BUCK writes:

The U.S. Air Force is denying re-enlistment to an atheist airman who refuses to swear “so help me God” as required in the standard military oath of enlistment. The USAF used to allow airmen to omit “swear…so help me God” on request. They could substitute “affirm” for “swear” and drop the reference to God. This was standard policy across the services,  despite the fact that the U.S. Code Title 10, paragraph 502, still requires all enlisted service members to “swear…so help me God.” The USAF, suddenly in October 2013, discovered Title 10. They await a ruling from the Pentagon. Oddly, the U. S. Air Force Academy just recently dropped the requirement to “swear…so help me God.”

Is the USAF provoking a religious test because they want God removed? What other reason could there be?

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A NEW PERFUME named after the Man Who Would Be Pope has citrusy notes of apostasy and betrayal.

ACCORDING TO The New York Times:

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of legal black African immigrants in the United States about doubled, to around one million. During that single decade, according to the most reliable estimates, more black Africans arrived in this country on their own than were imported directly to North America during the more than three centuries of the slave trade.

READ about the latest school statistics in North Carolina here.

By the way, according to Education News, the average annual expenditure for homeschooling a child is $500 to $600.That does not, of course, include the labor of the parent who is teaching. Homeschoolers also pay public school taxes.

FRED OWENS writes at his blog, Frog Hospital:

I have worked at community gardens quite often. They depend on volunteer labor. Planners consistently overestimate the supply of volunteer labor. They begin projects with a burst of enthusiasm and discover a weed-choked mess several months later.

The garden where I volunteer has wisely learned from those experiences. We use volunteer labor on a sustainable basis. We have lots of wonderful ideas and things we like to do, but we talk ourselves out of it. I serve on the board of this garden, and I have been known to say, “I’m not willing to do any work on this. I might do a little bit of work, but not much.”

My fellow board members often agree with that assessment. You might say we are lazy. We have designed an orchard of fruit trees, choosing projects that require the least labor — that gives us time to sit in the shade and enjoy the view. Read More »

“MEN have been put on earth to receive a little of that light of eternity as it descends on them. They become in some way eternal, they too, immortal, according to the extent to which they attach themselves to the truth of God. To the extent by which they attach themselves to the things that change, to moving things, they move away from God. And here it is that we feel a need. All men feel this need. They have in them an immortal soul which is already now in eternity, a soul which will be happy or unhappy, but it is a soul that exists. It will not die.

Every man who is born, who has a soul, has entered into eternity which is God. We cannot do without it. It is part of our lives. It is what is most essential to us. That is why men seek the truth, seek the eternal, because they have an essential need of eternity.”

…..

“When we possess the past we possess the present and we possess the future. Because it is impossible, I say metaphysically impossible, to separate the past from the present and the future. Impossible! Then God would no longer be God! God would no longer be eternal! God would no longer be immutable. And then there would be nothing more to believe in. We would be completely in error.”

— Archbishop Marcel LeFebvre, Sermon at Ecône; September 18, 1977

WHILE Eve was the first revolutionary, Mary was the first counter-revolutionary. While Eve took a bite of that apple, giving in to pride and rebellion, the Mother of God said yes to the angel in humility and submission. She is the Eternal Yes. She is the first anti-feminist. She is the crusher of serpents. She is the immortal queen of Truth, Goodness and Love. Today is the Feast of Her Nativity. Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope.

Canadian Columnist Jen Zoratti and her family

JEN ZORATTI, a columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press (as if there is such a thing), recently hailed the movie Obvious Child which “finally opens in Winnipeg this weekend.” The movie, she writes, represents a positive cultural development. For it is a romantic comedy that portrays abortion in a positive light.

Donna decides to have an abortion. And nothing bad happens to her.

Zoratti considers it outrageous that some people in this era of enlightenment still oppose abortion. The “subtlety of right-to-life tropes” is especially annoying. Anti-abortion activists are even arguing that terminating life in the womb is psychologically and medically harmful to women!! Do you believe it!?

From where I’m sitting, these are new tools of an old oppression under the guise of being “pro-woman.” All the more reason we need films such as Obvious Child to help de-stigmatize what is a common — and, in this country, legal — procedure.

Zoratti fails to mention that the overwhelming majority of these public critics of abortion are women themselves. Minor detail.

Don’t be fooled by this column into thinking Zoratti’s callousness towards women and children, her sense of superiority and condescension toward anyone who would not easily eliminate a human life in its formative stages, means she is devoid of maternal sentiments. She is not. In fact, she is extremely maternal. In another column, Zoratti effuses over of her dog, Samson:

Full disclosure: I am a dog mom.

My baby’s name is Samson. He’s a two-year-old Maltese/shih tzu cross — a handsome little fella with a wonky underbite, soulful brown eyes and a big personality. The kindly neighbour calls him “Mr. GQ” when he wears his charcoal grey J. Crew-esque turtle-neck sweater. (Yes, he owns a charcoal grey J. Crew-esque turtle-neck sweater.)

I regale friends and co-workers with what I think are adorable, witty stories about his various quirks. I flood my social-media feeds with photos. Samson in the porch. Samson in the park. Plaintive Samson. Artsy Samson. Samson in repose. On my desk at work is a framed photo of Samson and his dad, my partner. Our mothers refer to him as their grandchild. We’ve raised him from puppyhood. We can’t imagine our lives without him.

I am sure her friends are eager to see every last picture of Samson.

The nice thing about canine children is that they don’t stand in the way of a brilliant career as a newspaper ideologue. Samson, with his wit, his soulful eyes, his artistic depths, his interesting quirks, his “wonky underbite,” will never be an ornery teenager reminding his mother just how imperfect she is or keep her up night after night or require extensive moral education or be the subject of intense conjugal disagreement. As far as maternal investment goes, Samson is a remarkably good deal. Something tells me that Ms. Zoratti would be happy to oppress Samson’s real mother if abortion had been under consideration before her little darling was born.

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A.J. WEST, who comments as Anthony Gonzales at length in the previous entry, describes the first part of his fictional trilogy Wolves Among the Ruins here:

The Prince Dethroned begins with the death of Pope John Paul II and the unexpected election of an obscure bishop governing the small diocese of Palencia, Spain. This unknown bishop is actually a man of great resolve and integrity who has observed the autodemolition of the Catholic Church by men and women supposedly dedicated to its protection and the continuance of holy tradition handed on since the Apostles. He had protected his diocese but against all odds. Now he is thrust into the most powerful position of authority on earth and he will have to walk carefully.

What if a man were elected to the Papacy who was more like William Wallace (Braveheart) than Robert the Bruce, or more like George Patton than Dwight D. Eisenhower, or more like a Winston Churchill than Neville Chamberlain? How would such a man deal with the crisis, turmoil and scandals in the Catholic Church of the 21st Century; a crisis fomented by Masonic infiltrators, turmoil sown by Communist sabotours, and scandals spawned by Modernist pseudo-Catholics? Would he compromise and appease or would he deal with the threat directly. How would his actions affect the geopolitical landscape of Europe, the United States and the rest of the world?

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FROM Authority and Its Enemies (Transaction, 1995) by Thomas Molnar:

NOW my contention is that authority is analogous to love. Every act within the family is either a manifestation of authority (and corresponding obedience or refusal) or a manifestation of its absence. At first sight, love could be represented by a larger circle, authority by a smaller one inscribed in the first. Love is always present in the form of care, consideration, gifts, gestures, and so on, whereas authority needs a precise external sign, a regular affirmation, a direction. I once heard a father say how he envied his brother who merely had to signal to his teenage sons in order to silence them when he was talking with other adults. “My son would continue talking,” he lamented in a resigned tone. The case of the two brothers displays similar situations and similar sentiments of paternal love, but they are made dissimilar by the presence or absence of authority. It is not difficult to conclude that love is more effective (and mutually more satisfying) when accompanied by authority. The latter indeed is a way of channeling love; instead of a general and ubiquitous emotionalism, love becomes structured, apportioned, is made directive, I would even say “educational” if the term had not been devalued as a part of the bureaucratic jargon. Anyway, love is formative and humanizing when coupled with authority; in combination, the two are the cement of the family structure.

DAN writes:

I check into your website daily and admire your thought-provoking and stylish essays/subjects.  I am 50 years old, married with four children.  I recently went through a horrendous trial regarding Francis, who I believe is a heretic, if not an outright apostate.  That is not something I broadcast, given the circles I travel in, but is more my opinion.  I entertain the sedevacantist thesis, and nearly embraced it completely.   Read More »

GRATEFUL READER writes:

I just went to the grocery store and  met a woman whom I have not seen in many years. She said that her daughter had had a baby some time ago. When I remarked that I had not known this and that, in fact, I did not know that she had gotten married, she said, “Oh, no, she’s not married. She had IVF, sperm bank, you know. She is a single mother by choice.” Alas. The daughter was a pretty, intelligent woman who attended an Ivy League college and is now nearly forty. I made polite conversation with the mother, but I don’t know what to say, or how to act toward her. Perhaps I should have looked at her in horror, dropped the package of meat in the crowded aisle, and said, “That is terrible! How could she do such a thing?” But I doubt it would help her to understand the truth of the situation.

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Kidist Paulos Asrat writes about the bridal designer Vera Wang (pictured here in her favorite workspace) and her Gothic gowns.

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The Loiterers, Walter Osborne; 1888

IN his short story “The Majesty of the Law,” the Irish writer Frank O’Connor describes the arrest of Old Dan Bride. (The story begins at page 30 in this online edition of his works.) It’s all civilized and orderly. You might say, both the arrest — and the crime — are quintessentially Irish.

A man’s shadow fell across the oblong of dusty light thrown over the half door before Dan looked round.

‘Are you alone, Dan?’ asked an apologetic voice.

‘Oh, come in, come in, sergeant. come in and welcome,’ exclaimed the old man, hurrying on rather uncertain feet to the door, which the tall policeman opened and pushed in.

The Ottoman Siege of Vienna

STEVE KOGAN writes:

In the winter of 1933 at the age of nineteen, the English travel writer and World War II hero Patrick Leigh Fermor began a trip through Europe that he later described in a series of works drawn from his notes, journals, memories, and reflections. The first book is titled A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube. The following passage is taken from his chapter on Vienna:

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ADAM writes:

It seems absurd to me that this country rewards people who illegally cross the border with free, taxpayer-provided public schooling. Public schools were created for the education of American children. Citizens would not have been willing to fund public education with their property taxes if they knew that the money would not be used to educate local children, but rather would be used to help settle “refugees” in their communities.

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