Faithful cross, above all other,
One and only noble tree:
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peer may be.
Sweetest wood and sweetest iron,
Sweetest weight is hung on thee!

The Crucifixion, Fra Angelico; 1420s

IN The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton writes about Good Friday and its historic meaning:

Every attempt to amplify that story has diminished it. The task has been attempted by many men of real genius and eloquence as well as by only too many vulgar sentimentalists and self-conscious rhetoricians. The tale has been retold with patronizing pathos by elegant skeptics and with fluent enthusiasm by boisterous best-sellers. Read More »

ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

A Singaporean graduate student at Stanford University has been charged with poisoning other students and sabotaging lab projects. Interestingly, according to reports, she only targeted other Asian women. And, using the language of therapeutic culture, she says she poisoned her own drinks, and that it was all a ‘cry for help.’

A comment in the linked article stands out: Read More »

AT The Orthosphere, Thomas F. Bertonneau writes that true higher education benefits from the erotic energy of the young and channels it. The Higher Ed Complex perverts it:

Has it occurred to anyone that the codes that brutally suppress speech, or brand all sexual interest as predatory prior to any fact, or banish those things, like great art and literature, which might awaken passion in students – has it occurred to anyone, I ask, that these wretched devices are all manifestations of hatred, which is the opposite of love, and of impotency, which is the opposite of capacity, or that they are all first and foremost assaults on the soul?

The Last Supper, Francesco Henriques

FROM The Hidden Treasure of the Holy Mass by St. Leonard of Port Maurice:

Place together all the gifts and all the graces you have received from God ; so many gifts of nature and grace, — body, soul, senses, faculties, health, and life itself; add to all these the very life of His Son Jesus Christ, and the death that He suffered for love of us, and does not all this increase a thousandfold the debt you owe to God? But how shall we ever be able sufficiently to thank Him? If the law of gratitude is observed by the wild beasts, whose fierce nature is often changed into gentleness towards their benefactors, how much more ought it not to be observed by man gifted as he is with reason, and so nobly endowed by the Divine liberality? Read More »

WANDA SHERRATT writes:

This story is front page news in Canada right now.

Our new Consul General in Miami is a woman named Roxanne Dubé, and she has only been in the job two months.  Yesterday, her two teenage sons, who were both allegedly armed, took her BMW to go buy drugs, and the affair ended with the 17-year old dead, and the 15-year old charged with murder.  If you read the history of this woman’s life encapsulated in the story, you’ll see that she could be a poster girl for the modern woman, and an example of someone who could hardly have made worse decisions if she tried. Read More »

TWO years ago, an Atlanta hospital declined to put 15-year-old Anthony Stokes on its heart transplant list because he had a history of noncompliance with doctor’s orders and criminal delinquency. Civil rights groups accused the hospital of racism. The hospital relented and Stokes was given a new heart, instead of someone else on the list.

He died on Tuesday after carjacking a vehicle, bursting into a home and shooting at a woman inside who was watching TV, fleeing in the stolen car, hitting a pedestrian, and crashing into a pole.

DON VINCENZO writes:

Much of this morning’s news was dominated by a story in which a man, arrested and charged with several bank robberies, who had escaped police custody and was being sought by the law enforcement members of Fairfax County Virginia, where I live. There were radio updates upon updates, informing the public to be on the lookout for a certain car, which had been hijacked, and not to approach the “accused” felon, who was considered armed and dangerous. But something did not fit: how had this man, identified as Wossen Assaye, who appears (from his photo) not particularly big or bulky, “overpowered” two policemen, taken the gun of one, and fled. It didn’t sound kosher, and, of course, it wasn’t. Read More »

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

A featureless and ugly museum has opened in Boston, next door to John Kennedy’s featureless and ugly presidential library.  It is the brain-child of the late President Kennedy’s late baby brother, Senator-for-life Edward Moore Kennedy, known to Americans with varying degrees of affection as Teddy Kennedy.  The museum, The Edward M. Kennedy Institute, is supposed to be about the U.S. Senate but is really a center for Leftist hagiography of Teddy, just as the library next door is a center for Leftist hagiography of Jack. Read More »

TODAY marks the tenth anniversary of the court-ordered starvation and dehydration of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who suffered massive brain damage after she collapsed in cardiac arrest at the age of 26. At Christ or Chaos, Thomas Droleskey discusses the famous case and presents a first-hand account of Schiavo’s last days by the priest who was by her side when she died. There were police in the room also. They were there to prevent anyone, even the parents who loved her and brought her into the world, from giving Schiavo food or water. The Rev. Frank Pavone wrote:

There was a little night table in the room.  I could put my hand on the table and on Terri’s head all within arm’s reach.  And on that table was a vase of flowers filled with water.  And I looked at the flowers.  They were beautiful.  There were roses and other types of flowers and there was another vase at the foot of the bed.  I saw two beautiful bouquets of flowers filled with water — fully nourished, living, beautiful.  And I said to myself, this is absurd, totally absurd.  These flowers are being treated better than this woman.  She has not had a drop of water for almost two weeks.  Why are those flowers there?  What type of hypocrisy is this?  The flowers were watered.  Terri wasn’t.  And had I dipped my hand in that water and put it on her tongue, the [police] officer would have led me out, probably under arrest.  Something is wrong here.

As the media reported, those who killed Terri were quite angry that I said so. The night before she died, I said to the media that her estranged husband Michael, his attorney Mr. Felos, and Judge Greer were murderers. I also pointed out, that night and the next morning, that contrary to Felos’ description, Terri’s death was not at all peaceful and beautiful. It was, on the contrary, quite horrifying. In all my years as a priest, I never saw anything like it before. Read More »

Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Orazio Borgianni

“THE entire history of mankind is a story of love. It’s a story of how man was made for God and how man became estranged from God. But in the end, after many struggles and sorrows, man has come back to God to have a happiness in the end.”

— From this sermon on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

DON VINCENZO writes:

A READER writes:

I was thinking of Lawrence Auster this weekend when I took my boys out to lunch near my new apartment, which is in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia. I admit this East Coast stuff is new to me, having recently moved here from overseas, but the scene I witnessed in this restaurant at 1 p.m. on a Sunday was really something to behold. Read More »

THE hysteria regarding all things feminist and racist in the mainstream media has reached new levels. Ideas contrary to orthodoxy are now believed to inflict emotional abuse or even torture.

As one example, I offer this review by Anthony Tommasini, music critic for The New York Times, in which he compares the “mental brutality” of Rush Limbaugh’s radio shows to the beheading of women by the Persian king in the tale of Scheherazade. No kidding. He actually does that. I would like to say Tommasini is an imbecile, appearing under the guise of the cultured aesthete. But that would be too kind. He appears to be off his rocker.

By the way, women are indeed being beheaded. They are being beheaded by feminist ideology.

Read More »

STEPHEN I. writes:

On a purely personal level, I was very pleased indeed to learn that Lawrence Auster loved and studied both English literature and law as a young man as those were my own two courses of undergraduate study at university. In the case of the former discipline, it was and remains my consuming passion – whilst the latter provided me with a living for almost 30 years. Not a great link to a great man but, then again, better than no link at all. Read More »

ACCORDING to The Wall Street Journal, two- to four-year-olds watch an average of 25 hours of TV per week. Now television producers are aiming at the younger market, creating programming for children as young as six months old.

This is not surprising. There is nothing — nada — to prevent commercial interests in America from exploiting and corrupting children. We’re living in the sort of dystopian screen environment depicted by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451

The tomb of the Count of Urgell at The Cloisters Museum

“JOURNEY” is a much abused and over-used word. So much so that it is almost impossible to use it today without conjuring a New-Agey binge of self worship. But, on the second anniversary of the death of the formidable writer Lawrence Auster, I am drawn to think of his journey.

He was born in New Jersey in 1949. He was born at the right time and at the wrong time. He was constantly at odds with his surroundings. Read More »

WENDY McELROY writes about the movie, The Hunting Ground: 

Political careers, administrative jobs, government grants, book and lecture contracts are just some of vast financial benefits that rest upon continuing the “rape culture” crusade on campus.

The Hunting Ground offers a rare glimpse into what may be a subtle “other financial benefit.”  Read More »