TO THE VIRGIN

— by Edgar Allen Poe

At morn, at noon, at twilight dim,
Maria, thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe, in good and ill,
Mother of God, be with me still!

When the hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and
thee.

Now when storms of Fate o’ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine.

A BRIEF history of Tulip Mania and the subsequent crash in prices in 17th century Holland.

A COMMENT by Wallace Klink at the Clifford Hugh Douglas Institute:

Human energy is a diminishing factor of production in the modern economy, where it is being rapidly replaced by technology providing enormously greater efficiency. We must abandon the anachronistic, unrealistic and false moralistic position that access to consumer goods is only or primarily justified by direct participation by individuals in production processes. The logical conclusions to be drawn from this erroneous and dogmatic belief are that the end of man is either endless manufacture of goods and services, regardless of actual need or desire, or that efficiency is to be abjured as something evil or undesirable. Both positions are an obvious fatal impediment to the flowering of anything worthy of being called Civilization.

Crucifixion of St. Peter, Caravaggio; 1600

See more Karaoke “Catholicism,” if you have the stomach for it (barf bag strongly advised), here. And, please, be careful on the roads! You never know what dangerous cornballs might be in the next lane.

HEATHER writes:

My five-year-old son was recently diagnosed with Asperger’s. One of the red flags noted by his speech therapist, and then by the psychologist who diagnosed him, is that he “can’t play pretend.” By this they mean playing with dolls or action figures, coming up with a spontaneous little script. It’s true, he does find this difficult, especially with unfamiliar adults. With me, he can, but it’s never a spontaneous experience. I didn’t notice for years because he can spontaneously play pretend in so many other ways – he can pretend to cook, pretend a stuffed animal is a pet, pretend he’s an explorer, firefighter, or fur trapper, pretend his bed is a ship, etc. He can play with other children in these ways too. I never had to teach him any of this. But in a clinical setting he’s unsure of what to do with dolls, and labeled with “can’t play pretend.”

I don’t dispute his diagnosis, and I acknowledge that playing pretend with dolls can really help his speech and social skills (although drawing cartoon situations seems to work better for him). Read More »

HOLOCAUSTIANITY is the de facto state religion of Western society, says Michael Hoffman, who is not a “Holocaust denier” in the sense commonly used, i.e. someone who denies that many thousands of Jews suffered and died in labor camps in Germany.

FROM a collection of prayers, for children (and adults):

Indulgence of 300 days. Raccolta. 452

WATCH John F. Kennedy’s speech at American University in 1963, in which he said:

“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war–and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament–and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude–as individuals and as a Nation–for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward–by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.”

YEAH, that’s right all you hawks. Justice for Libya is long overdue. John Wight writes:

Though it may have slipped off the radar of global consciousness, Libya’s central importance when it comes a region that has been mired in conflict and chaos over the past few years cannot be overstated. The country’s destruction and societal collapse will forever stand as a withering indictment of Western foreign policy towards the region and NATO’s role, not as a defender of democracy, peace, and stability, but as an instrument of Western imperial power. The savage murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at the hands of a NATO-supported mob in October 2011 was a ghastly and despicable crime, one that stands comparison with the legal lynching of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2006. Read More »

GERMAN philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was not right about everything, but he was right about truth when he said:

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.”

COLLEGES once created an environment in which women could learn and preserve themselves for marriage or another serious vocation. That environment depended on strict rules and recognized that 18-year-olds do not always possess good judgment. This author believes these rules were “absurd.” I guess she prefers drunken hook-ups and campus rape. She writes:

Though these rules existed at both men’s and women’s schools (see Spelman below), the concept of in loco parentis became almost ubiquitous between the 1940s and 1960s, when formerly all-male schools slowly opened their doors to women and the need to keep a strict eye on the sexes and maintain women’s propriety became the primary focus of school administrators. Thus, while male students were allowed to dress as they pleased, study where they pleased, move off campus, drink, smoke, and throw parties, female students were subjected to strict curfews and dress codes, constant monitoring and supervision, and harsh punishment for even the most minor violations of these endless rules.

Anyone with common sense and a few archival photos can see that college women have undergone a dramatic loss in dignity.

The Virgin And Child Surrounded By Four Angels, Master of the Castello Nativity

BLESSED are you, O Virgin Mary, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth.
 

 
Image courtesy of It’s About Time blog.

THE CASE OF BARRONELLE STULTZMAN, the Christian florist who was sued by two “marrying” homosexual men and the Washington State Attorney General because she would not create a floral arrangement for their “wedding,” is going to the U.S. Supreme Court. This video tells her story.

BELLINI, Giovanni; Four Allegories: Falsehood (or Wisdom) c. 1490

There is but one evil, and that is sin. This evil has many different paths by which it approaches us. These paths are called temptations. It is true that of themselves temptations can not injure us. On the contrary, Holy Writ says: “Blessed is the man that endureth, for when he hath been proved he shall receive the crown of life, which God hath promised to them that love Him.” All depends upon our withstanding them, and to be able to do this we must heed the admonition of Christ, we must watch and especially guard ourselves against those temptations through which Satan most frequently approaches man.

— Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger, 1896; Source

JORGE BERGOGLIO, the Man Who Would Be Pope, loves to be interviewed. On his latest interview, Novus Ordo Watch wrote recently:

[S]ome time ago, German journalist Alexander Kissler referred to Francis as a “U.N. Secretary General with a pectoral cross.” That is a pretty apt description of Mr. Bergoglio, except that even his pectoral cross leaves a lot to be desired, as it looks more like a bottle opener than anything else — although it is a fitting reflection of the man’s shoddy theology.

In essence, there is nothing that Francis says that couldn’t just as well be affirmed by a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian, a Jain, a Wiccan, an agnostic, or an atheist. One day people will figure out that if that is the case, nobody needs a “Pope”, a “Catholic Church”, or even a great variety of religions — they could all just come together under one false “Messiah” who preaches fraternity, dignity, and solidarity.

Clarence Johnson, Back Road to Carversville

BOND AND FREE

— Robert Frost

Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about—
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world’s embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.

Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius’ disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.

His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star.

PEOPLE ARE NOT ALWAYS aware of their own hopelessness. That’s bad. Modern philosophy offers them no hope whatsoever, but to be unconscious of this state of hopelessness is worse than being distracted from it.

Frank Sheed, a mid-20th century author who had a brilliant way of summing up complicated phenomenon, wrote in his 1946 book Theology and Sanity:

An unhappy generation has of necessity to distract itself from its own emptiness. Since the beginning of the world, men have sought distraction in sin; our own world has found a further distraction, special to itself, in science. Take science first. It is incredible how long science has succeeded in keeping men’s minds off their fundamental unhappiness and its own very limited power to remedy their fundamental unhappiness. One marvel follows another— electric light, gramophone, motor car, telephone, radio, aeroplane, television. It is a curious list, and very pathetic. The soul of man is crying for hope or purpose or meaning; and the inventor says “Here is a telephone,” or “Look, television!”— exactly as one tries to distract a baby crying for its mother by offering it sugar sticks and making funny faces at it. The leaping stream of invention has served extraordinarily well to keep man occupied, to keep him from remembering that which is troubling him. He is only troubled. His sense of futility he has never got round to analysing. But he is half strangled by it.

Sheed, Frank (2015-03-17). Theology and Sanity (Illustrated) (Kindle Locations 5292-5296). Aeterna Press. Kindle Edition.

The Artist’s Wife with Katherine and Philip, Han Holbein the Younger; 1528

SISTER WENDY BECKET, in her book The Story of Painting, wrote about this 16th-century portrait, a painting of the artist’s wife with their children, by Hans Holbein the Younger:

Artists have always painted their families, but this is the saddest version on record. He lived very little with his wife and children in Basel (the reasons may have been political, religious or financial), but this tragic little trio has all the withering marks of the unloved.

The dim-eyed wife presses down on the children, plain, pale little beings, all unhappy and all ailing. Holbein, that superb manipulator of the human face, cannot have meant to reveal their wretchedness and expose his neglect with such drastic effect. It is as if his art is stronger than his will, and for once Holbein is without defenses.

The court painter, native to Germany, captured the personalities of the rich and powerful of Europe by maintaining a “dignified distance,” without conveying any intimate knowledge. But here he gets closer:

Here his courtly shield is down, perhaps because of the artist’s personal sense of guilt. He was not a good husband or father, and while he can carry off any portrait with superb technical aplomb, he catches his breath and opens the inner door when he paints the family that he abandoned and neglected. Read More »