye angel bands,
All beautiful and bright;
For higher still and higher,
Through fields of starry light,
Mary, your Queen, ascends,
Like the sweet moon at night.

“A fairer flower than she
On earth hath never been;
And, save the throne of God,
Your heavens have never seen
A wonder half so bright
As your ascending Queen.

“O happy angels! look
How beautiful she is!
See! Jesus bears her up,
Her hand is locked in His;
Oh who can tell the height
Of that fair mother’s bliss! (Source) Read More »

Madonna and Child, Fra Filippo Lippi; 1465

FROM Orestes Brownson’s “The Moral and Social Influence of Devotion to Mary:”

Nowhere in ancient or modern heathendom do we find maternity regarded as a holy function, or any conception of its deep spiritual significance Motherhood had hardly any rights of its own, even with free mothers, and none at all with slave moth

It is mainly to the low estimate in which maternity is held among the heathen that we must attribute in both ancient and modern times the prevalence of child-murder, or the exposure of children, as in China, India, and perhaps in all nations on which the light of the Gospel sheds no ray. In ancient Sparta the law ordered all malformed children to be put to death as soon as born, and in Rome the mother had no rights over her new-born child, and the nurse must wait the word of the father to know whether the babe just born is to live or to be strangled. If the father refuses to own it and to say let it live, it cannot be reared. The father can slay the child with his own hand or with the hand of his slave before the mother’s eyes without her having any right to complain, or the law any right to intervene. If the mother herself had any proper respect for the sacredness and dignity of motherhood she could never destroy her own offspring, and infanticide by the hands of the mother or with her knowledge and consent would be an unheard-of crime. If again, the father or society had any due appreciation of the greatness and sacredness of motherhood, the practice of child-murder could never be tolerated, or even connived at. Not only did the low estimate in which maternity was held, an estimate that placed it little above a mere animal function, lead to the toleration or authorization of child-murder, but it tended to degrade womanhood, and to make woman herself a mere accomplice with man in pleasure or ambition.

Under Christianity this estimate is corrected, and motherhood, as a necessary consequence of elevating marriage to a sacrament, is elevated in some sense to the spiritual order, and made a holy function. Woman herself is elevated, ceases to be a mere drudge, or an article of luxury. She is a person, not a chattel, has her own personal existence, rights, and duties. If a wife, she is indeed under obedience to her husband, but the obedience of a person morally free, not the obedience of a slave. If the rights of the father are paramount, they are not exclusive, and the rights of the mother are recognized, and in some cases even supersede those of the father. Under this Christian view of woman and motherhood infanticide and the exposure of children ceased in the nations that became, and just in proportion as they became and remained Christian. Read More »

THE tiny village of Dundrum in County Tipperary, Ireland had until yesterday 200 residents.

On August 13, 280 ‘asylum seekers’ were reportedly brought in to be housed in a local hotel at government expense, replacing the local population overnight.

The interviews with local residents above are from three weeks ago. Below are scenes from yesterday.

 

Our Lady’s Holy Death

Mary, thy heart for love
Alone had ever sighed;
So much it loved at length,
Of very love it died.

O happy, happy death:
If death indeed could be,
Blest Virgin, that sweet end
Which God bestowed on thee.

‘Tis in a sweet repose,
With smile of heavenly mirth,
Thou takest joyful flight
To Paradise from earth; Read More »

                                                                                      Abigail Adams

“THE PECULIAR FORMS of uneasiness in the American woman of today come naturally enough from the Revolution of 1776. That movement upset theoretically everything which had been expected of her before. Theoretically, it broke down the division fences which had kept her in sets and groups. She was no longer to be a woman of class; she was a woman of the people. This was striking at the very underpinning of femininity, as the world knew it. Theoretically, too, her ears were no longer to be closed to all ideas save those of her church or party — a new thing, freedom of speech, was abroad — her lips were opened with man’s. Moreover, her business of family building was modified, as well as her attitude towards life. The necessity of all women educating themselves that they might be able to educate their children was an obligation on the face of the new undertaking. Another revolutionary duty put upon her was — paying her way. There can be no real democracy where there is parasitism. She must achieve conscious independence whether in or out of the family. Unquestionably there came with the Revolution a vision of a new woman — a woman from whom all of the willfulness and frivolity and helplessness of the “Lady” of the old régime should be stripped, while all her qualities of gentleness and charm should be preserved. The old-world lady was to be merged into a woman strong, capable, severely beautiful, a creature who had all of the virtues and none of the follies of femininity.

“It was strong yeast they put into the pot in ’76. Read More »