[Reposted from March 8, 2015]

ALAN writes:

When interviewed by UPI reporter Vernon Scott in 1981, actress Joan Fontaine said: 

“During the golden years, movies were filled with actresses and actors playing ladies and gentlemen.  Well, there is no elegance left on the screen and there never was any in television.  Come to think of it, there’s little elegance left in our culture or society…”

She was right.  It is of course much worse today.  Elegance?  Who could find a trace of elegance today in movie theaters that look like rooms in a warehouse?  In the dreck, drivel, and depravity that Americans now accept as entertainment?  In profanity in place of dialogue?  In moviegoers who think they have a right to inflict their beeps and tweets and cell phone rings on everyone around them?  In movie patrons who prove themselves as ill-mannered and vulgar-tongued as the fourth-rate actors and actresses they have been taught to admire in the absence of such elegance?  Where are today’s equivalent of Irene Dunne, Greer Garson, Loretta Young, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, Deborah Kerr?  Of Walter Pidgeon, Fredric March, Ronald Colman, James Stewart, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott? (more…)

"Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged..." -- Pope St. Pius X (H/T @TempusFugit4016)  

FROM a comment by Fitzgerald posted here in 2012:

There is a quiet groaning across society from women who feel they must work to be valuable. The having-it-all lie in particular has them trapped. Women are highly susceptible to peer pressure and the feminist overlords have been able to perpetuate a web of lies that has trapped a large majority of women into wage slavery and abandonment of their families, with a resulting quiet desperation and longing for a loss most can’t quite place entirely. It is the loss of the freedom to focus on their families, churches and communities as in days of old. The “freedom” to be a wage slave is not freedom. Dare we also bring up the sexual revolution? Both sexes have adopted lies en masse, believing that sexual freedom and the resulting “necessity” for contraception and abortion equals political and individual freedom. It is of course enslaving psychologically, and often physically damaging. Furthermore, a large majority of males and females now consider it their duty to push their daughters into sports, degrees, career trajectories at all costs without a second thought.

One of the grandest lies of all that the feminist movement has pushed forward is that there are large number of highly fulfilling jobs. Most men see through this quickly. Very few jobs are highly rewarding, creative endeavors, and even those largely comprise a form of intellectual share cropping work on the company land, so to speak. True, modern information businesses have generated a few more interesting jobs, but most of those in all fields come with crushing responsibilities and demands for near complete focus and commitment, with decades of continuous education and self-driven evolution. Few women are willing to make the ongoing, demanding commitments save for pursuit of the degree initially, only to then seek for some kind of balance once they have checked the “career” box off their checklist. Women workers are typically planning for their next break or vacation while most men are driven to excel or at least seek success and respect for fulfillment. I believe the recent posting on the law profession and the cultivation of female underlings as favored pseudofamilial daughters very aptly describes this now entrenched phenomenon. (more…)

"IN any conflict where the human masses are at stake, whatever the hazards of the great physical shocks, it is always the strongest idea, the most just, which prevails. The life of peoples, like the life of men, is affirmative: a code of negations will never be able to subjugate it, especially the code that wants to force man to believe that he has no soul and no other status but that of an animal. Physical violence may exert its fury, but a strong idea will be ever stronger. And the strong idea will always be the idea of Love, essentially creative." -- Adrien Arcand, Is Christianity Bankrupt? (Based on two talks in Montreal in 1954)  

As your president, I will fight for democracy with every fiber of my being, and I'm asking every American to join me. --- Joe Biden, September 1, 2022 ""IS there today in this world a word more widely used, either on this side or the other of the “Iron Curtain”? The word is never defined because no definition can be proved by the reality of concrete facts. However, we venerate this word the most, respect it the most, and offer up the most incense to it. It is the first and last word, the alpha and the omega which encompasses all, which contains all within it. If you live, if you breathe, if you can eat, work, sing, dream, sometimes be happy, if the steam engine works, if electricity serves its purpose, if the microscope enlarges objects, if we have theaters and hospitals, if the sun shines and the wheat grows, if the rivers flow and the wind blows, if you can even believe in something and raise up temples, there is only one explanation for it all: DEMOCRACY! Eliminate democracy, it’s the end of the world, oblivion. Listen to our liberals, our socialists and our communists shout out the word, gargle it with hysterical tremolos, see them roll their ecstatic eyes when they declaim it, their mouths pasty, foaming, and you will understand the importance given to this idol, this fetish of modern times that liberalism makes us adore…

“THE advent of a Universal Republic, desired by all the worst elements of disorder and awaited by them with confidence, is an idea already ripe for realization. From this Republic, founded on the principles of the absolute equality of men and community of goods, will be banished all national distinctions; the authority of the father over his children will not be recognized, nor that of God over human society. If these ideas are put into practice, an unprecedented reign of terror will inevitably follow. Already, even in our day, a vast portion of Europe is passing through this sad experience and we see that it is sought to extend this state of things to other regions”. -- Pope Benedict XV, "Bonum Sane," 1920  

"BEHOLD I stand at the door and knock; if any man shall hear My voice, and open to Me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me; and to him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with Me in My throne." -- [Rev. 3:20]  

"ANOTHER and more attractive class of the animal creation ... played a great part in St. Rose's life — namely, birds. Their song had a peculiar fascination for her; and they are said often to have sent her into a rapture, so strongly did they fill her with the thought of God's goodness. She would often call upon them, as well as the insects, to join her in singing His praises. Concerning this point, and apropos of her intercourse with nature generally, such a charming description is given in De Bussierre's 'Life' of the holy maid in her mother's garden, that we cannot do better than conclude this chapter by giving it word for word: "'When, at sunrise, she crossed the garden to get to her hermitage, she would call upon all Nature to glorify the Maker of all things with her. Then might the trees be seen bowing over her path, shaking off the dewdrops, and rustling their leaves so as to send forth harmonious sounds. Then would the flowers sway gracefully on their stalks, half opening their petals to give out their sweetest fragrance, and so in their own way celebrate the praises of God. And with this the birds began to sing their songs, and came to perch on Rose's hands and shoulders, the insects greeted her with their joyful hum —all things, in short, with life or motion joined in concert with the early praises that…

“AS St. Peter says, a good woman’s adornment consists not in anything external, but in her quiet spirit. Her true sphere of action is her home; and every woman able to work for the welfare of her household is bound to do so; this is her chief business in life, especially if she be married. In her spare time she may care for the sick and poor, and still be occupied in work befitting her and precious in the sight of God, provided that it does not cause her to neglect her own home, and that she displays charity and humility in all that she does. Work for others is peculiarly suited to women who have not a household of their own demanding their attention. A Christian home is a sanctuary which the wife should do her best to adorn; and her efforts may render it the happiest place on earth. Its true value is seen most plainly in times of misfortune. (more…)

THE religion of Vatican II in the 1960s replaced the "Holy Ghost," a term used for centuries by the Catholic Church, with the "Holy Spirit." Was this an insignificant change of words? No, it was not. It was a very significant part of a spiritual cataclysm. "Holy Spirit" embraces New Age concepts, ancient misconceptions really about the nature of God. Teresa Stanfill Benns writes at Betrayed Catholics: "The Church had grave reasons indeed for mandating the use of Holy Ghost in the English language, particularly in prayer and the Sacraments when administered in English: to eliminate the possibility of error in reference to this blasphemous and heretical idea of spirit. The use of Holy Spirit versus Holy Ghost began to creep into Catholic missals and prayer books in English in the 1940s, 1950s. In his work New Age Bible Versions, G.A. Riplinger contrasted newly translated biblical texts to the King James and (in some instances) the Douay-Rheims versions. He concluded that all these modern translations have replaced 'Holy Ghost' with 'Holy Spirit' in key passages, a change arising, he said, 'from ecumenical practices.' He cited the rebuke from Job 26:4 to those who were moved, not of the holy Spirit of God, but by their 'human spirit;' and also referred these changes to Gal. 3:5 and Cor. 2:11 which mention 'unclean spirits.' This affords us further insight into what may be intended by the Novus Ordo usage." Read more here.  

"THERE can seldom have been an ideology that has had such a pernicious influence on the human species as the fallacious Marxist doctrine of the equality of all men. According to that doctrine human beings are distinguishable from one another only by their membership of a particular social class, religion or state of affluence. Apart from that, regardless of whatever race or nation they belong to, they are all naturally equal and possessed of the same capabilities, talents and potentialities. If they all grew up under the same conditions, with equal opportunities in education and training, they would all be capable of the same mental development of the highest order. "However absurd and contrary to all human experience that doctrine may appear to anyone capable of thinking clearly, it was adopted in principle by the UN and entered into the statute books of several multiracial states, including Britain and America. The notion is now championed with fanatical zeal by Marxists, communists, socialists, liberals and many politicizing churchmen who are not prepared to admit that wherever equal opportunities exist, unequal abilities are perfectly obvious. "What is true of the individual is no less true of races or peoples. It is foolish and contrary to all reason to attempt to force people of different races and cultures into a common mould. Nor is it possible by doctrinaire methods to “standardize” them or make them homogeneous. There are genetic and other differences that…

FROM Chris at Know Your Adversary:

Someone recently asked me what I thought about student loan debt cancellations.

My answer as an economist is straightforward. Any sizeable debt cancellation will indeed increase upward price pressures. And it’s not just overall price pressures per se, with debt cancellation of this size, what we’ll witness will be price pressures in certain sectors over others. While price inflation will trickle down overall to even the price of a can of corn, price growth will concentrate around the areas that these student drone debt slaves concentrate. This means that house prices and rents will continue to find a firm footing.

Look, even the biggest housing bear has to recognize the obvious here and that the government is doing everything it can create massive price distortions in the supply demand equations of basic necessities. The most effected will be housing. (more…)

"THEY were no longer beaming with light, and they went about, one here, the other there, as if seeking something they had lost. They were ashamed of each other. Every step they took led them downward, as if the ground gave way beneath their feet. They carried gloom wherever they went; the plants lost their bright colors and turned gray, and the animals fled before them. They sought large leaves and wove them into a cincture for their loins. They always wandered about separate. "After they had thus fled for a considerable time, the region of refulgent light whence they had come began to look like the summit of a distant mountain. Among the bushes of a gloomy-looking plain, they hid themselves, but apart. Then a voice from above called them, but they would not obey the call. They were frightened, they fled still further, and hid still deeper among the bushes. It made me sad to see that. But the voice became more imperative, and, in spite of their desire to flee and hide, they were compelled to come forth. The majestic Figure shining with light again appeared. Adam and Eve with bowed head stepped from their hiding places, but they dared not look upon their Lord. They glanced at each other, and both acknowledged their guilt. And now God pointed out to them a plain still lower than the one on which they stood. On it were bushes and…

(I recommend skipping first two minutes of this video.)

FROM Thuletide:

Occultism” in the West doesn’t refer to any old spooky mysticism, it specifically refers to the Kabbalistic-Hermetic practices that became popular during the 1800s. These practices were distinct from the Hermeticism of Classical Antiquity due to the infusion of Kabbalah (i.e. Jewish mysticism) during the Renaissance. The invention of the printing press in the 1400s led to the spread of Lurianic Kabbalah among European intelligentsia.

Classical Hermeticism is Greco-Egyptian mysticism based on texts ascribed to a god-man named Hermes Trismegistus, a fusion of the Egyptian god Thoth, regarded as a messenger of the gods and the source of all esoteric knowledge, and the Greek god Hermes, who played a similar role. They claimed that Trismegistus was originally a human who attained enlightenment and ascended to the world of the divine.  (more…)

"THE heart of Mary will console us because it is capable of deep commiseration. The sources of pity are dried up in the heart by egotism, the germ of which was deposited in the soul by original sin, and developed by subsequent faults; innocence, on the contrary, preserves the treasures of the heart and is prepared to pour them out upon all unfortunate objects worthy of compassion. The heart of Mary being Immaculate from the beginning, is especially predisposed to be moved in our favor." [Source]