Still Life, Leon De Smet; 1928

THESE are the opening pages of the 1880 book Home and Health and Home Economics by Charles Henry Fowler, who was president of Northwestern University from 1872 to 1876, and William H. De Puy. It’s hard to imagine this guide to home economics being written today.

Only Man has a Home.—The tired lark sinks in the evening shades down to its quiet nest, and oilers its grateful anthems for the boon of a house; but man, wearied with the strifes of the mart and of the field, seeks shelter in his home, the sacred retreat of the heart. Foxes have holes, birds have nests, lions have dens, tigers have lairs, dogs have kennels, but men have homes. The supreme putting of divine love is found in Jesus, when he forsakes his home, and wanders a stranger, not having where to lay his head; while the extreme display of human sinfulness is found with those human creatures who are “without natural affections.”

Virtues of the Hearth are the Securities of the Peoples.—The home is the cradle of the great virtues. The Church was organized in the family. The power to command his household and his children after him was the spring of Abraham’s call to be the Father of the faithful and founder of the Church. There is one bond that encircles earth and heaven. It is woven from the most tender longings and hunger of the heart. It binds the humblest home on earth to the Home of our Father on High. It domesticates the angels in cabins. The love of mother is often the last cable that holds a youth to his moorings. Beaten upon by the storm of his passions, every other stay gives way. Every other anchor drags. But the love of mother, that was dropped deep into his soul’s substance before he got out of the nursery, holds. While that holds he is almost certain to outride the wildest gales. So the Home, which is the sanctuary where this spirit presides, is a perpetual protection. It is an ark floating with us down the tide of the years. It carries the virtues that make the citizen, and the inspirations that develops the saint. It is not merely a shelter from the storm, it is also a workshop, where the grandest characters are built. It is a preeminent opportunity for the achievement of good. To miss this chief purpose of the home is to lower its grade. Read More »

AN article by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge illustrates the inevitable outcome of an economic system (capitalism), which is dominated by usury. When money, which should be a token of the exchange of goods and services, becomes a commodity in the hands of a few, it leads to this kind of servitude. In Greece, withdrawals of cash are now limited for pensioners and civil servants. How long before the Greeks even have their purchasing decisions controlled from above?

WE see this week what appears to be great conflict and division at the Anti-Family Synod in Rome where some “bishops” have come right out and said that homosexuality is an acceptable congenital “orientation” (see video above) and other “bishops” have written a supposedly leaked letter in which they mostly protest procedural issues but also say that the Church risks losing its branding edge by becoming too much like the Anglicans (as if they were marketing executives for the Piggly-Wiggly Supermarket chain and not spiritual guardians). But all this conflict is so much huffing and puffing. Irreconcilable conflict is a familiar and inherent characteristic of the Vatican II religion, which is more like an umbrella group for an ensemble of beliefs than the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith for which millions of people have died and which will never change in its essential doctrines and worship however many lay people and “popes” happily and triumphantly depart from it. Beneath this conflict is basic agreement and adherence to a system of beliefs that is man-centered, not Christ-centered. All this conflict will not stop the Revolution from advancing. We will see female deaconesses or quasi-priests and possibly even churches where homosexual “marriages” are celebrated and definitely churches where the divorced and remarried freely munch on the liturgical cookies along with other more conservative churches which are stricter and more Catholic-seeming, providing some with an illusory oasis of sorts, but nevertheless are part of the same sect because they do not reject the principle by which these differences are tolerated or the heretics in power. As Dr. Thomas Droleskey wisely notes, the protests at the synod are meaningless. In the end, they amount to theater and smoke which distract the clueless into thinking that what is happening isn’t really happening. Modernism is, above all else, confusion and doublespeak. The fog never lifts. From Dr. Droleskey:

[T]he pitched battle going on now at “Synod ‘15” as “cardinals” and “bishops” from F Troop (“Where Indian fights are colorful sights and nobody takes a lickin’, Where paleface and redskin both turn chicken”—F Troop) is meaningless. The results of this farce have been predetermined the moment that Jorge Mario Bergoglio stepped out on the balcony of the Basilica of Saint Peter on Wednesday evening, March 13, 2013, as he told “Monsignor” Guido Marini, who is no relation to Piero Marini, that “carnival is over” as he, the newly-elected “Pope Francis,” refused to don the papal mozzetta and then asked for the people to pray for him without his giving them a “blessing.” Bergoglio is doing now on a universal scale exactly what he did in Buenos Aires, and it is laughable to see various “conservatives” and semi-traditional commentators try to convince themselves that the farce that is going on at “Synod ‘15” is not part of their “pope’s” plan to make what is purported to be the Catholic Church a DFZ—a “Doctrine Free Zone”—where all are welcome regardless of what they believe, except in actual Catholicism, of course, and how they live, making the conciliar sect a JFZ—a Judgment Free Zone as well. Read More »

DR. THOMAS DROLESKEY made a prediction last week regarding the Family Synod taking place in anti-Catholic Rome:

Here is a prediction, perhaps erroneous, about the farce at the Aula Paolo Sicko that is ending its first full week of melodrama: there will be no schism. The “conservative” “bishops” and their false opposites in the Jacobin/Bolshevik camp will go home to put their own “spin” on the developments, agreeing to coexist with each other in a spirit of the miserable Anglican sect. Read More »

ORPHANAGES run by the Missionaries of Charity, which were started by Mother Teresa, are refusing to comply with new government guidelines that require them to put children up for adoption with single individuals. The Missionaries have ceased adoptions altogether rather than change their standards. Previously they occasionally arranged adoptions with single parents, but the new guidelines would give them less freedom in rejecting candidates they consider inappropriate. Read More »

ED writes:

Thank you for your recent post and linked artwork about Doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda. While looking at the It’s About Time blog I was reminded of an interview Dr. E. Michael Jones did six years ago on his book Ballet Parking. Last year someone on YouTube excerpted about seven minutes of this hour-long interview and combined it with a few still images which help clarify the points Jones made. The entire Jones interview on his book (eight segments of nine minutes each) is here.
The original 2009 interview was done by Stephen Hand and Joanna Francis for TCR Reports, a website which doesn’t exist any more as far as I can tell.

Thanks again for your blog!

SOLANGE HERTZ, the formidable and inspiring Catholic author who wrote some two dozen books and many magazine articles on culture, history and the Church, died on Oct. 3 at the age of 95. A trenchant anti-feminist in the age of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, Mrs. Hertz was the mother of five children. Her husband, Gus, was captured by Vietcong while working for USAID and died a prisoner of war. The family was living in Saigon at the time and she returned home with their children. She later supported the family in part through her writings. Here is an obituary in The Remnant newspaper. Mrs. Hertz is survived by 19 grandchildren and 50 great grandchildren.

Mrs. Hertz, I suggest, was virtually unknown to mainstream culture precisely because she was such an eloquent critic of it. Feminist trash fills the shelves of every public library while one must dig to find Mrs. Hertz’s works. She would never pass the censorship of our cultural commissars. Here is an excerpt from one of her many memorable essays, “The Housewife as Guerrilla:”

Whereas man has been entrusted with government, his wife has been entrusted with society.  His the state, hers the family.  To his sophisticated professionalism she brings the happy pragmatism of the dedicated amateur.  ”Whenever you have a real difficulty…when a boy is bumptious or an aunt stingy, when a silly girl will marry somebody, or a wicked man won’t marry somebody, all your lumbering Roman Law and British constitution come to a standstill.  A snub from a duchess or a slanging from a fishwife is much more likely to put things straight.”

To woman, “almost certainly, are due all those working traditions that cannot be found in books, especially those of education; it was she who first gave a child a stuffed stocking for being good or stood him in the corner for being naughty.  This unclassified knowledge is sometimes called rule of thumb and sometimes motherwit.  The last phrase suggests the whole truth, for none ever called it fatherwit” (G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World).

Motherwit is the very stuff of guerrilla warfare, at which woman excels to the degree that she remains at Adam’s side where God put her.   To fight with Adam is not to fight Adam.  Each must face, not the other, but their common enemy.  In this confrontation Eve’s position is that of the guerrilla in relation to the regular army, which is her husband’s.  Like every guerrilla’s hers is ancillary and presumes the existence of the regular; but, again like the guerrilla, she must be prepared to continue the fight alone when routed regulars fall back to regroup.

I daresay this is woman’s unenviable task today, when authority is crumbling all around us.  Man has all he can do to restructure it and regain control.  Luckily, as Chesterton also remarks, “Government is only one side of life.  The other half is called society, in which women are admittedly dominant.”  While man reforms his ranks, she must keep the resistance going, lest everything fall to the enemy.  Unfortunately many women alert to the current emergency have been seduced for the first time in history into abandoning their most impregnable positions without a fight.

I am saddened by the death of this powerful voice of sanity. May more people discover her writings in the years ahead. Read More »

MICHAEL R. writes:

You always have interesting posts.

I was particularly  encouraged by the one titled “Courageous Women.” I checked out the link which relates to the French group Les Brigandes.

What’s not to love?  One might not agree with all they believe but to realise all Europe has not rolled over is a breath of fresh air. They bring out their message in a very accessible way.

One of their other songs, “How we become an American,” has a powerful message. One  line made me think of you:

When you get into your car
And fasten your seat belt
To go and get a pizza
Right around the corner

Please accept the usual disclaimers I am not anti-American but as I think you would agree, Americanism is an attempt to submerge us all. Read More »

Doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda

Doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda was a beautiful, 16th-century Spanish aristocrat who regrettably lost her eye in a sword fight with her father’s page. You see, even before the Age of the Internet, women had fun with swords.

See more portraits of this interesting woman here. Read More »

DON VINCENZO writes:

There is a recent bit of news, overlooked by the majority in our national media, that may have serious repercussions for many throughout the civilized world: divinely-inspired pasta is declining in use as a result of people now counting the number of calories in every meal, and this drop also includes the denizens of Italy, surely a sign of stagnation and decay in their society.

On September 3, The Washington Post ran a story with the title, “Around the world, even in stronghold Italy, pasta is starting to lose its gusto.” Based on projections of an organization called the Mintel Group, “…U.S. pasta decline will continue through at least 2019,” and in that we are not alone. In nations as diverse as Australia, where the market for pasta has declined 8% since 2010, and Germany, where pasta sales have dipped 12% since hitting its peak in 2008, the trend is unmistakable. But by far the greatest surprise and decline, according to the Mintel report, occurred in Italy, “Where sales of dried pasta have plummeted …more than 25% since 2009…” Read More »

IN this video, Brother Michael Dimond, O.S.B., of Most Holy Family Monastery does a fine job of analyzing “Pope” Francis’s scandalous meeting with a homosexual couple in Washington D.C. The private audience with a former student and his much younger “boyfriend” was arranged by Francis himself — no act of charity or beautiful “inclusiveness,” but another display of gross intolerance by the pseudo-pontiff. It was, in effect, an endorsement of sodomite marriage in America. Francis never once publicly condemned the Supreme Court ruling in Oberfegell vs. Hodges during his junket. His appalling lack of mercy and love for homosexuals, who are pressured everywhere to become the lonely slaves of their compulsions, and his failure especially to protect children, whom he smothers with random kisses during his public parades but does not love enough to defend from harm, have no foundation whatsoever in the Catholic Church. To add to his message, Francis distanced himself from the courageous Kim Davis, a Protestant woman of true Christian charity whom Francis should have openly praised and graciously urged to enter and embrace the one true Church.

And you call this man “pope,” dear Catholic? Think again. All this is the inevitable unfolding of the false religion of Vatican II, which has deprived even highly virtuous Catholics of illuminating graces and veiled their minds from the truth.

There is nothing in Catholic dogma that requires a Catholic to accept a non-Catholic as his spiritual leader. The very idea is absurd. Perhaps this article by Steven Spray will clear up some of the theological smoke regarding the position of sedevacantism.

“POPE” FRANCIS may not be an actual Freemason, as these handshakes — similar to those used by members of the secret society — suggest, but his principles are Masonic. Freemasonry is the formidable anti-Christian movement that under the guise of a benign and  philanthropic organization seeks to abolish nations and bury the Catholic Church. See relevant links at Novus Ordo Watch.

See Pope Leo XIII’s 1884 encyclical on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus, in which the pontiff wrote:

Candidates are generally commanded to promise — nay, with a special oath, to swear — that they will never, to any person, at any time or in any way, make known the members, the passes, or the subjects discussed. Thus, with a fraudulent external appearance, and with a style of simulation which is always the same, the Freemasons, like the Manichees of old, strive, as far as possible, to conceal themselves, and to admit no witnesses but their own members. As a convenient manner of concealment, they assume the character of literary men and scholars associated for purposes of learning. They speak of their zeal for a more cultured refinement, and of their love for the poor; and they declare their one wish to be the amelioration of the condition of the masses, and to share with the largest possible number all the benefits of civil life. Were these purposes aimed at in real truth, they are by no means the whole of their object. Read More »

THE public is bathed 24 hours a day in stories of mass shootings, while soldiers killed and maimed in foreign military theaters are given no attention. Peter Van Buren at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity writes:

Sustaining America’s state of post-9/11 perpetual war requires skillful manipulation of the public at home. The key tool used for this purpose is the bloodless narrative, a combination of policy, falsehoods and media manipulation that creates the impression that America’s wars have few consequences, at least for Americans.

How can the American government sustain its wars in the face of dead soldiers coming home? Why is there no outcry among the American people over these losses? The answer is the narrative of bloodless war.

MY apologies for this disgusting photo, but it says a lot about a man the media have elevated to hero status. See the report at HenryMakow.com about Chris Mintz (in the bed), the alleged hero in the Oregon shootings who was supposedly shot five times. Here are Mintz and his friends in the hospital where he is recovering from what appears (see video at link — warning: crude language) to be hernia surgery, not bullet wounds. They are flashing the satanic sign of Baphomet. Mintz has raised hundreds of thousands in donations from comatose Americans who would walk off a cliff if the anchors at Fox News or CNN told them it was safe. Read More »

Stefano da Zevio; Madonna in the Rosary 1410

TODAY, Oct 7, is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira wrote this essay on the occasion:

What is the rosary? The rosary is a series of mediations on the mysteries from the lives of Our Lord and Our Lady. These mysteries are simultaneously prayers that one says vocally and meditations that one makes mentally. This mixture of vocal prayer and meditation is a splendid thing, because while the lips pronounce a plea, the mind concentrates on a point of the mystery. It is a dual activity that intimately unites one with God.

The practice of praying the rosary to beg a grace from God supposes the theological truth that Our Lady is the Universal Mediatrix of all graces. It is, therefore, a small masterpiece of spirituality and Catholic doctrine as they should be understood. The rosary is not a religious custom relying on emotions, but rather a serious, solid, and meditative pious practice, which explains why the rosary has obtained so many graces. Read More »

DYING PEOPLE are exploited by the assisted-suicide movement, which presents their tearful testimonies to make it seem as if it’s all about preventing suffering and pain. It’s not. Matthew Archibald writes about the approval earlier this week of an assisted suicide bill in California:

California became a crueler place today. Proponents of the law argue that people in terrible pain can opt out. But palliative care has never been better. That’s not what this is about.

This is about California running a cost/benefit analysis on life. If you’re old or disabled and not contributing maybe an early departure is best for everyone else.

Chuck Donovan, president of Charlotte Lozier Institute, called the law’s passage “tragic.”

“Legalization of doctor assisted suicide is like a forest fire. The practice has become so permissive in the Netherlands, for example, that doctors are now routinely euthanizing adults, infants, and children – sometimes without consent,” he said. “That the most populous state in the union has now enshrined this practice in law is a warning sign for the rest of the nation.” Read More »

IN 1787, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson:

“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in the Constitution, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”

This downright ignorance is probably worse today. The vast majority of Americans do not understand that the consortium of private banks that constitute the Federal Reserve System create money and charge interest for it. Instead of money being a token of exchange, it is a profit-making instrument in the hands of a few. This system of what the author E. Michael Jones calls “state-sponsored usury” necessarily leads to debt slavery, centralized government and monopolistic control of the press. The American colonists went to war to protect their right to make and control the money supply. That freedom was later relinquished by the American government.

“In the Colonies we issue our own money,” said Benjamin Franklin. “It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.”

Here is brief history of banking in America by Alain Pilote, which I offer as a primer on the subject. Pilote wrote in 1985:

The bankers’ dictatorship and their debt-money system are not limited to one country, but exist in every country in the world. They are working to keep their control tight, since one country freeing itself from this dictatorship and issuing its own interest- and debt-free currency, setting the example of what an honest system could be, would be enough to bring about the collapse of the bankers’ swindling debt-money system worldwide.

This fight of the International Financiers to install their fraudulent debt-money system has been particularly vicious in the United States of America since its very foundation, and historical facts show that several American statesmen were well aware of the dishonest money system the Financiers wanted to impose upon America, and of all of its harmful effects. These statesmen were real patriots, who did all that they possibly could to maintain for the U.S.A. an honest money system, free from the control of the Financiers. The Financiers did everything in their power to keep in the dark this facet of the history of the United States, for fear that the example of these patriots might still be followed today.