Detail from The Inferno, Sandro Botticelli; 1480

A GROUP known as the Satanic Temple has applied to put a statue of Satan at the Oklahoma state capitol building. The group is protesting the erection of a monument to the Ten Commandments. Its spokesman says that it is just using Satan as a rhetorical device to protest favoritism for the Christian view and religion in general. According to CBS:

If you were Satan (not that you’re anything like that), wouldn’t you consider it your greatest triumph to convince human beings that you were metaphorical? But then you would also be delighted by the notion of religious liberty and by state capitol buildings with no explicit recognition of Christ and his social rights. Egalité, liberté, fraternité. Satan is one of the greatest of political philosophers.

Read More »

Hollande and Trierweiler

DANIEL O. writes:

Here is another one for the books. Valérie Trierweiler, the “partner” of the French president François Hollande, has had a nervous breakdown, because the president is cheating on her with the actress Julie Gayet and the media is writing about that. Hence, the poor victimized woman, a successful journalist, had to be hospitalized. Trierweiler and Hollande started having an affair when he was still in a relationship with the socialist politician Ségolène Royal, and she was still married to Denis Trierweiler, which was by the way her second marriage. In fact, Trierweiler even was the shared mistress of the socialist Hollande and the ‘conservative’ politician Patrick Devedjian, writes The Mirror. You will reap what you sow.

Such is the couple leading the glorious revolutionary French Nation: a Clintonian President and his ‘First Girlfriend.’ Robespierre once said that virtue without terror is fatal, and terror without virtue is impotent. Clearly, he was wrong. The progressivist terror in France, such as the crackdown on la Manif pour tous, is virtueless and exactly the opposite of impotence — it is political and sexual licence.

Julie Gayet — the new First Girlfriend?

Read More »

A University of North Carolina “learning specialist” (i.e., someone who helps students who cannot possibly do college work) found that a majority of the school’s football and basketball players cannot read above an elementary school reading level. Mary Willingham has received death threats and dozens of hate messages, according to The Daily Mail.

Read More »

THE ARCHBISHOP of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, is one of nineteen men appointed cardinal by “Pope” Francis. While Archbishop of Birmingham, Nichols approved and defended a celebration of Mohammed’s birth at a Catholic college. He has said that it’s acceptable for homosexuals to adopt children as long as they are single. And according to Wikipedia:

In February 2010, Nichols was thanked by British education minister Ed Balls for supporting a sexual education bill which would require schools – including Catholic schools – to explain civil partnerships and, as Balls put it, give “a balanced view on abortion… give both sides of the argument… explain how to access an abortion, the same is true on contraception as well.” Balls characterised the position of Nichols and the Church agencies as an improvement on the previous situation: “To have the support of the Catholic Church and Archbishop Nichols in these changes is, I think, very, very important, is a huge step forward.”[41]

In other words, this is just the kind of man one would expect this flagrantly non-Catholic “pontiff” to promote. In his tenure as Archbishop of Westminster, the leading Catholic position in England and Wales, Nichols also endorsed masses for homosexuals at which the following prayer to the “erotic Christ,” a masterpiece of New Age Novus Ordo-ism, was said:

‘Rainbow Christ, you embody all the colors of the world. Rainbows serve as bridges between different realms: Heaven and Earth, east and west, queer and non-queer. Inspire us to remember the values expressed in the rainbow flag of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community.

Red is for life, the root of spirit. Living and Self-Loving Christ, you are our Root. Free us from shame, and grant us the grace of healthy pride so we can follow our own inner light. With the red stripe in the rainbow, we give thanks that God created us just the way we are.

Orange is for sexuality, the fire of spirit. Erotic Christ, you are our Fire, the Word made flesh. Free us from exploitation, and grant us the grace of mutual relationships. With the orange stripe in the rainbow, kindle a fire of passion in us.

Yellow is for self-esteem, the core of spirit. Out Christ, you are our Core. Free us from closets of secrecy, and give us the guts and grace to come out. With the yellow stripe in the rainbow, build our confidence.

Green is for love, the heart of spirit. Transgressive Outlaw Christ, you are our Heart, breaking rules out of love. In a world obsessed with purity, you touch the sick and eat with outcasts. Free us from conformity, and grant us the grace of deviance. With the green stripe in the rainbow, fill our hearts with untamed compassion for all beings.

Blue is for self-expression, the voice of spirit. Liberator Christ, you are our Voice, speaking out against all forms of oppression. Free us from apathy, and grant us the grace of activism. With the blue stripe in the rainbow, motivate us to call for justice.

Violet is for vision, the wisdom of spirit. Interconnected Christ, you are our Wisdom, creating and sustaining the universe. Free us from isolation, and grant us the grace of interdependence. With the violet stripe in the rainbow, connect us with others and with the whole creation.

Rainbow colors come together to make one light, the crown of universal consciousness. Hybrid and All-Encompassing Christ, you are our Crown, both human and divine. Free us from rigid categories, and grant us the grace of interwoven identities. With the rainbow, lead us beyond black-and-white thinking to experience the whole spectrum of life.

Rainbow Christ, you light up the world. You make rainbows as a promise to support all life on Earth. In the rainbow space we can see all the hidden connections between sexualities, genders, and races. Like the rainbow, may we embody all the colors of the world! Amen.’

Read More »

AT The Orthosphere, Dr. Thomas F. Bertonneau describes the breakdown in reading ability and discipline he has witnessed as a literature professor. Increasingly, students tell him they cannot understand assigned readings and about ten percent flatly refuse to read at all, probably because it is too demanding. He writes:

Post-literacy is both a symptom of the general breakdown of North American society and a cause of many other aspects of that disaster. It combines insidiously, for example, with the trends of narcissism and group-identity that have so distorted our “liberal” politics; it helps make people vulnerable to propaganda and demagoguery; and it stultifies the cultural scene by deleting the ability to think. Indeed, post-literacy has an ideological expression under such terms as “critical thinking,” which is a euphemism designed to equalize groupthink with actual ratiocination and judgment. “Offense” and “discomfort” are likewise ideological constructions rooted in the post-literate “shame culture.” Read More »

THE New York Times’s has a front-page obituary today of the former New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka, who in addition to being a self-described “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist,” was a hater of whites, a Nazi sympathizer, a Muslim convert and one of the worst poets ever published. There are two reasons why Baraka’s poetic junk reached the light of literary day — the color of his skin and his hatred of white civilization.

But even liberals had a hard time loving him — not because of his sympathies with genocidal Communism, but because he ranted against Jews. The New Jersey legislature eliminated the position of poet laureate purely in an effort to fire Baraka for his poem “Somebody Blew up America,” which blamed 9-11 on Israel. See John Derbyshire’s literary analysis of the poem.

Lawrence Auster wrote in 2002:

What the mainstream media has not mentioned is that, apart from those four lines attacking Israel, the rest of the 292 line poem, which I found at the black web site bet.com, is a ceaseless invocation of hatred against whites as the source of virtually all the evil in the universe. Needless to say, no one has demanded that Baraka/Jones resign over that.

There would be something comical about millions of white suburbanites turning to their newspaper over breakfast coffee today and reading approving commentary about this breathtakingly hateful poetic garbage that blames every conceivable evil in the world on them — it would be funny, if it was not true.

Read More »

A 1910 photograph from the website British Paintings.

RACISM is killing black men, according to a new study. CBS reports:

Accelerated aging and a greater likelihood of suffering from an age-related illness at a younger age are two consequences being linked to African-American men who have experienced high-levels of racism throughout their lives.

A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that African-American men who reported high levels of racial discrimination, or who have internalized anti-black attitudes themselves, have an increased risk of premature death and chronic disease than white people.

Previous research has documented African-Americans’ shorter life expectancy and greater risk of chronic diseases, but this new study is the first to link racism-related experiences to accelerated aging at the biological, cellular level.

By the way, notice the clever use of the passive voice. If the first sentence had said, “High levels of racism are causing accelerated aging and age-related illnesses in African-American men,” the falsity of it would have been much more apparent.

Read More »

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

European geopolitical analyst Sören Kern writes about The Islamization of Britain for the Gatestone Institute.  Westerners, read it and weep. There are really no bright spots in Kern’s account of British officialdom’s unfailing capitulation to alien Moslem agitators’ every Sharia-driven demand that the traditional life of Britain be suppressed so as not to give them offense.  Kern appears to confirm the late political philosopher Lawrence Auster’s verdict on once-Great Britain: for now, at least, and for actual Britons, the Sceptr’d Isle is dead.  Her Majesty’s Government is her people’s enemy and her enemies’ friend.  And it is supposedly a Conservative government.  The same, of course, is true of almost every social institution of any importance. Read More »

JAMES N. writes:

Your recent posts on the question of the papacy are quite provocative. I have a couple of things for you to consider.

Since I was a Protestant for 59 years, you could say that I recognize Protestant thinking coming and going. To me, the Protestant paradigm falls over the issue of authority, specifically, authority to govern the Church and to speak with authority about the meaning of Scripture.

Read More »

AS promised, I would like to examine briefly another excerpt from the Rev. Antonio Spadaro’s account of comments  “Pope” Francis made before a gathering of the heads of religious orders. It is an important excerpt because it helps us understand the revolutionary phraseology of Vatican II. Francis here is discussing the formation of priests:

A RUSSIAN blogger, Mat Rodina, aptly describes Britain:

The UK is like that crazy and broke aunt, who was once a lady of the court, but has since partied, gambled and sorted out her fortune into just enough to survive and nothing more. However, she has still retained all those old dresses, nicknacks and furniture to fill her old and aging house that she can not afford to repair or maintain and that one day will collapse from rot. Sure, for those who happen to be riding by or walking through the yard and not looking too closely, it appears grand, but once they move into one of the rooms, they start to realize the lights flicker, the heating is unstable, the pipes leak and mice are in the walls.

In a related matter, Prince George baby memorabilia has been put on deep discount:

AN American who teaches philosophy at Paris University is disturbed to find that the French openly display negative attitudes toward nonwhite immigrants. Justin Smith, writing in The New York Times, tries to make sense of the “rising xenophobia in France:”

In the past year I have witnessed incessant stop-and-frisk of young black men in the Gare du Nord; in contrast with New York, here in Paris this practice is scarcely debated. I was told by a taxi driver as we passed through a black neighborhood: “I hope you got your shots. You don’t need to go to Africa anymore to get a tropical disease.” On numerous occasions, French strangers have offered up the observation to me, in reference to ethnic minorities going about their lives in the capital: “This is no longer France. France is over.” There is a constant, droning presupposition in virtually all social interactions that a clear and meaningful division can be made between the people who make up the real France and the impostors.

Read More »

Adoration of the Magi, Fra Angelico

FROM G.K. Chesterton’s “The God in the Cave” in The Everlasting Man:

It is still a strange story, though an old one, how they came out of orient lands, crowned with the majesty of kings and clothed with something of the mystery of magicians. That truth that is tradition has wisely remembered them almost as unknown quantities, as mysterious as their mysterious and melodious names; Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar. But there came with them all that world of wisdom that had watched the stars in Chaldea and the sun in Persia; and we shall not be wrong if we see in them the same curiosity that moves all the sages. They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had their reward. But even in order to understand that reward, we must understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was the completion of the incomplete.

Read More »

Still Life, Margaret Preston; 1957 (National Gallery of Art)

BUCK writes:

In an earlier entry, I mentioned that my sister became pregnant at the age of 19. She ended up marrying the much older man for his name only. She never saw him again after the wedding.

Last year, my niece — my sister’s daughter who was now age forty nine — learned via a persistent phone call to her mother, that her father was dead. My sister twice hung up on the unfamiliar caller, who asked questions that annoyed her, rather than getting to the point and seizing her attention.

Read More »

MODERNIST Catholic theologians and pontiffs have often used inflated and unclear language to convey revolutionary ideas. Jorge Bergoglio is, as we all know, a master at diffusing this rhetorical fog. His famous interviews and first “apostolic exhortation” were riddled with revolutionary code words and familiar phrases newly defined, as well as new terms of his own, such as “self-absorbed promethean neo-Pelagianism.” See Atila Sinke Guimarães analysis of some of Bergoglio’s “papal slang.”

“Pope” Francis’s most recently published “interview,” comprised of comments he made during a conversation with Superiors General of various religious orders on Nov. 29, 2013, is no exception to this trend. There is much that is disturbing in it, but I offer today only one excerpt from the conversation as recorded by the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, S.J.:

“I am convinced of one thing: the great changes in history were realized when reality was seen not from the center but rather from the periphery. It is a hermeneutical looked at from the periphery, and not when our viewpoint is equidistant from everything. Truly to understand reality we need to move away from the central position of calmness and peacefulness and direct ourselves to the peripheral areas. Being at the periphery helps to see and to understand better, to analyze reality more correctly, to shun centralism and ideological approaches.”

Read More »

Triptych with the Adoration of the Magi (central panel); Pieter Ertsen;
c. 1560

“O God, who on this day didst manifest Thine only-begotten Son to the Gentiles by the guidance of a star: graciously grant, that we, who know Thee now by faith, may be led even to contemplate the beauty of Thy Majesty.”

— Collect of the Epiphany of Our Lord, Roman Missal, 1962