Therese, aged 15

MODERN SOCIETY exalts efficiency and expertise over wisdom and holiness.

That’s why a woman such as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux could not easily be produced by our age.

St. Thérèse, born in 1873 France, lived only to the age of 24, and the last years of her life were spent in a cloistered convent, but she has nevertheless had a powerful influence on millions of people.

Her spiritual doctrine is so simple that, at first glance, it seems like nothing. Only on close examination does one find its profundity.

Thérèse, charmingly known as the Little Flower, believed the path to heaven lay in recognizing one’s littleness and doing everything, the smallest action — especially those which are painful or annoying — out of love for God. Not everyone is called to heroism, but all of us are called to endurance and confidence. The small matters of life can be transformed into acts of love. These have eternal ramifications for ourselves and others. Thérèse offers an antidote to the quest for man-centered utopia and the drugs of contemporary psychology, which she turns completely on its head, directing human actions upward and leaving nothing, no suffering, that is without great purpose and resolution.

Here on the feast day of this remarkable woman is food for thought from her letters and her book Story of a Soul:

“‘Remaining little’ means—to recognise one’s nothingness, to await everything from the Goodness of God, to avoid being too much troubled at our faults; finally, not to worry over amassing spiritual riches, not to be solicitous about anything. Even amongst the poor, while a child is still small, he is given what is necessary; but, once he is grown up, his father will no longer feed him, and tells him to seek work and support himself. Well, it was to avoid hearing this, that I have never wished to grow up, for I feel incapable of earning my livelihood, which is Life Eternal!”

…

By telling us that a single hair can work this wonder, He shows us that the smallest actions done for His Love are those which charm His Heart. If it were necessary to do great things, we should be deserving of pity, but we are happy beyond measure, because Jesus lets Himself be led captive by the smallest action. . . .

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I have definitely schooled readers of this site in the art of manipulated news enough for them to reject, or be extremely skeptical of, reports that 58 people were killed, and some 200 wounded, Sunday night at a country music concert in Sin City, capital of organized crime and the perfect setting for another criminal and treasonous mass hoax. We cannot know all that transpired, but we can know that this is extremely fishy. Trump has paid his dues and now it is time for the deception artists in the government, police and controlled media to let loose, as they did under Obama.

How can we tell that this was another orchestrated effort to create mass fear, panic and distraction? Let’s list a few reasons:

*** The absolute implausibility of anyone quickly killing that many people from the 32nd floor. Most experienced soldiers, acting alone, could not have that kind of instant kill rate, let alone a 64-year-old retired accountant at such a distance. [Update: See this report on the physical impossibility of it. Were there multiple gunmen?] In order to kill someone instantly with a gun, in this day of advanced medicine, you have to hit him right in the head or the chest.

*** The implausibility of the scenes depicted on camera, which show no real carnage, no real gunshot wounds and just lots of people running and screaming. Do you have any idea what a scene in which 58 people have been shot dead and 200 wounded looks like? Sorry to be specific, but there would be blood, intestines, and brains everywhere, not dribbles of what appeared to be red tempura paint. I await that evidence, and suspend final judgment until it appears, as sad as it would be. The grisly scene, featuring heads blown apart and chest cavities ripped open, would have been captured by dozens of smart phones. Real life is not a movie. Read More »

BISHOPS of the Vatican II Church corrupt Scripture to justify unlimited illegal immigration.

Interestingly, they have a huge financial incentive to support open borders. See more at One Peter Five.

Portrait of a Widow at her Devotions, Leandro Bassano

GRANDMA’S ROSARY AND MINE

When Grandma goes to say her Beads
For all our family and our needs,
She sweetly says to me: “My dear,
Play nicely with your dollies here
Until I call. Then come to me,
And bring your little Rosary.”
I help her (Grandma says it’s true)
With Aves ten, when she’s most through.

She lays her hand, her gentle way,
Upon my head. “When children pray,”
She says, “The guardian angels take
The whispered Aves, and they make
(They do, indeed, right then and there)
The loveliest rosebud of each prayer:
Some rosebuds white, some rosebuds red,—
Red as the lips the Aves said.
Then, with the posy, off they fly,
Those happy angels, to the sky.”

And all that Grandma says is true
I see it in her eyes—so blue
And clear and deep and kind—
That look right into mine, and find
Those thoughts that can not see a way
To get out in the words I say.

I see her sitting over there
In her old-fashioned rockingchair,—
The place (so I’ve heard father say)
She taught her babies how to pray.
And now the rosy altar light
(She keeps it burning day and night)
Sends rays that give the softest kiss
To her gray head — like this and this.

— C.M.C.

“In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet [Isaiah] to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.” Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job, in fact, he had asked for it, but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so, if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start, was there any sense in starting it? “Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.”

—– Albert Jay Nock, 1936

ALAN writes:

What Jacob Hornberger wrote  [“Iraq and the National Security State”, Sept. 21] about the radical expansion of government power after World War II is right on the mark.

I expressed a similar judgment in part two of my essay looking back fifty years [the first part of which was “When I Was Seventeen”, Sept. 12].  Here is the second part:

FIFTY YEARS AGO  (Part Two)

         “The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments,” said George Washington.

The current fake “war on terrorism” is a prime example.  The Vietnam War was another.

In 1967, when I watched the nightly Huntley-Brinkley news report on NBC television, I had the impression I was living in never-never land.  I hated the Communists, had no sympathy for “Hanoi Jane” Fonda and her crowd, but I also opposed any involvement of Americans in the Vietnam War.  I was more appalled by the “Conservatives” than by the “Liberals”.  Exactly what are the “Conservatives” conserving?, I wanted to know.  They failed to keep tens of thousands of Americans alive at home instead of dead in Southeast Asia.  I should respect such people?

The Vietnam War offered a classic example of the false alternative:  In one camp were the hippies, the “students”, and the “Liberals”.  In the other camp were the hard hats and the “Conservatives”.  I thought neither camp had the slightest claim to credibility.

Nor was I a pacifist.  If any part of my nation was attacked, I would gladly have seen the attackers annihilated.

But what Americans were doing in Vietnam was something very different.  I favored self-defense; I opposed self-immolation. Read More »

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MARRIAGE “EXPERTS” are often frustrated by the fact that “the uneducated” just don’t get it.

Ordinary people who will never be lawyers or human resource directors, and may even only be able to finish a mere 13 years of schooling (horrors!), just don’t get the Modern Marriage Rules. Here is the path to a happy marriage and family, promoted by the marriage “experts:

— Go to an overpriced institution of “higher education” to get a degree.

— Devote years of peak fertility to career-building.

— Then and only then, after secure in a well-paid and satisfying job, find a loving and devoted spouse.

— Then and only then, have a baby.

The uneducated won’t do all this. Despite enlightened instruction from marriage experts and enough cheap contraceptives to prevent human birth altogether, they move in with a “fiancé or “fiancée” and have children at a way too early age and without marriage or their eternal salvation secured by a good job. Are these people stupid, or what? How many times do we have to repeat the words, “condom” and “abortion,” “college” and “career,” before these idiots catch on? Do they actually like working at McDonalds to support their ill-timed brats? 

Well, let’s not put it that way. Let’s just say, um, “marriage has become a mark of privilege:”

Just over half of adolescents in poor and working-class homes live with both their biological parents, compared with 77 percent in middle- and upper-class homes, according to the research brief, by W. Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies. Thirty-six percent of children born to a working-class mother are born out of wedlock, versus 13 percent of those born to middle- and upper-class mothers.

The research brief defined “working class” as adults with an adjusted family income between the 20th and 50th percentiles, with high school diplomas but not bachelor’s degrees. Poor is defined as those below the 20th percentile or without high school diplomas, and the middle and upper class as those above the 50th percentile or with college degrees. Read More »

AMERICAN football fans have reacted with justified outrage to the anti-white bigotry and anti-police hate campaign of spoiled black NFL players. Too bad, though, that Mr. Patriotic American subverts so much of his protest energy and team spirit into watching these gladiators in the first place.

Mike King at The Anti-New York analyses the football protests and Trump’s criticism of players who refused to stand for the national anthem:

Trumpstein’s declaration of war and call for a boycott on the NFL & NBA represent a classic case of a clever politician doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. With his conservative / nationalist core constituencies shrinking due to his tiresome buffoonery, leftward movement and broken promises, this calculated move to fire-up the patriotard base may turn out to be a stroke of political genius for Ivanka’s daddy. Though Sugar and I, er, “The Editorial Board” of The Anti-New York Times can see right through the Orange Clown’s tactical trickery, any damage done to the National Felons League will come as a welcome side-effect. Read More »

SOME important facts about North Korea are highlighted in this video. (Sorry for the one vulgarity.)

MANY who fled Syria have returned. But few Christians have gone home to war-torn Iraq:

In a World Watch Monitor article, human-rights lawyer and genocide expert Ewelina Ochab made this conclusion after interviewing Christians from Iraq who had fled to Kurdistan or become refugees in Jordan: She stated that Iraqi Christians have faced persecution since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003. Christians were blamed for the invasion, and in the ensuing chaos, various Islamic extremists destroyed their churches, stole their homes and drove them out of the nation to either northern Iraq (Kurdistan), Jordan or Lebanon.

In the article, Ochab was quoted as saying that the reality for Syria is different because “Assad is perceived as the defender of Christian minorities.” She went on to say that, “Many Syrian Christians worry that once Assad is gone, they will face the same fate as Iraqi Christians suffered after Saddam Hussein’s fall.” [Source]

CALL ME JORGE writes:

Where’s the ADL of B’nai B’rith?

And the Southern Poverty Law Center?

Have you seen national news coverage, evening after evening of the growing anti-Catholicism in the United States?

FROM A COMMENTER at Real Jew News:

The main reason the Jew[ish] media praises Obama but reviles Trump is because Obama is black and Trump is white. Satan’s Zionist Jews are trying to replace the traditional old white Christian order of the world with their Jew World Order.

The Jews set up puppets and front men such as Obama and Trump with the intent to portray the Black puppet in the best possible ways and portray the White puppet in the worst possible ways. Jews do this with sports, movies, news stories, and the rest of the media also, not just politics only.

Jews are trying to destroy Christian power, influence, and traditions. Satan and his children, the Zionist Jews, view white Christians as the only substantial obstruction to their Jew World Order. Satan and his children hate white people most because Christian culture spread from Europe to North America, Australia, South America, islands in the oceans, and most of the rest of the world.

From Satan’s viewpoint, it’s the fault of white people that Christianity spread out to the rest of the world. So Satan and his Jews vilify Republicans, white Christian politicians, to weaken and destroy white people along with their Christian religion. Satan and his Jews made lots of progress in destroying Christianity over the last hundred years. Read More »

FROM RON PAUL’S weekly column:

The descent of US/North Korea “crisis” to the level of schoolyard taunts should be remembered as one of the most bizarre, dangerous, and disgraceful chapters in US foreign policy history.

President Trump, who holds the lives of millions of Koreans and Americans in his hands, has taken to calling the North Korean dictator “rocket man on a suicide mission.” Why? To goad him into launching some sort of action to provoke an American response? Maybe the US president is not even going to wait for that. We remember from the Tonkin Gulf false flag that the provocation doesn’t even need to be real. We are in extremely dangerous territory and Congress for the most part either remains asleep or is cheering on the sabre-rattling.

Now we have North Korean threats to detonate hydrogen bombs over the Pacific Ocean and US threats to “totally destroy” the country.

We are told that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is a “madman.” That’s just what they said about Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, and everyone else the neocons target for US military action. We don’t need to be fans of North Korea to be skeptical of the war propaganda delivered by the mainstream media to the benefit of the neocons and the military industrial complex. Read More »

A must-read review by John Pilger of the new Ken Burns epic on the Vietnam War:

In the series’ press release in Britain — the BBC will show it — there is no mention of Vietnamese dead, only Americans. “We are all searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy,” Novick is quoted as saying.  How very post-modern.

All this will be familiar to those who have observed how the American media and popular culture behemoth has revised and served up the great crime of the second half of the twentieth century: from The Green Berets and The Deer Hunter to Rambo and, in so doing, has legitimised subsequent wars of aggression.  The revisionism never stops and the blood never dries. The invader is pitied and purged of guilt, while “searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy”. Cue Bob Dylan: “Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?” Read More »

THE audio system in the operating room was playing “Build Me Up, Buttercup” when I was wheeled in on Friday to have my broken wrist repaired.

I’m sure you have encountered this song, which was a big hit in that fateful year of 1968. If you have forgotten how supremely annoying it is, the video above will remind you. But be careful. Once you hear it, it may be difficult to get rid of it for the rest of the day, like bubblegum stuck on the bottom of your shoe. This is the kind of song that interrogators should play over and over when they are trying to get someone to divulge secret information. Torture should be unnecessary.

Fortunately, I fell asleep and the operation went well.

But it made me realize anew how bad the compulsory noise has gotten. The ugly music we hear everywhere has now invaded operating rooms too. We are a captive audience. We cannot close our ears. Many of the quasi-lewd rock songs in stores and offices feature a man or woman expressing resentment that he or she is not getting enough action. They all serve as advertising jingles. They are meant to get your juices flowing, so that you literally lose your reason and buy things you don’t need, but I also believe in a higher sinister plan to overwhelm the human mind with so much junk that it barely exists anymore. Perhaps the point of this music at a surgery center is to prevent you from, God forbid, feeling anxious or momentarily serious, but the point — by some crafty agents somewhere — is also to continue the ongoing demolition of the mind and soul.

The devil is fond of noise and sells these soundtracks by the millions. He is a big fan of The Foundations. That God created something so sweet and profound as silence truly ticks him off, but we can always celebrate its existence, even when we are prisoners to noise pollution.

Thank you to those who sent me get-well notes the last few days. I appreciate your concern. The recovery has been tough, with pain, swelling, weakness and grogginess, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

The surgery center did its best to make it a “fun” experience. Read More »