Domenico Ghirlandaio, Announcement of Death to St Fina (detail)

MANY practice serious austerities and penances for the sake of physical health or a good appearance, but consider the same type of sacrifices unessential to the life of the soul, as if God would be unmoved by concrete expressions of repentance. A few thoughts on this subject from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Granger, who was indignant at the decline of Lenten observances in the 19th century:

Groundless prejudices, idle excuses, bad example,–all tend to lead men from the observance of Lent. Is it not sad to hear people giving such a reason as this for their not fasting or abstaining,–because they feel them? Surely, they forget that the very aim of fasting and abstinence is to make these bodies of sin (Rom. vi. 6) suffer and feel. And what will they answer on the Day of Judgment, when our Saviour shall show them how the very Turks, who were the disciples of a gross and sensual religion, had the courage to practise, every year, the forty-days’ austerities of their Ramadan?

But their own conduct will be their loudest accuser. These very persons, who persuade themselves that they have not strength enough to bear the abstinence and fasting of Lent, even in their present mitigated form, think nothing of going through incomparably greater fatigues for the sake of temporal gains or worldly enjoyments. Read More »

Harmen Steenwijk, Vanitas c. 1640

ASH WEDNESDAY, the first day of Lent, is a day devoted to the certain knowledge that we will die. Someday, somehow, we are all going to be gone. Someday no one on earth will think of us or remember us. It helps to know. “Dear soul, from what peril and fear you could free yourself, if you lived in holy fear, mindful of your death,” Thomas à Kempis said.

From Fish Eaters:

In Genesis 3:19 we hear God tell us “for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return,” but nowadays, when someone dies, they are rushed from deathbed to funeral home to be embalmed and to be worked over by a make-up artist so that that “dusty reality” is hidden from us. Their deaths are spoken of as almost an embarrassment; “he passed,” they say, or “he is no longer with us.” These comforting but sterile luxuries weren’t an option in the past when plagues felled so many people that there weren’t enough survivors to bury them, when bodies had to be stored all winter until the ground was soft enough to dig, when most of the children a woman bore died before they were able to grow up. In our culture, with our medicines and “funeral sciences,” we are afraid to look at death, and we are a poorer people because of it. No matter how long science can prolong life, no matter how much embalming fluid is pumped into a corpse, nature will have her way. This is Truth. And when nature has her way, we can either rest in the knowledge that the ultimate Victor is Christ, Our Lord, Who walked out of His tomb 2,000 years ago and offers resurrection to us, or we can believe that decay is all that is left. This is the meaning of Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday is the day for being reminded of and contemplating our mortality, of which Ecclesiasticus 1 reminds us:

What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh…

When a new Pope processes to St. Peter’s Basilica to offer his first Mass as Pope, the procession stops three times and, at each stop, a piece of flax mounted on a reed is burned. As the flames die, the Pope hears the words, “Pater sancte, sic transit gloria mundi” (“Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world”), to remind him not only that he is a mere man, but as a man, a mere mortal whose end is like the end of all other men. The things of this world are transient, and Christians must always keep one eye on the world to come.

Recalling this Truth is one of the principles behind the use of ashes on the forehead today: to remind us that we are mortal, subject to the rot and decay our Western culture now desperately tries to euphemize away, and that we are radically dependent on — solely dependent on — Jesus Christ to overcome this fate.

More here.

Aaren O’Connor

REPORTS OF THE SHOOTING death in Chicago of Aaren O’Connor, a 25-year-old woman who had moved to the city a year and a half ago against the advice of her father, have some of the strange and confusing signs of manipulation with the intent of promoting “gun control.”

Aaren was shot in the head as she sat in her parked car Friday night in the Pilsen neighborhood while speaking to her sister on the phone, according to police reports. Read More »

Source

THIS portrait of contemporary military leaders, which was sent to me by a reader, is a bit outdated. The Swedish minister of defense is no longer a woman. She could be replaced with the Albania Minister of Defense Mimi Khodeli, another formidable face (below).

USING the pretext of abolishing child marriage and improving education for women, two objectives which virtually no one would object to, the Ford Foundation inculcates Indian women into the globalist vision of life, detaching them from their traditions, their parents, their future husbands and a non-economic vision of life. Notice the steely glint at one point in Kajal’s eye. She is a lovely girl. And she is ready to be one more serf, one more Global Me. Her enlightened education includes “reproductive health,” an Orwellian term for promiscuity and sterility, and it probably sounds like liberation.

Who are the people at Ford to shape the family lives and control the births of Indians?

Feminism never was a grass roots movement. Without the support of the major tax-exempt foundations, built upon the great dynastic, Capitalist fortunes, those consciousness-raising sessions would have been inconsequential tea parties. The same process that occurred in America has been happening for many years all over the world. Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie and the Open Society Institute, to name a few, push birth control, feminist lending, abortion and careerism in women, all of which prepare the way for a loss of national economic sovereignty to international finance. Patrick Buchanan wrote in 2002, and it is still true:

The old Marxists — Marx, Engels and the others — wanted to bring down the traditional family, and move women out of the home and into the marketplace, to make them independent of the family. The global capitalists want the same thing. Women who live at home are not consuming or producing enough, they think. Global capitalism seeks to make everyone an employee, everyone a worker. There is a tremendous premium on bringing into the marketplace talented and capable women workers — who are more reliable in many cases — so that they can boost productivity and consume more goods. (Patrick J. Buchanan interview, Right Now!, no. 35, April-June 2002).

With Indian women pulled from their homes, their children are ready to be inducted into global culture and consumerism. They are ready to be citizens of everywhere and nowhere.

Child marriage is not a good thing. Education for women is important. But poor Indians make a bargain with the devil when they accept these cultural imperialists into their towns. Read More »

“CONSERVATIVE” columnist Rod Dreher marvels over the financial industry’s support for homosexual liberation. He wonders whether Wall Street has been taken over by idealists. Hilarious!

As one of his commenters points out, hyper-individualism, the cult of money and success and the belief in happiness above all else are great for business. Homosexual liberation is a weapon. The enemy is Main Street and any moral force that stands in the way of the total rule of money.

TED CRUZ, to his credit, is the only candidate in the dog-and-pony show known as the presidential race who has blasted the outrageous, lunatic idea of women being drafted, an idea which has absolutely nothing to do with military effectiveness or “women’s liberation” and absolutely everything to do with consolidating the power of an entrenched oligarchy. (This as not any kind of endorsement of Cruz.) In the Republican debate at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire on Saturday, February 6, the rest of the “pro-family” morons (with the exception of Trump who was absent on the issue) enthused about the idea. But then there isn’t a single socialist ideal that Republican Bolsheviks haven’t at some point praised. I offer this excerpt from the transcript of the debate to give you a breathtaking glimpse of unapologetic idiocy:

RADDATZ: I want to move on to the military. Senator Rubio, all restrictions on women in combat as long as they qualify. Positions including special operations forces, like Navy Seals. Just this week military leaders of the Army and Marine Corps said that they believed young women, just as young men are required to do, should sign up for Selective Service in case the Draft is reinstated. Read More »

THE Super Bowl halftime show with Beyoncé paid tribute to the Black Panthers, Malcolm X and Black Lives Matter, writes Lee Stranahan. Imagine a halftime show inspired by the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, assuming the wizard was loved by Hollywood and a powerful elite. More here.

This has nothing to do with black liberation, folks. This isn’t about the people. It’s about the establishment. It’s powerful forces consolidating their power over the people, whether they be black or white. You bein’ used, black man. You bein’ used. 

HAS a national male figure ever stood before a group of men and told them there’s “a special place in hell” for those who vote for women candidates? Men, at least in America, have never stooped so low. I guess it was only a matter of time: We’ve gone from women’s suffrage to obligatory voting for women. Feminists (of which I was once one) are walking advertisements for misogyny. They were supposed to remove privileges based on sex. Instead they promote them. They openly brag of favoritism, discrimination and moral superiority. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem have pulled out the knives in their efforts to bully women into voting for Billary Clinton. Steinem, former CIA operative, says women who vote for Bernie are just looking for boyfriends. (I thought women never do that.) Albright’s remark that women who vote for a man go to hell is reminiscent of a comment by Dr. Anna Shaw, President of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, who was once quoted as saying there are “no men heaven.” The same charming modesty has run like a black, oil-slicked stream through the campaign for women’s suffrage and the campaign for a woman president.

How can politicians who openly brag of their prejudice against almost half of the population have any claim to national office at all?

“Hillary Clinton will always be there for you,” says Albright. Really? How so? Many young women, I would hope, are not drawn to Hillary. She is all too real. She is the embodiment of feminist principles: a ruthless workaholic, a liar and a warmonger, a mother who doesn’t believe in motherhood, a political boss with a cheating husband whose transgressions against other women she helped cover up. The number of women who want to be like Hillary when they grow up is, let’s hope, extremely small.

Dr. Anna Shaw: Presumably in heaven

Beyonce, featured Stupor Bowl Whore. What’s a football game without black leather and fishnet stockings?

MIKE KING offers the top ten reasons to hate the “Stupor Bowl.” They include:

THE PSEUDO PATRIOTISM

Before the Super Bowl actually begins, viewers must sit through not only the National Anthem, but also “America the Beautiful”, usually sung by some no-talent, America-hating degenerate. That America the Ugly has deviated so far from the vision of its founders that it is now unrecognizable, is lost upon the brain dead masses who get all choked up over the empty rituals.

THE DEGENERACY OF THE HALFTIME SHOW

From Janet Jackson’s bare breast performance of 2004, to washed up Madonna’s booty-grinding Satanic symbolism of 2012, to Beyonce’s street whore outfit of 2013, to Katy Perry’s weird occult performance in 2015, the Super Bowl halftime show has degenerated into a spectacle symbolizing everything that is wrong with America’s so-called “culture”. Whatever happened to marching bands?

THE MISGUIDED PASSION OF THE FANATICS

Nothing wrong with a little diversion and fun cheering for your hometown team; but many of these “fans” display a passion so intense that a straight-jacket is warranted. If only they would get as agitated about Obongo and Fed robbing them blind, or their children’s future in a permanently depressed economy, or the innocent people in faraway lands being killed by the US-Israel led Axis of Evil, or the never-ending flood of “migants” being pumped into America, or the potential coming wars with Russia and China, or the fact that their elementary school kids are being forced to learn of the joys of homo-anal sex and cross-dressing. What pathetic losers these people are!

See more at TomatoBubble.com.

Stupor Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium on February 7, 2016 in Santa Clara, California.

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I offer these tantalizing images of Pillsbury Buffalo Ranch Pizza and Pizza Roll Bundt Cake as a virtual buffet for my readers on Super TV Commercial Sunday, especially for those who will not be participating and may feel left out of its culinary riches.

Read More »

WALTER Liew, a Chinese immigrant and naturalized American citizen, allegedly made millions by stealing Dupont’s protocols for the whitening chemical, titanium dioxide, and using them to set up chemical plants in China. Two American engineers, one of whom later committed suicide, helped him in the theft of the trade secrets, according to the FBI.

From Bloomberg Business:

Liew excelled at school and traveled overseas to earn his college degrees—a bachelor’s from Taiwan University and a master’s in electrical engineering in 1982 from the University of Oklahoma. He worked for Hewlett-Packard before starting a technology consulting firm in 1989, fulfilling a personal dream.

“Walter’s ambition really was to be more than a midlevel engineer,” Stuart Gasner, his lawyer, told jurors. “He wanted to make money. He wanted to have his own business and what that entails.” In 1991, at 34, he married a Chinese woman named Christina (it was a second marriage for both), and they became naturalized U.S. citizens before the decade was through. Read More »

THE housewife-humorist Erma Bombeck raised three children and churned out newspaper columns in this suburban house in Centerville, Ohio. She wrote the column below, “Are We Rich?,” for publication on June 3, 1971. She eventually did become rich from the hundreds of clever, satirical pieces she wrote about her domestic world. She neither romanticized nor disparaged her way of life. It was a world where men were still men and women were still women. Having started them in 1964, her columns were syndicated to 900 newspapers by 1978. Though she would later go on to campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment, she was not initially enthusiastic about the feminist movement, once saying of Betty Friedan and her fans, “These women threw a war for themselves and didn’t invite any of us.”

“Are We Rich?” by Erma Bombeck

The other day out of a clear blue sky Brucie asked, “Are we rich?”

I paused on my knees as I retrieved a dime from the sweeper bag, blew the dust off it and asked, “Not so you can notice. Why?”

“How can you tell?” he asked.

I straightened up and thought a bit. Being rich is a relative sort of thing. Here’s how I can always tell. Read More »

JOHN RAPPOPORT writes:

[A]ttributing very serious problems to Zika on a worldwide basis is insupportable and speculative. It isn’t science.

And to make the leap to claiming the virus is causing pregnant women to give birth to babies with very small heads and impaired brains is absurd.

More here.

JOB gains since 2007 have overwhelmingly gone to immigrants, according to new labor statistics. Zero Hedge reports:

And the bottom line: starting with the infamous month when it all started falling apart, December 2007, the US has added just 186,000 native-born workers, offset by 13.5x times more, or 2,518,000, foreign born workers.

It’s interesting that leftists who pride themselves on their compassion for the working man show no concern for the rate at which Americans have lost jobs and opportunities to immigrants. They are not storming the Democratic Party and demanding that the interests of workers be protected from outsiders. They believe in organic food — passionately — but not organic human beings. They will do anything they can to protect the environment of a chicken or a pig. They will do nothing to protect the cultural environment and livelihood of the native American worker if it involves turning a non-white outsider away. They disdain their own. Their snobbery knows no bounds.

STARTING with the highly-charged issue of what dolls little girls prefer — white girls preferring white dolls is racism, black girls preferring black dolls is self-affirmation — Lana Lokteff embarks on a critique of Cultural Marxism and the neurotic, hateful guilt complex it has foisted upon whites.

(WARNING: Skip minutes 19-21 in this video. Lewd scenes.)

Courtesy of Call Me Jorge

A 23-page report by Miles Christi on the blasphemies of Jorge Bergoglio is available here. Since the papal pretender is an ever-flowing fount of heresies and insults against the Faith (see the latest here in which he ascribes “the interior torture of doubt” to John the Baptist), the list is not complete. It must be updated almost daily.