John Paul II poses in 1983 under a billboard of Nicaraguan Communists Augusto Sandino and Carlos Fonseca during his visit to the country. 

PETER ZITKO writes:

I couldn’t agree with you more. What a sad day it was for the Church Sunday, two heretics and destroyers of the Catholic Church “canonized” and now worthy of veneration as declared by Francis.

How could these men possibly be in heaven, for what they have done to the Church? Walk into any Novus Ordo Church today, and you will witness the abomination of desolation taking place.

What an absolute mockery the Vatican II church has become by claiming to be Catholic. And to make matters worse, millions of Catholics have fallen into deception by actually believing that these men are now worthy of veneration.

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S. from India writes:

India is facing a terrifying influx of Muslims from Bangladesh. How much of our crime is a direct result of this, no one dares ask, but the news items that give away names do give away this fact. The socialist intelligentia, press, political parties are all maintaining a conspiracy of silence.

A friend posted this on Facebook. Japan, which has relatively few Muslims, makes for a compelling study:

“Another thing that helps the Japanese keep Muslim immigration to their shores to a minimum is the Japanese attitude toward the employee and employment. Migrant workers are perceived negatively in Japan, because they take the place of Japanese workers.

The fact that the public and the officials are united in their attitude against Muslim immigration has created a sort of iron wall around Japan that Muslims lack both the permission and the capability to overcome. Read More »

TWO DAYS ago, a reader reported that a friend, a female graduate of The Citadel and an Army captain, had committed suicide. I have not been able to find further confirmation of this story, which was also reported on another website, so for the time being, pending more evidence, I am going to remove it.

[UPDATE: The original entry has been reposted as it was. There is good reason to believe it is true. A reader who knew the deceased Cpt. Kelly Hasselman reports that a memorial service is scheduled for tomorrow at The Citadel, the South Carolina military academy.]

FRENCH politicians bring serial polygamy to a whole new level. Top political figures are now weirdly part of the same extended harem. It truly is creepy and redefines the concept of nepotism. Perhaps someday in the not-too-distant future, France will have a president with an entire cabinet of former wives. Should be exciting. At Galliawatch, Tiberge writes:

Wow! What a piece of juicy gossip lies within the readers’ comments at Le Salon Beige. First, the cover ofL’Express shows a happy François Hollande surrounded by his harem, from the left: Ségolène Royal, Julie Gayet and the rejected Valérie Trierweiler. But who is missing? That’s what we learn from the obliging readers. It’s Anne Hidalgo, newly elected mayor of Paris, who has a daughter by the very busy and productive president! Louis XV could not have done better, though I still prefer Madame de Pompadour.

Le Salon Beige also asks a pertinent question that should occur to any good Socialist: Is this not homophobic behavior? Yes, it is, and furthermore, where is the racial mixture? François Hollande is just an old racist fuddy-duddy, unless the Spanish blood of Anne Hidalgo saves him from perdition. But Spanish blood is still white. So… Where is SOS-Racism when you need them?

IN an essay on Jorge Bergoglio’s recent conversation with an Argentine woman regarding divorce and the sacraments, in which he is reported to have blithely denied Church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, the Rev. Anthony Cekada writes that it was the sort of calculated move that has characterized His Holy Humbleness’s utterly false reign:

Looking back over the catalogue of Bergoglian messes, we can see a pattern emerge.

Bergoglio sows the seeds of change through what at first appears to be chaos. But far from being misrepresented in the secular media, he manipulates it to his ends with a peasant-like cunning.

In a few short months, therefore, Francis has positioned himself as “the people’s pope” and become a world-wide object of adoration, thanks to self-aggrandizing gestures designed to showcase his “humility,” “compassion,” “simplicity,” contempt for “small-minded rules,” indifference towards sexual immorality, and moralizing on social issues dear to the left (immigration, income disparity, unemployment and “climate change.”)

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John Paul II committing one of many sacrileges against the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

John Paul II kisses the Koran

WHO were the multitudes who cheered on the canonizations in Rome today of John XXIII and John Paul II? Atila Sinke Guimarães at Tradition in Act describes the “middle-of-the road majority” that celebrated this blasphemous demagoguery, which was a flagrant, illegitimate effort to glorify Vatican II and was in effect in homage to every religion but Catholicity because of the revolutionary ecumenism of John Paul II:

The entire world, including its Freemasons leaders, its Jewish inspirers, its almost unanimous media and its characteristics stars, are thoroughly pleased.

The great multitude of Catholics, who love the modern world, are thankful to have the conciliar Church “canonize” these two Popes who ended the “old” Catholic militancy and replaced it with a “more human” face. This new Church tolerates their bad morals and relativist beliefs. So, they are going to Rome in great exhilaration to express their approval of these Popes and the transformation of the Church into a joyful institution consonant with the World Youth Days.

This cheering majority of hedonist Catholics does not want to submit to any hierarchy and seeks approval for whatever kind of moral behavior they adopt – divorce, free-love, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, etc. They are going to Rome because John XXIII and John Paul II are symbols of this mentality.

CNS photo

Cpt. Kelly Hasselman

[UPDATE: The death of Kelly Hasselman has been confirmed on social media and there is reason to believe she has committed suicide.]

SARAH SAMS writes:

The accident at O’Hare International Airport in March

ALAN writes:

The sinking of the ferry with a 26-year-old woman at the helm prompted the memory of these incidents:

1. Chicago, March 2014:  “Brittney,” age 25 and with two months’ experience operating trains, dozes off at the controls of a passenger train arriving at the airport station, thus permitting it to crash into the platform and escalator, injuring more than 30 passengers and causing millions of dollars in damage. [ Read about it here.]

2. Washington, D.C., June 2009:  Passenger train collision kills nine people and injures more than 70;  train operator is 42-year-old woman with seven months’ experience operating trains.   “Were standards lowered to hire her?”, asked Lawrence Auster.  [“D.C. commuter train crash, seven dead.”]

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IN WHAT many will no doubt see as an event symbolic of the pending canonization of John Paul II, a 21-year-old Italian man, Marco Gusmini, was crushed to death Thursday by a hideous, gargantuan crucifix erected in 1998 in John Paul II’s honor. Representative of the ugly, sterile modernism of the Vatican II Church, the 100-foot-high cross collapsed as the young man was posing for a photograph underneath and he was not able to move in time. At Novus Ordo Watch, there is a longer report. The Telegraph reports:

In a bizarre coincidence, the 21-year-old man was reported to have been living in a street named after Pope John XXIII – who will also be canonised in the ceremony on Sunday, in an event that is unprecedented in the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church.

THESE words of the Catholic blogger Dr. Thomas Droleskey are apt regarding the Great Canonization Show on Sunday, when John Paul II and John XXIII will be elevated as “saints,” placing those Catholics who believe in the legitimacy of Jorge Bergoglio’s reign and yet recognize the revolutionary work of these men in a definite dilemma, as they are then absolutely bound to venerate them as saints:

Yes, step this way.

Get your programs in advance.

Watch the conciliar revolutionaries ape the practice of Roman emperors, who had busts of themselves placed throughout the Roman Empire, and of the French and Bolshevik and Maoist revolutionaries in establishing cults of personality that will continue after their deaths. The conciliar “canonization” process is a farce, and it is been used in many instances, including the upcoming “double canonization” of Roncalli and Wojtyla, to place beyond question the legitimacy of the false doctrines, liturgical rites and pastoral practices of conciliarism by claiming that those responsible for their promulgation and institutionalization enjoy the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven.

Those Catholics who only remember the good qualities of John Paul II, and he certainly had good qualities, he indisputably had good qualities and said Catholic things, may want to read this 2010 article in Chiesa Viva by Fr. Luigi Villa. The English translation is a bit rough, but it is still worth reading, a wide-ranging look at the formation and thinking of John Paul II, who is often erroneously viewed as an heroic opponent of Polish Communism. Fr. Villa writes:

To Protestants out there who are thinking, “Gee, thank goodness, we don’t have to deal with that circus,” let me respectfully suggest, yes, you do have to deal with it. Oh, dear friend, yes you do. As the heirs of organized plagiarism, of those who ripped off the Church’s lands and closed its monasteries, stole its Bible and murdered its priests, you are indeed implicated in everything that happens to the Church.

ACCORDING to CNN, the Vatican has confirmed reports of a phone call to an Argentine woman by “Pope” Francis:

Julio Sabetta, from San Lorenzo in the Pope’s home country, said his wife, Jacqueline Sabetta Lisbona, spoke with Francis on Monday.

Jacqueline Sabetta Lisbona wrote to the pontiff in September to ask for clarification on the Communion issue, according to her husband, who said his divorced status had prevented her from receiving the sacrament. Read More »

Still Life, Giovanna Garzoni

A READER writes:

My name is Chasity and I’ve been an avid reader of your blog for years now. I am 27 years old and am a housewife and mother. My husband and I will celebrate eight years of marriage in a couple of weeks. We have one son, who will turn seven in June. He was born with a cleft lip and palate and will undergo further surgeries as he gets older. He was also diagnosed with OCD and Autism in the last couple of years.

I wanted to write and tell you thank you for writing this blog, as it has been a tremendous comfort to me over the years. I’ve always been told that I should have put our son in day care to help my husband support our family over the years. Some people have even asked me why I haven’t institutionalized him, since he’s so “high-maintenance.″
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A Exciseman, 1792 (Courtesy Atwater Kent Museum)

IN “The Anti-Federalist Papers,” a series of essays against ratification of the U.S. Constitution that appeared in newspapers in 1787-88, the pseudonymous author Brutus argued that the proposed federal government was by definition despotic: It “will penetrate into the most obscure cottage, and finally, it will light upon the head of every person in the United States. To all these different classes of people, and in all these circumstances, in which it will attend them, the language in which it will address them, will be GIVE! GIVE!”

The current conflict between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who refuses to pay for grazing rights on federal land and has been widely hailed as a freedom fighter and patriot, seems to confirm Brutus’s point.

Defenders of Bundy decry the government overreach they say underlies the grazing fees. But this alleged overreach is commonly seen as something that violates the American order. But does it? Consider the Whiskey Rebellion. George Washington raised an army of more than 12,000 soldiers to quash a rebellion that is similar in its complaints to the one by Bundy against the Bureau of Land Management. Washington’s army confronted and overcame whiskey distillers and their supporters in Western Pennsylvania.  The small-time distillers refused to pay federal excise taxes, which they said were making it impossible for them to do business and compete with large distilleries, who could pay a much less onerous flat fee.

Washington declared resistance by the rebels, who at one point raised a force of 7,000, as constituting “treasonable acts.” Ironically, these acts of treason were similar to those committed by the American Revolutionaries against the British. In his paper, “The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794: A Democratic Working-Class Insurrection,” (as quoted in Christopher Ferrara’s book Liberty, the God that Failed), Wythe Holt wrote that the tax rebels “were amazed that the Washington administration wanted to hang them for the same sort of actions which had been praiseworthy and heroic a short time before, while Hamilton and Washington never seemed to notice this deadly irony.”

Bundy also was born too late. He would have made a great revolutionary against the British — and would have had a better chance of success. British authority at least was not obscured beneath the mantle of Liberty.

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Associated Press

A 26-year-old woman was at the helm of the South Korean ferry that sank last week with 476 passengers aboard. Park Han-gyeol had been with the company that owned the Sewol for only six months when she was navigating the most difficult passageway of the trip to the island of Jeju. Aside from her inexperience, it is reasonable to ask whether the mere fact that she was a woman contributed to the loss of so many lives. Women are less adept at spatial skills than men and are by nature less suited to maneuvering large vessels. Eighty-seven people are confirmed dead and 215 are still missing. The captain of the ship, who abandoned the ferry before it sunk, faces criminal charges. [UPDATE: A reader with naval experience states in the comments below that it is unlikely her inexperience made much of a difference.]

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The Lamentation, Girard David

HOLY SATURDAY is traditionally reserved to honor Our Lady. At Tradition in Action, there is a beautiful version of the hymn Stabat Mater with this description:

Stabat Mater is a tragic song that meditates on the sorrow of Our Lady as she stood at the foot of the Cross during the crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The song embodies the lament of Mary, for as she watches the agony of her Son she also sees the suffering of her God. As foretold by the Prophet Simeon, her heart was pierced by a sword of sorrow.

This particular version of Stabat Mater was composed by the Italian musician Giovanni Maria Nanino (1543-1607). It was adopted into the book of Gregorian Chant, the Liber Usualis, and is here sung by the Benedictine monks of the Abbaye Saint Maurice et Saint Maur de Clervaux, Luxembourg.

AS Lent comes to a close, many of you will be eagerly indulging in pizza delicacies once again. Truly, there is never a dull moment in the Pizza Industrial Complex, which employs tireless, brilliantly inventive engineers, so while you were away, things have been happening. In our Brave New Pizza World, time never stands still.

Boston Pizza, a Canadian chain, is floating the idea of a five-layer pizza cake and so far has received enthusiastic responses from consumers, as one would expect. This seems like a perfect party item.

Domino’s is also moving into a new frontier, having recently unveiled its chicken-crust pizza, which for a few days last week swept the airwaves, surpassing all other breaking news on the planet, as one would expect. Russell Weiner, chief marketing officer for Domino’s, announced the news. “Our new Specialty Chicken is one of the most creative, innovative menu items we have ever had. Our pizza chefs have taken chicken to a whole new level, using our unique ingredients to create these four bold flavors. There’s nothing quite like Domino’s Specialty Chicken on the market today.”

Creativity has always been Domino’s strong point.

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Tung Ho, of Portland

ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

Tung Ho and Kyle Yamaguchi, Asian Americans who were employed by Nike in Oregon and are suspected of running a highly lucrative sneaker theft business, used a gweilo as a bagman – and so far, he’s the only one who’s been indicted.

According to The Smoking Gun:

When investigators searched Ho’s residence [in Portland,Oregon] on March 14, they seized 1941 pairs of Nike shoes and “a large sum of United States currency.” After being read the Miranda warning, Ho “admitted that he had stolen several hundred pairs of Nike Look See shoes and sold them in two (2) different ways” He sold about $15,000 worth of samples on eBay, while the bulk of the stolen “Look See” models were peddled through [Kyle] Yamaguchi, his “middle man.” Read More »

Andrea Mantegna, Calvary

VIEW a live broadcast of the Traditional Good Friday Mass of the Pre-Sanctified and Tre Ore devotions at the website of St. Gertrude the Great in Cincinnati here. It begins at 12:15 p.m. (Eastern Time), but a recording can also be viewed later.