BORN TO poor Jewish parents who emigrated from London to New York City and Boston in his childhood, David Goldstein (1870-1958) is a fascinating and little-known figure in American letters whom you will never, for sure, read about in today’s mainstream publications. He described his early life thus:

 Poverty was the lot of my father and mother. This they struggled through with courage, with devoted love for each other and the children. My parents and their four children had to be supported on the meagre earnings my father obtained from long hours of toil at the bench, making cigars. Though born of strictly Orthodox Jewish parents, they like most Jews who attend the synagogue were Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Jews. Thus, my father and mother, during my boyhood days, attended synagogue services on those two leading Jewish holidays, “if only for the children’s sake,” as Jewish fathers and mothers often say. [Wikipedia]

Goldstein became a socialist as a teenager and entered politics. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Boston when he was 27. He lost his political will, however, when he became disenchanted with socialism and Marxism. He realized the degree to which both opposed normal and healthy family life. Socialist “free love” deeply offended someone so conscious of his own indebtedness to family constancy and intimacy. He unsuccessfully sought to get the Massachusetts Socialist convention in 1902 to disavow free love and attacks against religion. He co-authored a book Socialism: The Nation of Fatherless Children in 1903. He was, of course, entirely correct and prophetic about the implications of socialism for the family. He also grew tired of class enmity:

It took some time to understand — being sympathetic with Socialism — that Socialists succeed in making ‘Socialist minds’ mainly by constantly picturing the misery of the poor and the greed of the rich; by continually condemning all things which meet with dissatisfaction in the minds of toilers, whether the discontent be rational or ridiculous; by increasing disapproval or condemnation of the character, work or proposals of officials in trade unions who have to meet practical issues and the responsibilities of the conflicts of labor organizations. At the same time, Socialists press forward their abstract propositions attract those idealists whose pictures are ephemeral and fall into confusion, like a baby’s house made of blocks, when the common sense touch of the actual world of strife and strain is applied to them; for human nature is what it is and not what Socialist idealists conjure it up to be in their sickly sentimental thoughts.” [Wikipedia]

Not long after his disillusionment with socialism, Goldstein, through the mysterious workings of grace,  converted to Catholicism. He then set about his most important intellectual work — doing battle with prejudices and misconceptions of the Church. For ten years, he wrote a weekly column for the Boston Pilot, a newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese. A sample of his learned and elegant columns, in many cases actual letters to various public individuals — truly remarkable for their literary quality, especially by today’s standards — can be found at catholictradition.org.

Goldstein also traveled around the country as a sidewalk apologist, speaking in streets, squares and parks. He took his duty to propagate the Faith with unabashed seriousness and courage. He explained why he possessed such extraordinary zeal: (more…)

  SOCIAL CREDIT, a body of economic ideas introduced by Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, is a provocative challenge to today's financial system. It is not a realistic alternative at this point, but it is well worth considering. From a website devoted to Douglas's work: Clifford Hugh Douglas was a household name throughout the English-speaking world during the so-called inter-war years of the twentieth century. His work, like that of so many of his contemporaries, has been ignored by mainstream studies of political economy. Here you can read how he influenced his contemporaries and discover what happened in Alberta. Shortly before his death in 1952 Clifford Hugh Douglas surveyed the landscape near Aberfeldy in Scotland, turned to a close colleague and said: “You know, T.J., I think the time is approaching when we shall have to challenge this monstrous and fantastic overgrowth of industrial expansion – fundamentally. Really, you know, I personally can see nothing particularly sinful about a small dynamo; but this thing we’ve got is past a joke. If it isn’t a joke, it is Satanic.” More interesting articles on Social Credit can be found here.

  BP. DONALD SANBORN writes: Common sense, what in philosophy we call the first principles of reason, knows that from nothing, nothing comes. It is impossible, in other words, that being come from nothing. This same common sense tells us that the cause of anything must have a perfection more than the effect has it. For example, a young pine tree cannot reproduce itself, since it does not yet have the perfection of its nature. When it achieves maturity, it is able to produce pine cones and reproduce the species. So the nature of pine must be more perfect in the mature tree than in the seedling which it reproduces. This is true of all living things. Reproduction occurs when the nature achieves perfection. In children, for example, the nature is not yet perfect, and unable, therefore, to reproduce. In old age, the nature is declining and unable to reproduce. Evolution requires that something higher come from something lower. The gorilla becomes a man. They attribute this to mutations caused by cosmic rays. While it is true that accidental mutations may occur within a species (change in color, for example), it is impossible that a higher species evolve from a lower one, since this would mean that something more is produced from something less, or that something comes from nothing.

  THIS BLOG has been idle for a few days while I set up a new computer. Thanks to donations from readers, I was able to buy a new laptop and am making the transition from a nine-year-old machine. I am very grateful for your support. I  also have a new e-mail account with encrypted messaging, which also took some time to set up. I can be reached at laurawood@thinkinghousewife.net. Readers can be assured that all correspondence with me is confidential (to the limits of modern technology). I will also be receiving messages at my old address for now. Regular blogging should resume by tomorrow or later today.

THOUGH the divorce rate in Africa is not increasing dramatically, women are becoming much more enthusiastic about leaving their husbands, according to a recent article on the phenomenon in West Africa. The New York Times makes interesting references to some of the causes of this shift:

Across West Africa, people are pouring into cities from the countryside, leaving behind parents and local traditions. The push for women’s rights has expanded, with more nations signing on to international commitments to gender equality. Governments have passed laws against domestic abuse and discrimination against women, and many nations now have ministries of women’s affairs. (more…)

BRANDON SMITH argues that engineered financial downturn is imminent and conservatives will take the fall:

The con game is to get liberty advocates to invest themselves fully in Trump, to the point that we end up owning every mistake he makes, and every disaster that is pinned on him. There is a concerted propaganda campaign targeting the liberty movement which is telling us that Trump is playing “4D Chess;” that Trump is planning a “coup” against the banking elites, that Trump is planning to bring down the Fed as a means to save the U.S., and even that Trump is working with Jerome Powell to crash the globalist system as a means to “restore the Republic.”

While Trump throws a bone to conservatives at times, including promises of a border wall, or a pull-out in Syria, there is no evidence to support the fantasy that Trump is some kind of ingenious tactician battling the the forces of evil using his wits while inside the system. But, there is considerable evidence as I have linked above supporting my position that Trump is controlled opposition working with the globalists to initiate a collapse that will be blamed on conservative ideals and limited government liberty activists. We shall see in due course. It is unfortunate though how many otherwise very intelligent people within the liberty movement have bought into Trump as a hero on a white horse.

The activists and alternative media are the real heroes. They are the people that pushed liberty philosophy into the mainstream. Trump merely rode the wave that they created. Even if he was a legitimate conservative and constitutionalist (which he is not), the movement doesn’t need his leadership. It never did. The globalists know this and hope to chain us to Trump as he sinks into historical oblivion, destroying us all in the process.

Don’t miss the comments! (more…)

“THIS FEAST was kept in the East from the third century and its observance spread to the West towards the end of the fourth. The word Epiphany means manifestation, and just as at Christmas, it is the mystery of God appearing in visible form; only no longer does He show Himself to the Jews alone but “on this day” it is to the Gentiles that God reveals His Son.” (St. Andrew’s Missal)

O God, who on this day by the leading of a star didst manifest Thine only begotten Son to the Gentiles; mercifully grant that we who know Thee now by faith, may be brought to the contemplation of the beauty of Thy majesty. {From the Collect for the Mass of the Epiphany of Our Lord}

THE WISE MEN
—- G.K. Chesterton

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity. (more…)

YAIR ROSENBERG, writing in the Jewish Tablet, recently accused black poet Alice Walker of vicious anti-Semitism because of her poem on the Talmud. Jeepers, you know things are bad when even a star like Walker needs to be ripped to shreds.

Michael Hofffman replies to the accusations. He writes:

Mockery is a stratagem that the Talmudic mentality puts forth as a substitute for truth.  That’s one “answer” — mocking Alice Walker as a myopic blunderer so sloppy she is seduced by tiresome and hateful libels. How do we know they are libels? The media tells us so. If we doubt the media, then we are cast as demons inhabiting an anti-Semitic hell. (more…)

  A HUNGRY GOD rules our world. Rapacious, bottomless, never-ending, his appetite sends hot, roaring winds across the planet. Every day, every hour, he demands sacrifices to his glory. His cravings are widely known and obeyed. He wants male and female to come to him in long avenues. He consumes these willing victims and belches out an indigestible residue to spread across the androgynous world. He wants the young seized from the womb and placed in his arms. He delights even more in infants who have never been conceived. He wants that nothingness laid at his feet. He seeks the absent babe with a greedy desire. He wants whole nations, or at least their identities, placed into a roiling cauldron in his temple, the distinctiveness of each melded and melted down so that he can gorge on a rich stew. He wants particular races ground into dust and the dust offered to him in silver bowls, and then the love of extended kinship will be replaced with the love of him. He wants joy beneath bright shining skyscrapers pointing upward. He insists on smiles, hugs, music with pumping rhythms and groaning. He wants quiet to end. He wants packed sports arenas cheering his praises. He wants you. He wants you to come and reverently offer him your individuality, to participate in sacred, cathartic orgies and to exchange your useless prayers for political slogans. He promises you happiness in this life always. But…

HAPPY NEW YEAR to readers of this site. May the upcoming year bring you many good things, and may you continue to take part in the happiness and holiness of the Christmas season.

We have a tradition here to celebrate this day by listening to selections from the Vienna Philharmonic’s famous annual New Year’s Day concert. The orchestra has held a concert each New Year’s Day since 1941. (Here is information about this year’s concert.)

During its 160-year history, the Wiener Philharmoniker, with its characteristic “Viennese Sound,” has been led by many of the greatest conductors and praised by famous composers such as Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler (who conducted it from 1898 to 1901)  and Richard Strauss. The waiting period for weekend ticket subscriptions is 13 years. The New Year’s concert, which always features Strauss waltzes and ends with this rousing version of Johann Strauss’s Radetzky March under the chandeliers of the Musikverein, decorated in recent years with huge displays of flowers from Vienna’s gardens and shops, is especially popular and is broadcast on PBS in this country.

Members of the orchestra have openly stated in the recent past that the ideal member of their ensemble is a Central European man. They have even gone so far as to state that the orchestra’s sound can only be achieved by musicians who possess the appropriate cultural “soul.”

The Philharmonic did not allow women to become full members until 1997. Between 1997 and 2010, a period during which many other orchestras became heavily female, it hired only three women. Paul Fürst, a violist, once stated in a documentary on women conductors:

There is no ban on women musicians playing here but the Vienna Philharmonic is by tradition an all-male orchestra. Our profession makes family life extremely difficult, so for a woman it’s almost impossible. There are so many orchestras with women members so why shouldn’t there be – for how long I don’t know – an orchestra with no women in it … A woman shouldn’t play like a man but like a woman, but an all-male orchestra is bound to have a special tone. [Wikipedia]

Perhaps when listening to this rousing march, you will agree that though it can be enjoyed by men and women, it is made for an all-male orchestra. Is that because women are “inferior” to men? What a ridiculous idea! Top musicians typically succeed partly because of the devotion, support and musical insight of their mothers and wives. Men have been inspired to play and create beautiful music by women. No, it is because men and women are different. Let us rejoice this year and always in the true diversity — not the multicultural, feminist glop — that God in His great wisdom gave us. Let us this year and always reject the modern campaign to impose a sterile homogeneity on mankind. (more…)

CHANTICLEER performs a French 18th-century shepherds’ carol set to music from John Gay’s Beggars Opera of 1778. The shepherds express wonder at the lovely fragrance of the angels. This is from Chanticleer’s outstanding 1994 CD, Sing We Christmas.

Quelle Est Cette Odeur Agréable

Quelle est cette odeur agréable,
Bergers, qui ravit tous nos sens?
S’exhale-t-il rien de semblable
Au milieu des fleurs du printemps?
Quelle est cette odeur agréable
Bergers, qui ravit tous nos sens?

Mais quelle éclatante lumière
Dans la nuit vient frapper nos yeux
L’astre de jour, dans sa carrière,
Fut-il jamais si radieux!
Mais quelle éclatante lumière
Dans la nuit vient frapper nos yeux. (more…)

  FROM Natural Family Planning and the Christian Moral Code by Jeanne Dvorak (Fr. Wathen Books, 2017), pp. 18, 52: I have a friend who had four girls and was in the sixth month of her fifth pregnancy when her husband was killed. The child was a boy, and when a visitor remarked to the mother how sad it was that the husband was not there, she replied, "He is right here in my son." What would that mother have wrought by the foolishness of family planning? She would have rejected one of God's greatest blessings in her life. What right has the finite mind of man to make decisions that affect human history and all eternity? Consider as well that there are many large families into which, for years, only boys were born. Finally, at the end, came a girl. Would these parents ever have known the joy of a baby girl at last, if family planning had been in progress and their string of children cut off, so to speak, "in the midst?" And the same can be said of those all-girl families, ending finally in a boy. All of us must remember that we made serious vows at Baptism. As a result and ever since, we have walked about daily under those solemn promises we made to always choose God's Will and renounce the devil and all his works and pomps --- of which birth control is one of the cleverest,…

MR. AND MRS. Timmey received the notice in the mail on December 31st, 2033, just as they were anxiously discussing whether to take Theo, their one-year-old son, to the Urgent Care Center for his worsening fever.

Mrs. Timmey opened the envelope. “Look at this!” she said. “It’s a summons from Family Court!”

The registered letter instructed the couple to appear in court in one week’s time.

“I can’t imagine what that is,” said Mr. Timmey. His mind was too taken up with the emergency at hand to give it much thought.

The following week, the couple dutifully appeared at the imposing structure on Fourth Avenue, carrying little Theo, still not completely recovered from his bronchitis. Tess and Tommy, their three-year-old and five-year-old, were with a friend. (more…)

  A COUPLE I know had their first child fairly late in their marriage. They had a daughter. The wife wanted to have one more child, but the husband refused to permit it. He was worried about money. They sent their daughter to one of the most expensive prep schools in the Northeast. She interacted there with children of top professionals. She ended up marrying a blue-collar guy from Texas the year after she graduated from college, and now lives many miles away from home. Another couple I know lost one of their two sons to sudden death when he was 12. Many years later, the loss remains fresh. Today, the loneliness of these couples is palpable. How many people experience wrenching loneliness, especially at Christmas time, because of the Sexual Revolution and the normalization of birth control? We can never know; the number is incalculably high. Loneliness is part of the human condition. Even those with many children experience it. But contraception has made it far more prevalent. In the years ahead as more children of the Sexual Revolution enter old age, their lives at times will be a grim counterpart to the hedonistic pleasures or pragmatic mentality of younger years. The best hope is that these often intense sufferings, offered with true contrition to a loving God, may constitute a form of reparation for the sins of a society desperately gone wrong. God offers abundant graces to those who…

  IT IS very hard to hear The Coventry Carol fresh because it is so often played and has become over-familiar, but it truly is a magnificent lament, inspired by King Herod's decree that all children under the age of two be murdered and Mary's foreknowledge of her Son's suffering. The terrific blog, Clerk of Oxford, offers some history of this medieval carol which has endured for roughly seven centuries: This is an exquisitely sad nativity song, a lullaby addressed to the baby Christ, but full of compassion and pain and regret for the suffering that the child will later undergo. It dates to the fourteenth century and comes from a manuscript compiled by a Franciscan friar, John of Grimestone. Is it too sad for Christmas? I wonder if the popularity of the Coventry Carol today indicates that it expresses something people don't find in the usual run of joyful Christmas carols - this song of grief, of innocence cruelly destroyed. Handel's Messiah is also sad in parts. I say they add just the right somberness to the joy of Christmas. The Coventry Carol Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child, By, by, lully, lullay. Lullay, thou little tiny Child, By, by, lully, lullay. O sisters too, how may we do, For to preserve this day This poor youngling for whom we do sing By, by, lully, lullay. Herod, the king, in his raging, Charged he hath this day His men of might, in his own sight,…

 AT CHRISTMAS and Easter time, I usually make a French potato gratin with Gruyère cheese. My brother-in-law and his family liked it so much that they asked for the recipe. At that time, Gruyère was not as widely available in supermarkets as it is today, so my brother-in-law went to a nice cheese store to buy it. Having never studied French, he was a bit nervous about pronouncing this strange word. He went in to the store and said, his face turning a deep red as he spoke, "Do you have gry-EER cheese?" The owner of the store, whom I'm sure knew exactly what cheese my brother-in-law meant, said no, he had never heard of it. My brother-in-law thanked him, turned to leave and, as he got to the door, the owner said, "Do you mean GROO-yair perhaps?" If only my brother-in-law had this video he would not have been so humiliated.  

  I WAS in a grocery store this morning and to my deep amazement there was choir music on the sound system. Why are choirs so appropriate to Christmas that even a retail chain switches from sickening Christmas pop to sacred songs on Christmas Eve? The choir gives us a sense, though a dim one, of the songs of angels, praising and glorifying God in heaven. Their songs are of indescribable joy. Can real sorrow ever invade the ranks of the Holy Angels? Never. Not a single pang of disappointment, or regret, or anxiety, or sadness, or self-reproach can ever enter into their sinless souls. They were fixed in unalterable joy, when they were confirmed in grace and admitted to the Beatific Vision. Their perfect union with the Divine will prevents them from regretting anything that God permits. (Source)