STEPHEN HEINER writes at True Restoration:

I was on a train back into Paris this afternoon when I started receiving a number of messages on my phone asking if I had heard about Notre Dame.  The roof was on fire, I was told, and it might be difficult to put out.  But the first thought that came to mind was that all things happen by God’s will or His permission.  Nothing is random.  Everything has a purpose.  This was Monday of Holy Week.  Could I help but think of Our Lord’s words, “Weep not for me, but for your children“?

Just yesterday in the liturgy Our Lord was triumphantly welcomed into Jerusalem, a city He so loved.  A city whose denizens He wished to gather as “the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings.”  A city that would not know, would not accept the “things that are to thy peace.”

France, in the person of King Louis XIV, that most disastrous of Capetian monarchs, refused the request of Our Lord to be consecrated to the Sacred Heart.  One hundred years later his descendant was cruelly murdered.  Paris, where Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine Laboure the day after King Charles X was chased out of office by the mob, missed Our Lady’s message and continued spreading her errors, born of the so-called “Enlightenment” and come to life in the Terror.  Notre Dame de Paris, one of the most celebrated cathedrals in the land, has not hosted the true sacrifice of the Mass for half a century, the anniversary of Paul VI’s promulgation of the New Mass having passed only two weeks ago.  Can we be surprised that God abandons a building that has abandoned Him, a building in a city that is in the capital of the country that refused his gentle yoke, then and now?

Read more here.

Notre Dame is owned by the state and will probably be rebuilt as the museum of Catholicism it was before the fire. Fortunately, the historic structure is not owned by the New Church, which has built ugly edifices around the world, such as Notre-Dame du Haut, below, in Ronchamps, France.

I WAS thinking on Sunday, “Something big is going to happen this week.”    Holy Week is a time when the sinister forces of the world want some big event because it keeps people from focusing on what is most important: their own immortal souls and the mysteries of the Cross.

The huge fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris yesterday is something big. The question is: Was it an accident or deliberately set? Could a fire of such intensity be accidental?

I hope to post more on the details in the future. But please don’t let this distract you. As magnificent and historic as this building was — the symbol of French Catholicism —  it is not more important than a single soul. The Cross is eternal. Buildings will go up in flames. Holy Week is a time to grow closer to God.

Cathedral of Cádiz

ERIC R. writes:

The culmination of our Lenten musical journey focuses on the Austrian Catholic, Franz Joseph Haydn, a composer of the Classical Period. When we say “Classical” music, most people associate this with what I think is best called “Western European Art Music.” But really the Classical period was a specific artistic phase in its own right. It spanned approximately 1780 to 1825, and was characterized by balanced forms, slow harmonic rhythms (the chords don’t change very much) and clean, simple melodic lines without a lot of ornamentation. The major composers of the era were Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven, and Boccherini.

The Seven Last Words, a musical meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, was commissioned for a Good Friday service in Spain. The work had quite a journey of different musical forms. First, as orchestral “Sonatas”  (literally, sounds), then as a string quartet, and finally as an Oratorio (Orchestra, choir, soloists; a kind of religious opera which is not acted out). I’ll let the master speak for himself regarding the origin of the  composition. His description of the Good Friday tradition in Spain is fascinating:

Some fifteen years ago I was requested by a canon of Cádiz to compose instrumental music on the Seven Last Words of Our Savior On the Cross. It was customary at the Cathedral of Cádiz to produce an oratorio every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little enhanced by the following circumstances. The walls, windows, and pillars of the church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp hanging from the center of the roof broke the solemn darkness. At midday, the doors were closed and the ceremony began. After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced the first of the seven words (or sentences) and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left the pulpit and fell to his knees before the altar. The interval was filled by music. The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, then the third, and so on, the orchestra following on the conclusion of each discourse. My composition was subject to these conditions, and it was no easy task to compose seven adagios lasting ten minutes each, and to succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself to the appointed limits.

Composers work best under constraints. When they are given outside constraints like the ones described above, their creativity can soar. Stravinsky talked about how much easier he found composing under non-musical constraints (such as text or dancers, etc).

The Seven Last Words by Haydn, is radical in its use of tonalities. The tonal journey is thus: Bb Major, c minor, C Major, E Major, f minor, A Major, g minor, G Major, Eb Major,  c minor.

The juxtaposition of these keys is innovative. The closest relationships are from Major to minor in the same key, and the last two keys of Eb Major and c minor. But besides that, most of the relationships are very distant and jarring. For instance going from E Major to f minor is unheard of during the Classical period! Perhaps this has to do with the subject matter, the Crucifixion. So we get a little “modern music” with Franz Joseph after all!

The performance below is the Oratorio version in German.

THE DONKEY

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

— G.K. Chesterton

The entry into Jerusalem, BL Royal 2 B VII

THE Anglo-Saxon homilist Ælfric, in a tenth-century sermon on Palm Sunday, stated:

‘It is the custom in God’s church, established by its teachers, that everywhere in God’s congregation the priest should bless palm-branches on this day, and distribute them, thus blessed, to the people; and God’s servants should then sing the hymn which the Jewish people sang before Christ when he was coming to his Passion. We imitate the faithful ones of that people with this deed, for they carried palm-branches with hymns before the Saviour. Now we shall hold our palms until the singer begins the offering-song, and then we shall offer the palm to God because of what it signifies: a palm betokens victory. Christ was victorious when he overcame the mighty devil and rescued us, and we also shall be victorious through God’s power, so that we conquer our evil habits, and all sins, and the devil, and adorn ourselves with good works; and at the end of our life we shall deliver the palm to God, that is, our victory, and thank him fervently, that we through his help have conquered the devil, so that he could not deceive us.’

Read the rest of his moving sermon at The Clerk of Oxford.

Reading room of the Boston Public Library

THINGS HAVE been very busy at home this week as my husband and I work on repairs and renovations. A contractor is doing root canal on our house today and everything is a mess. I haven’t been able to blog much, but I expect to return to normal in time for Holy Week, which begins on Sunday.

Here, in the meantime, is an interesting letter I received this morning:

Grace A. writes:

I immensely enjoyed reading The Bostonians, thanks to the recommendation on your site. However, I would be interested to know what you make of the final sentence in the book:

“It is to be feared that with the union, so far from brilliant, into which [Verena] was about to enter, these were not the last [tears] she was destined to shed.”

Initially, I was dismayed, thinking that he had undone his entire story with that one sentence, but it’s hard for me to believe he would do such a thing, and the sentence is vague enough to mean something else.

This was only my first work of Henry James, and I plan to read others to attain a better grasp of his views in general, but if you wouldn’t mind sharing your opinion, I think it would help me to make sense of it. Read More »

The Agony in the Garden; Lo Spagna (fl 1504-1528)

SEE MORE here.

Lent
    — Robert Herrick

IS this a fast, to keep
The larder lean?
And clean
From fat of veals and sheep?

Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish?

Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg’d to go,
Or show
A downcast look and sour?

No ;  ‘tis a fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat,
Unto the hungry soul.

It is to fast from strife,
From old debate
And hate;
To circumcise thy life.

To show a heart grief-rent;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin;
And that’s to keep thy Lent.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER  Christopher Bollyn in this interview succinctly addresses 9/11, exposing the official conspiracy theory as a fraud. As he points out, 9/11 isn’t just a thing of the past. It’s an ongoing crime.

Only staged distractions can slow the exponential growth in the number of people who know the facts of 9/11. Those who still at this late date believe in the official story will be ashamed to admit this to their children and grandchildren in the years ahead given the widespread information readily available in this digital age. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has for many years covered the basics of controlled demolition of the three buildings that collapsed on 9/11. It reports the latest news on lawsuits here. See this interesting report on how one mainstream publication slipped and carried an article that did not present 9/11 skeptics as lunatics. The article was hastily deleted.

At his Facebook page, Bollyn describes Twin Towers leaseholder Larry Silverstein’s admission of guilt:

One bullet point would have to be the fact that Larry Silverstein, the owner or leaseholder of the three towers that were demolished on 9/11, freely admitted in a television interview about 9/11 that he made the decision to “pull” his 47-story WTC 7 building – and then he watched the building come down at about 5:20 pm. Read More »

A woman in leggings proffers fresh slabs of meat — and the hungry are supposed not to resent it

FROM Mike King at The Anti-New York Times:

It is as amazing as it is amusing to behold just how easily the fairer sex can be manipulated by the unseen dominant men who control the levers of culture. A century ago, after propaganda legend Edward Bernays (cough cough) linked cigarettes with “women’s rights ™,” loony ladies everywhere just had to show the boys that they too could take up the unhealthy and dirty habit. Youse gals sure showed us, didncha’ ya now!

Fast forwarding to the 1960’s, Deep State feminist icons Betty Friedan (cough cough) and Gloria Steinum (cough cough) managed to convince stay-at-home mothers that they were being “oppressed” ™ — and that true fulfillment was to be found not in home and hearth, but by working 9-5 at a “career.” How did that work out for you burnt-out workin’ gals, eh? Are youse happy sitting in traffic, slaving away at work, dealing with office politics, and coming home burnt out to your empty apartment, cat and sex toy?

And observe how year after year, the moment some limp-wristed faggot in Paris or Milan declares the new “style,” right away the more fashion-minded women will bust out their magic plastic cards to shop till they drop. As for those “ladettes” who are as lacking in modesty as they are in fashion conscious[ness], the accepted trend now is to wear skin-tight “leggings” — aka “yoga pants” as everyday wear for everything from going to the gym, to school, to a restaurant, or even to their jobs! Skin-tight leggings make a young lady (and in an increasing number of cases, an older woman) look like one part slob and, for the “hotter” ones, one-part slut. And they are totally “normalized” now.

Think about it. Would we not consider the flaunting of a plate of juicy steak and roasted potatoes in the face of a starving man to be a form of psychological abuse? Is the constant public flashing of barely concealed hips and buns in the face of a healthy man who is powerless to touch them any different? As a society, we believed understood that once. Read More »

     “BY PEOPLEHOOD or race consciousness, I do not mean an ideology in which race is seen as impermeable or as the determiner of moral values or as a substitute for fairness and humanity. Rather than expressing an ideology of race-supremacy or race-hatred, this race consciousness I speak of arises from the realization that European Americans are indeed threatened in their cultural, political, and ultimately physical existence by demographic dispossession and the ideology of anti-racism. In many cases, it is only by becoming aware of the mortal threat to their existence as a race that whites begin to become conscious of their race. Race, of course, is only one of the facets of our civilizational identity, but it is indispensable. A reawakening of racial and civilizational consciousness need not result in ideologies of race supremacy or race hatred. Rather it will restore European Americans to their rightful place, both as the heirs and representatives of America’s historic culture, and as an ethnocultural group in their own right, a people. I also suspect that far from making minorities hate whites, the assertion by whites of their peoplehood will make many minorities respect whites. Nonwhites don’t respect whites at present because whites have, in a collective sense, made themselves into nothing while still trying to protect their individual and class interests. Whites thus seem both weak and hypocritical and therefore despicable. But when whites begin to assert their own existence and their desire to preserve it, not in a hateful way but in a calm, intelligent and firm way, then non-whites will begin to respect whites. They will begin to see whites, not as the oppressor figures of anti-racist demonology, nor as cowardly saps, but as human beings who have the same basic concerns for their culture and peoplehood that the minorities have for theirs.”

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

E. MICHAEL JONES says nothing more damning of the Jews here than was said by their own prophets and leaders.

It’s okay to criticize Jews. Jeremiah did in the harshest terms. So did Moses. So did Paul. So did God.

It’s okay to criticize Jews. It’s not okay to hurt them.

Don’t let Jews tell you that you criticize them because you hate them. That’s their story, not yours. Their paranoia is not your problem. You criticize them not because you hate them, but because you love them. So did Jeremiah. So did Moses. So did Paul.

It’s okay to criticize Jews. It’s okay to refuse them submission. It’s not okay to hurt them.

Read More »

ERIC R. writes:

I wanted to share these stunning choral compositions. They are Tenebrae Motets Op 72, by the English composer Edmund Rubbra. They are very accessible, with just enough modern musical language to make them stand out from the typical Baroque and Classical fare we think of during Lent and Easter. I find them incredibly beautiful.

Rubbra converted to Catholicism in 1948, and you can hear his sense of the faith.

Edmund Rubbra

VIEW FROM THE RIGHT:  AN APPRECIATION AND A DISSENT

PART TWO: A DISSENT

by Alan

[Part One of this essay is available here.]

View from the Right presented a superlative counter-assault on the moral-philosophical-cultural decadence that Americans have permitted to overtake their nation.

Why did Mr. Auster oppose “Liberals”?   Because they promoted and excused that decadence.  Why did he oppose “Conservatives”?  Because they agreed to accommodate that decadence.  The differences between the two groups were entirely cosmetic, and nowhere is this more evident than in their uncritical acceptance of certain myths propounded in the name of science and medicine.

A case in point is a discussion at VFR in 2009 in which Mr. Auster and his readers addressed the matter of murder on a Greyhound bus.  It was one of a few instances in which I thought he and his readers were mistaken.  Indeed, they allowed themselves to debate the “condition” of the murderer’s “mind” or “spiritual state”, as if that had any bearing on the case.  Implicitly, they accepted the claim that it did.  It went on for 13 pages.  I thought that was 13 pages too many.  It was, I thought, a splendid example of the consequences of accepting false premises.  [“The Horror, The Horror”, VFR, March 5, 2009]

Mr. Auster wrote about the murderer:  “If he is insane, he is insane.  We all understand that you don’t try and sentence an insane man as you do an ordinary criminal…..”

“We all” did not include at least one reader:  I dissented.  I yield to no one in my defense of Mr. Auster in the many instances when he was right.  But here I parted company with him. Read More »

MARK J. PERRY writes about today’s holiday:

This week gender activists and feminist organizations like the American Association of  University Women will be promoting “Equal Pay Day” on Tuesday, April 2 and this is an update of my “Bigfoot” post from a year ago to help counteract some of questionable statistics and mythology that get recycled every year in early April about the “gender pay gap.” The annual event known as Equal Pay Day brings awareness to a completely bogus apples-to-oranges comparison of median incomes by gender. Specifically this year’s Equal Pay Day will publicize the 20% unadjusted difference in median annual earnings for women and men working full-time in 2018 (most recent data available) when absolutely nothing relevant is controlled for that would help explain that 20% raw differences in income like hours worked, marital status, number of children, education, occupation, number of years of continuous uninterrupted job experience, working conditions, work safety, workplace flexibility, family friendliness of the workplace, job security, and time spent commuting. Read More »

A FEMALE READER writes:

A lot of women (a staggering number to me) have blasted this mother and given her “parenting advice” about spending her time raising respectful men.  The mother is right on this one.

From the article in The Observer, the student-run newspaper at the University of Notre Dame:

The emergence of leggings as pants some years ago baffled me. They’re such an unforgiving garment. Last fall, they obtruded painfully on my landscape. I was at Mass at the Basilica with my family. In front of us was a group of young women, all wearing very snug-fitting leggings and all wearing short-waisted tops (so that the lower body was uncovered except for the leggings). Some of them truly looked as though the leggings had been painted on them.

A world in which women continue to be depicted as “babes” by movies, video games, music videos, etc. makes it hard on Catholic mothers to teach their sons that women are someone’s daughters and sisters. That women should be viewed first as people — and all people should be considered with respect.

I talk to my sons about Princess Leia and how Jabba the Hutt tried to steal her personhood by putting her into a slave girl outfit in which her body became the focus. (That’s the only scene in the whole franchise in which Leia appears in such a way — and it’s forced upon her.)

Read More »

VIEW FROM THE RIGHT:  AN APPRECIATION AND A DISSENT

PART ONE: AN APPRECIATION

by Alan

BRIGITTE BARDOT led me to View from the Right.  In or about 2004, I read news reports about how she was being penalized for expressing her views about the disastrous effects of immigration on her country.  I thought it absurd that she should be penalized, and I was curious to learn whether anyone else in America thought the same.  So I looked to the Internet for commentary on that matter.  One link or another led me to View from the Right.  That was how I discovered VFR and Lawrence Auster, so I have Brigitte Bardot to thank.

I was not looking for commentary by “Conservatives” because I knew how inept and spineless they had proven themselves to be in countless confrontations with the “Liberals” they pretend to oppose.

Some years earlier, Mr. Auster had become appalled by what he saw on the streets of New York City and in public places.  I had had the same visceral/esthetic reaction to similar scenes I observed in St. Louis in the same years.  His reaction to the culture-wide collapse of rules and standards nearly paralleled my own.

What I found at VFR—not all at once but over a span of weeks—was exactly the kind of thoughtful commentary and discussion I had hoped to find.  Several times each week I would read VFR.  For me, the important part of VFR was “the politically incorrect Right” part.  I knew I had found a kinsman. Read More »

The Annunciation, Zanobi Strozzi

Ave Maria Gratia Plena
By Oscar Wilde

Was this His coming! I had hoped to see
A scene of wondrous glory, as was told
Of some great God who in a rain of gold
Broke open bars and fell on Danaë ,
Or a dread vision as when Semele,
Sickening for love and unappeased desire,
Prayed to see God’s clear body, and the fire
Caught her brown limbs and slew her utterly.
With such glad dreams I sought this holy place
And now with wondering eyes and heart I stand
Before this supreme mystery of Love:
Some kneeling girl with passionless pale face,
An angel with a lily in his hand
And over both the white wings of a dove.

READ more on Lady Day here.