THE BASILICA OF SANTA Maria Maggiore is the oldest church in Rome dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The original structure was a fourth-century Roman palace. Since the 16th century, the church has also sometimes been referred to as Our Lady of the Snows. According to an ancient legend, the Mother of God caused a miraculous snowfall on the spot in the height of a Roman summer. Today is the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows. According to Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira: Here you can see the beautiful role of legends. Synarchic (1) or technocratic minds do not like legends because they lack definite proof of truth. They do not understand that the legend exists to prove something superior to the concrete fact. In this story, for example, we find many things that tell us about Our Lady.  It can be disputed whether or not the snow actually fell on that day in August, but the legend reminds us that Our Lady has the power to transcend the laws of nature. There is an enormous distance between Heaven and earth. She can make nothing of this distance and appear to a Pope. Naturally speaking, it is marvelous for it to snow in the hot summer - July and August are terribly hot months in Rome - but she has the power to make this happen if she so desires. Morally speaking, we experience this truth whenever she sends us consolations in…

  THE Remnant reports on the Man-Who-Would-Be-Pope-If-He-Happened-To-Be-Catholic's recent visit to a workers' cafeteria. He's at one with the proletariat. [The heading of this entry comes from Novus Ordo Watch.]

JAMES P. writes:

The former male Commanding Officer of the USS Cowpens has been removed from duty for “fraternizing” with a female subordinate and then letting her take over the Navy guided missile cruiser when he got sick.

From The Navy Times:

The cruiser Cowpens was halfway through its Western Pacific cruise earlier this year when the commanding officer got sick.

Capt. Greg Gombert came down with flu-like symptoms in January that confined him to his cabin for about a week.

As he was recovering, he contracted something more unusual: temporary facial paralysis. The non-life threatening disorder makes it difficult to move certain facial muscles and initially can feel like a minor stroke. (more…)

  KARL D. writes: A homosexual couple who are foster parents to numerous children left a baby to die in a hot car. The tattooed, homosexual man who was responsible for looking out for the baby was sitting on his couch smoking pot, eating pizza and watching Game of Thrones while the child roasted alive. This story has it all. Drugs, homosexuality, tattoos, pizza, TV and, sadly, the death of an infant.

MATTHEW writes:

If you can spare the time, I would like to ask you a parenting question.

My cousin, B., recently became pregnant. She is not married to the baby’s father. In this day and age, that is unfortunate but not terribly unusual. What is unusual, however, is that B. is 26 years old, not nineteen. She graduated from an Ivy League college and went on to obtain her Ph.D.  She now works in her field (she is a physical therapist) at a retirement home.  The pregnancy was not planned. B. isn’t making an ideologically motivated decision to forgo marriage before motherhood, and she isn’t making a lifestyle statement.  She had been dating her current boyfriend for three to six months when she discovered that she was pregnant. To her credit, she does not want to have an abortion. But she doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with single motherhood either.

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  IN 1896, Carrie Lippincott started a seed business in Minneapolis at the age of 33. Notable for its personal and feminine touch, the company grew rapidly and became the world's largest seed supplier specializing in flowers. According to Barbara Wells Sarudy at Early American Gardens: In 1891, Carrie Lippincott began calling herself  “The Pioneer Seedswoman of America.”  Unique among seed companies, she specialized in flower seeds, & targeted female clientele.  Her greatest contribution to the seed trade industry was her gift for marketing. In the 1880’s, most seed packets from most seedhouses looked the same. The packets were printed on medium bond manilla paper with the text in black ink, perhaps with a little color on the vegetable or flower illustration. The farm-oriented catalogs appeared with big 8x10 illustrations featuring fruits & vegetables on their covers & in interior illustrations.  Lippencott's seed catalogs & advertisements revolutionized how garden seeds were sold. Her catalogs featured images of children, women & flowers giving her an edge with women customers among her competition. It's an interesting story. Sarudy features illustrations of the famous Lippincott seed packets. The blog calls Lippincott, who never married, a feminist. However, there is nothing in the post to suggest she was feminist. (One doesn't have to be a feminist to be a successful businesswoman.)

IS childhood becoming more like adulthood or is adulthood becoming more like childhood? Let’s just say, they are converging, and it ain’t pretty. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think a child can feel safe in a world run by oversized children who wear T-shirts that say,”It’s about me.”

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  HAPPY ACRES writes: Listening to a giggling NPR announceress interviewing a breathless female freelance about terrorists burying kidnap victims in the desert, together enjoying the make-believe [that] they were intrepid James Bonds but in the tittering voices of a coffee klatsch… …I had the heretical thought that women don’t belong in public life and we’ve made a monstrous mistake now almost impossible to undo.

  JEANETTE V. writes: Two degenerates with their trophy child.

  "Tolerance is a virtue or a vice depending on the situation in which it is exercised. Most certainly we should be tolerant of customs, or ways of life, or opinions that differ from our own provided we believe them to be sincerely followed by men of wisdom and good will. But to be tolerant of evil is either laziness or cowardice." --- Carleton Putnam, Race and Reason: A Yankee View; New Century Books.

  DIANA Furchtgott-Roth writes on the campus sexual assault bill: Rape is a serious matter. That is why it is unfortunate that a bipartisan group of senators is exaggerating the problem of rape on campus and proposing legislation that encourages academic institutions to throw out due process for the accused.

  ADAM writes: When pregnancy is a paid service and a child is a product, then it's only natural that if the "product" is delivered with physical imperfections, then the customer will return the "product" to the supplier. I think it's unfair that the Australian couple in this story is anonymous thus far. They should be exposed for their callous behavior.

  THIS IS getting serious. Even the French are sick of nudity.

THE effective unemployment rate among 18-29 year olds is 15.1 percent and the average college graduate has $30,000 in student debt. The unemployment rate is lower for women than for men.

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THERE IS absolutely nothing wrong with Michelle Obama saying that she has the “blood of Africa” running in her veins. She is proud of her heritage, and that’s normal and good.

But an Italian-American or Anglo-American could not say, “I have the blood of Europe running through my veins,” and still hold any public office or position of prominence. No, he has nothing running in his veins but guilt.

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IT seems too obvious to say, but the problem of campus sexual assault, so prevalent in the news this week, could be largely prevented without the intervention of the federal government or the police or campus sexual assault investigators and advisors and lawyers. The obvious solution is the elephant in the room that no one acknowledges.

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  Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. The other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created. Hence, man is to make use of them in as far as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them in as far as they prove a hindrance to him. Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, as far as we are allowed free choice and are not under any prohibition. Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life. The same holds for all other things. Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created. FROM The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, translated by Louis Puhl, S.J.