"LET US, then, love this sacred sepulchre, which is to give us life. We have thanked Him for having died for us upon the cross; let us thank Him, but most feelingly, for having humbled Himself, for our sake, even to the tomb." Don Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, "Holy Saturday"  

FROM Exposing the Myth of Germ Theory by Arthur M. Baker, quoted here:

People have been educated to be terrified of bacteria and to believe implicitly in the idea of contagion: that specific, malevolently-aggressive disease germs pass from one host to another. They also have been programmed to believe that healing requires some powerful force to remove whatever is at fault. In their view, illness is hardly their own doing.

The ‘germ era’ helped usher in the decline of hygienic health reform in the 19th century and, ironically, the people also found a soothing complacency in placing the blame for their ill health on malevolent, microscopic ‘invaders’, rather than facing responsibility for their own insalubrious lifestyle habits and their own suffering.

Pasteur was a chemist and physicist and knew very little about biological processes. He was a respected, influential and charismatic man, however, whose phobic fear of infection and belief in the “malignancy and belligerence” of germs had popular far-reaching consequences in the scientific community which was convinced of the threat of the microbe to man. Thus was born the fear of germs (bacteriophobia), which still exists today. Before the discoveries of Pasteur, medical science was a disorganised medley of diversified diseases with imaginary causes, each treated symptomatically rather than at their root cause. Up to this time, the evolution of medical thought had its roots in ancient shamanism, superstition and religion, of invading entities and spirits. The profession searched in vain for a tangible basis on which to base its theories and practices. Pasteur then gave the profession the “germ”. (more…)

  "LET us stand in wonder, rejoice, be glad, love, praise and adore since it is by the death of our Redeemer, that we have been called from death to life, from exile to our own land, from mourning to joy." --- St. Augustine Reflections on the Seven Last Words of Christ by St. Alphonsus Liguori may help you benefit from the great wonders of this mournful day, the significance of which no events in the world can diminish in the slightest.  

HUNDREDS of composers have put to music the 13th-century poem The Stabat Mater, which recounts the sorrow of Mary as she witnessed the Crucifixion. Pergolesi finished this famous version in 1736. The Ultimate Stabat Mater Site, started by a man with no religious background, is devoted exclusively to the music.

This rhyming translation from the original Latin into English comes courtesy of the site:

Rhyming English translation by Beatrice E. Bullman

Mother bowed with grief appalling must thou watch, with tears slow falling, on the cross Thy dying son!
Through my heart, thus sorrow riven, must that cruel sword be driven, as foretold – O Holy One!
Oh, how mournful and oppressed was that Mother ever-blessed, Mother of the Spotless One:
She, whose grieving was perceiving, contemplating, unabating, all the anguish of her Son!
Is there any, tears withholding, Christ’s dear Mother thus beholding, in woe – like no other woe!
Who that would not grief be feeling for that Holy Mother kneeling – what suffering was ever so?
For the sins of every nation she beheld his tribulation, given to scourgers for a prey: (more…)

ACCORDING to prominent rabbinic scholars, he will come after World War III.  

KATHERINE writes: Thanks so much for your great posts on the coronavirus. My apartment house is on a fairly busy street in Olde Towne, Portsmouth, Virginia.  On a typical day, there used to be on my street at least two or three ambulances (and fire trucks) with sirens blasting. There have been none for the past week anyway – and I’m home almost all the time now.  Hmmm . . . seems strange to me, given that a lot of elderly people live in this neighborhood. This morning I ran into my downstairs neighbor – she is an RN and works the night shift at Norfolk General/Sentara Hospital in Norfolk.  She said that their patient load is so low that medical personnel are being sent home!  She said they are all puzzled by our governor’s recent call for volunteers to help with the “Coronavirus crisis” (I did not know he said that). Her parting words to me:  “Don’t believe what you hear on TV!” I hope and pray this ends soon!  It’s all insane.  Everyone is treating other people as bioweapons!  

“SOCIETY will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” ---- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America  

  "IF there had been no intervention, the epidemic would have been over" by now in the United States, says Professor Knut Wittkowski, for twenty years head of The Rockefeller University's Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design. The elderly should have avoided social contact and stayed home, he says, but the rest of the population should have gone about their business. That way, what is called "herd immunity" would have been achieved more quickly. Universal social distancing is an unscientific and harmful practice. It is a medical superstition promoted by powerful political forces. It has brought untold financial and psychological harm to America. It will leave shuttered businesses, suicide, alcoholism, despair and marital breakdown in its wake. It has enabled extreme financial plunder. It has left millions of people in circumstances of dire isolation and left many others demoralized and confused. The fact that some have undoubtedly enjoyed the break from routine and the chance to spend more time with their families does not offset its many negative consequences for the vulnerable. Update: States that didn't shut down their economies have lower death rates from corona than states that did. Is there any better proof that at the very least social distancing was not necessary?    

  DEL Bigtree explains clearly why the figures for the coronavirus death toll are highly unreliable, as discussed in a previous post. Talk about "flattening the curve" is meaningless if the curve is inaccurate in the first place. Bigtree doesn't mention that hospitals have a huge financial incentive to list COVID as the cause of death. The federal government is paying for treatment for all uninsured patients who have the virus. By suggesting that the death figures are not reliable, I am not saying that people are not dying from a serious respiratory condition.  

  RON PAUL continues to be a voice of common sense on the coronavirus. I'm not a supporter of libertarianism, but when you have dictatorial government over-reach, it sure is nice to have a few libertarians around. In this latest video, he looks at some of the resistance to the economic shutdown.