ALAN writes:

Apropos your discussion of city life (here and here), I vote in favor of neighborhood taverns—the old-fashioned kind that Mike Royko wrote about, not the silly, pretentious “sports bars” now favored by trendies.

In the 1940s-‘50s, every neighborhood in St. Louis had a dozen or more corner taverns. My grandfather would testify to that, since he worked in one and was a regular patron at others.

On Friday nights in the 1950s, he, my mother, aunts and uncles and I walked over to the Golden Oak Bar, a typical south St. Louis corner tavern in a red-brick building with a long bar on one side, tables, and a jukebox.  Read More »

IN THIS previous entry, I discussed a few of the ways in which suburban life seems to lack an organic quality and has the feel of a thing artificially created. To expand a bit on this point, below is a long quote from E. Michael Jones’s book The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing, in which he discusses the role of the federal government in clearing cheap housing in the cities, in this case Philadelphia, and destroying cohesive residential pockets in which various groups — the Irish, Italians, Poles, blacks — once lived both separate and close to one another. On September 1, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the United States Housing Act, which gave the federal government, acting in concert with local housing authorities, the authority to clear “slums,” which often included dwellings owned, not rented, by their inhabitants, and to provide low-rent housing in its place. The creation of public housing is similar in many ways to the story of Obamacare and so many other instances of the expansion of state power in the name of freeing the people from want. In the end it was decided by an assertion of “raw judicial power.”

The constitutionality of the government’s entry into the housing market was challenged almost immediately, but on June 30, 1938, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania handed down its decision in favor of the PHA [Philadelphia Housing Authority]. Read More »

ALL Catholics are enjoined to pray for Muslims and Jews. But praying with Muslims and Jews is strictly forbidden and quite impossible given their false beliefs and rejection of God’s Revelation and the Divinity of Christ. Antipope Francis’s ecumenical prayer service today with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Vatican Garden (see more here) is yet another act of apostasy by this deceiver and killer of souls.  This terrible act takes place on Pentecost Sunday, the day when we commemorate the descent of the Holy Ghost, an event which Jews and Muslims utterly deny. Instead, this service represents an anti-Pentecost and the descent of an evil spirit on the Vatican. While the Holy Ghost enlightened the Apostles after Christ’s departure, this evil spirit blinds its followers and propagates lies, particularly the lie that such a prayer service will bring “peace.” It will bring no peace to the world. It can only bring disharmony and woe, as it signals surrender to the organized enemies of the Church.

However, this is really a prayer service with no Catholic present among its three major participants. It isn’t so ecumenical after all. At Christ or Chaos, Thomas Droleskey writes:

The apostates who occupy the Vatican at this time have now welcomed into the Vatican Garden itself the very people who were defeated by Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary in the Battle of Lepanto and at the Gates of Vienna on September 12, 1683. What was unthinkable has become commonplace. What is blasphemous is applauded by Catholics and non-Catholics alike as advancing “peace.”

If you do not want to see this for it is, I am afraid that you will never do so. Read More »

DOUGLAS writes:

While I was exiting my building at the end of the workday yesterday, I saw this sign on the door. I went back in the building and saw these signs posted on all the bathroom doors and all the exit doors. I retired from the military in 2000. Despite Clinton’s best attempts, he did not get close to the destruction this anti-American president has caused. It sickens me. I can’t even bring myself to say the pledge of allegiance or stand for the National Anthem. I am leaving my good job with the government because I can no longer work in support of something that disgusts me.

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KARL D. writes:

As I am sure you know, today is the remembrance and 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy. In keeping with the dumbing down and the never ending march of pop culture, this year’s remembrance of that solemn day included a troupe of dancers, actors and singers in an event more akin to the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. After all, we must always be entertained, mustn’t we? I understand military singers singing certain hymns or the national anthem and songs. I can even understand re-enactments to a certain degree. But this is just too much.

THE American suburbs include many lovely, leafy communities that are ideal in many ways for family life. With organized activities for children, backyards for playing, abundant schools, safe streets, and businesses that cater to families, the suburbs are highly welcoming to couples raising children. The fact that most families, given the choice, do prefer the suburbs is further evidence that they are.

However, despite these amenities and the enormous population shift to the suburbs in the 20th century, which was in many ways orchestrated by social engineers, the overall landscape of family life in the suburbs is not so rosy. In many ways, the suburbs — admittedly a general term that encompasses various types of communities without the density of the cities — are inimical to family formation. They are not truly designed with the interests of families in mind. The low birthrate and poorer health of the family attest to this.

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READ the fascinating story of Bella Dodd, who was a member of the Communist Party of America in the 1930s and 1940s and later became an outspoken anti-Communist and Catholic here. An excerpt from the article by Eleonore Villarrubia follows:

In 1950, Bella was called before the Tydings Committee of the United States Senate to testify as to whether or not she knew Owen Lattimore, who had been accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being a Soviet agent within the American government. She had not known Lattimore and as far as she knew, he was not a member of the American Communist Party. She stated those facts; however, as she thought about the duplicity of the Party and how it had deceived her and thousands of others, she found herself revealing those facts as well. It was the first time that she had spoken out publicly against the Party. She began to see how the Russians had used the Spanish Civil War as a preview of the Red Revolution to come in western countries; she thought of the Koreans killing each other in the name of Communism and the Americans dying in the cause; she saw how the godless Communists used well-meaning Americans against their own country. Read More »

GALLIAWATCH has posted an interview with Marine Le Pen, of the Front National Party, which has changed the landscape of French politics with its recent election victories. In the interview, Le Pen states:

The EU is deeply harmful, it is an anti-democratic monster. I want to prevent it from becoming fatter, from continuing to breathe, from grabbing everything with its paws and from extending its tentacles into all areas of our legislation. In our glorious history, millions have died to ensure that our country remains free. Today, we are simply allowing our right to self-determination to be stolen from us.

John Philip Sousa

ON THE recent Memorial Day, I was busy and did not get a chance to post something appropriate to the occasion. Then the editorial department of this two-bit operation forgot to remind me to do something belatedly. Here, from the better-late-than-never department, are a number of John Philip Sousa marches to honor those who have fought for America. Also, there are Sousa recordings at Wikipedia.

Morgan Geyser with her father

MORGAN GEYSER, one of two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls — yes, 12-year-old girls — who are accused of acting as proxies for an Internet paranormal character and stabbing a friend 19 times, led a suburban American life that was saturated with Satanic imagery. Her father is a fan of the ‘stoner” band, Deadboy and the Elephantmen (flyer below.) Her mother decorated the house with Gothic imagery.

At Morgan’s trial, it will probably be argued that she was having mental problems. Who wouldn’t in such a setting? 

Anyone who is surprised by the increase in irrational and savage behavior by adolescents is living in a dream world, cut off from the real world. Anyone who denies that school shootings and teenage murders represent a significant trend is living in a dream world. Anyone who thinks parents can “monitor their children’s Internet use” and in that way shield them from the demonic imagery, music and pop fiction all around us is living in a dream world. 

That is not to say people should panic. There is no need to panic, only to act wisely and confidently against this supernatural adversary who is weaker, much weaker, than God and whose most effective strategy is to convince us that he doesn’t really exist.

Wake up, America! You need an exorcism! 

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RAYMOND IBRAHIM recently summarized the toll of U.S. intervention in the Muslim world:

[E]very Muslim nation that the U.S. has helped “liberate,” including in the context of the “Arab Spring,” has become significantly worse for Christians and other minorities. Previously moderate Syria is now ranked the third worst nation in the world to be Christian, Iraq fourth, Afghanistan fifth, and Libya 13th. All four receive the worst designation in the ranking process: “extreme persecution.”

Three of these countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya—were “liberated” in part thanks to U.S. forces, while in the fourth, Syria, the U.S. is actively sponsoring “freedom fighters” against the regime, many of whom have been responsible for any number of atrocities—including massacres, beheadings, and the crucifixion of Christians and others.

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THE recent prediction here that the time would come when Navy submarines would be fitted with daycare facilities has become all too real with the unveiling of a plan by German Defense Minister Ursula Von der Leyen, who is seen here exuding the gravitas of a typical military commander. Von der Leyen has proposed that the German armed forces install daycare facilities in barracks.

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque Contemplating the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Corrado Giaquinto; 1765

NO human being can fully comprehend the perfection and infinitude of God’s love. But everyone, without exception, can comprehend it in part and many of those advanced in spiritual knowledge and sanctity have greatly penetrated its mysteries. For instance, in the 13th century, Mechtilde von Hackeborn, a Saxon noblewoman and cloistered nun, reported a vision of the heart of Jesus:

“One day I saw the Son of God, holding in His Hand His own Heart, which appeared more brilliant than the sun and which was casting rays of light on every side; then, this amiable Saviour gave me to understand that all the graces which God unceasingly pours forth on men, according to the capacity of each, come from the plenitude of the Divine Heart.”

St. Mechtilde was one of the early practitioners of what later became known as the Devotion to the Sacred Heart. The month of June is dedicated to this rich and fertile ensemble of spiritual exercises, which have as their sensible object the physical heart of Jesus Christ, and as their spiritual object, the immense love which Christ has for humanity.

Another cloistered nun, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque of France, is famous for having ardently promoted the devotion in the 17th century and for having helped bring it to its present form after having reported her own private revelations.  She told her spiritual director, Father Claude de la Colombière, of her visions and communications with Jesus. She wrote:

“At another time, it seemed to me that I saw this amiable Heart like a sun projecting Its rays in every direction and on every heart, but in a manner differing very much according to the dispositions of those on whom these rays fell; for the souls of the lost became still more hardened, as mud becomes hardened by the rays of the sun; on the contrary, the souls of the just became more pure and were softened like wax.”

[From The Devotion to the Sacred Heart by Father John Croiset, S.J.]

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A Reader writes:

Have you seen this video?

Apart from – or alongside – the horror that is “transgenderism” at six years old, this child also has cochlear implants. They say this little girl began to identify as a boy when she first began to speak – I’m guessing that was around the time she was given the implants.

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BUCK writes:

In the context of the intense and very informative recent entries here deconstructing and reconstructing the hierarchy of Church and State; here is another homosexual “rights” case that when and if it is appealed in our courts will be decided, for the reasons that I cited briefly here, in favor of the furthering of unnatural rights. In this case, a baker refused to accommodate two homosexual males requesting a cake for “our wedding.” Upon hearing “our wedding,” the baker said no, citing religious reasons. He refused to sell them a “wedding” cake, but offered to sell them any and all of the many other baked goods that he offers for sale to everyone. The two homosexuals immediately got up and left the store.

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HOW does an English professor cultivate literary judgment in undergraduate students who have had little serious reading experience? Thomas Bertonneau makes some suggestions.

MARK B. writes in response to the Auster movie review:

I used to review movies for Spero News and other outlets. I gave it up because one can only watch so many bad and immoral movies, and they are almost all bad and immoral now.

At the time, I joined a Christian Movie Critics web forum, but I got kicked off after I continued to argue that a Christian could never approve of a movie with nudity and simulated sex (of any kind) in it since it, in absolute fact, makes prostitutes out of actors (simulated sex for money), and made panderers and pimps out of producers and directors. I also pointed out that wall-to-wall swearing in movies was problematic. It’s one thing to be an adult and tolerate a bit of salty expression in a work of art, but not what is being said now.

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LIBERALISM demands not just that homosexuality be approved, but that it be celebrated. Anything less would be unfair. From AllGov.com:

Declaring part of its duty is to tell the history of the gay rights movement, the National Park Service (NPS) will place markers at significant locations that note the advancement of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

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