FROM the essay “The Decline of Controversy” by Bishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979), which can be read in its entirety here:

Once there were lost islands, but most of them have been found; once there were lost causes, but many of them have been retrieved; but there is one lost art that has not been definitely recovered, and without which no civilization can long survive, and that is the art of controversy. The hardest thing to find in the world today is an argument. Because so few are thinking, naturally there are found but few to argue. There is prejudice in abundance and sentiment too, for these things are born of enthusiasms without the pain of labor. Thinking, on the contrary, is a difficult task; it is the hardest work a man can do—that is perhaps why so few indulge in it. Thought-saving devices have been invented that rival laborsaving devices in their ingenuity. Fine-sounding phrases like “Life is bigger than logic” or “Progress is the spirit of the age” go rattling by us like express trains, carrying the burden of those who are too lazy to think for themselves. (more…)

WHEN I STOPPED IN a nearby supermarket today to get a few things, I asked a clerk who was working in front of the frozen fish case, “Do you know where the flour tortillas are?”

He said yes, and got up from the floor where he was kneeling. I told him he didn’t need to take me there, he could just tell me where they were, but he was off and bounding — with a slight limp — toward aisle 11.

Normally I would know where things are, but I hardly ever go to that store because it’s a little out of the way.

“They’re right down there in the middle of the aisle,” he pointed, but then he followed me to the place.

“See there they are. You can also get taco shells here,” he showed me with obvious pride and enthusiasm, as if he was a tour guide in a museum. “And here is the taco mix and the shells in one box. And here are …”

I interrupted him: “Wow, you know a lot about the things in this store!”

He beamed. “Yes, I do.” (more…)

  "A DIAMOND, carefully cut and perfectly polished, sparkles and shines in the sun with exceeding brilliancy. It not only reflects the light, but also absorbs it into itself, so as to shine even in the dark with the light it has absorbed. It actually becomes, as it were, a little sun, shining with its own light. It is thus become a partaker of the sun's nature, while it retains its own peculiar diamond nature and individuality. This is an image of what takes place in the Beatific Vision. While the soul was in this world, God had polished her by the sacraments and by sufferings; and now that she is in His presence, and sees Him as He is, she shines and sparkles in His light with unspeakable splendor. She reflects and absorbs the divine light and beauty of God. She is like God, because she sees Him as He is; she is made a partaker of the divine nature, while she retains her own human nature and personal identity. ".... But remember, too, that God, who created you without your cooperation, will not save you without it. He will never polish your soul into a jewel fit for Heaven in spite of yourself. You must, therefore, cooperate with Him, and do His holy will in all things. However painful may be the trials He sends you, they are all so many strokes to take away some roughness or deformity…

  THE ROLLING ENGLISH ROAD ---- G. K. Chesterton Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire, And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire; A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire, And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire; But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made, Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands, The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands. His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun? The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which, But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch. God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier. My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage, Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age, But walk with…

"THE SINS classified as sins against the Holy Ghost are those of pure malice. They are directly opposed to the love and mercy of God, and on that account, render conversion very difficult." They include despair, impugning the known truth and envy of another's spiritual good. Read more here.  

O Holy Ghost, soul of my soul, I adore Thee. Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me. I promise to submit myself to all that Thou dost permit to happen to me. Let me only know Thy will.

FROM the Acts of the Apostles 2, 1-25:

And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak. Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.

And when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded in mind, because that every man heard them speak in his own tongue. And they were all amazed, and wondered, saying: Behold, are not all these, that speak, Galileans? And how have we heard, every man our own tongue wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[10] Phrygia, and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews also, and proselytes, Cretes, and Arabians: we have heard them speak in our own tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all astonished, and wondered, saying one to another: What meaneth this? But others mocking, said: These men are full of new wine. But Peter standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spoke to them: Ye men of Judea, and all you that dwell in Jerusalem, be this known to you, and with your ears receive my words.  For these are not drunk, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day: (more…)

  HERE IS A GREAT speech by the British politician Sir Oswald Mosley (1896--1980) exposing the truth of multiculturalism. This is a must-listen. My posting of it is not an endorsement of everything Mosley said or did, about which I know very little, but it is an endorsement of this brilliant and prophetic speech.  

  S.K. writes: Regarding your previous post pertaining to the late Mr. Auster's anecdote about the woman at the party, it seems that this mentality can lead in all sorts of sterile directions. Apparently, even to this (above).  

  TELEVANGELIST Kenneth Copeland, interviewed here about his private jets, is one of the preachers calling for a national day of prayer for Donald Trump. Copeland is one of Trump's spiritual advisors and has dined with him at the White House. (The president prefers preachers with a lot of make-up.) It's a good match. As the writer Ed Brayton says in the above link, "Trump is essentially a secular prosperity gospel preacher himself."  

FROM the forthcoming Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism by Lawrence Auster:

I was once talking with a female acquaintance at a dinner party in Manhattan. She was in her late thirties, married without children, a moderate Republican with a high-level position in the New York business world. In the course of a friendly chat about bilingualism, I remarked that our common language cannot be defended (as I felt she was trying to do) simply on a utilitarian basis, but that we must see that our language is one of the things that forms us as a culture. We will not be able to oppose bilingualism effectively, I said, unless we see ourselves as members of that culture, and not just as participants in an economy. (more…)

ALAN writes:

Why would anyone remember an ordinary pedestrian bridge?

But I have good reasons to remember one that is long gone.

Twice by chance in recent months I found photographs taken in the mid-1960s that show a pedestrian bridge over a highway between Oakland Avenue and Forest Park in midtown St. Louis. Those were precisely the years when my father and I walked up the steps and across that pedestrian bridge on our way to and from the Planetarium in Forest Park.  It seems in memory that we made those visits to the Planetarium most often on sunny Saturday afternoons. Those visits and those days in our lives are now among my fondest memories. It was the summer of his life and the spring of mine.

The feeling I remember from those days was that the splendor of the universe loomed right before us, concretized in the lectures we attended in the Planetarium Star Chamber; in the exhibits of satellites and rockets we walked among inside and on the grounds outside; in the magazines about astronomy that my father purchased for me at the Planetarium Book Counter, long-defunct magazines like The Review of Popular Astronomy; in our awareness of Project Gemini spaceflights and exploratory space vehicles on their way to the moon and the planet Mars; and in the perennial mystery of the night sky. (more…)

FROM “Free Market Follies” by Oliver Heydorn:

Lately I have been reflecting on the views of the conventional economic ‘right-wing’, as represented by ‘neo-liberals’, adherents of the Austrian school of economics, ‘capitalists’, economic libertarians, and so forth. It seems that whenever someone suggests that radical changes need to be made to the reigning financial or economic model – a suggestion which, in essence, must be a plea for some kind of intervention on the part of the public authority – those who are more or less satisfied with the existing system and find themselves on the ‘right’ of the economic spectrum regard the suggestion quite reflexively as an intolerable attack on the free market and an affirmation of ‘socialism.’ I have found this attitude, and the rhetoric which often accompanies it, curious for four major reasons, reasons which I will want to outline in this article. (more…)

FROM “A Conspiracy Against the Catholic Church? The True Popes Speak” at Novus Ordo Watch:

In 1994, former member of the Vatican’s honor guard Franco Bellegrandi caused quite a stir when he published his book Nikita Roncalli: Counterlife of a Pope (free PDF here). Bellegrandi had worked in the Vatican from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, that is, during the entire reign of “Pope” John XXIII. Later he became a correspondent for the Vatican’s own in-house newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano(more here). In his explosive book, Bellegrandi revealed, among other things, that the election of Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) and later Giovanni Montini (Paul VI) had been pre-arranged by Marxist-Masonic forces behind the scenes:

In the Vatican’s high spheres it was indeed no secret that after Pius XII, the coming Conclave would elect Venice’s patriarch Roncalli, who, in turn, would “bring” on the See of Peter Giovanni Battista Montini. From Milan, the Brescian bishop with the owl-gaze, whom in Rome they nicknamed “Hamlet,” or the “Cat,” was pulling the strings of a colossal game, with the precious help of a group of powerful prelates among which distinguished themselves Belgian cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens, Dutch Bernard Jan Alfrinck, and German Agostino Bea, with the secretive support of international Marxism. That colossal game that would upturn the contents and the aspect of the Church, of Italy, of Europe, and of the whole world with all its established checks and balances, needed, to get in motion and develop, a formidable “battering ram.” (more…)