AS of yesterday, a total of 260 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. Two Israelis had been killed since the conflict began on July 8th.

See a breakdown of casualties at The New York Times.

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MICHAEL M. writes:

I loved your post on modernist architecture.  You really honed in on its anti-Christian origins.  Sadly, however, it set a new standard of building low and selling high: stripping architecture of all its costly beauty, but selling the new “modernist chic” at roughly the same price, and thus re-calibrating the industry’s profit margins to such a degree that it’s financially near-impossible to return to a level of beauty.

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The original Archie

THE famous comic book character, Archie, who was introduced to the juvenile market in 1941 along with his fictional friends Jughead and Veronica at Riverdale High in a fictitious small American town, is now the focus of a worldwide media blitz. Here is one of those manufactured controversies in which news outlets react en masse to clever marketing. Archie is killed off as a character in the latest issue of Life with Archie in the course of defending his friend, Kevin, a homosexual character who was introduced in 2010. Kevin Keller is a senator who supports gun control. During the course of an attempted assassination, Archie intervenes and is killed by the assassin’s bullet instead.

Thus, the controversy. Singapore has banned the comic because of its depiction of Kevin’s “marriage” to another man. And many have condemned the homosexual themes. None of this condemnation could possibly be unexpected or unwanted by Archie Comic Publications, Inc., which is one of a matrix of media companies, including the publisher Random House, now invested in the Archie stories as depicted in comic books, movies and digital media.

However, an important facet of this story has been generally overlooked. A living Archie is not so important anymore. A dead Archie is even better. Most of the characters of the comic book have now been transferred from life to the realm of horror in a new series, Afterlife with Archie.

Afterlife with Archie depicts a zombie apocalypse which begins in Riverdale. The comic is Archie Comics’ first title to be rated ‘teens and up,’ which means it has a potentially much larger audience.

Here is a synopsis from Wikipedia: “After a car driven by Reggie kills Hot Dog, Jughead asks Sabrina to bring his beloved pet back to life. She does, but with terrible consequences: Hot Dog becomes a zombie, and kills Jughead, who himself rises as a zombie and spreads the contagion.”

Archie Comics CEO Jon Goldwater has said that his father, the late John L. Goldwater, would have been “shocked by Afterlife (…) but shocked in a great way”.

That is probably true. The first four issues of Afterlife with Archie, introduced in 2013, sold out.

Archie Comics represents a now-familiar cultural trajectory, described so perceptively by the writer E. Michael Jones in his book Libido Dominandi. First comes fairly wholesome mass popular culture, with its homogenizing effects. Then comes sexualized mass entertainment, with profit as the single greatest motive for transgressing former taboos. Then, as much of society is suffering the personal chaos, disorientation and alienation caused by the Sexual Revolution, horror becomes a major preoccupation of mass entertainment, its purveyors reacting with prompt sensitivity to the appetites of this disoriented public. Horror confirms the inchoate awareness and knowledge of chaos and social apocalypse. Archie was destined to die defending sexual transgression and to become a superhero in a world of zombies.

Archie, angry and vengeful shortly before his death.

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DON VINCENZO writes:

Since I am not a member of the Anglican Church or its “community,” I will not attempt to fathom the latest move by its Synod of Bishops to appoint their first female to carry an episcopal miter. That decision, however, was not unexpected, for the feminists, along with their male enablers within the Anglican Church, have sought to move a basically non-resistant hierarchy in that direction for decades. And why not? If the putative U.S. version of the Church of England would openly consecrate an active homosexual  to that rank, well, then, to cite the title of a song, Anything Goes. What interests – perhaps “intrigues” is a better word – me is that ARCIC is still in existence. Say again?

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Landscape with the Prophet Elijah in the Desert, Abraham Bloemart; 1610s

PROTESTANTISM, as far as I know, has not produced a single monk in the desert or hermit in the wilderness who has forsaken everything, all worldly pleasures and human interaction, to contemplate the wonderful and terrifying mysteries of God.

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LIPPI, Filippino
Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas over the Heretics (detail)
1489-9

FAITH is not solely a matter of reason. If it were, then belief would be as simple as understanding a mathematical equation or proof. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, “To believe is an act of the understanding adhering to divine truth by command of the will, which is moved by the grace of God.” Faith involves an assent of the will. At the same time, supernatural truth is never in contradiction with reason.

“Faith and Reason,” by the Rev. Bernard Vaughan, S.J., is a very good short essay on this subject. It comes from Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth, starting on page 428. Here is an excerpt:

They say, then, they cannot believe in the truths of revelation, because to believe, on the word of another, what we cannot ourselves prove, is to put reason in fetters—it is mental slavery. This objection against Faith, which in one form or another is so often made to do duty against Catholic doctrine, may sound plausible at first, but I undertake to show it is very shallow, and as cowardly as it is unfair.

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Hannah Arendt

IN AN essay in The Brussels Journal on Hannah Arendt and Richard Weaver, Thomas F. Bertonneau quotes from Arendt’s book Between Past and Future:

“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.”

NOW that the General Synod of the Church of England has voted to allow women bishops, what does this unsurprising move mean for the ailing Anglican sect? We can get an idea by looking at one of its top clerics.

The most prominent member of the Anglican female clergy is the Very Rev.Vivienne Faull, who may be a candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury someday. Faull (not the attractive parson above) was once provost of Leicester Cathedral. According to The Guardian:

In Leicester she helped the gradual transformation of the cathedral into a place where people of all faiths could feel at home …

“Junction of Crispin Street and Duval Street, London, 20 April 1912.” Photograph by C.A. Mathew (Courtesy of British Paintings blog)

CLICK on this great photo to get a better view of the faces.

AT HIS blog, Malcolm Pollack handily demolishes the logic of “gun control” in a few sentences. If guns were the problem, towns in Vermont would be much more dangerous than Chicago:

In Chicago, a city of 2.7 million people, fewer than 8,000 people are licensed to own a gun – less than 0.3%. The city’s gun-homicide rate is about 18 per 100,000. In Vermont, by contrast, where 42% of the population are gun owners, the rate of gun murders in 2010 was 0.3 per 100,000. So Chicago has a gun-homicide rate about 60 times Vermont’s, despite Vermonters being 150 times as likely to own a gun. To put that another way, in Chicago the ratio of the gun-homicide rate to the percentage of citizens who legally own guns is nine thousand times higher than it is in Vermont.

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A Peasant Funeral; Harper’s Weekly June 1870

DID you know that a funeral home director is now referred to by some as a “Life Celebration professional?” I feel sorry for people who die. It’s sad to leave this world on a wave of sentimentality and stilted joy.

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AS the number of men infected with AIDS rises again, the World Health Organization contends that the epidemic, which is largely caused by immoral sexual practices, can be reduced by destigmatization of homosexuality, drug use and prostitution, as if there is a shred of sexual stigma left in the modern world. The WHO is now suggesting that all men who engage in homosexual activity take antiretroviral drugs. In other words, people should risk death to indulge illicit desires. No one has ever died from celibacy, millions die from illicit sexual activity. The WHO is anti-health.

Antiretroviral drugs will never help, by the way, with the numerous other diseases and afflictions caused by anal intercourse, which causes more suffering than cigarette smoking and eating trans fats. The list of diseases found with extraordinary frequency among those who engage in anal intercourse, which traumatizes the fragile tissues of the anus and rectum and thus allows the entrance of pathogens into the blood stream, includes:

Anal Cancer
Chlamydia trachomatis
Cryptosporidium
Giardia lamblia
Herpes simplex virus
Human immunodeficiency virus
Human papilloma virus
Isospora belli
Microsporidia
Gonorrhea
Viral hepatitis types B & C
Syphilis

Parasitic infections, and even typhoid, can be caused by homosexual sexual practices.  The rate of syphilis among homosexually-active men is three to four times that of the general population. According to John R. Diggs, Jr., M.D.:

The consequences of homosexual activity have significantly altered the delivery of medical care to the population at-large. With the increased incidence of STD organisms in unexpected places, simple sore throat is no longer so simple. Doctors must now ask probing questions of their patients or risk making a misdiagnosis. The evaluation of a sore throat must now include questions about oral and anal sex. A case of hemorrhoids is no longer just a surgical problem. We must now inquire as to sexual practice and consider that anal cancer, rectal gonorrhea, or rectal chlamydia may be secreted in what deceptively appears to be “just hemorrhoids.” Moreover, data shows that rectal and throat gonorrhea, for example, are without symptoms in 75 percent of cases.

One reason why the obscene television sitcom Vicious, which is about two nasty, homosexual men who have been together for 48 years, is unrealistic is that many men who engage in homosexual activity do not live to be elderly.

YOU would think Joan of Arc would be a favorite of feminists. After all, she was a military woman who dressed in men’s clothes and played a traditionally masculine leadership role. However, you are unlikely to find St. Joan in any women’s studies curriculum. Why? Solange Hertz explains why in this great article that appeared in the Remnant Newspaper last April. She writes:

Joan of Arc cut her hair short and wore men’s clothes. She particularly fancied beautiful armor and fine horses, which she rode astride, and was admired for her prowess with the lance. She led troops into battle, remaining in armor for six days running if necessary, and never faltered in her objective even after the enemy captured her. They tried her and executed her, not for war crimes, but for being a witch.

We might expect to see her commemorated on a postage stamp or a silver dollar along with other intrepid females who fought for women’s rights or otherwise beat men at their own game. But feminists seem wary of Joan, as if they didn’t quite trust her. Anyway, they don’t often mention her, at least in public, and they certainly don’t carry her banner in demonstrations. That shows a degree of political acumen on their part, for were they to call attention to her it would soon become painfully clear that she didn’t care a fig for equal rights, for either man or woman.

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River Landscape with Sheep; John William Casilear

STEVE KOGAN writes:

My wife and I have a three-acre rural property along a country road in Columbia County, New York. The sleepy Rip Van Winkle mood of the surrounding landscape is underscored by our nearby access to the other side of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains just beyond, which is aptly named the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. According to Washington Irving’s tale, Rip is almost sleep-walking himself as he scrambles “unconsciously” up one of the highest peaks in the region, where he sees the river shimmering far below, with “lagging” ships in the windless air “sleeping on its glassy bosom.” He soon  enters a kind of mythical dreamland, where he encounters silent little shades of Henry Hudson’s crew, drinks their magical liquor, is knocked insensible for twenty years, and sleeps through the transformation of his domestic life and his colonial village and through the American Revolution itself.

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A READER writes:

Thank you for your blog. It is a comfort to see hard evidence that there are others who also see the destruction of our culture and diminution of our way of life.
 Here is a link to a Washington Post story that might be a good addition to your ongoing ‘Model Minority’ series.

P.S. I ask that you please refrain from using my real name. I currently work for a hotel, and am thus surrounded by militant homosexualists.

DON writes:

Evangelical Deaconess Home and Hospital in 1930

ALAN writes:

On an overcast day in St. Louis in November 2011, I was walking near the huge building that was once the Evangelical Deaconess Home and Hospital. It stood on a high point of land across from Forest Park in the western end of St. Louis.

It struck me as odd that there were no cars in the parking lots, no sign of life around the seven-story main building, and no lights visible in any of its windows. Only then did it occur to me that the hospital was closed permanently. It was rather a stunning realization.

During my walk, I met a security guard: A young white woman. (This fact alone is proof of a cultural revolution.)  She seemed intelligent and conscientious. At that time, the future of the building was uncertain. We talked for about ten minutes. I told her some of my memories of the hospital.  She said there were still books and paintings and files of papers in the building.

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A READER writes:

I saw a new movie this week, Deliver Us from Evil, that has me writing to you for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

Regarding the film’s quality, it is simply of its era: lots of 21st century, post-MTV visuals, audio, and violence. I won’t even be critical. This is multiplex filmmaking, plain and simple. And to be fair, there were some effectively creepy moments (e.g. a zookeeper possessed by Satan, captured on video, calmly, authoritatively bringing a lion under his charge).

But I’m not writing to tell you about the film’s aesthetics. It was the characterizations that struck me, for the worst of reasons.  First, we have two “buddy” cops—but this isn’t Adam-12 or Starsky and Hutch.  These officers are never in uniform (save for a brief training flashback) but never is it really established that they are “undercover” (unless I missed it).  And this is where it’s worth writing to you:  They look and talk exactly like, well, the very type of thugs I would expect them to chase.

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