MARY BALL MARTINEZ’S fascinating book, The Undermining of the Catholic Church, first published in 1991, describes the internal destruction that began well before Vatican II and then burst into the open with the Council, causing even leading non-Catholic intellectuals and artists — figures such as Robert Graves, Vladimir Askanazy and Iris Murdoch — to object.

Martinez was a Vatican news reporter for many years. An excerpt from the 2007 edition by the Christian Book Club of America:

In Rome the hours before dawn are never really warm, even in summer. It was the vigil of Pentecost and virtually summer (the great movable feasts came late in the year 1971) when some four thousand men and women from many parts of the world knelt through the night on chill flagstones below the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica. In the immense circle of the piazza, only dimly lit by an uncertain moon and a few electric bulbs hidden high among the all-embracing Bernini columns, they would have looked from above, even in such numbers, like small huddled shadows.

Ahead, as if it were the object of their prayers, the great facade, secure atop its thirty-eight steps, immutable now for four hundred years, its magnificent stones successors to lesser stones, said to cover the bones of the Galilean fisherman, Simon called Peter. Here was the core of Christendom, the Rock and the tangible sign of Christian permanence. For the kneeling pilgrims the darkness itself added dimension and wonder to the wall the Basilica made, a wall to hold back not just the dawn that would soon come out of the East, but a wall to hold back all the false doctrines on earth. Hardly a handful among the crowd would have known that already behind the brave facade a hollowing-out process, an eating away of strength and substance, had been going on for more than half a century, that the Catholic Church had been undermined. [10]

All of them knew that something was wrong; otherwise they would not have joined the pilgrimage. In France, in Germany, England, Argentina, the United States, Australia, each in his own parish, had been stricken by sudden change, by orders to worship in a strange new way. Nearly half of the pilgrims were French, having arrived on chartered trains from Paris and all had come to plead with the Holy Father to give them back the Mass, the Sacraments and a Catechism for their children.

Had any of them looked beyond the pillars and high over to the right, they could have made out the shuttered windows of the papal apartments. Was the Pope asleep? Could he sleep, knowing they were there? From where he lay, the murmured Aves and Paters of the fifteen decades of the rosary cannot have sounded much louder than the play of water on the ancient fountain in the piazza. Read More »

Harry the Loser and his used-up, feminist bride Meghan — Who cares?

FROM Mike King’s Anti-New York Times:

Who bloody cares about those degenerate useless eaters of the modern British Monarchy and their “royal weddings?” Evidently, the owners of the Piranha Press (cough cough) and the hordes of simpletons enthralled by their wholly owned EIB (Electronic Idiot Box) do — and there’s a historical reason for it.

You see, the British Royal Mafia and various parliamentarians — initially for the glory of the ever-expanding Empire and then for the purpose of survival — got in bed with and were then forced to stay in bed with the International Jewish bankers a long time ago. That is why “The House of Windsor” is still around, whereas the Habsburgs (Spain,Austria),  Hohenzollern  (Prussia/Germany)  Romanovs  (Russia)  and Bourbons(France, Italy) are not.

[…]

What the short-sighted British Monarchy and ultra-nationalist statesmen never realized, is that in allowing the money lenders to grow so rich by financing the worldwide empire and its associated wars, the British eventually went broke, lost their official “hit man” position to the United States, lost their empire and power to the banker-funded subversive Marxists and Fabians, and even lost control of their home island to the Globalists as well! But for centuries of faithful services rendered to Zion, the British royals did at least get to keep their lives, their inherited fortunes, their unwarranted privileges and their undeserved “rock star” status — provided, of course, that they continue to obey and not get any ideas about truly serving the interests of the British “commoners.”

You know, given the absolute control that “they” have over these de-balled, has-been royals, we can’t help but wonder if Meghan Markle  —  a moderately attractive, divorced, 36-year old, half-Negress, Hollywood feminist actress who has surely been mounted up by more bucks that even Winston Churchill’s notorious whore of a mother, Jennie Jerome — wasn’t forced upon handsome Prince Harry (age 33) as some sort of elite psy-op against the traditional White remnants of rapidly diversifying / rapidly decaying Britain. Seriously, this guy could have married any 20-something-year-old virgin (or at least something with far less “mileage”) in all of England. What the heck is going on here?

Headline: The Guardian: “Meghan Markle’s wedding was a rousing celebration of blackness.”

Job well done, Mr. Cromwell.

The Pentecostal dove, from the Benedictional of St Æthelwold

THE BLESSED VIRGIN ON
PENTECOST MORNING

Maid and Mother, pure and kind,
’Tis the Whitsun morning;
May hath wearied sun and wind
For the world’s adorning,—
Earth is blossomed like a bride
For the blessed Whitsuntide.

Thrice the mighty Spirit wrought
For thy soul’s completing:
First, thy stainless self He brought
To the world’s entreating;
Next, to work thy “Fiat” came;
Last, He crowns thy brow with flame.

’Tis Elijah’s olden rite,
Slow in sign preparing:
First, God built thee, altar bright,—
Christ, the Victim, bearing;
Last, from Heaven, at thy desire
Flashed the Lord’s consuming fire.

—- Edward F. Garesche, S.J

A READER writes:

Your reader, Kyle, mentioned the legal battle between Katy Perry and a few nuns in Los Angeles. I think he is idealizing these nuns. I’ve done a tiny bit of searching into this story and came across the nuns’ website Stand with the Sisters and a link to a documentary on the story (which I’ve not spent my time watching).

The documentary opens with these words:

“Would you be surprised to find out that this is actually a case about women’s rights? For millenia religious women have persevered silently under the patriarchy of the Catholic Church. Their status has always remained secondary, behind the male clergy. Courageously, two women have taken a stand against this injustice.” Read More »

THIS IS A PUBLIC letter to David Leonhardt, columnist for The New York Times:

Dear Mr. Leonhardt,

I am writing in response to your fascinating opinion piece, “I’m not Quoting Enough Women.”

I understand that you are interested in quoting more women in your articles. Too many male experts, you believe, are asked for their input and you have decided to discriminate on the basis of sex alone to include a greater number of women in your reports. Read More »

ALAN writes:

Western Europeans are now fleeing into Hungary to escape from the tyranny of diversity-and-multiculturalism imposed upon them by their governments.  Sixty years ago it was the other way around:  Families were fleeing out of Hungary to escape from the tyranny of Communism.  I came to know one such family.  They would find rich irony in that historic reversal.

One day in or about 1961, a new boy appeared in my class at St. Anthony of Padua parochial school in south St. Louis.  He and I were the same age but he was a little bigger than me and he spoke two languages, while I was still learning to deal with one.

I can’t recall precisely how we became friends.  Perhaps he asked me for advice or perhaps our teacher encouraged us to become acquainted because she knew I was a good pupil who wouldn’t steer him wrong and because his family lived only a block away from mine.

My new friend’s name was Leslie. Some fellow students taunted him because when speaking to his younger brother, he spoke in his first language: Hungarian. It sounded strange, of course, and some boys believed (wrongly) that they were talking about them when in fact they were talking only about family or personal matters.

Whatever they talked about did not bother me.  I saw no point in taunting them.  I was a loner of sorts, quiet, obedient, an only child, and somewhat naïve. Leslie and his younger brother treated me right, so I did the same in return.  Thus we became friends.  On some days we walked home from school together.  His mother had an appointment at some doctor’s office whose whereabouts were a complete mystery to her.  So my mother offered to drive her there. They became friends.

Leslie’s parents and their four children were one of tens of thousands of families who fled from Hungary in 1956 because they preferred to go on living rather than be tyrannized or murdered by the Communist goons who reasserted their power in response to the short-lived Hungarian Revolution.  Read More »

FROM THE ONION:

On the heels of this week’s decision lifting a federal ban on sports betting, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 7-2 ruling Wednesday that legalizes all worldly vices, with the justices decreeing that immoral behaviors such as gambling, drug use, prostitution, and incest are “all good now.” “It is the opinion of this court that the right to participate in various forms of debauchery, whether heroin injection, illicit sex, or cannibalism, should not be impeded by any law,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, adding that if something is considered unethical or depraved, but you feel like doing it anyway, the court “doesn’t give a s***t” and you should just do whatever you want. “The government has no legitimate constitutional basis upon which to police any wicked or immoral actions that serve to satisfy an individual’s basest desires or appetites. As far as we’re concerned, everyone can just have at it.” At press time, reports confirmed the court adjourned for a brief recess during which several of the justices personally tested the waters with necrophilia.

Rihanna at the Met Gala

THE MET GALA at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is an annual fashion extravaganza  on the first Monday of May — an expensive celebration of ugliness, arrogance, raw flesh and ego by celebrities who parade on a red carpet before banks of photographers.

Stars at the event have for a long time flaunted blasphemy with crosses and religious images on their bodies, but this year’s event on May 7th reached new heights of indecency, sacrilege and Satanism with a theme that coincided with the museum’s new exhibit, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”

The fleshy stars were dressed in sacred vestments and objects donated by the Vatican. Yup, that’s right. Archbishop “Timothy Dolan was in attendance to further give a “Catholic” seal of approval. The actual exhibit was sponsored by Jewish billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, who gave $5 million to stage “Heavenly Bodies.”

“Hellish Bodies” was more like it at the star-studded ball.

The singer Lana del Rey did a parody of Our Lady of Sorrows complete with an image of the Immaculate Heart of Mary with the seven swords on her bodice.

“Victoria’s Secret model Stella Maxwell [wore] a tight strapless column gown stamped with six large icons of Our Lady; actress Sarah Jessica Parker ‘wore” a Neapolitan nativity scene on her head; [and] actress Zendaya Coleman dressed up as a back-and-cleavage-showing Saint Joan of Arc,” writes Luiz Sérgio Solimeo at The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

“Actress Anne Hathaway was dressed in a red cardinal’s outfit, with a bare back and equally indecent, cleavage-displaying front. Rapper Nicki Minaj sported a cardinal-type flowing red cloak, and her impure top was not outdone by the front of her dress which was slit almost to her waist, revealing her bare legs when she walked. To media Minaj declared: ‘I’m dressed as the devil.’ Another Victoria’s Secret model, Taylor Hill, wore a red-trimmed cleavage-showing black dress, a pectoral cross, and what looked like a cardinal’s red sash and pellegrina.” Read More »

Chemi Shalev reports in Ha’aretz (read more at If Americans Knew):

The stark contrast that played out on split screens throughout the world Monday, between the Israeli celebration in Jerusalem and the Palestinian casualties in Gaza, was worthy of Charles Dickens’ immortal opening to “A Tale of Two Cities:” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Read More »

Mrs Francis Brinley & son Francis, John Smibert; 1729

FROM an outstanding Mother’s Day piece by Stella Morabito at The Federalist:

Motherhood is the first and last line of defense against totalitarianism. If you think this statement sounds over the top, you ought to ponder why the family has always been the ultimate target of tyrannical systems of government such as communism. Advocates of cultural Marxism tend to view families as akin to subversive cells that get in the way of centralized state power.

The driving force in each of those “cells” is a devoted flesh-and-blood mother who defends, nurtures, strengthens, and teaches her children well. She magnifies this power by teaming up with the child’s father in that effort. Such a family represents, at the most elemental level, the “little platoon” philosopher Edmund Burke referred to:

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.

As healthy, cohesive families go forth into the world as little platoons, they are a force for goodwill and real justice in society, broadcasting by example and by good works into the culture at large. They begin with mothers who cultivate virtue and a sense of uniqueness in their children. In a very real sense, mothers are the ultimate force for de-centralizing and distributing power in society. Their influence sets virtuous communities in motion.

A mother begins this task as only a mother can: through the mysterious pull of love, by forging bonds of personal loyalty, and under cover of the hidden sphere of private life. Tyrants have openly targeted these positive forces at least since Karl Marx essentially declared them totally incompatible with socialism. Lately we see devoted mothers—particularly traditional, stay-at-home mothers—increasingly mocked and challenged as cultural throwbacks. Even President Obama has criticized them in policy speeches, including his 2015 State of the Union.

Countless examples illustrate the extraordinary impact of attentive mothers to thwart the forces of a tyrannical state. Some cases stand out. But most of the work is done quietly, through their teaching of faith, fairness, virtue, and goodwill. This groundwork mothers lay has a cumulative effect that supports wholeness over brokenness in human beings. Obviously that’s not good for any agenda propelled by resentment over understanding, or chaos over stability. [cont.]

FROM TODAY’S Anti-New York Times:

Five separate stories, with one common theme, spread like hot feces all throughout a single Sunday issue of Sulzberger’s Slimes. Here’s a brief summary of the essence of each article:

Women good — men bad
Women good — men bad
Women good — men bad
Women good — men bad
Women good — men bad 

The angle here is obvious. The Marxist-inspired “women’s movement” ™ which began with the suffrage movement of the late 19th century eventually metastasized into the feminist revolution of the 1960’s and beyond. Today, many loony and thoroughly miserable ladies, having abandoned motherhood for the pursuit of “equality” in government and the professions, now hold some of the highest corporate and government positions in major nations throughout the West, and constitute a majority of the university student population.

Yes indeed — you’ve come a long way, baby. How’s it workin’ out for ya?

Given this amazing “progress,” one would think that the “women’s movement” ™ would settle down and savor the “equality” it has won. Instead, the loony ladies are becoming even more aggressive in their holy war to tear down “the patriarchy.” The goal now is not merely “equality,” but rather, a perceived superiority over de-balled and dispossessed men. Note our use of the adjective, “perceived” in front of the word “superiority.” That’s because, at the very tippy-top of the New World Order pyramid, it has always been and will always be a men-only club calling the shots. Ever notice how, despite their total orchestration of the “women’s movement” ™, the “capos” and heirs of the intertwined Globalist Rothschild, Rockefeller, Sulzberger and Soros crime syndicates are always boys?

You see, the fraud of female equality not only serves the critical Globalist objective of degrading humanity by wrecking the traditional family, it also supports the heavy capstone of the pyramid structure because female presidents, prime ministers, senators, and CEO’s will never rebel against the strong masculine hand of the true masters of this troubled planet (cough cough). It is not in a woman’s nature. Though these nasty man-hating harridans (a $10 word for ‘bossy hags’) may fancy themselves as “liberated” rebels who love to throw their weight around before de-balled / demoted male subordinates, they will, paradoxically, grovel like star-struck groupies and purr like submissive kittens in the presence of a strong N.W.O. king queen-maker. That’s part of a woman’s nature too.

Notice how the nasty, bossy, man-hating, feminist Killary Clintonsuddenly melts like butter before the predominately Jewish, all-malemasters of the Globalist / libtard conspiracy.

Hillary and Bloomberg

Hillary and Soros

Hillary and Weinstein

MELANIE NOTKIN has some wise reflections on the rise of the childless mother — the woman who wants children but fails to have them because she never finds the right man.

But Notkin fails to see the solution — a reversal of the Sexual Revolution and the feminist quest for autonomy.

Still Life with a tulip, Jacob Marrel (1634)

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

Mothers who find their lives exhausting may enjoy this diary of a 19th-century Indiana farm wife. The account may make their lives seem easy by comparison. Sarah Young Bovard brought many children into the world (12 — though not all survived childhood) and gave herself entirely to the vocation of motherhood. She was the sustaining heart of her home before refrigerators and dishwashers helped with the work.

Trafalgar Square signals change for Pride London Credit: Transport for London

CHRISTOPHER writes:

We were in London in yesterday and crossed a road at Trafalgar Square when a strange pedestrian signal caught my eye. I thought I had seen something a little strange but wasn’t sure, so I went back across the road to get another look. It was exactly what I thought: an LGBT logo.

It turns out, they have been there for quite some time.

Here’s the film:

Read More »

THE fifth-century hymn Aeterne Rex altissime, on the Feast of the Ascension, is sung here by the Choir of St. John’s College. A translation by J.M. Neale:

Eternal Monarch, King most high,
whose blood hath brought redemption nigh,
by whom the death of Death was wrought,
and conquering Grace’s battle fought.

Ascending to the throne of might,
and seated at the Father’s right,
all power in heaven is Jesus’ own,
that here his manhood had not known.

That so, in nature’s triple frame,
each heavenly and each earthly name,
and things in hell’s abyss abhorred,
may bend the knee and own him Lord.

Yea, angels tremble when they see
how changed is our humanity;
that flesh hath purged what flesh had stained,
and God, the flesh of God, hath reigned. Read More »

Now it is very much like this: as if we were sailing
in ships across cold water, over the sea-waves,
beyond the wide ocean in water-steeds
traversing the floods. The waters are perilous,
the waves immeasurable, amid which we journey here
through this frail world, the stormy oceans,
across the paths of the deep. Dangerous was that life
before we came to land
across the rough waves. Help came to us
that we might be led to a haven of healing,
God’s Spirit-Son, and gave us grace
that we might find, by the ship’s side,
where we could moor our water-steeds,
our ancient wave-horses securely anchored.
Let us fasten our hope on that haven
which the Ruler of the skies opened for us,
holy in the heights, when he ascended into heaven.

— excerpt from the Old English poem, Christ II

Madonna and Child, Marianne Stokes

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round 
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense 
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms’ self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.

—- Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe”

SARA writes:

I have been reading your blog for a while, and want to thank you for being a voice of sanity in an insane world.  I don’t know what I would do without your words.

It seems one of the biggest issues in today’s world is what few are acknowledging.  It takes place in our skies daily and if people would just look up they would see it. Euphemistically called “geoengineering,” it is the aerosol spraying of aluminum particulates, ostensibly to moderate climate change.  There is a website the explains all of this better than I ever could, done by a man who has given his life to wake people up to this global threat to all living things. [Here is Dane Wigington’s introduction to the jet spraying of aerosols or “chemtrails.”] The scope and implications of this demonic activity are shocking.

This documentary is comprehensive, a must-watch on this issue. It is eye-opening (and disturbing); if you can take the time to watch it, you will see this health crisis approached from multiple angles.