ALAN writes:

A recent post noted that the top-rated television programs in 1965 included “The Beverly Hillbillies” at No. 2. Since I am likely the only one among your readers who remembers viewing the first episode of that series when it was telecast one evening in September 1962, I would like to say a few things about its virtues.

The intellectuals hated “The Beverly Hillbillies.” They hated it for the same reasons ordinary Americans loved it:  It offered thirty minutes of simple, clean comedy, crisp writing, and characters who were decent, honest, happy, and had plenty of moral fiber.  The critics just could not stand the thought that Americans were enjoying entertainment that included no despair, no messages, no murders, and no pretentious nonsense.  There was nothing dark or cynical or profane for the critics to feast upon and “interpret.”

“The Beverly Hillbillies” projected what Ayn Rand called a “benevolent sense of life.”  The early black-and-white episodes were the best.  They teem with brightness, good cheer, and optimism in the comical situations, misunderstandings, and musical themes heard at intervals throughout.  The comedy ranges from slapstick to word play to understated, self-effacing humor.

Only when viewing them forty years later did I begin fully to appreciate those virtues.  They are evident in many episodes in the early seasons.  In later seasons, the comedy pacing and restraints had largely vanished and the writing became overdone and self-consciously cute.  (more…)

TWO quotes from a compilation:

When a male Jew is called to the Torah, he recites the traditional blessing, ‘asher bahar banu mi’kol ha’amim’, praising God ‘who has chosen us from among all other nations.’

When Jews recite their daily morning prayer they say the benediction, ‘she’lo assani goy’, thanking God ‘that he has not made [us] gentiles.’

When they pronounce the benediction over the Sabbath [Saturday] wine, they declare that God has chosen and sanctified Jews from all other peoples in the same way which he has distinguished between Sabbath and weekday. (more…)

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS writes:

Yesterday I was stuck in front of Fox “News” for some minutes on both sides of 1:00 PM US East Coast time. It was one of the blonds and some character presented as a terrorism or ISIS expert. It seemed to me that the purpose was to prepare Americans for the next false flag attack. ISIS, we were told, will be branching out and bringing its bombing attacks to America.

All of these bombing attacks have anomalies that the media never notices. Whatever officials say is reported as factual. How these bombings serve Washington’s agendas is never mentioned. The bombings often have the same pattern—brothers who conveniently leave their IDs on the scene. I suppose that having hit on an explanation that worked, the explanation is used repeatedly.

Liberalism has helped to make Western peoples blind by creating the belief that noble intentions are more prevalent than corrupt intentions. This false belief blinds people to the roles played by deception and coercion in governing. Consequently, the true facts are not perceived and governments can pursue hidden agendas by manipulating news. (more…)

The Dangers of Individualism in Art

By Kidist Paulos Asrat

Western art has been the oeuvre of the individual man, the distinct person. It does not have the veil of communitarian art, but the light of the individual mind. Through centuries of quests and questions, study and theory, and most importantly practice, it is fundamentally concerned with beauty, anchored with truth and goodness (or Godliness). [1]

Modern Western art took this quest for beauty, which had always been aligned with God, into a new turn when the modern mind reduced, and even eliminated, the presence and the subject of God from its oeuvres. What took over instead was modern man as creator, like God himself, and the grand designer of his own destiny. This quest for the new, for progress, for change – artistic, technical and ideological – which has been the character of Western art and mind throughout its history, accelerated during the modern era. [2] This frantic search translated into the cult of the new, which became worshiped in its own right. Progressivism became a substitute for the waning God. [3]

But since there is nothing substantial to worship, or esteem, other than a concept (of progress), man started to hold the thinker and the creator of these ideas, man himself, as the highest pinnacle. [4]

Man’s lack of Godly influence began to show most prominently in his art where he felt God was an obstacle to these pursuits. These psychological and spiritual shifts, rather than leaving him alone to his thoughts and activities, apart and separated from God, introduced another player into his spiritual world. He began to acquire the directions of the Devil.

The Devil knows that man has a soft heart for beauty, even if he may denounce that need when he abandons God. But, the Devil’s beauty is twisted and maligned, a fantastic copy of man’s art created under God’s direction. (more…)

YESTERDAY was the third anniversary of the death of the writer Lawrence Auster, who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 64. A few of his close friends gathered at Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Springfield, Pennsylvania on this blustery spring day to remember and pray for him at his grave under an oak tree. A soloist sang a few hymns, including this version of the traditional Irish hymn “Be Thou My Vision.”

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that thou art;
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

Be thou my Wisdom, and thou my true Word;
I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, and I thy true son,
Thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise;
Thou mine inheritance, now and always;
Thou and thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my treasure thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

Eternal rest grant unto Lawrence Auster, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace, Amen. (more…)

Novus Ordo Watch looks at three theological honchos in the Vatican II Church who subtly reject belief in the physical resurrection of Christ.  It must be remembered at the outset that one of the characteristics of Modernism is the use of high-sounding and ambiguous words and confusing language in order to camouflage error and make it sound acceptable. In addition, what is denied in one place is sometimes affirmed in another, so that the Modernist can inject his poisonous error more craftily, for thus he seems confused rather than pertinacious, he prevents others from pinpointing his heresies exactly, and he always leaves a loophole for plausible deniability should he ever be challenged or found out. This is part and parcel of Modernism, and we need to keep this in mind as we review the evidence...

FROM REUTERS: The College Board, the not-for-profit organization that owns the SAT, has acknowledged widespread problems with test security in Asia in recent years. Since October 2014, the New York-based organization has delayed issuing scores in Asia six times and canceled an exam sitting in two locations there – steps the College Board takes when it has evidence that test material has been exposed to the public. But the breakdown in security is more pervasive than the College Board has publicly disclosed, Reuters has found. In addition to the security-related incidents the College Board has announced, the news agency identified eight occasions since late 2013 in which test material was circulating online before the SAT was administered overseas. (See table for details.)

SEBASTIÉN writes:

The Paris region is fortunate to have two relics directly related to the Passion of Our Lord. The Crown of Thorns, exposed every Friday during Lent at Notre Dame is known the world over, but the lesser known Tunic of Christ, said to be woven by the Holy Virgin and worn by Jesus on his bloodied body as he walked along the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha, when the Roman soldiers removed it before the Crucifixion, can also be seen at the Basilica of St. Denys in Argenteuil in a highly Islamicized northern suburb.

The seamless tunic is usually kept rolled up in a reliquary, but is occasionally exposed for short periods. The current exposition will last two weeks and began on Good Friday. It was last exposed in 1984. The day before yesterday, Easter Monday, we waited two hours along with hundreds of other pilgrims who made the trip to Argenteuil for this occasion. Judging by the crowds, Jorge Bergolio still has a long way to go before completely destroying the faith of Novus Ordo Catholics who made up the majority of the pilgrims. (more…)

  HAVING been mostly away from the computer for several days, I belatedly wish the readers of this site a happy Easter season. May you never be estranged from the wonder and promises of the Resurrection.  

  LIVE-STREAMING of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Traditional Catholic Masses and devotions from St. Gertrude the Great in Ohio and St. Jude's in Stafford, Texas can be found here and here. A description of the great metaphysical drama remembered and re-enacted this week from the St. Andrew's Missal: The drama of the Passion is universal and in one sense will end only with the world itself, for all men, by their sins, have taken a share in the death of Christ. Jesus was bound to triumph through those very atoning sufferings by which He became the Victim of every passion which shall agitate the human race until the end of the world. For He has atoned for the pride of those who share the hatred of truth which turned the Jews into murderers; the avarice of those who are possessed by the demon of greed which drove Judas to sell his master; the lust of all who indulge in sensual delights like Herod, who mocked Jesus and sent him back to Pilate; the cruelty of those who love to cause suffering like the soldiers, who struck our Lord and insulted Him; and the cowardice of all who leave the path of duty like the Apostles, who forsook Him to whom they owed everything. Our Lord's Passion is the whole of humanity, hurling itself upon its divine healer and yet cured by Him ....

THIS photo of a supposed victim of the attack in the Brussels metro is so fake, it's laughable. Two people are hugging next to the injured man with no concern for him at all. They can't even cover his bare skin with a jacket or respond to his plea for help. They appear completely unconcerned. Another woman is doing what? Looking for the can of red pigment dye? In this age of cellphones, there should be dozens of images of bloody carnage. Instead, there are these posed photos.

FROM Fr. Frederick William Faber’s At the Foot of the Cross:

NOWHERE in the Old Testament do we seem to come so near to God as in the book of Job. Nowhere is He more awfully enshrouded in mystery, or more terrible in His counsels regarding the children of men; and yet nowhere is He more plainly or more tenderly our Father. It is because the mystery of suffering is depicted therein. Because it is all so human, it seems to lead us so far into the Divine. Because it is the uttermost trial of the creature, he lies the more completely in the Creator’s arms. The calamities of Job are to the Old Testament what the Passion of our Lord is to the New, and the one was an intentional foreshadowing of the other. When we come to speak of our Lady’s dolors, we remember the touching picture of Job’s friends, when they heard of his afflictions and came to visit him. “When they had lifted up their eyes afar off, they knew him not, and crying out they wept, and rending their garments, they sprinkled dust upon their heads toward Heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no man spoke to him a word; for they saw that his grief was very great.” They knew that silence was the best consolation. (more…)

  HERE IS ANOTHER profound insight from St. Thomas Aquinas: The Mode of the Passion. So must the Son of Man be lifted up. This refers to His being raised upon the cross. He willed to die lifted up, (i) To purify the air: already He had purified the earth by the holiness of His living there, it still remained for Him to purify, by His dying there, the air; (ii) To triumph over the devils, who in the air, make their preparations to war on us; (iii) To draw our hearts to His heart,  I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all things to myself (John xii. 32). Since in the death of the cross He was exalted, and since it was there that He overcame His enemies, we say that He was exalted rather than that He died. He shall drink of the torrent by the way side; therefore shall Hie lift up His head (Ps. cix. 7).  

CHRIST in his Passion suffered more than any human being has ever suffered. The more elevated a being, the greater its potential for suffering. Given his divine nature, Christ was capable of a level of sensitivity, both physical and mental, which dwarfs that of any normal human being.

Thomas Aquinas wrote of Christ’s Passion:

The Passion of Christ is by itself sufficient to form us in every virtue. For whoever wishes to live perfectly, need do no more than scorn what Christ scorned on the cross, and desire what He there desired. There is no virtue of which, from the cross, Christ does not give us an example.

If you seek an example of charity, Greater love than this no man hath, than that a man lay down His life for his friends (John xv. 13), and this Christ did on the cross. And since it was for us that He gave his life, it should not be burdensome to bear for Him whatever evils come our way. What shall I render to the Lord, for all the things that He hath rendered to me (Ps. cxv. 12).  (more…)

  CLIPS from Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ

FROM Bernie Suarez:

 As we saw in the Paris attacks, once again we’re seeing a “global” component to the “reaction” phase of the usual problem-reaction-solution dialectic employed by the controllers. Look for it. Problem at point A, subsequent “reaction” to the problem at point B, all the way on the other side of the world. This then leads to a “solution” that applies to both point A and B. This also serves to endorse the illusion that the bogeymen, in this case ISIS of course, involved in the Brussels attack are somehow everywhere at once. (more…)