A READER writes from Ireland:

 The Roman historian, Pliny the Younger in approximately 100 AD, uses the word ‘burden’ to describe the one-child “families” of the Roman élite. As you know, Augustus the first acknowledged Emperor of Rome, was never tired of urging the Roman élite to have children and to stop spending their time having fun with the girlfriends and boyfriends. Augustus even had his “Bachelor Tax” to encourage young men into procreation.

However his Bachelor Tax failed spectacularly. His Bachelor Tax was made unsuccessful by the following method. Tom would have his buddy’s sister Mary pretend to be his (Tom’s) wife. They would then gather up a group of local children. Tom would present Mary and the children as his “family” to the Roman Bachelor Tax office. Indeed there was a thriving ‘Hire a wife and children for the Bachelor Tax office’ black market to deceive the Roman Bachelor Tax officials.

Time has proven the leaders of Rome correct in their view of the danger of demographic decline.

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HERE’S a humorous look at the fact that no Muslim bakeries or pizzerias have been targeted for refusing to cater “gay weddings.” Why is this unlikely ever to happen? I realize you already know why, but let’s just briefly mention the reasons.

First, Muslims do not take kindly to religious challenges.

Secondly, the Muslim view of homosexuality is inhuman and cruel. It is just so obviously wrong.

It is precisely because the Christian view of homosexuality is not hateful, it is precisely because it is charitable toward those afflicted with homosexual inclinations that it is targeted. The Christian view of homosexuality is based on objective truth and kindness. Thus it is truly threatening to homosexual liberation, which is founded on lies and distortions.

True morality is far more charitable toward the homosexually-inclined than Islam and far more charitable than liberalism, which simply ignores the scientific facts of the harmful medical, psychological and spiritual consequences of homosexual behavior and says, “Deal with it.”

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I HAVE a friend, I’ll call her Elizabeth, who was one of two children of a woman who was an attentive mother but also very critical of her daughter. Apparently she had great expectations of Elizabeth, who attended two Ivy League schools and then went onto have a reasonably successful career in public relations but did not become a superstar. For some reason, her mother was disappointed and thought she should have succeeded more. I’m not clear as to why, but it was true because I saw them interact. I remember being shocked, having never experienced this kind of disapproval myself. The mother often interrogated Elizabeth about her job prospects. When Elizabeth got married, the mother was disappointed again. She didn’t like the husband.  Elizabeth and her husband sadly divorced after a short time and Elizabeth had no children. Read More »

“Wretched are those countries to whom the Lord doesn’t speak any more, not even in quiet indignation, for this is a sign that He has cast them off, that they are abandoned and left alone in their blindness and obduracy.”

—Padre Pio in a letter to his spiritual daughter Raffaela Cerase

FROM Military Times:

Surveys find that men in U.S. special operations forces do not believe women can meet the physical and mental demands of their commando jobs, and they fear the Pentagon will lower standards to integrate women into their elite units, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Studies that surveyed personnel found “major misconceptions” within special operations about whether women should be brought into the male-only jobs. They also revealed concerns that department leaders would “capitulate to political pressure, allowing erosion of training standards,” according to one document.

Some of those concerns were not limited to men, researchers found, but were found among women in special operations jobs.

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ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

From The Times of India:

A leading British medical journal has retracted 43 published articles after it was found that the authors had fabricated their peer reviews. As many as 41 articles were written by doctors who worked in Chinese hospitals. Read More »

THE world’s largest sperm bank has just opened across the street from the University of Central Florida in Orlanda, which has 30,000 male students and is the second largest university in the country:

“This is the first international sperm bank in the state of Florida,” Cryos International Vice President Angel Tillis said.

Cryos officials aim to collect sperm and ship it across the nation and to fertility clinics and hospitals in 80 countries around the world. But it can’t do that without young men willing to donate for up to $125 each time and other benefits, including free health exams and treatment for three years.

MARK JAWS writes:

Evidently the white liberals at USA Today are upset that there are too many white players on the University of Wisconsin basketball team.

Where to begin with this nonsense? Well, how about we see if the major media moguls themselves reflect the diversity they have been imposing on everyone else? Good news. I have already done so. Back in 2009, I did an in-depth ethnic analysis of the 32 major decision makers of the national media at NBC, CBS, ABC, Time, and Newsweek. I found out that all of them were white, and 28 of them were male. Furthermore, and this came as no surprise to my semi-Semitic self, at least 23 of the 32 media moguls were Jewish (or part Jewish). Well, so much for media diversity. Moral of the story? Liberals who live in all white houses should not throw basketballs at white players.

FROM “The Words and Deeds of Christ” by Joseph Sobran:

What greater proof of his divinity could there be than the fact that [Christ] is still resisted, even hated, after 2,000 years? Nobody hates Julius Caesar anymore; it’s pretty hard even to hate Attila the Hun, who left a lot of hard feelings in his day. But the world still hates Christ and his Church.

The usual form of this hatred is interesting in itself. For every outright persecutor, there are countless people who pretend not to hate Christ, but subtly demote him to the rank of a “great moral teacher,” or say they have nothing against Christianity as long as the “separation of church and state” is observed, or, under the guise of scholarship, affect to winnow out his “authentic” utterances from those falsely ascribed to him – as if the Apostles would have dared to put words in his mouth! And as if such fabricated words would have proved as durable as “authentic” ones! (Try writing a single sentence that anyone could mistake for a saying of Christ for even a century.) Read More »

READERS of this site, accustomed as they are to associating commercial pizza with propaganda of various kinds, were probably not surprised to find pizza at the center of a national conflict last week. During Holy Week, the most sacred and solemn week of the liturgical year, owners of a pizza shop in Indiana were baited into stating that they would not serve pizza at a “gay wedding.” Even at this advanced stage of pizzafication there was probably not a single “gay couple” in America who wanted pizza at their “wedding,” at least from this particular pizza shop. Nevertheless, the owners faced an hysterical mob on the Internet and had to shut down.

Not a single slice had been denied to anyone. That didn’t matter. The owners of the pizza shop had committed a thought crime, and that’s what mattered.

Please do not blame the virtual mob. These people have been brainwashed. They have been indoctrinated all their lives into believing that the freedom to think and do whatever one wants is the highest and most precious principle. All freedom is good, even the freedom to destroy oneself.

They should not be blamed for their ignorance. They are pursuing American secularism to its logical conclusions. They are acting upon what they have been taught in school and by every major organ of public opinion. Read More »

Laudario of the Compagnia di Sant’Agnese, Pacino di Bunoaguida; 1320s

“I give You thanks, who illumine me and deliver me, for You have enlightened me and I have known You.  Late have I known You, O ancient Truth; late have I known You, O eternal Truth!  You were in the light and I was in darkness, and I did not know You, for I had no light without You, and without You, there is no light!”

   — St. Augustine, Confessions

TOM writes:

Regarding the abomination going on around us, i.e., its source and the fate of those responsible, this is from “The Mystical City of God” by Venerable Mary of Agreda, wherein was revealed to her Satan’s first rant to his fellow fallen angels in hell, after their being condemned there: Read More »

FROM “The Dangers of Human Respect and How to Overcome it,” (1891) by Father Michael B. Buckley:

Those who are influenced by human respect have tongues that utter no sentiments but those which others may applaud; they have ears that watch to catch the floating opinion of the crowd, that their own may be found according to the vulgar standard; they have eyes that see not their own contemptible subserviency, and their own wretched degradation; they have feet that walk not in the ways of God, but follow in the wake of those that insult and deride Him. Shameful servitude! infinitely more degrading than any physical bondage to which poverty or even crime subjects the outcast of society or the victims of the law.

One case, in which human respect most commonly exercises its pernicious influence is, where a man has been in the pursuit of sin for years, and who is now sincerely desirous to return to God, but who is deterred from the work of conversion by the fear that his new conversion of life may excite the ridicule of those with whom he had been associated in his former career of vice. Read More »

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS wrote on Christ’s burial in the tomb:

The sepulchre is a figure by which is signified the contemplation of heavenly things. So, St.
Gregory, commenting on the words of Job (iii. 22), They rejoice exceedingly when they have found the grave says, “As in the grave the body is hidden away when dead, so in divine contemplation there lies concealed the soul, dead to the world. There, at rest from the world s clamour, it lies, in a three days burial through, as it were, its triple immersion in baptism. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy face from the disturbance of men (Ps. xxx. 21). Those in great trouble, tormented with the hates of men, enter in spirit the presence of God and they are at rest.”

Three things are required for this spiritual burial in God, namely, that the mind be perfected by the virtues, that the mind be all bright and shining with purity, and that it be wholly dead
to this world. All these things are shown figuratively in the burial of Christ. Read More »

IF YOU thought you’d seen every possible travesty of Catholic worship since Vatican II, you were wrong. Body in Prayer translates the Stations of the Cross into yoga exercises.  Read More »

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 »