Tower of Babel in the Bedford Book of Hours, 1423-30

“MOST liberal Christians today affirm that creating culturally diverse societies is the moral, godly, and just thing to do—the more diverse, the more just and godly. But if it is our purpose to discern God’s purpose, doesn’t it seem far more likely that God would oppose the creation of multicultural, majority-less societies? He would oppose them first because they rob human beings of the stable cultural environments and the concrete networks of belonging that are essential conditions of personal and social flourishing; second, he would oppose them because they lead to unresolvable conflict and disorder. In opening America’s borders to the world, our political leaders are not following any divine scheme but are indulging an all too human conceit: “We can create a totally just society” they tell themselves. “We can stamp out cultural particularities and commonalities that have taken centuries or millennia to develop. We can erect a new form of society based on nothing but an idea. We can ignore racial and cultural differences and the propensity to inter-group conflict that has ruled all of human history. We can create an earthly utopia, a universal nation.”

—- Lawrence Auster, Our Borders, Our Selves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism (forthcoming)

A  CORRESPONDENT writes:

[At last week’s hearing in the House of Representatives on the Violence Against Women Act,] Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) offered an amendment that would have allowed biological women in [battered women] shelters to not have to sleep in the same room as biological men who were transgendered.

The Democrats voted down her proposal, since there was no clear “proof” that this was a problem.

Great political theater.

HOW CAN ANYONE believe what goes on in Catholic churches today is Catholic? This Ash Wednesday service in Cologne, Germany is an extreme example, but the ugliness and irreverence are not rare. The entire spirit of the Vatican II revolution is one of openness to everything modern no matter where it may lead. The idea is that if Catholics become cool, tolerant, people-centered and, all in all, very non-Catholic, they will convert other people. The opposite has happened. They have repelled.

This jarring, screeching performance is hideous — I feel sorry for her neighbors if she practiced at home — and yet no one walks out. The church is filled with zombies — or leftovers from the Sixties who possibly find it hip and would walk out if confronted with silence or sacred music. Notice there are few young people in attendance. They realize that anything as irreverent and secular as the One World Religion of Vatican II can’t possibly be important. Watching this video clip, says Novus Ordo Watch, is for the rest of us an act of Lenten penance.

A commenter at NOW writes:

The Enemy has succeeded in taking the spine out of men, perverting them to the point that some men actually think this garbage is art.

We are becoming a demonic society. What was good is now evil, and what was evil is now good. What was sin is now virtue, and what was virtue is now sin. What was heterodox is now orthodox, and what was orthodox is now heterodox. What was ugly is now beautiful, and what was beautiful is now ugly. What should be condemned is now applauded, and what should be applauded is now condemned. May God help us all.

MORE interesting commentary from Ole Dammegard on the Christchurch mosque shootings and the leftist “eco-fascist” who was allegedly involved. Again, no disturbing imagery here. (After the first hour, this interview becomes derailed for a while.)

THE mysteries of the life of St. Joseph have inspired folk music and hymns for many centuries. Here in honor of the feast of this great saint are two versions of The Cherry Tree Carol, performed by Paul Clayton and Artus Moser.

For a whole different experience, a beautiful medieval carol, Marvel not, Joseph, can be heard at The Clerk of Oxford.
 

 

AFTER I arrived in Ireland, I tended sheep every day, and I prayed frequently during the day. More and more the love of God increased, and my sense of awe before God. Faith grew, and my spirit was moved, so that in one day I would pray up to one hundred times, and at night perhaps the same. I even remained in the woods and on the mountain, and I would rise to pray before dawn in snow and ice and rain. I never felt the worse for it, and I never felt lazy – as I realise now, the spirit was burning in me at that time.

It was there one night in my sleep that I heard a voice saying to me: “You have fasted well. Very soon you will return to your native country.” Again after a short while, I heard a someone saying to me: “Look – your ship is ready.” It was not nearby, but a good two hundred miles away. I had never been to the place, nor did I know anyone there. So I ran away then, and left the man with whom I had been for six years. It was in the strength of God that I went – God who turned the direction of my life to good; I feared nothing while I was on the journey to that ship.

— St. Patrick Read More »

WHAT exactly happened in Christchurch, New Zealand?

Ole Dammegard looks at the event and the way it is being orchestrated. “Was it a crazy lone individual or professionals carrying this out?” Is the reported death toll true or false?

(This is an audio interview. No disturbing images!)

Source: James Perloff

WAY BACK in 2010, which was eons ago, a commenter at View from the Right wrote about the television show “The Brady Bunch:”

Everything you need to know about feminism can be found in one episode of the 1970s situation comedy, “The Brady Bunch.”

Notice that it’s not called the Brady Family or simply the Bradys. The reason is that it’s about a single father, with three sons, and a single mother, with three daughters, who fall in love and get married. Or, actually, they decide to move in with each other so they can split the rent and have sex while they raise their unrelated children. They do not conceive a child together and thus never form a true union.

[Note: That’s an interesting point about “bunch,” but the Bradys were married. The fact that they did not have children, assuming they did nothing to prevent it, does not mean they did not have a “true union.” Couples are still married in all senses if they cannot conceive. The Bradys’ previous spouses had died. Still, the show was preparing the viewing public for the mixed-up family of television future. In that way, it was cunning.]

It’s the new family! The new husband, the new wife, the man, the new woman, the new son, the new daughter, the new boy, the new girl. They’re not bound by the outdated modes of tradition. They’re hip, modern, and oh so liberal.

There was one episode in Marsha, the oldest daughter, wakes up one day and decides she wants to be a Boy Scout. She goes down to the troop, and the leader asks her, “Why do you want to be a Boy Scout? Why don’t you want to be a Girl Scout?”

Marsha immediately becomes horribly offended. “This is discrimination!” And she goes on a tear. She organizes marches in the streets, with signs, placards, billboards, and bullhorns. Television cameras. She brings the entire town to its knees. Julian of Norwich had nothing on this girl. Read More »

The Sense of Touch, Jan Miense Molenaer (1637)

[Reposted entry that first appeared here on June 20, 2011]

IN THIS ARTICLE in Commentary on recent scandals involving male politicians, Kay Hymowitz writes:

Before the 18th century and outside of Western Europe, marriage was a social and economic as well as sexual arrangement; it had little to do with love and companionship, and no one much cared about whether women were fulfilled or not.

Is that so? Where would Shakespeare have come from – how would we have Juliet, Miranda, Katherina, Bianca, Desdemona, Portia, Ophelia, Gertrude, to name a few – if there had been no concept of love in marriage for women well before the 18th century?

How would Dido and Aeneas have come to be? How could Virgil have conceived such a pair? How about Penelope, Odysseus’s loving wife who refused to marry any number of suitors? These figures were imagined outside Western Europe before the birth of Christ.

I offer this other bit of proof that Ms. Hymowitz’s historical facts are a bit sketchy. Consider the above painting by the 17th century Dutch painter Jan Miense Molenaer. It is part of his series on the five senses and is aptly called “The Sense of Touch.” The great Dutch painters created an enormous body of work portraying marriage and domesticity in the 1600s. This is but one example. I think it suggests that women’s needs were at the very least taken into consideration before the 18th century – through the sense of touch if necessary.

The man receiving a beating above with a slipper may not be this woman’s autocratic husband. It is unclear. But do you think this woman, and the culture she came from, would have stood by while her romantic needs were neglected? I think not. Here is another Dutch painting, this one from 1622 by Frans Hals, titled “Couple in a Landscape.”

St. Anthony, Albrecht Durer; 1519

“ABBOT MOSES was accustomed to say that, as when a general besieges a city he endeavors to prevent any provision being brought to the besieged, in order that through hunger and want the enemy may be obliged to deliver up their city, so the man that desires to overcome his carnal passions, must starve them out by fasting and abstinence.”

— Richard Challoner on the Lives of the Fathers of the Eastern Deserts

FROM Heather MacDonald:

The celebrity college-admissions cheating scandal has two clear takeaways:  an elite college degree has taken on wildly inflated importance in American society, and the sports-industrial complex enjoys wildly inflated power within universities. Thirty-three moguls and TV stars allegedly paid admissions fixer William Singer a total of $25 million from 2011 to 2018 to doctor their children’s high school resumes—sending students to private SAT and ACT testing sites through false disability claims, for example, where bought-off proctors would raise the students’ scores. Singer forged athletic records, complete with altered photos showing the student playing sports in which he or she had little experience or competence. Corrupt sports directors would then recommend the student for admission, all the while knowing that they had no intention of playing on the school’s team. Read More »

ART MUSEUMS are filled with too many frightening images.

TRUMP’S policy against “transgenders” in the military has gone into effect:

According to the Pentagon’s latest memo on the subject, the armed forces will no longer accept new recruits diagnosed with gender dysphoria or recruits who’ve had hormone treatment or reassignment surgery.

Already-serving members (who have been estimated to total anywhere from 1,320 to 6,630) may stay, but will be treated as members of their biological sex rather than their “gender identity,” and held to the dress and grooming standards of the former. Current medical treatment will continue for current members already diagnosed with gender dysphoria, but new transition procedures will not be offered. Read More »

Venus, a Landseer Newfoundland with a Rabbit, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer; 1819

In Praise of Self-Deprecation

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.

Wislawa Szymborska

DANIEL McADAMS from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity interviews Phil Giraldi about the storm over Rep. Ilhan Omar:

Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar (MN) has stirred up both political parties with her comments on the Israel Lobby, has infuriated the Republicans with her aggressive line of questioning for Trump’s “regime change” expert Elliott Abrams, and has driven the Democrats mad with her criticisms of Barack Obama. Is she on the right track, or off the rails?

“IF THE Lord should give you the power to raise the dead, He would be giving you much less than He does when He bestows suffering. By miracles you would make yourself a debtor to Him, while by suffering He may become debtor to you. And even if sufferings had no other reward than being able to bear something for that God who loves you, is not this a great reward and sufficient remuneration? Whoever loves understands what I say.”

— St. John Chrysostom