MAUREEN writes:

  Providential Function of Mary in the Latter Times It was through Mary that the salvation of the world was begun, and it is through Mary that it must be consummated. Mary hardly appeared at all in the first coming of Jesus Christ, in order that men, as yet but little instructed and enlightened on the Person of her Son, should not remove themselves from Him in attaching themselves too strongly and too grossly to her. This would have apparently taken place if she had been known, because of the admirable charms which the Most High had bestowed on her exterior. This is so true that St. Denis the Areopagite tells us in his writings that when he saw our Blessed Lady he would have taken her for a divinity, because of her secret charms and incomparable beauty, had not the Faith in which he was well established taught him to the contrary. But in the second coming of Jesus Christ, Mary has to be made known and revealed by the Holy Ghost in order that, through her, Jesus Christ may be known, loved and served. The reasons which moved the Holy Ghost to hide His spouse during her life, and to reveal her but very little since the preaching of the Gospel, subsist no longer. ---- True Devotion to Mary, St. Louis de Montfort (Tan Classics, p. 21)

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WHEELER MacPHERSON writes:

WILD OUTLANDER writes:

Some … thoughts occurred to me this morning while I was listening to a mourning dove outside the kitchen window. As I listened to the bird’s song I started trying to mimic his call. The more I imitated him the more I noticed the subtleties of his song. It was intriguing to discover the depth of his variations upon one or two themes(or perhaps there were two birds).

Later, I was discussing with my father how I’ve been beginning to find inspiration for melodies within the natural world. I demonstrated what I meant, first whistling my approximation of the bird call and then riffing a melodic structure from musical intervals within the call. The result was a satisfactory fiddle tune which borrowed from the bird song and melodic devices I’ve heard in other tunes.

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  FITZGERALD writes:  Joanna Blythman, of The Guardian, writes about nutrition studies: With salt, as with sugar, the public health establishment is too cowardly to take on the powerful processed food companies and their lobbyists by drawing a distinction between home-prepared food cooked from scratch and industrial convenience food. The crucial phrase "avoid processed food" appears nowhere in government nutritional guidelines, yet this is the most concise way to sum up in practical terms what is wholesome and healthy to eat. Until this awareness shapes dietetic advice, all government dietary guidance should come with a tobacco-style caution: Following this advice could seriously damage your health. I would suggest the implication that home cooked meals, lovingly prepared are critical to good health, even by extension good psychological health, runs afoul of more than just the current nutritional orthodoxy. To re-assert the importance of home cooking would implicate the modern two-earner household and make many women feel guilty for entering the workforce and therefore becoming too busy to prepare traditional meals.

JOHN HARRIS, at the Center for Literate Values, has an especially wonderful essay in the latest issue of his journal, Praesidium, on the negative effects of electronic technology on reading, writing and thought. Harris contends that working on computers has actually made him physically sick, but the cultural phenomenon is his main concern. E-culture is dehumanizing. He writes:

The electronic media have taught us, both as broadcasters and receivers, to value fireworks. Nothing else gets through. Our children send crude tweets and jeopardize their professional future by posting debauches or brawls on YouTube, all because (I am convinced) they want desperately to demarcate some sort of individuality, and the only means of distinction available through Internet and iPhone is strident vulgarity. I believe, indeed, that this search for difference at all costs accounts for excessive and obscene tattooing, wearing of rings in noses and lips and foreheads, spiking and bizarre coloring of hair, shaving of heads, and other kinds of repellent self-defacement so common in young people now. That is, e-culture has left them so alone and insignificant at their various “world at your doorstep” terminals that they settle for drawing any kind of notice. To be remarked as a “freak” is at least to be remarked.

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SEE Novus Ordo Watch’s report on the performance of Suor Cristina, an Italian Ursuline “nun” who appeared on the Italian talent show The Voice of Italy. As you probably already know, Sr. Cristina Scuccia belted out Alicia Keys’ pop song “No One,” about a woman holding a man close, before a panel of painfully ugly celebrity demons. It’s a TV update of Dante’s Inferno. But she’s a real nun and so it must be good. Here is the Catholic News Agency’s shamelessly approving article of the performance. Don’t be surprised if there’s more of this kind of thing on a pseudo-altar near you.

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THANKS very much to the readers who sent notes of concern this week. I was in Florida taking care of an elderly aunt who just got out of the hospital. My aunt, who has lived alone most of her life and has many serious, chronic health problems, just got out of the hospital and needed intensive help. I thought I might be able to post while I was away but it was all too much, not only caring for my aunt but trying to survive the week without being attacked by her small dog. According to the American Kennel Club, the Havanese is “a small sturdy dog of immense charm.” My aunt’s Havanese must be an anomaly. No matter how good I was to “Bo” (short for Bonaparte) — taking him for walks, petting him on my lap, feeding him hot chicken — he still snarled, yapped ferociously and lunged at me whenever I approached or walked away from my aunt. Bo was fine if I had him on a leash. He was a terror when he was free. One night he loudly barked at me, as if I was an intruder who had just broken in, on-and-off throughout the night as I tried to sleep on the couch. He bit me twice. My aunt’s remedy for his misbehavior was to feed him treats and cuddle him. Bo is her baby. The psychodynamics of this kind of relationship, once set in place, are inalterable.

So, dear reader, I was too overwhelmed to pay any attention to the rest of the world.

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  DUE to an illness in the family, I have not been able to post much. I hope things will get back to normal very soon.

ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

Academic achievement in the “world’s largest democracy” involves so much cheating that the police monitor exam sites.

These are the people that U.S. high-tech corporations are seeking to import under H-1B visa and ‘training’ schemes to replace supposedly nonexistent qualified Americans – at far lower wages than Americans would command.

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  HERE is another excellent reading for this Lenten season. Fr. Chad Ripperger describes the importance of detachment: Holy Indifference means that when it comes to the created order we are completely indifferent as to what happens to it and to us. We are not indifferent or detached than for any other reason than God alone. We are not detached because these things are evil; we are detached because they are good and since they are good they can come between us and God. This detachment has to be complete. Some people give up some things but remain attached to others.

LAURA E. writes:

I enjoyed your post on the importance of fasting.  To that end, I thought I might share with you the homily from my cousin’s wedding in June 2013. The Nuptial Mass, a Latin high mass, was presided over by the groom’s brother (also my cousin).  He is a cloistered monk (and a priest, obviously) at a monastery in the Midwest.

My cousin’s homily argued that the ability to fast is the most important trait to seek out in a marriage partner. The full text is rich in themes that would be well-appreciated by your readers. Here it is.

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ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

Neither the press nor Adam Lanza’s father, in his recent heavily publicized interviews with The New Yorker, will admit the roles of separation, divorce, and accommodative parenting in the Sandy Hook school shooting. 

[Peter Lanza and his wife, Nancy, separated when Adam was nine.  Peter moved an hour away and later remarried. In the interview, he says, “The funny part is that the separation didn’t really change things for the kids very much.”]

If I’d ever tried to tell my mother how she ought to behave, as Adam Lanza repeatedly did when he was living in isolation with his mother for years, she would’ve slapped me silly, and my father would’ve turned me over his knee.

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TEXANNE writes:

I have been reflecting on the Book of Genesis, and it strikes me that it seems to be such an apt allegory of the way in which feminist ideology was introduced into Western consciousness and has been received into the culture without resistance.

The woman knows God’s command, but the most cunning of creatures plants in her mind the seed of cynicism and mistrust — the possibility that God’s motive is not really for her own happiness, but to keep her in her place.  Until this consciousness-raising session, it had not occurred to Eve to think in terms of power, and to think of herself as subservient, and naive, a victim of the oppressive patriarchy.

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