THE MORE oppressive government becomes, the more taxes we pay. But, of course, it’s all for our “freedom” and “rights.”

Here’s a ditty found in The Fishwrapper of April 9, 2024, I guess to ease the pain of this massive transfer of wealth, which may be still fresh in your mind. Maybe the excessive publicity of the recent solar eclipse was a way of saying, “Look over there!” during tax season.

Tax his cow, tax his goat;
Tell him, “Taxing is the rule.”
Tax his tractor, tax his mule;
Teach him taxing is no joke.

Tax his oil, tax his gas,
Tax his notes, tax his cash.
Tell him good, and let him know
That after taxes he has no dough.

If he hollers, tax him more;
Tax him ’til he’s good and sore.
Tax his coffin, tax his grave,
Tax the sod ‘neath which he’s laid.

Put these words upon his tomb:
“Taxes drove him to his doom.”
After he’s gone, we won’t relax;
We’ll still collect inheritance tax.

David Caspar Friedrich, Monk by the Sea (1809)

FROM Cardinal Henry Newman’s “Mission of St. Benedict:”

The unity of idea, which, as these words imply, is to be found in all monks in every part of Christendom, may be described as a unity of object, of state, and of occupation. Monachism was one and the same everywhere, because it was a reaction from that secular life, which has everywhere the same structure and the same characteristics. And, since that secular life contained in it many objects, many states, and many occupations, here was a special reason, as a matter of principle, why the reaction from it should bear the badge of unity, and should be in outward appearance one and the same everywhere. Moreover, since that same secular life was, when monachism arose, more than ordinarily marked by variety, perturbation and confusion, it seemed on that very account to justify emphatically a rising and revolt against itself, and a recurrence to some state which, unlike itself, was constant and unalterable. It was indeed an old, decayed, and moribund world, into which Christianity had been cast. The social fabric was overgrown with the corruptions of a thousand years, and was held together, not so much by any common principle, as by the strength of possession and the tenacity of custom. It was too large for public spirit, and too artificial for patriotism, and its many religions did but foster in the popular mind division and scepticism. Want of mutual confidence would lead to despondency, inactivity, and selfishness. Society was in the slow fever of consumption, which made it restless in proportion as it was feeble. It was powerful, however, to seduce and deprave; nor was there any locus standi from which to combat its evils; and the only way of getting on with it was to abandon principle and duty, to take things as they came, and to do as the world did. Worse than all, this encompassing, entangling system of things, was, at the time we speak of, the seat and instrument of a paganism, and then of heresies, not simply contrary, but bitterly hostile, to the Christian profession. Serious men not only had a call, but every inducement which love of life and freedom could supply, to escape from its presence and its sway. Read More »

                                                          St. Jerome, Jan Massys

“TELL me whether you know of anything more sacred than this sacred mystery, anything more delightful than the pleasure found herein? What food, what honey could be sweeter than to learn of God’s Providence, to enter into his shrine and look into the mind of the Creator, to listen to the Lord’s words at which the wise of this world laugh, but which are really full of spiritual teaching? Others may have their wealth, may drink out of jewelled cups, be clad in silks, enjoy popular applause, find it impossible to exhaust their wealth by dissipating it in pleasures of all kinds; but our delight is to meditate on the Law of the Lord day and night, to knock at his door when shut, to receive our food from the Trinity of Persons, and, under the guidance of the Lord, trample under foot the swelling tumults of this world.”

— St. Jerome, in a letter to his disciple Paula

“GRINDING poverty is a well-known enemy not only to morals but to faith itself. But always our primary preoccupation is to help men make the best of the condition in which they find themselves; whereas the primary preoccupation of the modern reformer is to better the conditions and to hope for a new race of men. Our work is to colonise heaven, theirs to breed for Utopia. And that disparity of inspiration leads, again and again, to a contrast of method. The revolutionary reformer wishes to achieve Utopia by methods which offend against our sense of justice. The bureaucratic reformer wishes to achieve Utopia by methods which offend against our sense of liberty. Neither side finds in us an ally who can be trusted to go all lengths; either side, therefore, distrusts our alliance, and at best tolerates it as a necessary embarrassment.”

— Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

Statue of Paul VI in Milan

FROM Liber Accusationis by Abbé George de Nantes, a brief addressed to “Pope” Paul VI on March 28, 1973, accusing him of multiple heresies and the creation of a new Religion of Man:

At first, you speak of PEACE as though it were the fruit ripened by civilisation and by the United Nations. Your concern was restricted to the settling of various local conflicts which you regarded as sequels of the last World War. You were concerned to replace armed force with negotiation so that, with the establishment of peace and with the co-operation of all peoples, the world should reach a state of prosperity and happiness unknown before. Such an ideal was still very conservative. But before long, a new idea began to be mixed up with that of peace: that of JUSTICE. “Persuaded that peace can be built only upon justice, we must all make ourselves the advocates of justice. For the world has great need of justice and Christ wishes us to hunger and thirst after justice.” (Papal Discourse to the Council) But whenChrist blesses those who hunger and thirst after justice, it is of a different sort of justice that He speaks – of one directed towards God, of holiness: social justice is but a secondary result of this. So here too, you have misrepresented the Gospel in order to make it into the message of your own new-style, revolutionary messianism. Read More »

Spring, Claude Monet (1902)

SPRING
               —Christina Georgina Rossetti

Frost-locked all the winter,
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
What shall make their sap ascend
That they may put forth shoots?
Tips of tender green,
Leaf, or blade, or sheath;
Telling of the hidden life
That breaks forth underneath,
Life nursed in its grave by Death.

Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly,
Drips the soaking rain,
By fits looks down the waking sun:
Young grass springs on the plain;
Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees;
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
Swollen with sap put forth their shoots;
Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane;
Birds sing and pair again. Read More »

Den blomstertid nu kommer (English translation)

The flowering season’s here now
With beauty and great joy
Delightful summer’s near now
When grass and plants deploy.
The gentle sun’s warmth coaxes
Fresh growth in what’s been dead;
As soon as she approaches
Reborn life lies ahead.

The meadows’ lovely flowers
And fields of sprouting seeds
The budding plants in bowers
And all the green-leafed trees
Should serve to make us wonder
At God’s great goodness here:
On God’s grace then to ponder
Which lasts throughout the year.

We hear birds gladly raising
Their many-throated song;
Shall we then not be praising
Our Lord God too ere long?
My soul, extol God’s splendour
And joyous songs unfold
That bring delight and tender
Such benefits untold. Read More »

FROM Central Government (1991) by Ben Williams:

Central Governmment is typified by Babylon. Babylonian type World Empires, based upon the concept of Central Government, are liberally strewn throughout the records of world history. Today, the epitome of Central Government is usually thought to be the Communist government of the Soviet Union. But, in all fairness, evidence shows clearly that the Soviet Union’s government is NOT unlike other centralized governments in the world. The truth is, Marxism is merely a typical Central Government. And Marxism, like all centralized governments, is bad!

Looking at Central Government, certain recognizable traits stand out. Central Government always develops into a self-willed, self-protecting entity interested only in its own survival. Central Government is never a servant, but rather a master. lt is its own master, with its own personality. lt rules! lt never serves! lt uses every means at its disposal (including police and military force) to protect itself against the public. The people, collectively, are considered its greatest resource, and at the same time its greatest threat. Therefore, Police are employed in great numbers to enforce the Central Government’s will upon the people, and to protect it from possible public interference. lt is a continuing struggle to keep the people suppressed. Read More »

FROM British author Douglas Reed’s Insanity Fair (1938), a book about the state of Europe before World War II:

A few months after Hitler came to power I had gone to England on leave. Before leaving London for the country I sought out a certain important man and told him what I knew – that Germany was rearming day and night, that a fierce desire to stage a come-back was being instilled into the Germans, that the danger of a new war was looming larger and nearer, and that England should not delay a moment in rearming herself.

It was all true. In Germany the entire energy of the nation is concentrated on militarization. I should doubt whether a nation has ever been so completely and thoroughly reared to think exclusively of arms and warfare. You start when you wake up and stop when you go to sleep, provided you do not dream about these things. Your education in these matters begins in the nursery and finishes with the grave.

The child that learns to read gets as a birthday present a book, which might be called Little Adolf and The Big Bad World, describing how Little Snow White (Germany) was set upon by wicked neighbours (England and France) jealous of her beauty, prowess and possessions, how she nevertheless would have overcome them but that she was stabbed in the back by an Evil Spirit (Marxism), and how one day Prince Charming (Adolf) freed her from her abasement. Adolf (Ah, the lad was doughty!’) had been accustomed in his youth to play war games with his comrades, and the other boys played the Frenchmen and Adolf and his friends the Germans, and Adolf always won! Read More »

“Captain of English cargo vessel reports French navy for ‘migrant’ trafficking across the Channel. He is told that the governments of France and UK have an arrangement and not to worry about it. We are not voting our way out of this.”

Source

“ALL these cries of having ‘abolished slavery,’ of having ‘saved the country,’ of having ‘preserved the union,’ of establishing ‘a government of consent,’ and of ‘maintaining the national honor,’ are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats—so transparent that they ought to deceive no one—when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war, or for now compelling the people to pay the cost of the war, or for compelling anybody to support a government that he does not want.

“The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as mankind continue to pay ‘National Debts,’ so-called,—that is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered,—so long there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; and with that money a plenty of tools, called soldiers, can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and usurpers, and robbers, and murderers and blood-money loan-mongers for masters.”

— Lysander Spooner, “The Ruling Class and the State,” 1870

“MORAL issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.”

— G.K. Chesterton

Read More »

False Pope Paul 6 during his visit to the UN symbolically sits below the dais.

I DON’T pay much attention to the documents issued by the anti-Catholic Vatican in Rome these days. Lacking the sublime clarity of Church teachings, cleverly mixing truth with error, reassuring the simple with denunciations of abortion while simultaneously undermining the very moral and economic foundations of the family and unabashedly employing Marxist buzzwords and slogans, these statements are depressing, boring and far too long. They do not emanate from the Catholic Church.

I have, however, read the recent, highly-publicized Vatican declaration, Dignitatis Infinita, On Human Dignity — out of a sense of possibly misplaced duty. At 15,000 words with just eight mentions of Jesus (one more mention than the seven of “migrants”), this document, steeped as it is in ambiguity, is arguably dangerous to the free exercise of human dignity. But I won’t go there. Let’s just say, it was a slog. I did it and I would like to make a few comments here, for whatever they’re worth. Perhaps I have a point to make that no one else in the extensive news commentary has made.

Most important regarding this document, as is stated from the beginning, is that it was written to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, issued by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. The mere fact that a body that claims to be the Catholic Church is promoting a secular, world parliament that explicitly denies the rights of God is so immensely significant, so overwhelmingly meaningful that most people can’t even see it.

From Dignitatis:

As we commemorate the 75th anniversary of that document, the Church sees an opportunity to proclaim anew its conviction that all human beings—created by God and redeemed by Christ—must be recognized and treated with respect and love due to their inalienable dignity. The anniversary also provides an occasion for the Church to clarify some frequent misconceptions concerning human dignity and to address some serious and urgent related issues. [bold added]

This is the single most important thing you need to know about this expensively-publicized declaration.

Paul 6 stood before the UN in 1965 in one of the most significant acts of his (false) pontificate and declared that the parliamentary body — not the Catholic Church — was “the greatest hope of the world.” And so it has been ever since. Dignitatis is part of a stream of revolutionary, Vatican II verbiage all dedicated to the same idea: the Religion of Humanity. “We too, more than anyone else, have the Cult of Man,” said Paul 6 at the closing session of Vatican II. Sadly, what claims today to be the Catholic Church has become the religious wing of secular world government founded on utopian, Marxist ideas and financial control of the weak — a super-government never dreamed of even by the most ambitious of emperors and pharaohs of the past. Read More »

A FORMER MEDICAL coder who was responsible for filling out patient hospital bills for insurance reimbursement describes her experience under Covid protocols.

She claims that financial incentives and government mandates led to many unnecessary deaths in the hospital where she worked. Having worked with the case histories of thousands patients over the course of years, she was able to see remarkable differences. The role of money in all this, she reports, is staggering.

A PHARMACIST describes her tragic story, including the sudden death of her 29-year-old daughter, in an interview at Children’s Health Defense.

The pharmacist has left her job, refusing any further involvement with government-enforced medicine.

ALAN writes:

Timewise, the 1962 motion picture The Music Man is only seven decades removed from the filth and junk that Americans today agree to accept in the name of entertainment. Morally, metaphysically, and esthetically, it is light-years removed.

It is from the summer of 1962 that I recall seeing advertisements on our black and white television for that new motion picture.  It seemed the ads were shown repeatedly.  One brief scene showed Robert Preston marching toward the camera in front of a large brass band.

But for whatever reason, at that time the promotional blurbs did not inspire my desire to see the movie. At age 12, I had yet to develop an appreciation for such entertainment; that would come several years later.

The movie was released that summer and played at the ornate Ambassador Theater at Seventh and Locust Streets in the heart of downtown St. Louis. (It was demolished in 1996. Architect Robert Powers wrote: “….the Ambassador was, in its day, perhaps the most spectacular of the St. Louis movie palaces, easily in league with the Fox. It was the last remaining movie palace in downtown…..” Source) Read More »