A READER writes:

I wanted you to know I was rather relieved when you were unable to post for a few days. It meant I no longer had an excuse to ignore my daily household obligations. And now, much to my dismay (and much to my glee), you have resumed posting. I suppose the laundry will have to wait another day. I have been a silent lurker for several months and have been immensely enjoying myself. You bring grace, clarity, intellect and wisdom to the blogosphere. Thank you from a young, often disheveled, homeschooling, Catholic mother of four small boys.

(more…)

SOCIALISTS don’t think much of housewives. Why should they? Housewives don’t do much for the cause. The worker bee can be raised in an institution.

Last week, Chairman Obama, promoting the Marxist scheme of cheap daycare for all, said:

“Moms and dads deserve a great place to drop their kids off every day that doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg. We need better child care, day care, early child education policies.”

Doesn’t it make you cringe to hear a politician refer to grown men and women as “moms and dads?” He added:

“Sometimes, someone, usually Mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. That’s not a choice we want Americans to make.”

No president, I believe, has ever so baldly endorsed feminist thinking on the vocation of housewife. Socialists collectivize homes. That’s what they do. They also promise things they can’t possibly deliver. Quality daycare is an oxymoron. Though it can never be delivered, it can always be dreamed of, to the point of actually believing that parents have the right to someone else raising their children cheaply.

American presidents did not always think so little of those who personally raise the next generation in their homes. Theodore Roosevelt, speaking in 1905, said: (more…)

THIS $100,000 bronze sculpture of a “real” British family was unveiled this week in front of the Library of Birmingham. The models were two single women with their sons. Gillian Wearing, the artist, says, “A nuclear family is one reality but it is one of many and this work celebrates the idea that what constitutes a family should not be fixed.” This bleak portrait of two haggard zombies doesn’t seem to succeed in celebrating anything. But perhaps their haggardness is seen as heroic.

The sculpture in front of the $188 million new library is a way of saying, “Even though we built this egotistic monstrosity, we are the people, we love the people.”

Interestingly, the women who posed for the statue were mixed race, but Wearing chose to portray them as white.

(more…)

IN THE previous discussion about fathers setting limits for their daughters, James F. writes:

Most of the females I’ve met have a tendency to blame anyone except themselves, and especially men. Feminists in particular are somewhat comical in their constant complaining and blaming of men, never quite clever enough to realize that in doing this they are passing all the responsibility to the man. Then they ignorantly complain about men having all the authority. These Jezebels are caught in their own paradox. This is why they are almost always miserable: they insist on having (or usurping) complete control over everything, but when something goes wrong they won’t take the blame – so they never improve and the situation never improves. The unfortunate men in relationships with these women often endure such a battery of constant psychological abuse that they lose their identities and become passive and useless, often turning to drug abuse or defiling themselves in various ways. I have seen this happen to a number of close friends.

(more…)

PETER writes:

When you think for a time about Darwinian assertions on life formation, one rather simple aspect gets overlooked. Primarily, any so called mutations would have to be either produced, or be chromosome compatible, in both male and female organisms simultaneously to ensure the transmission and fusion of genetic information.

Other than viruses and other micro-organisms all life is heterogeneous. That random variation and natural selection some how coordinated DNA modification simultaneously in two sexually distinct life forms is just absurd. The ontological question of how beings came into existence as two distinct sexual entities with compatible reproductive ability and in proximity of one another to start reproduction is even more ludicrous.

Genetic research seems to confirm the statement in Genesis, “according to its kind.” Or perhaps we’re just not sophisticated enough to be agnostic.

(more…)

  [UPDATE, NOV. 1: More comments have finally been posted in the previous discussion.] I HAVE more comments to post in the previous discussion. I hope to return to blogging this afternoon. I had to travel out of town to take care of a relative who is sick and have not had any time at my computer since yesterday.

KARL D. writes:

This charming photo from a group called “Blue Nation Review” has been making the rounds on Facebook. A man purporting to be a “Feminist Father” is wearing a T-shirt that lays out the “rules” for dating his daughter. The punch line (if you want to call it that) is that there are no rules! Her body, her choice. With fathers like that, who needs enemies?

(more…)

  LACONIA Public Library in Laconia, New Hampshire is housed in one the many beautiful American public library buildings built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, at a time when the acts of thinking and reading were still considered inherently ennobling. The building, so different from the functional and non-ornamental modern library, speaks of its lofty purpose. This is democracy offset by aristocratic principles. The building is open to all and yet does not pander to the masses. Here a blogger reminisces about childhood days spent in the library.  It was less than 100 years old when I was little but it looked like an old fairy castle, and it felt magical, with its spires and turrets.  Opening the front doors led you to the main reading room, where old men sat with their papers.  The librarian there smiled at us as we passed her on our way to the children's room.  [...] On the way home, our car could have passed by an entire road-side circus and we wouldn't have noticed; our minds were already too far away, engrossed in whatever we were reading.  The car was absolutely silent, like its own library. I don't remember a time when I didn't know that library.  I grew up there. And even though I live in New York City, with its gorgeous Beaux-Arts library and its huge central Brooklyn library, none of that can ever top my memories of the Laconia…

THE end of white rule in South Africa has been a spectacular disaster for black South Africans and white Afrikaners. The soccer star Senzo Meyiwa is the latest victim of gun violence there. He was killed during a robbery.

More than 17,000 people were murdered in South Africa from April 2013 to March 2014, an increase of 800 deaths from the previous year.  The Western world deserves to share in the blame for these deaths, which were overwhelmingly committed by blacks. The West bullied South Africa relentlessly to abandon apartheid.

(more…)

  MR. BERGOGLIO speaks on evolution. As usual, he specializes in contradictions and incoherence. God creates all things and yet he is not magic. God directed biological change and yet gave "autonomy" to beings. Evolution (popularly understood as the appearance of life forms through random mutation) is "not inconsistent with the notion of creation." Let me suggest that this confusion is intentional. I have highlighted the remarks that support the Darwinian mechanistic view: "When we read in Genesis the story of Creation we risk imagining that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand that make everything. But (this) is not so. He created beings and let them develop in accordance with the internal laws that He has given to each one, because they emerged (or developed) themselves; they arrived themselves at (their) own fullness. He gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time in which he assured them of his continued presence, giving the beings to all reality. Thus, the creation has been going on for centuries, millennia and millennia until it became what we know today, because God is not a demiurge or a wizard, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. The beginning of the world is not the work of the chaos that has another of its origin, but is derived directly from a supreme Principle that creates with love. The Big Bang, which today stands at the origin of…

I WAS browsing on a publisher’s website when I came across this. From the publisher’s description:

Marriage and monogamy are not what they used to be, and today many couples are opting to start families before getting married, or deciding not to get married at all. At the same time, gay couples in states that recognize same-sex marriage are getting married in droves. Some people prefer non-monogamy and have relationships that include swinging and polyamory. The landscape of American marriage and relationships is changing, and a variety of family systems are developing and becoming more common. (more…)

WILL there ever be enough T-shirts and candles and stuffed animals and ribbons to console whites for the loss of relatives to crimes so brutal and sudden that they, the survivors, spend the rest of their lives stunned and uncomprehending?

(more…)

THE New York Times has lectured the world on the “right” to terminate a pregnancy (and the life of an unborn child) millions of times. The implication is that pregnancy is a grave inconvenience. Infertile couples willing to adopt newborns are abundant, so it’s not that a woman absolutely must be inconvenienced after she delivers her child.

Strangely enough (or logically enough), pregnancy is not at all considered an inconvenience if a woman is achieving something really impressive, perhaps reaching for some vanity goal that will make her the exciting and dynamic transcendence of stale old femininity, the perfect synthesis of male and female. In that case, pregnancy is so normal and natural and easy that women should carry on doing everything they normally do, even if what they normally do involves all the stresses that go along with extreme ambition. This weekend, reporter Lindsay Crouse effused about elite runners who train for marathons and other races while pregnant, athletes such as Alysia Montaño, an Olympian, who ran an 800-meter race in June during her eighth month of pregnancy:

“I wanted to help clear up the stigma around women exercising during pregnancy, which baffled me,” Montaño said. “People sometimes act like being pregnant is a nine-month death sentence, like you should lie in bed all day. I wanted to be an example for women starting a family while continuing a career, whatever that might be. I was still surprised by how many people paid attention.”

Clara Horowitz Peterson, above, has trained in the late stages of pregnancy. To her credit, Peterson, who is pregnant with her fourth child, believes having children while young is important, and an athlete obviously may be capable of this kind of exertion while pregnant. But Peterson is also willing to take serious risks with her children in utero. Even highly-tuned athletes trip. It’s not impossible.

To bounce back for the trials, Peterson said, she breast-fed her second child for only five weeks — finding that the hormones related to breast-feeding made her feel sluggish — and dropped the 20 pounds she typically gained during pregnancy in eight weeks without dieting. (She breast-fed her third child for six months.)

Interesting. Breastmilk doesn’t make a baby feel sluggish, quite the opposite. This, and Peterson’s immodest poses in skimpy and extremely unflattering track wear, suggests that while she may be physically maternal, her priorities are not always maternal.

She qualified for the 2012 United States Olympic marathon trials just four months after delivering her second child, and she logged a 2-hour-35-minute time at the race four months later.

I guess her children learned how to care for themselves quickly. That’s the great thing about infants. They are so darn independent. “See ya’ later, Mom.”

“We still don’t have good science to guide us,” said Dr. Aaron Baggish, associate director of the cardiovascular performance program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which counsels elite athletes through pregnancy. “But unequivocally I think women should exercise through pregnancy, both for their baby and their own health. The body has evolved that way. Your baseline fitness level is the best guideline: Elite athletes start out with a higher threshold, so they can do more.”

Perhaps science will someday catch up with women such as this one, who is now suffering from incontinence due to running during pregnancy. Or perhaps science will catch up with women in less exalted careers such as the firefighter Christi Rodgers, women who push themselves during pregnancy and its immediate aftermath, even at the risk of their own lives.

(more…)

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

I recently got into trouble at The Thinking Housewife by saying what I thought about naval officer Destiny Savage’s visual self-presentation.  Here I go again.  This time it’s the late Christie Rodgers, fireperson.

I speak with some knowledge.  My father (1911 – 2006) joined the Los Angeles City Fire Department as a firefighter in 1937 and retired, with the long-standing rank of Battalion Chief, in 1972.  He was a lean man and athletic, who rigorously every morning went through the complete fitness schedule of the Royal Canadian Air Force, which the LAFD had adopted as its model for the physical training of firefighters.  Every firefighter I knew was lean and in good condition.  A firefighter who looked like either one of the stricken Rodgers marriage would have been called on the carpet and threatened with termination, did he not swiftly lose weight and comport himself with the published standards of the force. (more…)

CHRISTI RODGERS, a 26-year-old volunteer firefighter, delivered her first child one month ago. This morning, she was awoken suddenly at 5 a.m by an emergency alarm for a house fire. She never arrived at the scene of the blaze. The Pennsylvania woman went into cardiac arrest after the call and now her child and husband are without a mother and wife. Perhaps she would have died young anyway. But one cannot help but wonder if the sudden call in her fragile condition caused her death. [See reader comment below. She had the baby by Caesarean. She was not just caring for a newborn but recovering from major surgery.]

This is very sad, and so is the idea of a new mother fighting fires. In fact, the idea of women fighting fires at all is sad and outrageous. Feminism has so eroded the natural aversion toward placing women in danger that many don’t even question the increasing prevalence of women firefighters and soldiers and police officers — or consider the ramifications. Women who are pregnant or recovering from childbirth are now routinely expected to exert themselves. And they call this liberation?

Perhaps Rodgers loved being a firefighter. Perhaps she was good at it. But she shouldn’t have been permitted to be a firefighter unless she lived in a town with a severe shortage of men.

(more…)

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

Writing for Crisis Magazine, Mark Gallagher reveals in The Bishops’ Fateful Decision Respecting the Unborn just how soon Catholic bishops in the United States, represented by their Washington lobby, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, abandoned their duty to oppose abortion as an intrinsic evil that must never be supported in resistance to the unrestricted abortion “right” the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions of January 22, 1973 — taken together — invented for women in America.

Mr. Gallagher also recounts the unsavory whys behind that fateful decision, and tells us that nothing has changed in the intervening 40-odd years.  According to Crisis, “Mark Gallagher worked with the Government Liaison Office of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Washington from 1974 to 2007. He was mainly responsible for lobbying Congress on abortion and programs for the poor.”  Gallagher is an eyewitness to the crime. (more…)

IN light of the two separate murders this week of Canadian soldiers by Muslim converts, it is worth reading this speech by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in February welcoming His Highness the Aga Kahn, who is honored by Ismaili Muslims as a direct descendant of Muhammad. (As usual the prime minister must ridiculously speak in both French and English.)

As we all know, Canada is home to a well-established and fast-growing Ismaili community. His Highness has therefore become an increasingly frequent visitor, and always a welcome one.

En fait, votre Altesse, vous n’êtes plus simplement un visiteur. Vous êtes maintenant citoyen canadien à titre honorifique.

I remember well, Your Highness, the day you accepted honorary Canadian citizenship – something agreed to by all parties of this House. (more…)

  "Just in proportion as maternity is honored is womanhood honored, and just in proportion as womanhood is honored are manners and morals elevated. Licentiousness cannot obtain a foothold where the real dignity and sphere of woman is understood and respected. It can prevail only where a low estimate of woman obtains in society, and indeed only where woman entertains a low estimate of herself in relation to the designs or plans of divine Providence. Men, in general, estimate women very much as they estimate themselves, or rather, estimate womanhood as women estimate it, and if women regard womanhood as invested with sacred and awful functions, they will be as averse to wronging her as to the commission of the crime of sacrilege. The maternity of Mary has given sublime moral and spiritual significance to womanhood, as the assumption of human nature by the Word has to manhood itself." ---- The Moral and Social Influence of Devotion to Mary, Dr. Orestes A. Brownson