ANOTHER report showing that CV-19 has mysteriously not been as contagious in America’s prisons as it is alleged to be at large.

A FRIGHTENED MAN is much more dispiriting than a frightened woman.

Peggy Hall talks about men in masks. Read More »

Parish of St. Paul in Corbeil-Essonnes, France, July 4, 2020. Credit: OIDACE.

AS YOU probably already know, there have been many attacks against churches here and abroad in the last two months. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe every single one of these attacks is against Catholic buildings or statues. Satanists, anarchists, Communists, Muslims — they know there is one true Church. (These buildings sadly no longer house Catholic worship, but that’s another issue and the attackers are attacking the Catholic faith nevertheless.)

Here’s a piece from yesterday’s Catholic News Agency:

The fire that ripped through the Gothic Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes July 18 was reported around the world. But suspected arson attacks on French churches usually do not make international headlines.

Since 2010, the Paris-based L’Observatoire de la Christianophobie (Observatory of Christianophobia) has chronicled anti-Christian incidents in France and around the world.

It has recorded these events month by month on interactive maps since 2017, placing them in six categories: arson, murder/assault, vandalism, theft, bombing, and abduction.

Following Saturday’s fire at Nantes, the organization has reported several less well-publicized incidents, including the destruction of a crucifix on the Île-d’Arz in Brittany, the slashing of paintings in a church in Auxerre, and the decapitation of a statue of the Virgin Mary in Montaud.

Statistics suggest there are nearly three such attacks a day in France, which is sometimes described as the “eldest daughter of the Church” because the Frankish King Clovis I embraced Catholicism in 496.

The French Interior Ministry recorded 996 anti-Christian acts in 2019 — an average of 2.7 per day. The true figure may be higher, as it is thought that officials do not count fires of undetermined cause at churches across the country.

On July 4, for example, fire devastated the Parish of St. Paul in Corbeil-Essonnes. Investigators concluded that the blaze resulted from a gas leak caused by squatters, but locals questioned the official explanation. Read More »

Trump, Melania, Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell in 2000

TRUMP sent good wishes yesterday to Ghislaine Maxwell, awaiting trial in New York for sex crimes against minors:

Donald Trump has sent a message of support to Ghislaine Maxwell as pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s accused madam awaits her trial for sex trafficking minors.

The president admitted meeting Maxwell ‘numerous times’ over the years and wished her well in his Tuesday White House press conference – his first since vowing to return to coronavirus news briefings as cases soar across the US.

Trump’s connections to Epstein and Maxwell have long come under scrutiny as they mixed in the same wealthy circles for decades, with Trump once describing the convicted pedophile as a ‘terrific guy’.

What a sleazeball. Read More »

FROM the Religion News Service on July 7, 2020 comes this report:

 Thousands of churches and other religious organizations received forgivable loans of up to $10 million to make up for pandemic losses, according to limited government data released this week by the U.S. Treasury.

The vast majority of religious organizations listed in the data received between $150,000 and $300,000 as part of the federal Paycheck Protection Program intended to help small businesses maintain payroll and other approved expenses during the pandemic. The data did not list businesses and organizations that received less than $150,000.

At least two dozen religious organizations received the highest tier of funds, between $5 million and $10 million. Among them were two megachurches — Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, and Life.Church in Edmond, Oklahoma.

Several Protestant denominations, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), also received between $5 and $10 million, as did a dozen Roman Catholic entities, mostly dioceses, and at least two Jewish organizations, the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.

The data released did not specify the exact amount each entity received. Instead, it broke down the data into five broad ranges or tiers: $150,000 to $300,000; $350,000 to $1 million; $1 million to $2 million; $2 million to $5 million; and $5 million to $10 million. A total of 661,218 small businesses and nonprofit organizations were listed in the database. That is less than 15% of the total number of loans granted.

Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University who examined the data, said 70% of the churches listed in the data received between $150,000 and $300,000.

“THE SOUL of a child is free from all passions. He bears no ill-will towards those who have done him harm, but goes to them as friends, just as if they had done nothing. And though he be often beaten by his mother, yet he always seeks her and loves her more than anyone else. If you show him a queen in her royal crown, he prefers his mother clad in rags, and would rather see her unadorned than the queen in magnificent attire; for he does not appreciate according to riches or poverty, but by love. He seeks not for more than is necessary, and as soon as he has had sufficient milk he quits the breast. He is not oppressed with the same sorrows as we, nor troubled with care for money and the like; neither is he rejoiced by our transitory pleasures, nor affected by corporal beauty. Therefore Our Lord said: Of such is the kingdom of heaven, wishing us to do of our own free will what children do by nature.”

— St. John Chrysostom

FOR YEARS, Camille Paglia has been touted as a “maverick critic and scholar,” by conservatives and liberals.

Here, in this video, is a little background. Read More »

L.R. writes:

Third world jails like in my country Panama are far more dirty than in America; each tiny cell is fully packed with several inmates and many times with members of rival gangs. Food most of the time is very bad; bathrooms are never in sanitary condition; guards are corrupt and collaborate with powerful, high-ranking gangs members, etc. For many years the media in Panama has been criticizing the bad conditions in jails and how the inmates live, but that has never changed.

Anyway, it makes sense, given these conditions, that these jails would be overwhelmed by the virus, right?

Well, I was taken by surprise last week when the media reported just two deaths and two people hospitalized so far.

Meanwhile, in the outside general population that is not trapped in those deplorable jails and have freedom to go outside to buy the necessary things in stores, the death toll and hospitalizations are much worse! Deaths are 1,000  and hospitalizations are 900+ so far!

It doesn’t make sense!

So there are two possible explanations of this strange virus statistic: Read More »

Read More »

The author looks across the boat lake in Carondelet Park to the place where Aunt Edith stood with him 65 years ago. [Photo by his friend, Jeff]

ALAN writes:

Carondelet Park is a large park in south St. Louis. It has two lakes, many hills, and winding paths for walking or bicycling. For me, it is also a park of many memories. I go there often to visit some of the higher animals (as Twain might have worded it): Ducks, geese, cranes, bluebirds, cardinals, red-winged blackbirds, butterflies, rabbits, squirrels, and woodchucks.  It is a temporary refuge from the preposterous idiocies of the lower animals in the city around it.  A bench in a quiet setting in the park is an excellent place to sit, think, and remember.

I am always alone when I go to the park, except for the ghosts who accompany me everywhere. One morning the melody and words of Duke Ellington’s 1934 “Solitude” occurred to me unexpectedly as I sat on a bench overlooking one of the lakes. That was fitting but odd, because I had not listened to the song since the mid-1980s when it was played on some St. Louis radio station featuring Big Band music.

In years long past, passenger trains came through the park. Many school picnics and band concerts were held there. A hundred years ago, boys liked to go fishing and swimming in one of the park’s lakes, until they were run off by “Big Bad Bill”, the park-keeper.

St. Louis newspaperman Jim Fox recalled how he and his wife and friends pulled their children in coaster wagons to the park in the 1950s, where they rode down the hills. Read More »

EXCELLENT SUMMARY by Vernon Coleman. (This is not an endorsement of all of Mr. Coleman’s writings.)

 

 
A Prayer to Mary, the Star of the Sea

“She is the star, the sign of help and of joy.”–St. Ephrem

Ave Maria! thou Virgin and Mother,
Fondly thy children are calling on thee;
Thine are the graces, unclaimed by another,
Sinless and beautiful–Star of the Sea.

Ave Maria! thy children are kneeling–
Words of endearment are whispered to thee;
Softly thy spirit upon us is stealing,
Sinless and beautiful–Star of the Sea.

Ave Maria! the night shades are falling,
Softly our voices arise unto thee;
Earth’s lonely exiles for succour are calling,
Sinless and beautiful–Star of the Sea.

Ave Maria! thy arms are extending,
Gladly within them for shelter we flee;
Are thy sweet eyes, on thy lonely ones bending?
Sinless and beautiful–Star of the Sea.