CATHOLICS who reject the papacy of “Pope” Francis and his Vatican II predecessors, as well as the new forms of worship, don’t just exist in Europe and America. Though small in numbers, they are all over the world.

In these fascinating videos, courtesy of True Restoration, (here and here), Nigerians explain how they arrived at their position and their efforts to convert others in their country.

FRANK sends a second donation and writes:

The truth is heard and needed even in the godless Germany I live in.

There are still some Germans who love the truth.

Young Woman, Jean-Pierre de Saint-Ours (1752-1809)

GWEN sends a donation and writes:

You are an encouraging and confident voice to me, a stay-at-home mother of faith. You have filled a void left by my mother, a feminist. I am forever grateful.

I am emboldened to continue pursuing a life of feminine grace and virtue.

NITIDA STELLA (Transl. Clear Star)

Clear star,
happy girl,
you are the flower of flowers;
O Blessed Mother,
Virgin Mary,
Pray for us! Read More »

Meghan Markle at the British Fashion Awards

SUSAN-ANNE WHITE writes from Northern Ireland:

I would like to ask your opinion on an event which took place this week in the UK. It was the British Fashion Awards.

I saw links to it on Youtube although personally I have no interest in modern fashions as most are immodest and vulgar and sometimes frightening.

At this year’s ceremony the Duchess of Sussex (Meghan Markle) was an unexpected guest and she presented an award to the woman who designed her wedding dress. The woman who announced the appearance of the Duchess is an actress called Rosamund Pike and in my opinion she looked androgynous. Some of those in the audience looked likewise strange and evil.

Meghan Markle is a feminist and, in my opinion, a dangerous woman. She was dressed immodestly and made a point of drawing attention to her pregnancy. Feminists love to wear tight, clingy clothes when pregnant to convey the message that pregnancy will not change their lives or inhibit their activities in any way shape or form. Some feminists wear such clingy T-shirts when pregnant that their umbilicus is clearly seen bulging through the fabric.

Gone are the days when expectant mothers dressed in lovely feminine smocks etc and took things easy so as not to harm their unborn babies.

The pregnancy of Meghan Markle is worth commenting on because something doesn’t seem right. Some commenters on Youtube have declared it a fake pregnancy. I do not know, but it does seem strange that in some photos over the weeks since her pregnancy was announced she either doesn’t look pregnant at all or she looks further along in her pregnancy than her due date dictates. Read More »

A READER sends $50 and writes:

I have been reading your blog for years and so admire the thoughtful and fair-minded approach you take to the topics you write about. Thank you for creating such a beautiful place on the Internet.

PS: My daughter (29) also thinks your “awesome.”

Laura writes:

Thank you for your appreciation! 

You and your daughter are now officially Thinking Housewife Fat Cats. I am deeply grateful, and hope this generous donation will bring unforeseen — and unseen — benefits to you.

To others: Please donate today and become a Fat Cat for a mere $25! You won’t regret it. The views expressed here are absolutely, 100 percent guaranteed to make you different and stand out from the crowd!!

Thank you for your kindness and generosity.

            

DO you see these peanuts? Do you know what I could have done if I were a successful advertising copywriter with a few rhetorical tricks to get you to buy them for Christmas?

I would have convinced you, with just a few words, that instead of possibly being made in a peanut sweatshop somewhere by people who have never heard of Virginia, they were roasted in an “artisanal” workshop.  I would evoke craftsmen in black aprons roasting nuts over a roaring fire. Once I used the words “artisanal” or “hand-picked,” I would have you, and then could basically lather it up with the “sea salt,” which would evoke images of yourself in the open air, instead of stuck in traffic or on the sofa, exhausted from the daily grind.

The “bacon cheddar” flavoring — possibly not made from much of anything from a pig or a cow, but in a laboratory  — would be a problem. But I would use the word “small batch” before the “bacon cheddar.” That would divert your attention from the “artificial flavors,” which evokes smokestacks and people in labs.

Words like “handcrafted” and “small batch” and “artisanal” unfailingly work in advertising even though large numbers of people basically realize they are shams. They work because everyone instinctively wants to live in an artisanal world. We were made for a “small batch” economy.

We despise the conglomerization of everything, whether we know it or not.

Some people, mostly liberals, admit they dislike it. Other people, mostly conservatives, talk as if all this conglomerization is good because it’s “Capitalism” and without Capitalism we would have Communism.

This is not true. There is a third way, and that is the determined, organic cultivation of small businesses, small farmers, and a generally decentralized existence.

But how, you ask, can we possibly bring about this happier state of affairs and live in a more “artisanal” world? How can we have our peanuts more often roasted by craftsmen, even ones who live nearby?

We can take the first steps.

The very first step is to acknowledge that we object to the bigness of the modern world, that it is unhealthy, unnatural and leads to inequalities in wealth, as well as the frightening centralization of power and the loss of political freedom because to work for someone else, especially a distant multinational corporation, is automatically to lose some political freedom, in particular the freedom to voice dissent. The conglomerization of our world is deeply un-American; a small-batch existence was exalted by our founders. Big Business is intimately and necessarily connected with the Sexual Revolution, which was never, ever about true freedom but about political and economic control of the masses. We are given sex, sex, sex and naked ambition to compensate for the grievous loss of the roaring hearth, with all its messy complications, and local farms and small businesses and self-initiative.

The second step is to decide that this bigness is not inevitable, as if following some iron law of nature. It is cultivated.

We should be strongly opposed to it. That’s all. And then we can go from there, letting this stance bloom and unfold naturally. This vision that “Small is Beautiful,” as E.F. Schumacher argued, burns in the heart of every true housewife, I believe, because a housewife feels the impersonal forces keenly and goes out into the world looking for community and finds a strip mall instead.

In the meantime, you don’t need these peanuts, which sell for 25 whole buckaroos! Ha! Give to The Thinking Housewife instead.

You see, I was meant to be an advertising copywriter after all.

Thank you for your generosity.

            

Laura Wood

A READER sends a donation and writes:

[This is] from a Protestant couple who knew they were a perfect match when they discovered that The Thinking Housewife was one of several reactionary blogs that they both perused regularly.

Keep up the good work!

Laura writes:

Thank you! Ha!

I’m thrilled you found each other and wish you much happiness.

CHRISTOPHER in Paris sends a donation and writes:

Thank you, Laura, for your excellent work in gently guiding right-thinking people towards the difficult truths that they must acknowledge in order to be set free from the monstrous lies that are the foundation of today’s world.

THIS great performance of Pachelbel’s classic, the Canon in D Major, by the Jean-Francois Paillard Chamber Orchestra is not Advent or Christmas music. But somehow it seems right for what I want to say. I dedicate this posting to all the readers who have supported me over the years and to those who have written to me, in agreement and non-agreement, and also to those whom I have had the pleasure of personally meeting. Every time I have met a reader of this blog, I have been encouraged. I always say to myself, “Wow, I must be doing something right because he (or she) is an interesting and thoughtful person — warm and considerate too.” You give me hope. As my friend Lawrence Auster said, “I’m glad to be living through the apocalypse with you.”

Thank you to all my supporters, especially those who have given during my latest fundraising campaign, which continues.

I can assure you, all the readers of this site have a special place in  my prayers. That is a corny thing to say by the standards of our cool, tough world, but so be it. It’s true.

I AM seeking 100 donations of $25 today.

I have only six more to go!

Thank you for your generosity.
 

            

KYLE writes:

The current attack on retro Christmas-time entertainment brings to mind all of the pop vocalists of the past who had five decade careers in radio, television and film yet today, we only hear them at Christmas time. The lasting legacy of some of America’s most iconic popular vocalists will likely be their Christmas recordings. Crooners like Crosby, Dean Martin, Perry Como, and Andy Williams hosted dozens of Christmas specials.

From the perspective of someone born in the 1980s, the America of these Christmas shows seems so remote. Read More »

‘THANK YOU’ very much to the readers who sent donations in response to my latest fundraising campaign. I am grateful for your generosity. However, it is not over yet! I am looking for 100 readers to donate $25 today. Please consider a contribution. Donate via Paypal below, or write to me at thinkinghousewife@msn.com and I will send you a mailing address. Your support is greatly appreciated.

If you read this blog regularly, or occasionally, and if it is worth the price of two movie tickets, a trip to a museum, the price of a decent paperback, or a week of take-out coffee, I hope you will donate.

A reader sent a donation this weekend and wrote:

I have read your blog for many years. I admire you for your truth and for your courage. I wish I had 10 percent of each.

Another reader wrote:

Your website means so much to me; it’s a haven of sanity, and wholesomeness,  in a world that is getting exponentially crazier and sicker by the day.

Thank you so much for all you do!

And thank you for your encouragement and generosity.

            

EVIDENCE of rampant sexual abuse in pubic schools (or synagogues) never gains much traction in the media. Only stories, many of them never substantiated, of abuse in the Catholic Church count.

See more at TheMedia Report.com.

James Gillray, 1799

ADVENT is traditionally a time of fasting and penance.

It’s also a good time to consider the subject of gluttony.

The sin of gluttony does not just involve eating too much food. It can also entail thinking too much about food or being too fastidious. You can usually find thin people who are gluttons in natural foods markets. Drinking to the point of inebriation is also a form of gluttony.

A worthwhile sermon on the subject can be found here.

WOULD you like a Christmas TV special wholesome enough for the whole family?

This 1953 episode of the detective series Dragnet may fit the bill. I recommend it for families with children over the age of eight. (There’s nothing salacious in it for younger children, but the topic of crime is not appropriate for them.)

In this episode, detectives Joe Friday and Frank Smith investigate an important case on Christmas Eve in Los Angeles. The statue of the Baby Jesus has been stolen from the manger of a local church. They want to recover it by Christmas Day. The famously stone-faced Friday and Smith take the case so seriously that they devote the entire day to the investigation despite other pressing cases. I won’t spoil it for you by revealing the results of their investigation, but I will tell you that the crime is happily solved.

Note:

* The politically incorrect banter about differences between the sexes

* Acting that is so bad it is good

* The Brooklyn accent of the Hispanic priest

* The respectfulness of the two hard-boiled detectives

* The joke about how priests and detectives would be out of business if there were no thieves

* The bums at The Golden Dream Hotel who know the true meaning of Christmas

Do you wonder why more shows like this are not made today?

Catholics were a major, organized force for decency in movies and TV when this show was made. Every year, starting in the 1930s, Catholics around the country took the Legion of Decency Pledge at Sunday Mass during the week in December of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Here it is:

I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy.

That battle largely ended with the rise of the Counterfeit Church of Vatican II.

Immaculate Conception, Filippo Parodi, 1660s

SHE IS one of only two women in history conceived without sin. The other is Eve.

She is the Immaculata, patroness of the United States, the Mother of humankind, the Queen of Heaven.

She reigns with humility, tenderness and compassion. God willed from the beginning of time and the moment of her conception that she would crush the head of the serpent, the cause of Eve’s downfall and the source of all evil. We honor and praise her Immaculate Conception today. May she help us through her intercessions to love our enemies, deliver us from our faults and embolden us in battle:

Thou art the ark of salvation; the one creature unwrecked in the universal deluge; the white fleece filled with the dew of heaven, whilst the earth around is parched; the flame which the many waters could not quench; the lily blooming amidst thorns; the garden shut against the infernal serpent; the fountain sealed, whose limpid water was never ruffled; the house of the Lord, whereon His eyes were ever fixed, and into which nothing defiled could ever enter; the mystic city, of which such glorious things are said. We delight in telling all thy glorious titles, O Mary! for thou art our Mother, and we love thee, and the Mother’s glory is the glory of her children. Cease not to bless and protect all those that honour thy immense privilege, O thou who wert conceived on this day! May this feast fit us for that mystery, for which thy Conception, thy Birth, and thy Annunciation, are all preparations—the Birth of thy Jesus in Bethlehem: yea, dear Mother, we desire thy Jesus, give Him to us and satisfy the longings of our love.

— Dom Gueranger, O.S.B.

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Thank you!