Jozef Israëls (Dutch Realist painter, 1824-1911) Mother and Child by the Sea

PAINTINGS of people by the ocean are featured at this blog by Barbara Wells Sarudy.

A BAPTIST reader says Catholics are pagans and idolaters, and I respond. An excerpt:

Protestant rationalists dislike things such as beads and lit candles and the crucifix’s image of Our Savior suffering on the Cross, which — because human beings inhabit the physical realm and not just the sterile world of the mind — is a constant reminder of the meaning of his suffering (and our suffering) and serves as a vital outward profession of faith. At the same time, they show no hesitation when it comes to waving an American flag or aiding their patriotism with various physical objects such as little replicas of the Liberty Bell or pictures of the Founders! I won’t accuse them of idolatry because I believe these things are reasonable aids to love of country but they can be used in an idolatrous way and they certainly point to Protestant hypocrisy on the issue of sacramentals and devotionals. Catholics have always believed in these outward professions of faith and reminders of the supernatural world, which many Protestants scorn hypocritically. In the end, the belief that these things are evil and idolatrous smacks of another inherited gimmick and marketing ploy, tricks of the trade to distinguish Protestant sects from the holy tree from which they came, a way to demonize their Catholic ancestors whose beliefs and devotions they now selectively reject. And you criticize Catholics for the sale of indulgences!

IF marriage is primarily for emotional fulfillment, then why not marry a pet? Dominique Lesbirel “married” her cat and then her dog. She is the operator of Marryyourpet.com. According to The Mirror:

Dominique was inspired to set up the site after her cat Zeus was tragically run over and killed.

“I felt really depressed and nobody seemed to get it,” she said. “People just kept saying, ‘Come on, it’s just a cat,’ but it wasn’t to me. Read More »

THE BLOGGER  “Tantumblogo” writes here:

In a new video entitled Human Capital – Episode 1: Planned Parenthood’s Black Market in Baby Parts, the Center for Medical Progress provides even more damning evidence that Planned Barrenhood routinely sells aborted baby parts for profit, something that certainly seems to be illegal under current federal law. Read More »

CYRUS N. writes:

EMILE COLE writes:

I think what’s really surprising about the facts about World Trade Center Building 7 is all the continued speculation almost fifteen years later about other possible explanations for the observed period of gravitational acceleration involved in the building’s collapse. When it comes to WTC7 everyone intuitively knows why the official story must be wrong. Let’s not forget that it was David Chandler, a high school science teacher (featured in the video above), who actually forced the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to reverse itself on the issue of free fall. I think that’s why people who see the video experience a persistent, nagging sensation that something’s just not right. They remember…. and they’re correct.

I spent two full months discussing and hammering out what free fall is and what it is not with Dr. Alan Calverd, PhD, a Cambridge University educated, forty-five year veteran research physicist and regular contributor to the Cambridge University sponsored website The Naked Scientists who, though he ultimately ended up repeatedly degrading himself academically over the entire course of the exchange with an eighth-grade dropout by continuing to argue sophistically in open debate against the Law of Conservation of Energy as applied to a falling body, was nevertheless instrumental in helping to guide the formatting of the animations. It’s been over ten months now since I posted a complete Empirically Verifiable Scientific Method Driven Graphical Target System Analysis and Conclusion at the end of the thread “What is Free Fall?” [See the animations on the last page of that thread, in which I write under the name “Aemilius.”] Read More »

STANLEY KURTZ writes about Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing scheme, which will affirmatively further unfair housing and dramatically diminish local autonomy:

It’s difficult to say what’s more striking about President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing  (AFFH) regulation: its breathtaking radicalism, the refusal of the press to cover it, or its potential political ramifications. The danger AFFH poses to Democrats explains why the press barely mentions it. This lack of curiosity, in turn, explains why the revolutionary nature of the rule has not been properly understood. Ultimately, the regulation amounts to back-door annexation, a way of turning America’s suburbs into tributaries of nearby cities. Read More »

HERE IS Part 6 of our ongoing series, “Tales of Chester,” my husband’s recollections of growing up in a working-class neighborhood in the city of Chester, Pennsylvania during the 50s and 60s. In this episode, Buttons, the family dachshund, faces capital charges during the annual summer vacation at the Jersey Shore. It’s somewhat disturbing, and for that, I sincerely apologize.

PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE ONCE opined that Wildwood-by-the-Sea, New Jersey, had achieved the Marxist ideal. It was absolutely classless.

The writer obviously was not from Chester. We knew of no better place on Earth. We went there every year for the first two weeks in August. We savored the absolute purity of the humble white-washed cottages, the candy-colored apartment houses, and the futuristic motels that evoked an alien paradise far from Wildwood – the Eden Rock, the Rio, the Lu Fran. We luxuriated in the dazzling sand that burned our feet; the taste of marine depths in the air; the exotic sensation of being on an island; the enormous tomatoes, and Cokes spiked with vanilla extract.

Wildwood-by-the-Sea was a magnificent refuge. The novelty of the school year’s end had worn off by the day after school closed, and we were left to the brutal heat, the demoralizing odors of bad suppers in the languid air and the horrid realization that we had nothing to do. The sultry days passed at a glacial pace. The nights were too hot for sleeping in our flea-infested beds. The only relief came from a tiny rotating fan that scanned the bedroom, parceling out ineffective puffs of warm air, too weak to blow the mosquitoes away from our ears.

We did not need the fan in Wildwood-by-the-Sea, New Jersey. We had the sea breezes and house-high waves. Instead of the cracked railroad bridge along Sixth Street, we had a Boardwalk with roller-coasters and bumper cars. Instead of the odors of bad suppers, we had the fresh and salty smells of the sea. Instead of the loud fights of bad marriages that had invaded our rusty, hole-pocked window screens, our wonderfully exhausted bodies fell asleep to the rhythmic roars of those waves.

And what a sleep it was after a day of body-surfing and castle-building and football on the beach. What a contrast to those tedious steamy afternoons on The Corner, counting cars and watching dogs chew their hopelessly itchy backs. At home a three-block walk to the grocery store was an odious errand. In Wildwood, the three-block walk to the beach was enchanting, full of reverie and anticipation even as the sun-heated asphalt scorched our feet as we crossed the streets. Would the waves be 20 feet high? Was this the day I finally would be tan? Read More »

A “Pope” who blasphemes the Holy and Immaculate Mother of God is not a pope.

THOMAS DROLESKEY writes at Christ or Chaos:

Jorge Mario Bergoglio rarely misses an opportunity to put multiple drops of blasphemous and heretical poisons into his allocutions, homilies, “apostolic” exhortations, and encyclical letters.

Most of those Catholics who read or listen to his words have no means to recognize blasphemy or heresy and to flee from it because they are the products of over fifty straight years of nonstop apostasy, blasphemy and heresy. These Catholics have been robbed of any true sensus Catholicus, something that Jorge Mario Bergoglio knows and is exploiting all of the time, not most of the time, all of the time.

This is because the Argentine Apostate is a tool of the devil himself, a veritable demon dressed up to look like a permissive, indulgent, understanding and merciful “pope,” and the adversary must know that his time is running out on him as the pace at which events in the world and the counterfeit church of conciliarism are unfolding is nothing less than stupefying. It is as though the combined forces of hell have unleashed their final assaults upon us all. There is no “relief” to be found in the farce that represents itself as electoral politics, and there is certainly no “relief” to be had for “conservatives” and “traditionally-minded” Catholics in the ranks of the sect erroneously believed to be the Catholic Church. Read More »

PATRICK writes:

I don’t know if you saw this story [about Ben Shapiro’s encounter with a “transgender” man] but it is quite remarkable. Quite un-ladylike behavior from someone who wants to be identified as a woman now. Read More »

FROM The Connecticut Post:

Under pressure from the NAACP, the state Democratic Party will scrub the names of the two presidents [Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson] from its annual fundraising dinner because of their ties to slavery.

Party leaders voted unanimously Wednesday night in Hartford to rename the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner in the aftermath of last month’s fatal shooting of nine worshipers at the historic black church in Charleston, S.C.  Read More »

“A GRATEFUL READER” writes:

Your discussion of Solange Hertz recalls today’s article on the Orthosphere  by Kristor. He discusses the book, The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks. He writes:

Three key insights inform everything in the book:

1. In the ancient world, essentially all the meat available for consumption in human settlements was the fruit of sacrificial rites.

2. Cookery and sacrifice were therefore aspects of the same procedure. Sacrifice was the way animals were slaughtered and butchered in preparation for cooking; cooking the meat was part of the sacrificial rite. Read More »

IN Sin Revisited, Solange Hertz describes three forms of gluttony:

1. The first one consists in eating whenever we please. This might mean often or seldom, ahead of time or later, never or simply constantly nibbling between meals. Habitually indulged in, this form of gluttony quite predictably disposes its victim to restlessness and dissatisfaction with his state in life. It feeds instability. Read More »

DEANA writes:

I have been reading your blog for about a month and just wanted to take a moment and tell you thank you for sharing your thoughts with the world.

I am a 46 years old. I married late in life (41) so I do not have children but I do have a wonderful husband and I have work that I enjoy (I am a nurse). I have much to be thankful for but of late, I find myself despairing and perhaps in a depression. Laura, I am afraid. I feel as if I’m looking at the most beautiful tapestry hanging in front of me and people are walking by, grabbing a thread and pulling it, shredding it to pieces. Our country is falling apart. Read More »

I DON’T know anything about “Sofia Smallstorm” other than what you see here. She does a good job of analyzing Sandy Hook in this video from September, 2014, offering a plausible theory for why numerous people may have participated in a fraudulent event and explaining why you, yes you, may be part of a brave new experiment in social engineering.  Read More »

SEE excellent reflections at Novus Ordo Watch on cornball dance and song routines in the Vatican II pseudo-mass.

If this turns off human beings, imagine how it turns off God.

ON the morning of December 14, 2012, 20 young children and six adults were murdered in a shooting spree by a gunman at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. As most of you know from the official account, the gunman was 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the emotionally troubled, homeschooled son of a gun-toting Republican mother with whom he lived alone and whom he also allegedly killed that day. Lanza’s frightening and bizarre photograph appeared in news outlets throughout the country for months after the event, which was the second deadliest shooting by a single person in U.S. history. He reportedly committed suicide at the school. Read More »