Also of interest by Baldwin: "Is Israel Planning to Relocate to Ukraine?"  

"THE Apostle, having reached the spot and come up to the instrument of death, implored of his executioners to set him thereon, not in the usual way, but head downwards, in order, said he, that the servant be not seen in the same position once taken by the Master. His request was granted; and Christian tradition, in all ages, renders testimony to this fact which adds further evidence to the deep humility of so great an Apostle. Peter, with outstretched arms, prayed for the city, prayed for the whole world, the while his blood flowed down upon that Roman soil the conquest of which he had just achieved. At this moment Rome became forever the new Jerusalem. When the apostle had gone through the whole round of his sufferings, he expired; but he was to live again in each one of his Successors, unto the end of time." --- Dom Prosper Gueranger, "Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul," The Liturgical Year  

Hymn for the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (English translation)

Lo! beauteous Light Eternal floods, with sacred fires, this golden day which crowns the Princes of Apostles and opens out unto the guilty a free path to Heaven.

The Teacher of the whole earth, as well as the Doorkeeper of Heaven, both of them Fathers of Rome, and Judges of nations, each a victor of death, the one by the sword, the other by the cross, laurel-crowned, both take their seats in the Senate of Eternal Life. (more…)

"OH GOD, to how many and what great dangers are my children exposed, and how insufficient is the protection that I can afford them. Yes, O Lord, I watch in vain over them if Thou does not watch with me. But when they abide under Thy protection how sure may I not be. I recommend then my children to Thy powerful and loving care. Keep graciously far from them all that may be hurtful and dangerous to their life; let them enjoy the blessing of health; but, above all, protect them in the dangers of their souls. Drive away from them with Thy powerful hand whatever may have an injurious influence upon their yet tender and youthful hearts and become for them an occasion of wickedness and sin. Send Thy holy angels, that they may 'bear them up in their hands, lest they should dash their feet against a stone.' Almighty Father, lead my children through the dangers and storms of this life so they may arrive one day at the haven of salvation. Amen." --- From "The Christian Mother," by the Rev. W. Cramer (Benziger Bros, 1880)  

AS JEWISH organizations protest the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it's worth remembering the work of Bernard Nathanson, the Jewish doctor who was a major figure in legalizing abortion and who performed, by his estimate, 5,000 abortions and presided over more than 60,000 by other doctors. He later recanted his position and became an outspoken opponent of abortion. Read more here. Robert P. George wrote in an article on Nathanson: In the mid-1960s, with the sexual revolution roaring after Alfred Kinsey’s fraudulent but influential “scientific” studies of sex and sexuality in America, Hugh Hefner’s aggressive campaign to legitimize pornography and, perhaps above all, the wide distribution of the anovulant birth control pill, Nathanson became a leader in the movement to overturn laws prohibiting abortion. He co-founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), which later became the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and is now NARAL Pro-Choice America. Its goal was to remove the cultural stigma on abortion, eliminate all meaningful legal restraints on it, and make it as widely available as possible across the nation and, indeed, the globe. To achieve these goals, Nathanson would later reveal, he and fellow abortion crusaders pursued dubious and in some cases straightforwardly dishonest strategies. First, they promoted the idea that abortion is a medical issue, not a moral one. This required persuading people of the rather obvious falsehood that a normal pregnancy is a natural and healthy condition if…

FROM Lifesite News: Abortion is now virtually illegal or sharply restricted in at least 10 states, most of which have implemented what are known as “trigger” laws designed to take effect immediately upon the reversal of Roe v. Wade and criminalize abortion throughout pregnancy. The newly-enforceable bans are a devastating blow to the abortion industry: Since Friday morning, clinics have ceased abortions in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Abortions initially stopped in Utah and Louisiana but have resumed this week due to recent court orders. More than 100,000 abortions took place in those states in 2019, according to CDC data. In Texas and Alabama, those performing an abortion can face felony charges equivalent to rape or attempted murder and in Louisiana, anyone aborting the child of a minor may face up to 50 years in prison. So much selfless effort by anti-abortion activists for many years has truly paid off. They will save many lives. See a complete rundown of the latest developments in the post linked above.  

WHEN POLITICS is everything to people, they become aggressive and cruel when they don't get their way. This fanatical nastiness, with the happy end of Roe v. Wade, is now more obvious than ever. Some thoughts on this phenomenon from Eddie Scarry, written before last week: Even when Democrats emerged victorious from the suffocating bonfire of 2020, having control of the White House and all of Congress for two years, has their mood change? No. It’s only gotten worse. They may have traded their pussy hats for Fauci prayer candles, but the attitude has never been angrier or more spiteful. Vengeance has animated them each and every day. There are scores of studies, surveys, reports and data to back up that truism. Spoiled brats are everywhere. And mostly they're grown adults. Stay away. There's nothing to gain from engaging them in any political conversation.  

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THOMAS DROLESKEY’S detailed commentary on the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is must reading. (Please consider tipping the author if you find it of value.)

Mr. Droleskey writes:

While it is indeed wonderful that abortuaries in [some] states have shut their doors, none of this represents any kind of victory, especially when one considers that laws delineating at what age baby-killing can be prohibited makes it appear that his life is fully negotiable and thus expendable before that age. A human being is a human being at conception, and all the talk of gestational age is simply sophistry upon sophistry.

Moreover, do we really think that those who kill for a living are going to scrupulously observe all the terms of these laws even if they have to be confined to the space of a hospital rather than an abortuary to do so?

The Fifth Commandment admits of no exceptions to the inviolability of innocent human life, which can be targeted deliberately for execution. The laws listed above have such “exceptions” and are thus nothing to celebrate.

Am I saying that Roe v. Wade should not have been overturned or that its being overturned is meaningless?

No, I am not saying such a thing.

It is very good that Roe v. Wade and its false reasoning have now been consigned to the proverbial dustbin of history.

Roe v. Wade has, as noted earlier, miseducated generations of people, including many Catholics, that they had a “right” to [murder] innocent unborn babies, whose own “crime” was to be conceived as the natural consequence of that which is used properly in the married state alone for the procreation and education of children according to the mind of Holy Mother Church. Those who created that “right” did so illicitly as it is not given unto men to dispose of the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandments, but it remains to be seen whether the overturning of Roe v. Wade will correct the errors that have become deep-seated in a world where men act as beasts and do not fear the just judgment of Our Divine King and Judge, Christ the King. (more…)

SEAN writes:

Although it may be a concern that abortions may increase, I think this misses the point.

Individuals can always choose to sin whether it is against the law or not. They could have already traveled to abortion-friendly states to obtain an abortion. They can already quite easily get abortion pills and they can do tele”medicine” from wherever. The primary benefit of overturning Roe v. Wade is that it is no longer a national sin. As nations can’t suffer the effects of judgment in purgatory as they only exist here on earth we must corporately suffer the consequences for our national sins (whether you agree with or directly participate in them or not you are still a member of that nation).

The primary purpose of the government is to create the conditions for the common good of the people to aid them in getting to heaven. Getting rid of Roe just made that a lot easier. The temptation of committing the mortal sin of murder has been removed from tens of millions of people. And people who grow up in states with it being banned will grow up with that being normal for them. The ruling, and specifically thanks to justice Thomas, has also opened up the possibility (or at least the conversation) of addressing other laws that are anti-religious/moral such as sodomy, contraceptives, and sham-marriages that were ruled “constitutional” in the same way Roe was.

God bless these justices and credit where it is due Donald Trump. May this accomplishment be large expiation for their many sins. (more…)

“THE United States Supreme Court finally issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Friday, upholding Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, overturning Roe v. Wade, and delivering the pro-life cause its most transformative victory since Roe unleashed nationwide abortion-on-demand in 1973.

“Justice Samuel Alito delivered the opinion of the Court, which was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. The ruling declares Roe ‘egregiously wrong from the start.'”

Read more.

Also “Seven Myths about Overturning Roe v. Wade.” Abortion will still be legal in much of the U.S.

And, “Most U.S. Abortions Are Already Performed Using Pills.”

There is cause for concern about the ultimate political repercussions. Brian Shilhavey writes:

I have previously written that if the Supreme Court does strike down the infamous Roe vs. Wade abortion decision, that this will NOT decrease abortions in the United States, but actually increase them.

The issue of abortion will now be dealt with at the State level, and some states, like California, will increase abortion services and become “Abortion Tourism States.” (more…)

GOD does not need us.

He has everything. He lacks nothing. In His three Divine Persons, He even has love. He is a furnace of eternal love.

Think of the world He created out of nothingness with its physical, intellectual and moral splendors. Then why? Why does He love creatures who are so far beneath Him, who can do nothing by comparison?

Theologians have pondered this question for thousands of years. In his book, The Creator And The Creature; Or The Wonders Of Divine Love, Fr. Frederick William Faber devotes an entire chapter to it. We cannot understand God’s ways completely, but the simplest answer is,

God loves us because He created us. 

We are different from all His other creatures. We have the freedom not to love Him, the very Source of our being and all that is good. Our love when it comes is freely given.

In the meantime, God showers us with visible proof of His tenderness and devotion, a love that is both universal and personal. He loves each creature as if it were the only one. He knows and loves each of us more than we know and love ourselves. “Reason and revelation, science and theology, nature, grace, and glory, alike establish the infallible truth that God loves His own creatures, and loves them as only God can love.” More from Fr. Faber:

The whole creation floats, as it were, in the ocean of God’s almighty love. His love is the cause of all things and of all the conditions of all things, and it is their end and rest as well. (more…)

Sentimentality is the over-use of the heart, and heartlessness is its under-use. We live in a world awash in a sentimentality that disguises heartlessness. It is a brilliant seduction, the heartlessness clothed in talk of love. Love is cheapened and misrepresented. Warmth can be coldness and animosity when forgetful of the soul.

These are human imperfections, in which we all in some way have participated. Today, the Feast of the Sacred Heart, is a day to meditate on the perfection of divine love, on the ineffable, mysterious and indulgent qualities of the heart of God.

The Heart of Jesus is both wounded and perfect; wounded with compassion and perfect in love; divine and human. No heart is capable of greater sorrow because no heart loves so intensely, so completely.

Behold this heart which has loved men so much that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, to testify to them its love…

These words were spoken to a pious nun in a vision in the 17th century, when Christ opened up this new source of grace in the souls of men, another manifestation of the profound change in the relationship between man and God that occurred with the Incarnation.

Hence it is before the Incarnation of the Word, however great the prodigies God performed in favor of his people, He was always feared more than loved by them; but finally God made Himself perceptible, so to speak, by becoming man, and this Man-God has done things that go beyond anything that we can imagine to induce men to love Him. [Fr. John Croiset, The Devotion to the Sacred Heart; TAN Books, p. 71]

He can never be entirely eradicated from the human heart, even from the most unmoved human being. He speaks to us from within, as the great French clergyman, Cardinal Pie, explained in the 19th century: (more…)

  ONLY IN SLEEP Only in sleep I see their faces, Children I played with when I was a child, Louise comes back with her brown hair braided, Annie with ringlets warm and wild. Only in sleep Time is forgotten – What may have come to them, who can know? Yet we played last night as long ago, And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair. The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces, I met their eyes and found them mild – Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder, And for them am I too a child? -- Sara Teasdale Music composed by Ēriks Ešenvalds  

THE WOODS are his concert hall. High up in the trees, flute-like music resounds from his little breast. He says farewell to the summer day. Farewell to the feeding and rushing. Goodbye to the verdant profusion of life. "Enough for now." But what a day it was! The tree limbs touched the sky. The song of the wood thrush is the breath of his being. It "is calm, unhurried, peaceful, and unequaled in both power and beauty by any other woodland songster of New England," wrote an observer in 1929. It can be heard today in deciduous woods and backyards throughout eastern North America. "It is usually composed of a series of triplets, each beginning with a high note, then a low one, then a trill, often highest of all, but the different phrases varying in pitch." (Source) We once knew a thrush who preferred jazz. He was a pianist in a romantic hotel bar and he knew we applauded him. The thrush's practiced melodies are a message of territory, but destined for human ears. They announce the tranquility of a summer night. They are a requiem for a June day in all its glory. A softness pervades the woods as he sings, and an assurance that all will be well in the end. Nature will come to a close in this way, with a chorus of such profound love. Our hearts are full. We have room for no more.  …