SOME wisdom pertaining to romantic love on this day after St. Valentine’s Day from Frank Sheed’s book Sanity and Society (Sheed and Ward, 1953):

Sex is a power of the whole man, one power among many: and man is not an isolated unit, but bound to his fellows in society: and his life on earth is not the whole of life, but only a beginning. To use the power of sex successfully we must use it in balance with the rest of our powers, for the service of the whole personality, within a social order, with eternity to come. And all this is too complex a matter to be left to instinct or chance, to desire or mood or the heat of the blood or the line of least resistance. It calls for hard thinking.

A summons to think about sex will be met with no enthusiasm. Men are not much given to thought about sex; as we have noted, they expect no fun from thought and are not much inclined to it or good at it: whereas they expect a great deal of fun from sex and persist in thinking (in the face of the evidence) that they are good at it. Not only that. They feel that there is something rather repellent, almost improper, in the association of sex and thinking. A man must be cold-blooded, they say, to use his reason on sex. The taunt of cold-bloodedness is one that we can bear with fortitude. To the man with fever, a normal temperature seems cold-blooded—but vitality goes with normal temperature, not with fever. And modern sex life is not, even by its own standards, very vital. Too many men who have reached middle life have to admit that for themselves sex has not lived up to its promise—that on balance their life has been rather more begloomed by sex than delighted by it. They have had plenty of glowing anticipation, a handful of glowing experiences, a mass of half-satisfactions and whole frustrations—with the horizon drawing in, and the worried feeling that the splendour has somehow eluded them. (more…)

“IMAGINE that a group of people break into your house every night, go into your kitchen and use your food, appliances and electricity to prepare meals. Then they take those meals and sell them on their food truck. Compared to other food trucks, the ones breaking into your house have no overhead and no risk. Everything they make is pure profit. Then they use that money to buy things, to send money back home, to drive up costs and scarcity and drive down profits for other food trucks – who have their market share diminished by them.

“This is the scam of illegal invader labor. There’s no benefit to the citizen to have them here. NONE. Every single thing they are able to do, get, have is at the expense of someone who belongs here. (more…)

FAKENUKES PHIL makes some funny observations about political partisanship, including his commentary on Elon Musk's five-year-old son laughing hilariously at the people. Phil is apparently a working class guy. He's done a good job of exposing some media hoaxes.  

[Reposted]

WHEN I was growing up there was a television soap opera (I can’t remember the name) that I watched occasionally. One of its characters was a middle class housewife who always appeared in scenes in her kitchen.

Her kitchen was small and modest by today’s standards, especially by Hollywood’s standards, and she was not glamorous, unlike many soap opera characters today. I remember her wearing plaid blouses and skirts, and very little make-up. Everything in her kitchen was neat and orderly and she was never in a rush. During the course of the show, someone — a neighbor, friend or relative — would drop by to visit her. She always had the time to stop what she was doing and talk.

She would usually sit down at her table with the visitor and they would discuss some interpersonal drama, this being a soap opera. As they were talking, her face would register all the appropriate emotions, but mostly empathy and concern. I can’t recall who the actress was, but she was very good at it. This housewife was never angry or depressed or hysterical. Her tranquil empathy seemed a sort of filter through which the conflicts of this fictitious community beyond her kitchen passed. Nothing was truly solved in her kitchen, but worries and disappointments were cleansed by her attentive listening and wise suggestions. (more…)

"NO paths, no streets, no sidewalks, no light, no roads, no guests, no calls, no teams, no hacks, no trains, no moon, no meat, no milk, no paper, no mails, no news, no thing — but snow. — Bellows Falls Gazette on the Great Blizzard of 1888  

  

TWO posts from 2017, here and here, examine some of the desecration of Lourdes, France, by the Vatican II Church, which insists on humanistic fun and fellowship over sublimity, awe and reverence.

I especially recommend these perceptive comments by a reader — and, by the way, I have included another photo of St. Bernadette in this post because I think her face speaks volumes about her interior state. It reveals the conviction and simplicity that enabled this uneducated girl to resist everyone around her — her parents, her teachers, the police and all the most smart people of her day. This same solemnity helped her turn away later from the status of a celebrity and endure illness. She was even more beautiful in death.

From the reader’s comments:

The clip you feature with its prancing priests trying to be all things to all men by placing fun and frivolity and childishness at the heart of what is afterall an event personally commanded by Our Lady, (“Go, tell the priests to come here in procession and to build a chapel here” – March 2nd, 1858), is at odds with the reality of what happened at Lourdes in 1858. How so?

Consider that Our Lady took care to appear arrayed in very dignified garb. Her manner of speaking to Bernadette was always dignified and courteous and formal.

Consider that Bernadette was but a child herself in 1858 but Our Lady nevertheless made no concession to childishness by seeking to indulge or amuse her. On the contrary she granted Bernadette the compliment of addressing her as a young woman – with agency. Indeed, it is important that on her first few appearances nothing at all was said but instead they prayed together silently honoring God through the rosary. (more…)

[Reposted and revised.]

TODAY is the anniversary of the day in 1858 that a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, had the first of numerous visions in a grotto in Lourdes, France in the Pyrenees mountains. A beautiful young woman appeared to her.

“Her face was oval in shape, and ‘of an incomparable grace,’ her yes were blue, her voice ‘Oh, so sweet!'”

Bernadette’s recollection are described in the book by Abbe Francois Trochu, Saint Bernadette Soubirous, first published in France in 1954:

“I had hardly begun to take off my stocking when I heard the sound of wind, as in a storm. I turned towards the meadow, and I saw that the trees were not moving at all. I had half-noticed, but without paying any particular heed, that the branches and brambles were waving beside the grotto.

I went on taking my stockings off, and was putting one foot into the water, when I heard the same sound in front of me. I looked up and saw a cluster of branches and brambles underneath the topmost opening in the grotto tossing and swaying to and fro, though nothing else stirred all around.

Behind these branches and within the opening, I saw immediately afterwards a girl in white, no bigger than myself, who greeted me with a slight bow of the head; at the same time, she stretched out her arms slightly away from her body, opening her hands, as in pictures of Our Lady; over her right arm hung a rosary.

I was afraid. I stepped back. I wanted to call the two little girls; I hadn’t the courage to do so. I rubbed my eyes again and again: I thought I must be mistaken.

Raising my eyes again, I saw the girl smiling at me most graciously and seeming to invite me to come nearer. But I was still afraid. It was not however a fear such as I have had at other times, for I would have stayed there for ever looking at her: whereas, when you are afraid, you run away quickly.

The lady or “girl” would return and communicate with Bernadette 16 times in the ensuing months. She is now known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Her timing was apt. Convulsed by the revolutions of 1848, the 19th-century was undergoing great changes.

Bernadette faced intense opposition from her parents, her teachers, her neighbors, the clergy and the local police, who threatened her with arrest. Her parents initially forbade her to return to the grotto. Many were converted to the view that she was telling the truth when they saw her experience one of her apparitions, so transfixed and transformed was this small, humble child. Twenty thousand people came to watch during the 14th apparition. But no one else saw what she saw or experienced the same incomparable ecstasy. (more…)

“THE Faith and the use of the intelligence are inextricably bound up. The use of reason is the main part -- or rather the foundation -- of all inquiry into the highest things.” --- Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies  

A MESSAGE from Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz:

 Terry Morris writes: Who among us in fake and gay 2025 America can even imagine a superbowl halftime show featuring the likes of "the sounds of Dixie," or of "Waiting on the Robert E. Lee?" Or of failure to add "Marching Through Georgia" to such a Playlist for that matter. "When Nazis ruled America," amirite?! How sad!  

  

FROM The Unity of the Catholic Church by St. Cyprian of Carthage (A.D. 200? - 258): ""Discord and ambition lead to schism. Beware of false prophets (10-11). "10. Heresies have often arisen and still arise because of this, that disgruntled minds will quarrel, or disloyal trouble-makers will not keep the unity. But these things the Lord allows and endures, leaving man’s freedom unimpaired, so that when our minds and hearts are tested by the touchstone of truth, the unswerving faith of those who are approved may appear in the clearest light. This is foretold by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle when he says: There must be also heresies, that those approved may be manifest among you. Thus are the faithful proved, thus the faithless discovered; thus too even before the day of judgment, already here below, the souls of the just and unjust are distinguished, and the wheat is separated from the chaff. This explains why certain people, backed by their hot-headed associates, seize authority for themselves without any divine sanction, making themselves into prelates regardless of the rules of appointment, and, having no one to confer the episcopate upon them, assume the title of Bishop on their own authority. In the Psalms the Holy Spirit describes these men as sitting in the chair of pestilence; they are pests and plagues to the faith, snake-tongued deceivers, skilled corruptors of the truth, spewing deadly venom from their poisonous fangs; whose speech spreads…

A LITTLE bird in our yard has a runny nose. We suspect the worst. I just wanted to warn you that the price of eggs at your supermarket may be rising again.  

"THERE are two kinds of people in the world: the people who think there are two kinds of people in the world, and the people who don't." --- Robert Benchley