SHE MOVED THRO’ THE FAIR

My young love said to me “My mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kine”
And she stepped away from me and this she did say
“It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.”

She stepped away from me and she went thro’ the fair
And fondly I watch’d her move here and move there
And then she went homeward with one star awake,
As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.

The people were saying no two e’er were wed
But one has a sorrow that never was said
And she smiled as she passed me with her goods and her gear
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.

I dreamed it last night that my true love came in
So softly she entered, her feet made no din
She came close beside me and this she did say,
“It will not be long love till our wedding day.”

[There are numerous versions of this old Celtic song. The lyrics above are somewhat different from the song in the video.] Read More »

The Wedding March, Theodore Robinson; 1892

FROM More than Many Sparrows: A Practical Guide to Christian Living by Fr. Leo J. Trese (Fides Publishers Association, 1958):

In planning the human race God did a most gracious thing. He chose to make mankind partners with Him in His work of creation; partners in the very highest of His works of physical creation: in the fashioning of human life. God did not have to create us male and female. He could have provided for the perpetuation of the human race in many other ways. He could have made us a sexless race of beings, Himself creating each body individually as He does now create each soul individually.

In His infinite goodness, however, God did choose to share with us His own creative power. Man, woman and God; these three would be partners. By an act of profound love which would express the complete giving of themselves to one another, man and woman would initiate the new human body into which God would infuse the new spiritual soul. This would be parenthood, in which the paternal strength and providence of God and the maternal tenderness and patience of God would be reflected by diffraction in human mother and father.

The dignity of parenthood is enhanced by a further privilege accorded by God. Father and mother are not only to be partners of God in the creation of a new human life, they also are to be His partners in the nurturing of the child’s spiritual soul. Parents not only will be the procreators of children, they also will be the makers and molders of saints. Under the warmth of their love for each other and the child, this new soul will unfold and flower with the sanctity willed for it by God. Through the love of His parents for him, the child will learn what it means to be loved by God; through his own love for his parents the child will learn what it means to love the God Who gave them to him. Through the prayers and the example of the parents, God will channel His graces to the child. Not merely to people the earth with humans, but to people heaven with saints; this is the ultimate meaning of parenthood.

The sexual drive underlies all this and is a part of the total gift of marital love and (when God so wills) parenthood. Original sin destroyed the perfect control which reason was to have exerted over it, as over other human drives. But no amount of misuse and abuse can destroy the beauty and holiness of God’s gift of sex.

Moloch and his Minions, engaging in child sacrifice

NOT ALL female athletes suffer from fertility problems.

Dr. Eowyn writes at Fellowship of the Minds:

This is a companion post to DCG’s post this morning on U.S. gold medalist runner Sanya Richards-Ross’ confession that she had an abortion one day before she left for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and her even more startling admission that every female athlete she knows has had abortions — “I literally don’t know another female track-and-field athlete who hasn’t had an abortion”.

That “every” female athlete has had abortions strains credulity in our age of widespread knowledge of birth control and availability of contraceptives. [TH: Actually, abortion and contraception are part of the same social phenomenon.]

What Richards-Ross doesn’t tell you in her autobiographical book that she’s hawking, Chasing Grace, is that female athletes deliberately get pregnant (and then abort) in order to boost their athletic performance. The practice is called blood doping.

WebMD explains that blood doping is an illicit method of improving athletic performance by artificially boosting the blood’s ability to bring more oxygen to muscles via increasing the amount of the amount of hemoglobin — an oxygen-carrying protein — in the bloodstream. The increase in hemoglobin allows higher amounts of oxygen to reach and fuel an athlete’s muscles, thereby improving stamina and performance, particularly in long-distance events, such as running and cycling.

Blood doping is banned by the International Olympic Committee and other sports organizations. Read More »

Women’s golf, Iowa State University, 1940s

AMERICAN colleges in the late 19th and early 20th centuries believed that women should pursue physical fitness in a distinctly feminine way. Today, in the age of Title IX, this approach is detested as “inequality.” However, at that time, a woman was believed to have great influence on the world around her through her grace, charm, modesty and refinement. She was being groomed for an influential role in society, but one radically different from the utilitarian role women are groomed for today.

As one example, I offer this history of physical education and sports for women at Iowa State University. Female students were at one point taught what was known as “Swedish gymnastics,” a program of calisthenics developed by a poet laureate of Sweden.

In-class work was described in the 1909 General Catalog:

“The Swedish System of gymnastics, including marching tactics, calisthenics, and apparatus work is taught.  The highest ideals are kept constantly before the mind, not only in health and strength but ease, grace, and refinement in manner and carriage of the body.” Read More »

IN THE past, the belief that highly strenuous exercise compromised the health and fertility of women was common and led to efforts to encourage women to pursue less demanding athletic activity, such as tennis, field hockey, calisthenics, and archery.

This belief, frequently ridiculed in the age of feminism, has been vindicated with time (the view that women should engage in no vigorous exercise has not.)

The “Female Athlete Triad” is a growing concern.  From Runner’s World: Read More »

David Wilcox, a Trump supporter, was beaten in Chicago in November.

TRUMP VOTERS have been punched, knocked to the ground, dragged from their cars and now, in the wake of a shooting of five at a Congressional ball game yesterday by a Bernie Sanders supporter, shot. (A partial list of other attacks can be found here.)

Just ‘Google,’ “Trump supporter attacked” and “Hillary voter attacked” and you will grasp which side of the political divide is violent.

IT HAS no practical function and can be quite uncomfortable. It is a symbol of dignity and respect for the job or activity of the wearer. And visually, it is a focal point that directs the gaze to the shoulders and upper torso, conveying an impression of strength.

Kaede Lire reflects on the vanishing necktie at Tradition in Action.

The man in a tie is a figure of respect. The man in a T-shirt is a boy.

St. Anthony of Padua; Francisco Zurbaran

Responsory to St. Anthony of Padua

If miracles thou fain would see;
Lo! error, death, calamity,
The Leprous stain, the demon flies,
From beds of pain the sick arise.

              Refrain
The sea withdraws and fetters break,
And withered limbs he doth restore;
While treasures lost are found again,
When young or old his help implore. Read More »

A NATIONALIST organization in India teaches women to be militant and feminine:

“We teach the girls to be fully empowered and equipped – that is, physically, mentally and spiritually strong, so that a girl is capable of protecting herself and is able to guard her country, its traditions, its sanskriti and its languages. The Samiti instills pride for the nation in her.”

[…]

The Samiti informs the girls that becoming good mothers is important, since it is the woman who is responsible for sculpting the nature of her child. “Maata nirmata bhaviti hai, ma chahe toh nar se Narayan bana sakti hai, ma chahe toh vidhwansak bana sakti hai.” (A mother is the ultimate creator. If she wants, she can bring up her child to be a saint or a destroyer).

ANNA F. writes:

I like your blog very much, especially your posts on modesty. It is refreshing to read your writings on various topics because you display the common sense that is sorely lacking in world today! Well, most people might think what you say is outrageous but it would have been accepted as obvious truths 100 years ago. Right? I hope so.

Originally, I came across your blog from googling Solange Hertz’s name. She is my favorite author and I have read many of her books and your writing reminds me of her.

Anyway, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Read More »

Read More »

JUDE DUFFY writes at Fitzpatrick Informer that the immigration problem in Ireland is worse than that in Germany, France, the UK and Sweden and yet receives little attention:

On O’Connell Steet, Dublin city centre’s main thoroughfare, foreigners often outnumber native Irish at a rate of well over 100 to one. The official figures say migrants account for around 15 per cent of the Irish population—much higher than in most European countries, but still a huge underestimate.

These days you can drive from the centre of Dublin to its northern inner suburbs without seeing one white Irish pedestrian en route. Schools in many parts of Dublin have almost no white Irish pupils, and convenience stores, restaurants and supermarkets are staffed overwhelmingly by south Asians, Africans, Chinese and Eastern Europeans. Last year Merkel and her fellow Rotchshild shills opened the gates of continental Europe to millions of “refugees”, but successive Irish governments had beaten them to it by about 20 years. From the mid-1990s onwards, Ireland welcomed hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the globe. This process accelerated rapidly from the mid 2000s onwards—to the point where foreigners now form a majority in many localities.

[…]

For many Irish men, the ultimate statement of their masculinity is not pride in their country, but a nerdishly obsessive devotion to English soccer teams like Manchester United or Chelsea. They exemplify the cultural phenomenon I call the “macho mangina”: those men who have no stomach for defying the Feminist-thought cops and national suicide engineers, and who, instead, overcompensate by adopting a lifestyle the corporate crass media, with clear diversionary intent, sets before them as “manly” – e.g., obsessive interest in sport, cars, alcohol, heavy metal, porn, etc.

King Solomon

FROM AN excellent essay by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira at Tradition in Action:

There are men who correspond to grace and fulfill their vocations dragging whole historical eras with them or there are others whose sins have analogous consequences. They unleash dynamisms, they bring together charges of energy that were dispersed, make them surge forward.

[…]

We can also see this dynamism in the roles God assigns to peoples in History. It is very beautiful to see when a dynamism enters a people and illuminates it from within; henceforth everything that people does takes on a special brilliance. This can be a natural, supernatural or preternatural phenomenon. As a consequence of that dynamism, a people become splendorous.

In the Old Testament, this happened with the Chosen People in the golden phase of its history, that is, during the kingships of David and Solomon. The episode of the Queen of Sheba traveling from afar to see King Solomon was a repercussion of the brilliance of the vocation God had given to the whole people that shone especially in him.

In the history of the New Testament, the French people received a similar grace of predilection at the baptism of Clovis, when France became the first-born daughter of the Church.

The history of a people is in many ways the history of this splendor that dwells in it. At a certain point, however, that splendor begins to diminish, as it did in France after the French Revolution. Either someone reignites that splendor or the dynamism fades and nothing goes forward anymore. These are some samples of the mysterious crescendos and decrescendos of History.

This is a general view of what I consider the deepest layer of reality with an indication of the roles played by the natural, supernatural and preternatural in it.

Liber Custumarum, 1321-25

WHAT is the world’s most famous false shepherd up to now? Ah, yes. He’s come out with another whopper: God needs man and cannot possibly get along without him.

Now don’t go telling me that we can ignore or defy the teachings of a real pope and only on rare occasions listen up when he makes a solemn pronouncement. No, sir-ee. Catholics cannot be anti-papists. We are obliged to approach with a spirit of submission and obedience the ordinary teachings of the Pope and this is but one of many examples of the outrageous errors of this arch-blasphemer and fake.

LYDIA SHERMAN writes:

A year ago I began a correspondence with one of my grandchildren, who is now ten years old and home-schooled. We both created little hand drawn catalogs of goods and services for each other, including ordering forms, for things like handmade books, paintings, wildflower seeds, newsletter subscriptions, home baked goods and anything that could be sent by post or used for bed and breakfast service in each other’s homes. Read More »

Summer Duck, Mark Catesby (1722-26)

MARK CATESBY (1682-1749) spent four years exploring and documenting the wildlife of the Carolinas, Florida, and the Bahamas. His extraordinary watercolors are the result.