Orestes Brownson

IN 1873, Orestes Brownson, the New England intellectual, wrote that the theory of evolution, “like the modern theory of progress, is untenable, and must be dismissed.” According to Brownson, Darwin had committed a crime worse than murder by presenting his conjectures as science:

“We have read Mr. Darwin’s books with some care, and, though not an absolute stranger to the subject he treats, or to the facts he narrates, we are a little surprised that even a professed scientist could put forth such a mass of unwarranted inductions and unfounded conjectures as science. Not one nor all of the facts he adduces, prove the species originate in natural or artificial selection. In all his inductions he is obliged to assume the progress of the species as the principle of his induction, while he ought to know that the assumption of the progress of the species negatives the origin of species in selection. But, and this is fatal to his theory, he nowhere adduces a single fact that proves the species is progressive, or a single instance in which a lower species by its struggles for life, as he pretends, approaches a higher species, or in which the individuals of a lower species lose any of the characteristics of their species, and acquire those of a higher or a different species.

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LINDA N. writes:

The first thing I thought of when I saw your image of the EU headquarters in Strasbourg was Breugel the Elder’s Tower of Babel.

Spooky.

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DON VINCENZO writes:

In September of 2013, I wrote of the three Barilla brothers, owners of the largest pastificio (pasta manufacturer) in Italy, who had refused to alter their ads celebrating the traditional family, refusing to relent in the storm that gathered around them for their impudence in questioning the new morality. That was then, now is now. According to  The Washington Post, after steadfastly refusing to show a same-sex couple in an ad, the company has “…now journeyed from gay rights pariah to poster child…”

Barilla, which also has production factories in Illinois, joins Starbucks, Nike and Microsoft, which have also endorsed homosexual marriage. Read More »

FOR a full report on this latest act of apostasy by Jorge Bergoglio, go here.

THE darkness of winter corresponds so well to spiritual tenor of Advent, which starts today, that it is reasonable to think of God fashioning this annual darkness and barrenness so that we could better perceive with our limited supernatural sight the blazing light and warmth of the Incarnation of the Word. In his work, The Liturgical Year, the nineteenth-century French Benedictine monk, Dom Prosper Guéranger, writes:

[W]e find that the Mystery of this Coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple for it is the one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.

‘In the first coming,’ says St. Bernard, ‘He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and power; in the third, He comes in glory and majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.’  Read More »

HERE are protestors in Oakland, California yesterday, angry that a black teenager who assaulted and possibly tried to kill a police officer in Missouri was shot and killed in the encounter. Not far from where they protested, a 72-year-old woman, Nancy Jo McLellan, was stabbed to death in October. An 18-year-old black teenager has been charged in her murder and was reportedly seen stabbing her while trying to steal her car. He apparently became enraged when the car wouldn’t start. McLellan was returning to her car after a wedding and had never assaulted anyone. She was attacked in broad daylight and there has never been a single protest related to her vicious murder. The truth is, black lives matter more to these protestors, and innocent whites killed in horrific crimes don’t matter at all. The many blacks killed by other blacks don’t matter either. At best, these protestors are racist, mindless sheep and spoiled brats seeking an excuse for righteous misbehavior. They have the same mentality as Nazi youths. At worst, they are evil liars who want to destroy everything good and are motivated by nihilism. See a round-up of protests yesterday here.

These protests will almost certainly lead to more violence and viciousness by black criminals against both whites and blacks, as violent blacks become ever more enraged, impulse-driven and entitled.

Nancy Jo McLellan

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JORGE BERGOGLIO visited the headquarters of the EU in Strasbourg, France this week. The European Parliament building is a sort of Cathedral for Bergoglio’s Cult of Man. He richly praised the statist project of the God-less EU. There was almost nothing Catholic in his message. It was the usual Marxist, humanist bilge with some scolding of European nations for not obliterating their borders and not solving the problem of inequality. In fact, he only mentioned the word “Catholic” once.

The Cult of Man, not God, must rule Europe:

The motto of the European Union is United in Diversity. Unity, however, does not mean uniformity of political, economic and cultural life, or ways of thinking. Indeed, all authentic unity draws from the rich diversities which make it up: in this sense it is like a family, which is all the more united when each of its members is free to be fully himself or herself. I consider Europe as a family of peoples who will sense the closeness of the institutions of the Union when these latter are able wisely to combine the desired ideal of unity with the diversity proper to each people, cherishing particular traditions, acknowledging its past history and its roots, liberated from so many manipulations and phobias. Affirming the centrality of the human person means, above all, allowing all to express freely their individuality and their creativity, both as individuals and as peoples. [emphasis added]

Liberated from “manipulations and phobias?”

Not surprisingly, the Man Who Would be Pope (if only he professed the Catholic faith) did not visit the Strasbourg Cathedral with its sublime message for Europe. The Cathedral was completed in 1439 and now is a temple of the Protestantized happy talk known as Novus Ordo worship, not a bastion of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which was a Revelation from God and without which European civilization would never have become European civilization.

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AMONG the many things I am thankful for are the wise and perceptive readers of this site. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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In Times Square yesterday

AMONG THE THOUSANDS of people protesting the Ferguson decision in the last two days are those carrying signs that read, “Black lives matter.”

That is very true. Black lives do matter. And they have probably never mattered anywhere more on earth than in America, where blacks are treated with a level of judicial respect and given civil rights that have been historically unknown in much of Africa, where murder is still often treated with indifference.

Almost every single day in the week, a black person in America is killed by another black person. Most of the time it is white policemen who find and apprehend the people who kill blacks, often at the risk of their own safety. And black violence has gotten worse under the reign of judicial leniency and concepts of racist injustice.

The striking thing about Darren Wilson’s testimony to the grand jury is the contempt Michael Brown, assuming the testimony is true, showed from the very beginning of their encounter on the street. That’s not to say that Wilson had to shoot Brown. It was tragic that he did, but his reaction appears to have been within the limits of reasonable self defense. 

Every person protesting the grand jury’s decision should be forced to live in a black neighborhood without white police protection. Let them have their own country. Then they may discover just how little both white lives and black lives matter.

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SEE Jared Taylor’s commentary on Obama’s entirely predictable reaction to a grand jury’s refusal to indict Darren Wilson and the subsequent rioting last night:

Mr. Obama spoke for nearly 10 minutes, and spent about seven of them blaming the police. He said protesters have “legitimate issues of how communities and law enforcement interact,” and called anger over the refusal to indict “an understandable reaction.” He explained that Ferguson is an example of the “broader challenges that we still face as a nation.” He said he has “instructed Attorney General Holder to work with cities across the country . . . to train law enforcement so it conducts itself in a way that is fair to everybody.”

“This is not just an issue for Ferguson, this is an issue for America,” he explained, adding that the country can look forward to “tackling much-needed criminal justice reform.” “America isn’t everything that it could be,” he said sorrowfully, but “we can make progress not just in Ferguson but in a lot of communities and cities around the country.” Read More »

MANY CHRISTIANS have tried to reconcile the belief in an omnipotent Creator with Darwinian theories of evolution. Discussion continues in a recent entry on this subject. A reader contends that God could have used randomness to create life forms slowly over time and suggests that this view is compatible with Christian belief. The reader, Mike, writes:

Randomness is a tool that can be used creatively, and if it’s available to humanity I hesitate to say that it’s not available to God.

But the idea that randomness in any meaningful sense brought about the complexity and interdependence of higher, or even lower, life forms is untenable. There is no convincing scientific evidence that randomness was part of the origins of life. There is abundant evidence of conscious intention and design.

Furthermore, why would God choose to operate in this way, essentially playing a game with seeming randomness? For what reason? That God somehow fashioned life slowly and gradually, discarding lower forms for higher, is entirely incompatible with Scripture. If Genesis is pure myth, then why couldn’t the Incarnation be pure myth? Why would God choose to confuse and virtually deceive us in this way?

This view of an evolutionary God demolishes the concept of Original Sin. According to Genesis, Original Sin brought about death. If many quasi-human beings preceded the first human being — something which has never been proved by the fossil record or archaeology — how was death anything new or a divine punishment for Original Sin?

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PAUL writes:

Perhaps only God or Satan could harden the hearts of Americans to the extent we have been seeing for decades.  In Ferguson, Missouri a grand jury with many blacks on it decided not to indict a white police officer despite the whole black and liberal white community wanting the officer to be indicted.  The State of Missouri is in an alert status, while five dead whites were murdered in St. Louis, Missouri on September 2nd by a black, habitually-violent criminal, and the Media and politicians said nothing about it.

JOHN F. writes from Lemoyne, Pennsylvania:

Not a day does not go by without checking out your  blog. It is a must read for me every day if I want to hold onto my sanity, or what it left of it after six years of the great Obamgogue.

I have a small anecdote about “The Decline of Chopping” story.

I work part-time at a grocery store in Pennstlvania, in the produce department.  (This is in addition to my full-time job.)

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EVELYN writes:

You are not a Catholic. Nor are you a thinking Catholic. I will pray for you, that you will find the compassion that Jesus, our Lord and Savior teaches us to have for our fellow man. I will pray that idiotic statements such as Mexican people should stay and work on fixing their Country. Have you been to Mexico and seen the face of poverty on your sister and brother’s faces? If you cannot feed yourself, how are you to have energy to do anything but survive?

I would bet anything that you were raised in a home with plenty, and still live in a home with plenty.

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PROTESTS are scheduled in dozens of towns and cities around the country in response to the pending grand jury decision in the case of Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Michael Brown. Among the organizations planning the protests is A.N.S.W.E.R. Read Lee Cary’s article for details.

Brian Becker, above, co-founder of A.N.S.W.E.R is “a former member of the Secretariat of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party (WWP).”

M. CATHERINE EVANS and Bill Kassel both argue at The American Thinker that even if the recent allegations against Bill Cosby are true, he has been the target of Communist-style character assassination primarily because of his message of self reliance and moral improvement for blacks.

WHILE more stores are opening on Thanksgiving Day, forcing employees such as those at the Toys R Us store where this notice was posted to work on the holiday, there is also a growing consumer movement to stop the trend.

The Last Judgment, as portrayed on the portal of the Cathedral of Saint-Lazare

THE end of the world may be the most forbidden and censored subject in the history of human discourse. It’s pathetic how few people are interested in talking about it. Well, I guess it’s not surprising. We ourselves are immortal and are so blinded by earthly things that we like to think this world will go on and on and on. People tend especially in our day, so primitive and God-less that it looks suspiciously like the forerunner to doomsday, to avoid any kind of rumination on the last days. Too often, this important subject is left to those who live on the margins of society, weirdos and kooky people who warn that the end of the world is nigh. They may be right and they may be wrong about the timing, but they are most definitely right that the event will occur.

The law of entropy, which abides in all of nature, tells us on a scientific level that the world is finite. Jesus Christ has confirmed what nature foreshadows.

It could happen anytime. You cannot change the world, but you can prepare yourself for its spectacular and dramatic end.

On this the last Sunday of the ecclesiastical year, in the traditional calendar of the Catholic Church we meditate on Chapter 24 in Matthew, in which Christ very explicitly explains to the disciples what will happen. It is not kookiness, but firm reason, to believe every word He says:

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