A READER writes:

Only today, I read about Philip Chism’s recent attack at a Department of Youth Services detention center. In the Daily Mail article linked above, my jaw dropped when I read that he “slipped away from caregivers” and that a hospital attorney after the attack stated that “while the patients’ rooms are not locked, Chism remains under guard at night and is rarely alone.” [Emphases mine.] There are quotations from others almost equally shocking. Please read for yourself.

This is insanity. I instantly remembered a quote of yours in context of the murder itself, calling for a swift trial and implementation of the death penalty if convicted, in any case such as this.

Again, madness.

Thank you for your time, and your continued great work.

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LAURA E. writes:

THE revolting pop star loves Pope Francis and says Jesus would have approved of “gay marriage.”

PHILOSCRIBE writes:

I thank Dr. Thomas F. Bertonneau and Laura Wood and the other commentators for the recent posts on the rising prevalence of tattoos and scarification among people in our society. It so happens that I had been thinking a lot about this lately.

I live in the rural northeast, in a part of the country that decades ago was hallowed out by the disappearance of manufacturing, leaving communities abandoned and mired in borderline poverty and families barely hanging on to a decent existence. Many of my neighbors and their families live in trailers. There is a segment of the population that is affluent, but the “middle” is nearly gone, leaving the communities polarized by extremes.

This is the background from which I write.

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THIS essay by the Rev. James Jackson, FSSP, of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Littleton, Colorado, posted here in 2011, is worth revisiting in light of recent posts on the subject:

I was asked some time ago to give some guidance on tattoos, and though it took far too long to get to this, here is my advice on the subject.

In the Old Testament we read the following: “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh, for the dead: neither shall you make in yourselves any figures or marks. I am the Lord.” (Lev. 19.28)

With that being said, we Catholics are not fundamentalists (may it please God) and it would be wrong to condemn everyone everywhere who has a tattoo, or even many tattoos. It so happens that in some cultures, marks on the flesh are quite acceptable. Ethiopian Christians tattoo the cross on their foreheads and I understand this to be an ancient custom. I’m not advocating cultural relativism here, but there is a social element to this morality.In Western societies however, a tattoo would serve a very different function e.g., mere decoration. So when would the decoration be unacceptable? Here are a few guidelines:

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Gabriel Garcia Moreno

FOR those who practice the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Gabriel Garcia Moreno holds a special place in history.

Moreno was elected three times to the presidency of Ecuador, the last time in 1875. When Moreno consecrated that small nation to the Sacred Heart, he acted in keeping with the famous revelations of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun of the 17th century who said that Christ appeared to her and instructed kings and nations, as well as individuals, to adore his heart and receive an outpouring of graces. Moreno sealed his fate as well. For with that event, it is believed, Freemasons resolved once and for all to assassinate him.

Devotees of the Sacred Heart traditionally go to Mass and receive Communion on the First Friday of the month. On the first Friday of August, 1875, after Mass, work on his inauguration address, and a final visit to the Blessed Sacrament, Moreno walked to the Presidential Palace. According to Marian Horvat’s account:

At the steps of the Presidential Palace he greeted several persons, including Faustino Rayo, who would shortly strike the first brutal machete blow. Rayo, who held a grudge against Moreno for dismissing him from a lucrative office because of his dishonest practices, had taken up leatherwork. He pretended, however, to be on friendly terms with the President, who had recently contracted him to make a saddle for his young son (his only living child), Gabriel García del Alcázar.

He climbed the side stairs to the porch with its thick colonial pillars. At that time there were no railings between the columns, as we see today. In fact, the scrolled black grills came from the famous Tuilleries Palace in Paris, torn down by the revolutionaries and ordered by Garcia Moreno himself for Ecuador’s Palace. They would only arrive and be installed, however, after his death.

He was approaching the Treasury Department’s entrance into the Palace. There, Rayo rushed forward and attacked him with a machete. The first blow struck his hat, which flew off his head and landed in the plaza below. Rayo delivered more blows, and his fellow conspirators took position and fired their guns. Their bullets only grazed him.

Afterward, the infamous cry of Rayo, “Die, tyrant!”

And the beautiful response of Garcia Moreno, staggering from the wounds, “Dios no muere!” “God does not die.” These were the last words of a line he had often repeated, “I am only a man who can be killed and replaced, but God does not die.”

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KARL D. writes:

There is a staggering absence of men in certain parts of the American workforce. This is something I have noticed and it is blowing my mind. Where men were once dominant, they are now all but missing. I went to my dentist the other day for an annual checkup. My dentist is a woman. Her entire staff of around twenty people from the receptionist on down to dental assistants and dental hygienists are all female.

My local bank is dominated by females. I have also been looking for a new place to live and virtually all of the real estate agents are women, as is building management.

My cousin runs a law firm. Once again, with the exception of people who have to do grunt work, her entire staff of over one hundred people is 98 percent female.

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IT is not surprising that the ideal of the dual-income household has corresponded with a decline in overall wealth for the middle class and lower income families. The dual-income model is much easier to maintain at the higher levels, where nannies and paid services can be hired and income from investments cushion the loss of domestic order.

A Maori chief with tatttoos

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Aristotle remarked in The Poetics that man is the most imitative of all animals.  Two-and-a-half millennia later, picking up where Aristotle left off, René Girard developed an entire “Fundamental Anthropology,” drawing on Greek tragedy and the four Gospels, which argues (among other essential propositions) that the thing that people are most prone to imitate is the delusory impression that other people enjoy a degree of pure being greater than their own, which, as with all “mediated objects,” they strive to appropriate.  Old sayings express the same observation.  Thus “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”  That is, my neighbor is better off than I am, and I can’t bear it.  Biblical morality, as Girard notes, enjoins imitation, as in the Tenth Commandment and for the good reason that imitation unchecked runs to covetousness and so gives rise to conflicts in the community.  Biblical religion, especially Christianity, offers consolation for the ascetic gesture of opting out of the wicked deliciousness of coveting things.  It encourages people to develop their internal, or spiritual, resources.  All of traditional Western high culture has the same aim – through ritual, philosophy, literature, and the arts to cultivate the soul by cultivating the virtues.

What has all of this to do with tattooing and the current craze for it?

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DAN R. writes:

I live in a small rural town in Michigan where it seems as though every second or third woman from the age of 18 to 70 has adorned herself with a tattoo. I sometimes wonder whether nowadays there are even more women wearing tattoos than men. Today, however, took the cake. A high-functioning mentally-retarded man of about 40, who works in a local supermarket, has a new tattoo covering much of one forearm.

Are any additional words necessary?

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ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

From the Associated Press:

Responding to a major case of research misconduct, federal prosecutors have taken the rare step of filing charges against a scientist after he admitted falsifying data that led to millions in grants and hopes of a breakthrough in AIDS vaccine research.

Investigators say former Iowa State University laboratory manager Dong-Pyou Han has confessed to spiking samples of rabbit blood with human antibodies to make an experimental HIV vaccine appear to have great promise. After years of work and millions in National Institutes of Health grants, another laboratory uncovered irregularities that suggested the results — once hailed as groundbreaking — were bogus.

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DON VINCENZO writes:

I recently received a short video clip – just more than one minute – that has haunted me ever since I saw it more than a week ago. About a dozen men who were guarding a hospital in Aleppo in western Syria were captured by Sunni rebels, hogtied and executed in a barbaric way, all of which is visible in the clip. The men are young, but what struck me is their total composure in facing death by their Islamic captors, something that I cannot get out of my mind. What was the heinous crime for which they were killed? They were professed Christians, and they were living – or should I say dying? – proof of what awaits Syria if the Bashad al-Assad government falls.

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IN two posts at Reclaiming Beauty (here and here), Kidist Paulos Asrat reflects upon changes at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. The hospital recently removed the image of St. Michael the Archangel from its logo. The image was inspired in part by an Italian statue of the saint which was found encrusted with dirt in a second hand shop on Queen street in the 19th century and has long stood restored in the hospital’s lobby.

Below is a modernist addition to the hospital funded by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, who has close ties with the Chinese government. The hospital’s insipid slogan is now “St. Michael’s, Inspired Care, Inspiring Science,” sure to offend no one in multicultural Canada.

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PAULA writes:


A link to this video was sent to me from a Catholic friend who is aware of how my family has been broken apart by its members taking sides on the homosexual issue. I thought it was compelling to view and showed compassion to those struggling with same-sex attraction. It is amazing to think that there are homosexuals saying that they are living a happy, fulfilling celibate life through the saving grace of Jesus. Amen!

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JOHN from Vermont sent this note along with a donation:

Thank you for The Thinking Housewife. I stumbled upon it a couple months ago and reading it has become a daily habit and joy ever since. Your reflections and thoughts help me to understand better our place in the world and healthy relations within the family and in society. I am agnostic and even a borderline atheist (I don’t say this with pride or even easily) although wondering about God and a transcending order in life preoccupies much of my conscious thought.  Read More »

HERE is a glaring example of the irreverence of the Vatican II mass from St. Patrick’s Church in Seattle. Notice the age of the congregation, the predominance of women and the sparse attendance. You have to pity some of these poor souls. Their minds have been worn down by schmaltz over the years. Perhaps they don’t even notice it any more, like someone with bubble gum stuck to the bottom of his shoes, who finally says, “Heck, I’ll just leave it there.”  See more examples of Novus Ordo sacrileges at Novus Ordo Watch.