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THE fashion designer Coco Chanel (1883-1971) played a powerful role in changing women’s fashions. One of her most significant influences involved pants.

It is hard today, when most women wear pants all the time, to conceive of how revolutionary was this change, which allegedly began when she started wearing sailors trousers on the beach in the French Riviera. Up until the 1930s, women in the West universally wore dresses and skirts. If you look at photos of street scenes in those years, there are no women — none — in pants.

Chanel in 1928

Interestingly, Chanel later expressed regrets:

Although during the war women often had to wear trousers when working in traditionally male jobs, Chanel played a huge part in accelerating their popularity as a fashion item. While at the society beach resort of Deauville she chose to wear sailor’s pants instead of a swimming costume to avoid exposing herself, and the style spread quickly as her legions of followers emulated her. In the end, the designer regretted how her careless decision affected the course of fashion history. Aged 86 she said: “I came up with them by modesty.  From this usage to it becoming a fashion, having 70% of women wearing trousers at evening dinner is quite sad.” (Source)

The wearing of pants is almost universally considered today to be a form of liberation. But others, rarely quoted, maintained back then that it was a sign of a growing inferiority complex.

The skirt or dress was an emblem of a woman’s inherent dignity. Like a priest’s vestments, it had an almost ceremonial quality. Here are some early dresses designed by Chanel, who later popularized the more austere black dress:

The wearing of pants signified a desire to be like men. It represented an envy of men — and envy is always based in a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the envying one.

Guiseppe Cardinal Siri wrote in 1960 on the effects on the psychology of women in a pastoral letter:

Masculine clothing changes the psychology of women

In truth, the motive that impels women to wear the clothing of men is not always to imitate him, but rather to compete with the man who is considered stronger, less encumbered and more independent. This motivation shows clearly that masculine dress is a visible support to bring about a mental attitude of being ‘like a man.’ Further, since the existence of man, the clothing a person wears conditions, determines and modifies the gestures, attitudes and conduct of a person. Thus, just by its wearing, the clothing comes to impose a particular state of spirit in the person.

Permit us to add that a woman who always wears the clothing of men more or less indicates that she is reacting to her femininity as if it were inferior, when in fact it is only different. The perversion of her psychology is clearly evident.

These reasons, added to many others, are sufficient to warn us of how mistaken is the thinking of women who wear men’s dress.

Today it seems that women will always wear pants. But it is inevitable that they rediscover and take pride in the distinctiveness of femininity. Read More »

— Fr. Ronald Knox Read More »

S.K. writes:

Once again, you’ve touched on a powerful topic. Tattoos, which I am not in the slightest a fan of, are ubiquitous. I don’t like them on women especially; none at all. Find a woman (young, mature or even old) that doesn’t have at least three – if you can. I remember when they started becoming popular with all social classes in the 90’s. Prior to that I only noticed former military, bikers, hoodlums, etc., to have tattoos and even with them they were usually kept to a minimum of one and and kept out of sight. Then the yuppies, the college kids, everybody and their mother basically started getting tattoos.

You wrote:

“A young woman who sliced some bread I bought yesterday was wearing a nose ring. She seemed a nice, polite girl, but I wondered, was she afraid to seem ordinary? Why? Does she take some weird pleasure in shocking and repelling?”

She is mindlessly following her peer group, or she feels small in a big world and wants to signal that she is here too, and that she matters and should be paid attention too as well. I recently chatted up a lovely young woman that had a nose ring. I had not noticed it at first but once I did it sort of bothered me. She was so down-to-earth and sweet, and yet this thin strip of metal was jarring me. Read More »

THE OVER-USE of the expression “I love you” reduces its powerful meaning, writes Dr. Marian Horvat:

These words signify one of the highest and noblest sentiments of man. Love is an act of the will that indicates that he desires the best possible for the person who benefits from his affections and is willing to sacrifice himself for that end. Scriptures speaks splendidly of love as charity and poets make grandiloquent verses in its honor.

It used to be that these words, which have a deep significance, were not spoken lightly. They were reserved for very special occasions and said only for particular persons and relationships, parents and children, husbands and wives, etc. When the suitor first spoke them to the young lady he was courting, it was a moment to be remembered and cherished. Read More »

IN CASE YOU MISSED this story:

Abortion workers might have delivered babies alive and then killed them in order to harvest their body parts, the House Select Panel on Infant Lives revealed in an interim report on the one-year anniversary of the release of the Center for Medical Progress videos. Read More »

THE NOTION that all income must be earned is not just.

That’s because even earned income is a result of gifts that are unearned: natural resources and a cultural inheritance of technological innovations, law and language.

Everyone, by virtue of being human not by virtue of being a hard worker, is rightfully entitled to some monetary share of these gifts.

But how can such a thing be? Money can only be earned.

Not so. In a monetary system such as that proposed by Social Credit theorists, everyone receives some part of this communal legacy in the form of money. M. Oliver Heydorn explains it:

For ideological and no doubt political reasons, orthodox economics has tried to bury the gift, to exile it from the sphere of economics with the mantra, endlessly repeated like a form of Chinese water-torture, ‘There is no such thing as a free lunch!’

     In direct opposition to the teachings of economic orthodoxy, Social Credit theory affirms the existence of the ‘unearned increment of association’. In sober truth, the much maligned ‘free lunch’ is a reality that is operative in all spheres of activity with which we are familiar, including the act of production.

     Being, that is, reality or nature, is constructed in such a way then when two or more different elements are brought into the proper relationship or association with each, the power which these elements then have to be or to effect change in the world is greater than the mere sum of the component parts. That is, power or output can be multiplied by the apparent ‘magic’ of association, with the surplus (i.e., that which exceeds the isolated contribution of each element) supervening on the association as whole as a superabundant gift. The surplus is not the exclusive property of any one component, nor is it in any way earned by them. It is a something for nothing, or a free lunch.

     One of the simplest examples of the unearned increment of association is that of a lever. A lever is a mechanical device that consists in the association of a beam or plank with a fulcrum on which the beam may pivot. By applying force at one end of the beam, levers allow human beings to move weights on the other end with less effort than a direct application of force would require. The effort saved, or alternatively, the movement of an object that could not otherwise be achieved with the force on hand, is the unearned increment of association that accrues to the human being who is intelligent enough to make use of the lever. Read More »

Mourning Dove, Deschutes National Forest

FROM an essay by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, “Be Wise as Serpents and Simple as Doves:”

Harmonious in line, simple in color, graceful in its flight and movement, “affable” with other animals, pure and candid in its whole being, the dove has nothing in itself to suggest the idea of plunder, aggression, injustice, intemperance or impurity. It is, therefore, most appropriate that in the words of Our Savior, it is a symbol of innocence.

But it lacks something: the qualities that assures its survival in the struggle against adverse factors. Its perspicacity is minimal, its combativeness zero, its only defense is flight. That is why the Holy Spirit tells us, “Imbecile doves, without intelligence!” (Os 7: 11).

This reminds us of certain Catholics deformed by Romanticism, for whom virtue consists only and always in hiding, in submitting in receiving blows, in retreating, and in allowing themselves to be trampled underfoot.

*

How different is the serpent – aggressive, venomous, deceptive, astute and agile!

Elegant but repugnant, fragile enough to be crushed by a boy yet dangerous enough to kill a lion with its venom. His whole shape and way of moving is adapted for a veiled, treacherous and lightning fast attack. So bewitching that certain species mesmerize its victim but it emits and spreads an aura of terror. Thus it is the symbol of evil, with all the sorcery and all the treachery of the forces of perdition.

However in all this wickedness, what prudence! What cunning! Prudence is the virtue by which one employs the necessary means to reach the ends he has in sight. Cunning is one aspect, and in a certain sense, a quintessence of prudence, which maintains all discretion and employs every licit guise needed to arrive at an end. Everything in the serpent is cunning and prudent, from its penetrating gaze, its long, slender shape, and its terrible key weapon – a venom that pierces the victim’s skin through a single, small perforation and circulates throughout his entire body in a few moments.

Kitagawa Utamaro, 1788 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

BRITISH composer John Tavener (1944-2013) had “a profound sense of silence.” In his book Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music (read an excerpt here), Robert B. Reilly, who made this comment, says Tavener was one of three influential composers who have laid the atonality of modern music to rest. “The tyranny is now gone and tonality is back,” Reilly writes.

The words to Tavener’s choral composition, Mother and Child:

Mother and Child

Enamoured of its gaze
The mother’s gaze in turn
Contrived a single beam of light
Along which love may move.
Hail Maria!
Hail Sophia!
Hail Maria! Read More »

RETIRED MAJOR GEN. Albert Stubblebine, who died earlier this year, describes his gradual disillusionment with the official story of the events of Sept. 11, 2001 in this powerful video. He is one of many retired and active military members to challenge the story and the highest ranking military member to say publicly that the official story is not true.  Despite all his military experience, it was his wife who initially got him to see that something was not right.

Stubblebine was the commanding general of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command from 1981 to 1984. He graduated from the United States Military Academy and received a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Columbia University. He received the Bronze Star, a Distinguished Service Medal, two Legion of Merit medals and two Air medals. Beware of Internet disinformation suggesting Stubblebine is a kook.

He didn’t put all the pieces together but his knowledge was unfolding. The last few minutes of the video are moving as Stubblebine speaks of his intense patriotism.

[Note: I am not familiar with other statements Stubblebine may have made about 9/11. This is not an endorsement of all he may have said. Nor is it an endorsement of the simplistic idea that “the government did it.”]

NBC reports:

A husband and wife from Queens have pleaded guilty to enslaving two children from Korea, forcing them to do housework, provide massages, and turn over pay from outside jobs, prosecutors in New York said Wednesday.

The Flushing couple — 54-year-old Jeong Taek Lee and his wife, 50-year-old Sook Yeon Park — were charged on two counts of labor trafficking. Lee was sentenced to five months’ probation, while his wife faces six months in prison followed by five years’ probation.

Frances Gabe with a model of her house

DID you ever hear a plumber say, “I hate unblocking pipes. I hate it! I wish there was no such thing as the sewer line?”

Did you ever hear an electrician say, “I can’t stand wiring houses! Oh, I just hate electricity and wish it didn’t exist?”

Or how about a construction worker? Have you ever heard one say, “I hate nailing. I wish we all lived in grass huts so I didn’t have to nail anything together ever again?”

Probably not. For it is only the modern woman, under the influence of the Great Home-Hating Feminist Psy-Op, who goes about saying how much she hates, hates, hates the menial labor she has to do, as if she were a forest-clearing slave in the Siberian gulag rather than an independent domestic boss surrounded by nifty home-cleaning innovations that would be the envy of pre-industrial peasants.

Frances Gabe (1915-2016) was a housewife who detested and resented housework. She became especially ticked off when her children got fig jam on the walls. Jam on the walls! Oh, how boring, tedious and totally beneath the “educated” (or miseducated) woman! Gabe reportedly was so fed up that she decided to invent and build a self-cleaning house (we don’t know whether she tried to teach her children how to clean instead). She invented one over a long period. The result was entirely impractical and necessarily ugly due to the need to encase everything in plastic or other waterproof coverings to withstand cleaning from jets of water.

The self-cleaning house, though its invention certainly did involve hard work and creativity, has been consigned to the dustbin of useless creations. Mrs. Gabe, whose idea of a really clean house eventually meant one without her husband (she reportedly tossed him out), apparently did not have enough appreciation for the various objects made of fabric and wood that make a house beautiful (when not covered in plastic or resin) and prevent it from being the sort of thing that can be scoured with hoses. This appreciation might have helped her get through the tedium of cleaning or focus on a less ambitious invention.

The New York Times, in its extended eulogy of the maker of this ultimately useless invention, says she died recently in obscurity. (My condolences to her family.) This is not true. There are dozens of articles about Gabe. No one knows the names of many male inventors who made the appliances and little gadgets that make the housewife’s lot so much easier. I bet when Herbert Johnson, the inventor of the wonderful and very useful stand mixer, died, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times did not run lengthy obituaries.

But now many know the name of the woman who hated housework. May she rest in peace — and be someplace where everything is spic and span. If only ….

IF ONLY
— Fay Inchfawn

 If only dinner cooked itself,
And groceries grew upon the shelf;
If children did as they were told,
And never had a cough or cold;
And washed their hands, and wiped their
boots,
And never tore their Sunday suits,
But always tidied up the floor,
Nor once forgot to shut the door.

If John remembered not to throw
His papers on the ground. And oh!
If he would put his pipes away,
And shake the ashes on the tray
Instead of on the floor close by;
And always spread his towel to dry,
And hung his hat upon the peg,
And never had bones in his leg.

Then, there’s another thing. If Jane
Would put the matches back again
Just where she found them, it would be
A save of time to her and me.
And if she never did forget
To put the dustbin out; nor yet
Contrive to gossip with the baker,
Nor need ten thunderbolts to wake her.

Ahem! If wishes all came true,
I don’t know what I’d find to do,
Because if no one made a mess
There’d be no need of cleanliness.
And things might work so blissfully,
In time — who knows? — they’d not need
me!

And this being so, I fancy whether
I’ll go on keeping things together.

The two convicted criminals accusing “Cardinal” Pell (middle) Courtesy of TheMediaReport.com

THE “editorial board” of this website does not recognize the heretical, modernist Vatican II Church as the Catholic Church. But in the eyes of the world (and many sincere Catholics), it is the Catholic Church, and thus allegations of crimes by its clergy are publicly imputed to the Catholic Church. The media coverage of sex abuse charges, when that coverage is slanted or false, and the prosecution of false allegations, constitute a war against the Catholic Church.

The headlines recently announced that Australia’s “Cardinal” George Pell had been formally charged with “sexual assault.” This was a big, big story. People all over the globe were told, in so many words, that Pell was an evil scoundrel.  But in the first few days, the stories were uniformly and glaringly scanty on details, leaving the public to assume very ugly deeds. Here’s a typical story by ABC. It made note at the top that Pell was the “most senior Vatican cleric to ever be charged in the Roman Catholic Church.” The New York Times managed a lengthy, soberly-alarmed report with no mention of the actual events that allegedly occurred or anything about the accusers.

If it had been more explicit, readers might have been suspicious about why this story made top headlines. You see, the accusers are both criminals and the accusations do not involve actual sex acts but allegedly inappropriate touching under water in a swimming pool 40 years ago. All sex abuse of children is heinous and extremely serious. Let me repeat: sex abuse, including fondling, of children, is serious criminal activity. But these accusations of foul waterplay are highly suspicious. A full interview with the details left out by so many reports can be found here. Judge for yourself.

LYNDON MONUMENT: He’d play games like throw the kids out of the water, like, and you’d put your leg in his hands and he’d, “One, two, three,” and then he’d throw you out of the water. But it was only ever with boys.

DARREN MOONEY, FORMER ST. ALIPIUS STUDENT: There was never any girls flying off his shoulders or playing with him in the pool, it was always boys.

Monument says that Pell touched his private parts under the water. Damian Dignan says the cleric was very rough and grabbed him in the wrong places when he was throwing him in the water.

According to TheMediaReport.com, a website covering the sex abuse scandal as reported in the press: Read More »

A tattooed Tahitian

AMY writes:

I am a longtime blog reader and appreciate your unique website dearly. Your entries are always thoughtful and challenging, compelling me to ponder a multitude of important topics.

I was recently pursuing your archives on beauty after a rather shocking experience. I saw a facial tattoo in person for the very first time, and on a woman no less. Tattoos have always repulsed me but with their prevalence in our culture, they no longer shock me. This facial tattoo left me speechless and frankly I was thankful my young child was not present to witness this disturbing sight. It seems almost demonic to alter one’s face in such a way and I cannot begin to imagine what convince a person such a body modification is a good idea.

I’ve noticed body modifications of all kinds being more grotesque in recent years and am terribly disturbed to consider why these trends are happening. It seems to suggest a wicked bent in our culture, one wholly out of touch with all that is beautiful, good, and right. I loathe the idea that we must all accept such ugliness and pretend as if it’s a mere aesthetic choice and not indicative of something being very wrong.

What are your thoughts on the ever more disturbing tattoos and so-called “body modifications” that becoming frighteningly mainstream these days? Read More »

A Procession in the Catacomb of Callistus, Alberto Pisa; 1905

FROM Tumultuous Times: Twenty General Councils of the Catholic Church and Vatican II and its Aftermath by Fr. Francisco Radecki, CMRI and Fr. Dominic Radecki, CMRI (St. Joseph’s Media, 2004):

In 1534 St. Thomas More and a relatively small number of faithful Catholics refused to sign King Henry VIII’ s Oath of Supremacy because it amounted to a denial of the Catholic Faith. “If More had sworn the oath as it was presented to him. . . he would have concurred the forcible removal of the Pope’s jurisdiction and the effective schism of the Church in England. This he could not do, even at the cost of his life.”

When St. Thomas More stood before Parliament he was taunted by Audley, Duke of Norfolk:

‘Indeed, Master More, you wish to be held wiser than all the bishops, all the nobility, all the realm entire!’ It was the old sneer he had heard so often, and now he flung back challenge for challenge in a voice ringing with the glory of belonging to Christ’s Mystical Body. ‘My lord, for one bishop of your opinion I have a hundred saints of mine; for one Parliament of yours, and God knows of what sort, I have all the General Councils of a thousand years; for one kingdom I have all the Kingdoms of Christendom! ’

Unafraid of the violent death awaiting him, the saint joked with the executioner as he mounted the rickety scaffold: “I pray you, sir, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.”

More’s last words portrayed his deep faith and courage: “I am dying in the faith and for the faith of the Catholic Church, the king’s good servant and God’s first.”

It would be a mistake to claim that traditional Catholicism is false simply because it is not what most people now believe.  … [T]he Catholic Church is distinguished by the purity of its doctrine, not defined by the number of followers. In the fourth century, such multitudes of the faithful were seduced by the Arian heresy, that it appeared to be Catholicism’s great defender “(St.) Athanasius against the world.”

Catholicism is not defined by the possession of church buildings. During the sixteenth century hundreds of Catholic churches were occupied by “Catholic” priests who were, in fact, subtly replacing the true Faith with Protestantism. Catholicism is not guaranteed by those who bear titles of authority; during the Western Schism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, several of the men who bore the title of “pope” were not popes at all.

The New Church created by Vatican II is not the Catholic Church. Because its “popes” are illegitimate, there is no moral obligation to follow such men or their new religion. On the contrary, we are obliged to follow the doctrines handed down by  Christ and His Apostles and to avoid this New Church as we would any other false religion. Read More »