Remains of Mamilla Reservoir in Jerusalem where thousands of Christians were massacred.

“IN THE Other Face of Israel, Israel Shamir recalls the conquest of Palestine by the Persians, in the 7th century. In 614, Palestine formed part of the Byzantine Empire, which had succeeded the Roman Empire. The Jews of Palestine, he explains, allied themselves with their fellow Jews in Babylon to lend support to the Persians in their conquest of the Holy Land. An estimated 26,000 Jews participated in the offensive. After the Persian victory, the Jews perpetrated ‘a massive holocaust’: ‘They burned churches and monasteries, killed monks and priests and burned books … [This was] the most frightful year in the history of Palestine, right up until the 20th century,’ writes Shamir, who cites Oxford University Professor Henry Hart Milman: ‘It was here at last, the long-awaited hour of triumph and vengeance. The Jews did not miss their chance, and they washed away the profanation of the holy city in the blood of Christians.’ According to Shamir, they purchased Christian prisoners from the Persians and murdered them in the reservoir of Mamilla, a district in Jerusalem. ‘In the city of Jerusalem alone, the Jews massacred between 60,000 and 90,000 Palestinian Christians … A few days later, having understood the scope of the massacre, Persian soldiers prevented the Jews from pursuing their exactions … The genocide of 614 A.D was the most terrible, but it was not the only genocide perpetrated by the Jews in this chaotic period of history.'”

— Jewish Fanaticism, Herve Ryssen, p. 226

Softly and gently, dearly-ransom’d soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,

And, o’er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,

Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.

Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;

And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.

Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;

Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.

—  From“The Dream of Gerontius” by Cardinal John Henry Newman

Rest on the Flight to Egypt, Giovanni Battista Crespi

“IF a tiny spark of God’s love already burns within you, do not expose it to the wind, for it may get blown out. Keep the stove tightly shut so that it will not lose its heat and grow cold. Stay quiet with God. Do not spend your time in useless chatter.”

— St. Charles Borromeo

FROM Thuletide:

Thanks to huge longitudinal studies conducted by the Danish government (2021), Amsterdam University (2023), and Migration Watch UK (2014), we now know the financial damage of importing and supporting non-Western migrants.

The Danish government found that Third World migrants collectively make a net-negative lifetime financial contribution. Read More »

JUST follow these steps if you’d like to take down an entire society:

1. Seduce and demoralize the youth with false doctrines.

2. Destroy the family life.

3. Dominate humanity by preying upon their lower instincts and vices.

4. Debase and vulgarize Art, and introduce filth in Literature.

5. Destroy respect for religions; undermine the reputation of the clergy through scandalous stories and back up the so called “Higher Criticism” so that the old fundamental faith is shattered and quarrels and controversies become permanent in the churches.

6. Introduce the habit for luxuries, crazy fashions and spendthrift ideas so that the ability for enjoying clean and plain pleasures is lost.

7. Divert the attention of the people by public amusements, sports, games, prize contests, etc., so that there is no time for thinking. Read More »

FROM the website of Timothy Fitzpatrick:

The Zionist script is fundamentally nationalistic, moralistic, and ethno-centric, which is what the West had been up until about the 1960s when world Jewry introduced their immigration schemes and cultural Marxism. World Jewry doesn’t care for nationalism because world Jewry is cosmopolitan (Chabad admits it is “not Zionistic”). Nationalism is a hindrance to their advancement. They are after world government while rank-and-file Jews simply want a homeland of their own and to, more or less, live under the security of Western mores. Ultimately, world Jewry is stringing along little Jews with a deliberately handicapped Zionism. We know this is true because world Jewry funds the anti-Zionists as well, mainly through their Eurasian channels (Russia, China, North Korea), and more and more portrays Zionism unfavourably in their mass media racket. When Soviet garden gnome Henry Kissinger not long ago predicted the imminent end to the state of Israel, he wasn’t making an educated guess, he was revealing part of world Jewry’s plan. Read More »

“THROUGH its text and melody, the folk song is the mother both of literature and of music. This sung poetry is our earliest poetry; this poetic song is our first music. Thus, the well known folk song , ‘Summer is icumen in’ is the beginning of polyphony as well as the earliest recorded poem in the English language. Out of the background of lyric, ballad and other types of folk song, the more complex forms of literature have developed; from the simple melodies of the people, the elaborate harmonies of modern music have grown. But while it has given birth to many forms of music and poetry, the folk song is a mother who remains eternally young and beautiful. Can we ignore this mother or become so clever as to do without her? Must we not always return to her as to the source and crown of our musical culture? folk songs deal with universal realities of life

“The folk song deals with the fundamental, universal realities of human life, realities which belong equally to the present and the past, and which always hold deep meaning for us. Thus, nothing has has changed in the relation between God and man in spite of modern atheism; nothing has changed in the relation of boy and girl, man and wife, despite rising divorce rates; nothing has changed in the relation between mother and child despite birth control; nothing has changed in the relation of a man to his country despite treason and cowardice. Folk music sings of life and death, the joy of true love and the pain of disappointment, daily chores and heroic adventure, the jovial comradeship of the tavern, the difficulties of this earthly pilgrimage and the longing for our heavenly home.

“Because folk songs present these universal human experiences in a simple and beautiful form, they have the power to stir the souls of men in every age. They are always contemporary; they speak to us now as clearly and warmly as when they were first sung. We experience today the timeless beauty of the anonymous folk poetry, a beauty often equal to the work of our greatest pets and composers.”

— Laughing Meadows, A Book of Song; Grailville Publications, Loveland, Ohio; 1947

ALAN writes:

One day recently an old song came spontaneously out of the catacombs of memory and into my awareness.  Decades had gone by since I last listened to “Puff, the Magic Dragon” in its original recording by Peter, Paul, and Mary.  I remember when it was brand-new in 1963.  I knew who Peter, Paul and Mary were because one of my classmates and I enjoyed their song “Lemon Tree” in 1962.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the old days, 1954-’63.  When “Puff” became popular, I was in 7th grade at St. Anthony of Padua school.  I had left boyhood behind, but I could still enjoy a charming story-song like “Puff”.  How fondly I remember those nights in the warm, secure, and serene setting that my mother created for us in our modest apartment on Dewey Avenue in south St. Louis.  It was so long ago that I can remember seeing civilized human beings in that area. On such nights in 1963, “Puff, the Magic Dragon” was one of several favorite songs I would listen to before falling asleep.  It was a most agreeable way to top off the day.

Of course I took the song at face value. I could not have imagined in 1963 that the “true meaning” of its lyrics would become a matter of controversy in later years, with some contending it was really about smoking marijuana.

Did the lyrics mean what they appeared to mean — a story of boyhood days and an unlikely friendship — or were they code for something else? Or did the words represent both meanings simultaneously to different audiences? Read More »

“Like the ‘Stabat Mater,’ the ‘Dies Irae’ was originally intended for private devotion,–a sort of pious meditation on the Last Judgment, whose appeal lay in the graphic portrayal of the emotions that fill the soul of man when, conscious of his guilt, he is reminded of the all-knowing and just Judge. Its excellence caused its adoption as a sequence in the Mass for the Dead as early as the second half of the fourteenth century, but it was not until the sixteenth century that its use became universal through a rubric of the Roman Missal as revised by Pius V.

“The ‘Dies Irae’ rests upon a biblical foundation. The contents of the sequence are taken mainly from the prophetical descriptions of the Old Testament, from the eschatological sermons of Christ, and from the teaching and the references of the Apostles concerning the consummation of the world. The description of Christ’s return as Judge of the universe is in full harmony with Holy Scripture, especially the Letters of the Apostles. The time when the end of the world will come is, and will ever remain, a sealed mystery to angels and men. Even the Divine Master refused to answer the question when put by His Apostles (Matth. XXIV, 36), but admonished them to be watchful and ready at any time to render an account of themselves, as the Son of Man would come suddenly and unexpectedly.”

cont.

“WHEN the righteous soul has thus arrived in purgatory, losing sight of everything else, it sees before it only two objects — the extremity of suffering, and the extremity of joys. A most tremendous pain is caused by knowing that God loves it with an infinite love, that He is the Chief Good, that He regards the soul as His daughter, and that He has predestined it to enjoy Him for ever in company with the Blessed: and hence the soul loves Him with a pure and most perfect charity. At the same time it perceives that it cannot see Him or enjoy Him yet, though it so intensely yearns to do so; and this afflicts it so much the more, as it is quite uncertain when the term of its penal exile, away from its Lord and paradise, will be fulfilled. This is the pain of loss in purgatory, of which the Saint says that it is a pain so extreme, that no tongue can tell it, no understanding grasp the least portion of it. Though God in His favour showed me a little spark thereof, yet can I not in any way express it with my tongue.”

— Purgatory, Rev. Frederick William Faber

November is devoted to praying for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. See more here.

Dante and Virgil Entering Purgatory, Luca Signorelli; 1499-1502

MORE than a thousand years ago, a pilgrim visited a monastery in Cluny, France and reported a vision of demons who were annoyed by prayers for the dead. The prayers had the alleged effect of getting souls to heaven faster. St. Odilo then ordered a commemoration of all the faithful departed to be celebrated in his monasteries every year on November 2nd. The custom spread throughout Europe and became a general feast of the Catholic Church. The entire month of November was dedicated to prayers for the dead.

Praying for the dead is only reasonable if there is some intermediary state between heaven and hell. Today most Christians reject the belief in purgatory. Many even reject the belief in hell and prefer to think all suffering ends with death. Hell, they say, occurs in this life with the normal trials brought about by immoral actions. A Christian who doesn’t believe in hell is a walking contradiction.

All Souls Day is also often, in practice, a day of prayer to the dead. May all those in paradise befriend us. Read More »

“THE saints are friends of God. They are like the angels in heaven. We honor them, not as we honor God, but on account of the relation they bear to God. They are creatures of God, the work of His hands. When we honor them, we honor God; as when we praise a beautiful painting, we praise the artist.

“We do not believe that the saints can help us of themselves, but we ask them to “pray for us.” We believe that everything comes to us “through Our Lord Jesus Christ.” With these words all our prayers end. It is useful, salutary, and reasonable to pray to the saints and ask them to pray for us. No doubt all will admit the reasonableness of this practice if the saints can hear and help us.

“That they hear and help us is evident from many passages of Scripture. The patriarch Jacob would not have prayed to the angel to bless his grandchildren Manasses and Ephraim (as we learn he did from Gen. xlviii.), unless he knew the angel could do so. We are informed (Luke xv.) that the angels rejoice when one sinner does penance. We are also informed (Matt. xxii.) that the saints are like the angels–i.e., have the same happiness and knowledge. Hence the saints, as well as the angels, can hear us, can help us, and are acquainted with our actions, words, and thoughts.

“It is generally conceded that it is reasonable to ask pious persons on earth to pray for us. St. Paul, in his epistles, frequently asks the Christians to pray for him. “Brethren,” he says, “pray for us.” It is well known that God was pleased to answer the prayer of Abraham in favor of Abimelech. “More things are wrought by prayer than this world knows of.” Now, if we poor sinners here on earth do not pray in vain for one another, will the saints in heaven, the friends of God, who rejoice when a sinner does penance, pray in vain for us? No. We have hosts of friends in heaven to speak a good word for us. And as a child who has disobeyed his parents wisely asks a better brother or sister to intercede with his parents for mercy, so, too, having disobeyed our heavenly Father by sin, we have recourse to others better than ourselves, to our better brothers and sisters, the Blessed Virgin and saints, to intercede with God for us. Is not this a reasonable practice?”

Source

May all the Saints intercede for us!

“WHAT We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. ‘With God and Jesus Christ,’ We said, ‘excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.’

— Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1922, on the Feast of Christ the King (last Sunday of October)

Theodore Robinson

FROM The Nature, Dignity and Mission of Woman by Fr. Karl Stehlin (Kolbe Publications, 2018):

“… One of the most beautiful and fortunate things a human being can experience is the assurance that he has a home, a place where he can rest and withdraw from the commotion of everyday cares and concerns and renew his strength and vitality. And that is the woman’s role. That is why God, as we have already observed, designed her to have the qualities of constancy, “inertia”, patience and endurance. Constant change is not in her nature. On the contrary, she likes to be at home, beside her own hearth. She is not simply a place of rest; she actively opposes the agitation and unrest of the world, takes it into herself, so to speak, and thus causes it to come to rest. So it often happens that a child comes back home excited, worn out, upset, trembling and heavy-hearted. The child throws its arms around the mother’s neck, perhaps has a good cry and commends itself to her care, and then after a few moments his heart is peaceful and calm again. How indescribably important the restful, imperturbable qualities of a wife are for the husband, too, in his struggle to make a living today. This composure that soothes and radiates peace, this poise when everyone else is losing his temper—that is the great mission of woman in our time, which she can accomplish, however, only if she draws strength from the source of all peace, when she herself comes to rest at the feet of Him who is everyone’s final home. Read More »

JARED TAYLOR looks at the recently opened Hindu temple in New Jersey, the largest in the United States, that used ‘Untouchables’ from India as quasi-slave labor in construction. Hindu immigrants have brought their own definitions of inequality with them to this country. Read More »