THE MONTH of November is dedicated to the holy souls in Purgatory. Prayers and daily reflections can be found here and here. "The first source or cause of a desire to be delivered from any state in life is, when that state is connected with great embarrassment and afflictions. Hence it is that the sick long so eagerly for the presence of the physician and for the medicine that will cure them; in like manner the starving long for bread and nourishment; the thirsty, for water; the poor, for the sentence of the judge, that will declare them heirs to riches, and save them from destitution. So also does the wayfarer upon the billows of the stormy ocean sigh for the port, yearn to reach the place where a happy future awaits him; and so does the prisoner in his dreary cell anxiously expect the hour of his delivery. How great, therefore, must not be the desire of the poor souls to be ransomed from Purgatory." --- Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger, 1876  

"THE Church today has the same desire as the Apostle thus expressed to the first Christians. The truth concerning the dead not only proves admirably the union between God’s justice and his goodness; it also inspires a charitable pity which the hardest heart cannot resist, and at the same time offers to the mourners the sweetest consolation. If faith teaches us the existence of a purgatory, where our loved ones may be detained by unexpiated sin, it is also of faith that we are able to assist them; and theology assures us that their more or less speedy deliverance lies in our power." --- Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year  

 TODAY is All Saints' Day. We praise and glorify our friends in heaven: "Question:" From your blissful thrones of glory Look on us, O ye elect; Tell us what repays your combat, Tell us what we may expect? "Answer:" Our delights no one can utter, Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard; Nor can mortals feel the pleasure, That for us God hath reserved. On praying to saints: "The saints are friends of God. They are like the angels in heaven. We honor them, not as we honor God, but on account of the relation they bear to God. They are creatures of God, the work of His hands. When we honor them, we honor God; as when we praise a beautiful painting, we praise the artist. We do not believe that the saints can help us of themselves, but we ask them to “pray for us.” We believe that everything comes to us “through Our Lord Jesus Christ.” With these words all our prayers end. It is useful, salutary, and reasonable to pray to the saints and ask them to pray for us. No doubt all will admit the reasonableness of this practice if the saints can hear and help us." Source  

[Part One of this essay can be found here.]

IN George Orwell’s famous novel 1984, the main character Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, a colossal bureaucracy that disseminates lies. Smith is a bureaucrat playing a small part in the enormous task of editing and censoring published material in Oceania, one of three super-states, supposedly at war with each other but really working together, that comprise the globe. Oceania is ruled by the all-seeing dictator Big Brother.

Materials offensive to the Party are permanently deleted by Winston and his coworkers by being literally tossed down the “Memory Hole,” fed by a system of pneumatic tubes in the Ministry headquarters.

Winston first meets the main female character of the book in the hallways of the Ministry:

He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department. Presumably—since he had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a spanner—she had some mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines. She was a bold-looking girl, of about twenty-seven, with thick hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times round the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

Julia has noticed Winston and in time she surreptitiously passes him a note and requests a meeting. (more…)

He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two. For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word DOUBLETHINK. For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless. ---  George Orwell, 1984. GEORGE ORWELL'S world-famous book 1984 has probably been quoted more often in the last two years than ever before -- and this bleak examination of life in a Communist-style, global dictatorship as experienced by one man is justifiably considered prophetic. Are we living in the incipient stages of a real life version of Orwell's 1984? Terms such as "alone together, "asymptomatic transmission," "anti-vaxxer," …

JULIE B. writes:

In response to your post of October 11, 2021, “The Purpose of Staged Shootings,” it occurred to me that the possibility exists that the incident involving Alec Baldwin could have been staged. As most of us realize, what is the chance that a loaded gun would “appear” on a movie set without a purpose? Shifting concern toward gun control rather than focusing on the criminals that are responsible for this tragedy is deplorable. (more…)

THINK Communism ended in Lithuania? It hasn't. Read about one refusenik's experience today: I want to share the situation which my family and I are now facing because of Covid Pass restrictions. We live in the small European country of Lithuania. In the last few months, strict Covid Pass restrictions have been introduced which represent a fundamental transformation in society. In this article, I'll describe the details of how the Covid Pass works in my country and how it affects my family. As a start, we're banned from shopping centers, non-essential stores, and restaurants. And my wife and I were both were suspended from our jobs without pay. The principled people in Lithuania were killed by the Communists years ago and their descendants do not exist. Only obedient followers are left.  

FROM a reader out West.

"MY WIFE got me an acrylic paint set some time ago, and I have dabbled with it enough to reach a few conclusions. One, painting really is enjoyable and therapeutic…I can lose myself in it in the same way I can lose myself in puttering in the garden or ironing (and yes, I do enjoy ironing, as most old Marines do). Two, I have absolutely no talent for painting. And three, I have a fresh respect for artists who can actually produce objects that actually look like what the artist envisioned. There is a certain arrogance among many today, helped along by the repulsive garbage known as postmodern art, that anyone can just grab up a brush, swish it around in some Van Dyke brown, and create art. Likewise, the same breezy assumptions crouch behind the oft-heard statement, 'I may write a book someday.' Two sides of the same tin coin. 'If I can draw a stick figure, I can produce art, and If I can write a sentence, I can write.' -- S.K. Orr, Steeple Tea

WHAT IS masculinity? What is femininity?

Here is a description with perfect clarity from the Catholic Encyclopedia in its entry for “Woman”:

The same essentially identical human nature appears in the male and female sex in two-fold personal form; there are, consequently, male and female persons. On the other hand, there is no neutral human person without distinction of sex. Hence follows in the first place, woman’s claim to the possession of full and complete human nature, and thus, to complete equality in moral value and position as compared with man before the Creator. It is, therefore, not permissible to take one sex as the one absolutely perfect and as the standard of value for the other. Aristotle’s designation of woman as an incomplete or mutilated man (“De animal. gennerat.”, II, 3d ed. Berol., 773a) must, therefore, be rejected. The untenable medieval definition, “Femina est mas occasionatus”, also arose under Aristotelian influence. The same view is to be found in the “last Scholastic”, Dionysius Ryckel (“Opera minora”, ed. Tournay, 1907, II, 161a).

Notice how feminism, like ancient paganism and this medieval error, does take masculinity as the standard of value, i.e., a woman is not complete unless she can compete equally with man in all spheres of life.

The entry continues:

The female sex is in some respects inferior to the male sex, both as regards body and soul. On the other hand, woman has qualities which man lacks. With truth does the writer on education, Lorenz Kellner, say: “I call the female sex neither the beautiful nor the weak sex (in the absolute sense). The one designation is the invention equally of sensuality and of flattery; the other owes its currency to masculine arrogance. In its way the female sex is as strong as the male, namely in endurance and patience, in quiet long-suffering, in short, in all that concerns its real sphere, viz., the inner life” (Lose Blätter”, Collected by von Görgen; Freiburg, 1895, 50). (more…)

MORE beautiful photographs by Kidist Paulos Asrat here.