JAMES P. writes:

The Daily Mail reports on the “enthronement” of the new Archbishop of Canterbury:

Amid a spectacular celebratory ceremony of African music and dance, former oil executive Justin Welby became the 105th Archbishop to preside over the world’s 77 million Anglicans. [JP: African music and dance has what to do with the Church of England? Is this the Church of Making Africans Happy now?]

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AT Reclaiming Beauty, Thomas F. Bertonneau reflects on works by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, two twentieth century composers who sought to preserve traditional English folk music. Alluding to this tradition, compositions such as Vaughan Williams’ famous score, The Lark Ascending, evoked the gentle splendor of the landscape of England:

… Vaughan Williams and Holst began to tramp the countryside in Somerset, Hampshire, Essex, East Anglia, and Norfolk, notebooks at ready, to collect and annotate the archaic song-tradition that they well knew was on the verge of extinction. These were the years from 1902 to 1905. In addition to their project of preserving the treasury of the traditional ballads, love songs, and lullabies, both men had the notion that English folksong could become the basis of a novel and truly English concert music. That music would be new because its basis would be more ancient than that of the Germanic conservatory-vocabulary employed by Stanford and his peers.
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THE American media continue to provide scant news on the momentous developments in France, where opposition to the same-sex marriage law known as Taubira’s law has evolved into a mass resistance movement. On Sunday, the second “manif pour tous,” or march for all (a play on the slogan “mariage pour tous”), is scheduled to take place in Paris and, as Tiberge reports at Galliawatch, there is some possibility that the demonstrators will be banned from gathering on the Champs Elysées. According to Bloc Identitaire, the French nationalist group, the protesters will not give in. “Les Champs-Elysées appartiennent aux Français,”  — the Champs Elysées belongs to the French.

The Catholic group Civitas has departed ways with the organizers and the tone of ‘la manif pour tous,” objecting to the showmanship and vulgarity of Frigide Barjot, the former comedienne who is the main organizer. Civitas is planning a separate march in April.

Protesters from Civitas

French Spring, a new website, supports the march and unflinching opposition to the redefinition of marriage. From the site, as translated by Tiberge:

What is at stake is our identity and the future of our freedoms, our traditions, the culture of our provinces and our country. France is a family of families. The land of our ancestors is the heritage of our children. We want to transmit to them, entirely, from father to son and from mother to daughter, as did all the generations that preceded us. We are all born of a father and a mother! It is written in history, it is natural!

This is terrific. Where else is the issue openly discussed in terms of national survival?

Also, nowhere else in the West have children’s interests been as eloquently and passionately defended as in France. In January, an interview with a 66-year-old lawyer, Jean-Dominique Bunel, appeared in Le Figaro and caused a sensation. Bunel was raised by lesbians. From English Manif’s translation of the interview:

I suffered from the indifference of adults to the intimate sufferings of children, starting with mine. In a world where their rights are each day rolled back, in truth, it is always the rights of adults that hold sway. I also suffered from the lack of a father, a daily presence, a character and a properly masculine example, some counterweight to the relationship of my mother to her lover. I was aware of it at a very early age. I lived that absence of a father, experienced it, as an amputation.”

“What I offer you is a testimonial. It is not equal in value to a poll.”

When one objects to him that many children live in such a state because of divorce, he rebuts:  “Divorce does not deprive a child necessarily of its parents, who normally are given shared or alternate guardianship of the child. Especially, divorce does not replace the father with a second woman, exacerbating even more the affective imbalance, both emotional and structural, for the child. All psychiatrists ought to recognize that the latter does not depend on a woman the way it depends upon a man, and that the ideal for the child is that the two accompany each other in an equal, complementary way.

And to make things clear: “While I was a child and a teenager, I had absolutely no notion of all that and I naturally adored the two women who raised me alone and with courage. But I did not pose questions about the nature of their relationship,which I therefore did not figure out. My father, who had abandoned my mother when I was three, precisely due to the relation she was engaged in, was never around, notably when I needed him. Also I turned as much as possible to the men of my surroundings, who begged for an oversized and sometimes unhealthy place in my life.”

No comparable interview has received such prominent notice in the American press. This statement by Bunel is arresting:

“What I offer you is a testimonial. It is not equal in value to a poll.” [emphasis added]

Articles on same-sex “marriage” almost always report high numbers of people who support the idea in polls. But polls are as nothing compared to the lived experience of a single child.

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ON THE occasion of her father’s illness, Lydia Sherman reflects on the value he and others of his generation have placed on privacy. She writes:

Privacy today is looked at as some kind of a flaw. The people born back in the 1920’s, as my parents were, kept certain things to themselves, and in my observation, it kept their children and those around them more polite and calm. Today, curiosity is considered bright and intelligent, which, to a point, it is, but it has to be used for the right things. Too much airing of personal things can create a very nervous society.

As I learn more about the heritage of these people, I realize why they were able to accomplish so much. Read More »

Joseph's Dream, Gaetano Gandolfi; 1790

FOR ST. JOSEPH’S feast day, reflections on the humble carpenter and foster father of Christ can be found at Ars Orandi.

IN AN excellent essay titled, “The Futility of Liberalism and the Hope of Traditionalism,” at The Orthosphere, Alan Roebuck continues to elucidate the basic tenets of liberalism. He makes the important point that liberalism, properly understood, is the reigning state religion. He writes:

There is nothing improper in making this claim. Every society must have some sort of (at least unofficial) state religion because a religion is primarily a system of thought that describes reality, and leaders must always have a way of thinking to guide their decisions. Furthermore, the majority of the population needs to approve of the reasons the leaders give for their decisions, or at least to find those reasons tolerable. Therefore it is no insult to liberalism to call it a religion. On the contrary, this is to take it seriously. It is not its status as a religion that makes liberalism illegitimate; it is the specific doctrines of liberalism that make it a menace.

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JILL FARRIS writes:

This Daily Mail article implies that today’s educated and competent woman has discovered how important it is to be a mother and stay home with the children. How arrogant to think that women today are the first to discover this truth.

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Pius VII's slippers

AS HAS been widely reported, Pope Francis has rejected some of the traditional pomp of the papacy, including the red papal stole, the papal limousine and scarlet shoes, such as those worn by other popes for the last two centuries. Francis chose his well-worn black shoes instead for his first public appearance before journalists.

Pope Francis has made no statement on these choices, and we cannot know why he has made them.

I would like to comment, however, on the widely-held view that these gestures are deferential to the poor. It is a modern conceit that the poor are offended by majesty. Pomp and ceremony are not primarily for the rich. They are for the poor. Kings don’t need silk garments. They have everything. But the poor, who have nothing, benefit from outward displays of grandeur and magnificence, unless they are envious, in which case luxury reveals their own failings. Anyone can see a royal crown or a pair of papal shoes in a photo. The sight of such things costs nothing. They feed the craving for perfection. They satisfy the natural delight in beauty, constantly stymied in the flat and unvaried world of modern poverty.

For a person who has never seen anything beyond T-shirts, sneakers and denim, a pair of scarlet slippers may be a revelation, an invitation to a higher, invisible reality.

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DANIEL S. writes:

It is too early to know exactly what sort of pope Francis will be, but we do know the papal conclave exercised good judgment. For as Ilana Mercer reminds us, Cardinal Timothy Dolan was not elected to the position:

Mercifully, the new pope is not the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Shortly after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th pope, Cardinal Dolan demonstrated why my prayers had been answered. The American had been bypassed. Read More »

Judge Advocate General Dana K. Chapman

KATHERINE writes:

Here is an announcement about a speaker at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina:

The Riley Institute presents Lt. General Dana Chipman, Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army, speaking on “Combat Boots and Benefits:  Equality in an Era of Change” on Wednesday, March 20, 7 p.m. at the Younts Center.  This talk will focus on how the military is on the front lines of social change as it begins to allow women in combat, equal benefits for gay Americans, religious exceptions to grooming, and also seeks an environment free from sexual harassment.  Free.

Oh my, this is so depressing.  The JAG no less!

I often re-read your kind e-mail of condolence after my husband died. In it you said that my alienation from this culture is a sign of health. I must be in great health, because, wow, do I feel alienated when I see an announcement such as this one!

As always, thanks for your great website.

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CYNTHIA WACHENHEIM, the Manhattan lawyer who jumped to her death with her infant son strapped to her body this week, had a brilliant career. But motherhood appears to have caused her to unravel. While her case is extreme, there is something very typical about it.

In my experience, women who have a first child late in life after a long career are often high-strung mothers. Wachenheim became a mother for the first time at 43. Compared to law school and a professional life, caring for an infant is primal and chaotic. It is not surprising that motherhood would be deeply stressful for a lawyer accustomed to a world of efficiency and rationality and who will likely have few children, a fact that renders every event in her one child’s life extremely momentous.

Wachenheim, who attempted to kill her child, is symbolic of a nation that is so suicidal it fails to prepare women for the most important job of all.

Gertrude Stein, one of the first lesbian celebrities

IN THE following passage sent by a reader, Gertrude Stein, the famously unreadable lesbian writer and art collector who had a few memorable lines, most notably, “There’s no there there,” discusses lesbianism with Ernest Hemingway, the famously readable writer and macho adventurer. What a strange pair. Stein was the godmother of Hemingway’s son.

“You know nothing about any of this, really, Hemingway,” she said. “You’ve met known criminals and sick people and vicious people. The main thing is that the act male homosexuals commit is ugly and repugnant and afterwards they are disgusted with themselves. They drink and take drugs, to palliate this, but they are disgusted with the act and they are always changing partners and cannot be really happy.”

“I see.” Read More »

ARCHBISHOP Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia has agreed to let an eleven-year-old girl, Caroline Pla, play football in a Catholic league, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer. The archbishop overruled a panel of experts who had advised against allowing girls to play, partly for safety and — most disturbing of all — legal reasons. The girl’s parents, friends, teammates and coach all hail the decision as a great advance for Caroline and for girls in general.

Pla can already participate in an array of athletic activities, from field hockey to basketball, softball and soccer. And yet we are supposed to believe it a serious injustice that she is excluded from this one sport. She may say in all innocence that she passionately loves football, but her eagerness to play is not ultimately about a love of football. That’s not possible. Only a girl who dislikes or who misunderstands football would want to play the sport. Football is inherently and inalterably masculine.  It can accommodate girls only by becoming an entirely different sport.

Pla — again, the innocent mouthpiece of a sports-obsessed, feminist mentality — explains why this is a good development for her. It has nothing to do with sports:

“I did learn a really important lesson in life,” she said. “If there’s something you don’t like, you can change it. In the end, it can turn out the way that you want.”

Caroline has learned to disregard athletic traditions; to overlook what others want (not many boys want girls to play football) in order to get what she wants, to cross dress as a boy and to value rough aggression.

For years Catholic schools and colleges have been encouraging feminist careerism and assertiveness in girls. Girls altar servers have replaced boys to a large extent. Catholic femininity has been eclipsed. Of course, not many girls want to play football. But that’s beside the point. Even if only a few play, girls in general will be further masculinized by this additional refusal by idiotically immature adults, such as Pla’s parents and coach, to reinforce sex differences.

The archbishop has shown extraordinary weakness. Or I should say, he has shown the very ordinary weakness of men in positions of authority today.

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DANIEL S. writes:

The paleo-conservative, Serbian Orthodox writer Srdja Trifkovic has written a piece for Chronicles expressing tentative optimism about the recently elected Pope Francis:

Many of us non-RC traditionalists all over the world had awaited the news from Rome with some trepidation. In the end it turned out to be rather good. Pope Francis, the first non-European Bishop of Rome since Gregory III (d. 741), is universally described as “modest” and “moderate”—which is much preferred to the dreaded “bold” or “courageous,” in the sense that those words are used by the global media. Read More »

IT’S ONE of the great ironies of modern life. The liberated woman is exhausted. She has very little erotic energy once she’s married and has children. The sexual revolution isn’t all that much fun after all.

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AT Galliawatch, Tiberge writes about an anti-immigration campaign by the organization Bloc Identitaire in France. It features the above poster. The English translation is: “Smile, you have been replaced.”The group states:

From advertisements to television fare, from the standardization of products to the standardization of tastes, from the erasing of borders to the disloyal creation of job competition for workers from all over the world, everything is being organized so that a new population replaces our own deeply-rooted people.

AT the website Rorate Caeli, Marcelo González, an Argentinian journalist at Panorama Católico Internacional, gives his view of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who has been elected pope: