Does Your Professor Respect You?

— Richard Cocks

Interestingly, when I googled this question the responses I found involved advising students how to address respectful emails to their professors. One response took the intuitively plausible line that since in emailing your professor you are likely to be asking for something, you should do so politely. However, on teaching evaluation forms, the question is as asked, although the exact wording may differ.

To respect someone is to show them the appropriate degree of social honor. If a child goes to see the high school principal, I would like to imagine that a parent might hope that the child was properly respectful, not; ‘I hope the principal showed you respect.’ Imagine a student approaching a karate or kung fu master, asking to be instructed, and then demanding that the teacher respect him. Or, better yet, a new army cadet telling his sergeant major that he is hoping to be treated with all the respect he deserves. What a malicious gleam in the eye that sergeant major could be expected to have and what respect the new recruit would be obliged to show the toilets with his toothbrush. (more…)

FROM “Mortification of the Appetite” by St. Alphonsus Liguori:

The ancient monks, as St. Jerome relates, thought it a great abuse to make use of food cooked by fire. Their daily sustenance consisted of a pound of bread. St. Aloysius, though always sickly, fasted three times in the week on bread and water. St. Francis Xavier, during his missions, was satisfied each day with a few grains of toasted rice. St. John Francis Regis, in the great fatigues of his missions, took no other food than a little flour steeped in water. The daily support of St. Peter of Alcantara was but a small quantity of broth. We read in the Life of the Venerable Brother John Joseph of the Cross, who lived in our own days, and with whom I was intimately acquainted, that for twenty-four years he fasted very often on bread and water, and never ate anything but bread, and a little herbs or fruit. When commanded, on account of his infirmities, to use warm food, he took only bread dipped in broth. When the physician ordered him to take a little wine, he mixed it with his broth to increase the insipidity of his scanty repast.

I do not mean to say that to attain sanctity it is necessary to imitate these examples; but I assert that whoever is attached to the pleasures of the table, or does not seriously attend to the mortification of the appetite, will never make any considerable progress in perfection. They who neglect the mortification of the taste will daily commit a thousand faults.

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INTERVIEWED on Meet the Press yesterday, the anti-Catholic “Cardinal” Timothy Dolan said that “Pope” Francis’s  recommendation that the Church “look into” the reasons why homosexual civil unions have been adopted was wise. Here is the full transcript. And here is another nugget from the interview:

DAVID GREGORY:

Michael Sam, from your home state, the football player– revealed that he was gay, first in the NFL. And you saw the celebration from the President, the First Lady, and they were saying what a courageous step that was. How did you view it?

CARDINAL DOLAN:

Good for him. I would have no– no sense of judgment on him. God bless ya. I don’t think– look, the same– the same bible that tells us that– that– teaches us well about the virtues of chastity and– and the virtue of fidelity and marriage also tells us not to judge people. So I would say, “Bravo.”

This man’s mind is mush. The same Bible also tells us that sinners go to hell. And the Church — ever hear of it, Mr. Dolan? — teaches that one who praises or flatters a sinner is an accessory to sin. Just imagine him in the confessional. “You did what? Oh, God bless ya! Bravo!”

Dolan also whines that the Church is being picked on for its pedophiliac priests, as if the Church shouldn’t be held to a higher standard than the rest of the world. How ironic that he defends homosexuality, a major cause of pedophilia, at the same time.

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JOHN G. writes:

Thank you for your continued efforts. I also appreciate your growing understanding of the crisis in the Church.

In your item, “The Innate Power of Women,” Pete F. wrote, “Men are naturally barbaric; left to their own devices, many males are perfectly happy to live in relative squalor (Those disinclined to believe this are urged to hang out with a young single guy sometime).”

Paul seconded that comment by writing, “Most men are naturally barbaric.  We need our mothers to teach us how to become civilized and how to treat women.”

This is a serious error, and one that is sufficiently fundamental that believing it will undo and destroy the good that may come from any other truths which we may have comprehended.

It is simply a fact of history that all civilization comes from men. All art, all culture, all beauty, all music, all education, all literature, all painting, all sculpture, all philosophy, all abstract thought — they all come from men, and from men alone, not from women. All government, all law, all civilization, all religion — they all come from men, and from men alone, not from women.

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KARL D. writes:

According to this article, a rather mannish looking female neuroscientist has declared that there is no difference between the male and female brain. Any differences are mere creations of social constructs. I guess we can all go home now since the issue has been settled. Yet if we take her argument to its logical conclusion, then wouldn’t that mean that homosexuals aren’t born that way, but created? And if so, doesn’t it follow that they must be abnormal?

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  AS everyone on Planet Earth now knows, "Pope" Francis, the sloganeering papal impostor, has given his fifth lengthy interview in the press, proving once again that his famous humility does not preclude a seemingly insatiable love of publicity. In his talk with a reporter from the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, Francis, who at one point approvingly quotes that great enemy of the Church, Sigmund Freud, describes some of his vision for meeting the needs of "contemporary man." That vision is explained with characteristic ambiguity and mumbo jumbo. However, even in the dense vapor of revolutionary ambiguity, one can see that it involves divorce, homosexual civil unions, and euthanasia as acceptable innovations. In other words, it involves denial of infallible Catholic teachings, which are so much "casuistry." Francis alludes to the Church's previous unambiguous stand on the indissolubility of marriage, a dogma which no pope has the authority to overturn as it comes from Christ himself and which has stood as a bulwark in the modern world against the overwhelmingly destructive effects of divorce and its unraveling of fundamental social bonds, as "very superficial theology." He thus nonchalantly dismisses 2,000 years of tradition and the sacrifices of Catholics who remained in difficult marriages to uphold that "superficial theology." Alexander the Great was humble in comparison. Francis, as the guardian of souls, is a conqueror of a much more devastating nature. I recommend two excellent posts elsewhere. "Divorce Bergoglio Style"…

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

  JEWEL A. writes: Say goodbye to the minimum wage waitress, and hello to industrialized pizza on steroids. Blessings upon you this Lent. (I won't be missing pizza. I haven't had the stomach for it much, lately)

  SHAKESPEARE called death "the undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns." Ash Wednesday is a day for repentance and contemplation of the unpleasant fact that you, dear reader, and I will someday travel to that country and leave behind mere dust. "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return." (Gen. 3. 19) In observance of this day, here is St. Thomas Aquinas on the reason for death: Now in man's first creation he was divinely endowed with this advantage that, so long as his mind remained subject to God, the lower powers of his soul were subjected to the reason and the body was subjected to the soul. But because by sin man's mind moved away from its subjection to God, it followed that the lower parts of his mind ceased to be wholly subjected to the reason. From this there followed such rebellion of the bodily inclination against the reason, that the body was no longer wholly subject to the soul. Whence followed death and all the bodily defects. For the life and wholeness of body are bound up with this, that the body is wholly subject to the soul, as a thing which can be made perfect is subject to that which makes it perfect. So it comes about that, conversely, there are such things as death, sickness and every other bodily defect, for such misfortunes are bound up with an incomplete subjection of…

WHILE nominally Catholic colleges annually host stagings of the Vagina Monologue, invite homosexual and pro-abortion speakers to campus, treat the Democratic Party as the American Vatican, encourage feminism (both the radical and mainstream versions) and pursue cultural Marxism with such impunity that at least one survey has shown the obvious reality that students are much less likely to be Catholic by the time they graduate from a supposedly Catholic institution than they were when they entered, a small Texas institution trying  to swim against the tide and adhere to the faith has come under attack from the Vatican II hierarchy. This is truly a remarkable instance of hostility to Catholicism within the superstructure of the American Church.

The bishop of Fort Worth, Texas, the Most Rev. Michael Olson has stepped in (his letter is posted at Rorate Caeli and has been confirmed by the college) not to clamp down on abuses such as those above but to ban the Latin Mass at Fisher More College, which considers the Mass at the center of its academic mission, as every Catholic college should. The college has been struggling to survive and this action seems intended if not to destroy it altogether to change its entire mission. (more…)

THE excellent speech given by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda on Feb. 24th on the signing of his anti-homosexuality bill is well worth reading in its entirety for its unequivocal rejection of pressure by the Obama administration. Margaret Galitzin has commentary here. Museveni’s actions would likely arouse much, much more hatred in the West, probably the kind of all-out antipathy and hatred extended to Putin for Russia’s anti-homosexual propaganda bill, if he were a white European.

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PATRICK BUCHANAN writes that there is no important U.S. interest in Ukraine that would justify any military action or economic sanctions in response to Russia’s actions:

What is the U.S. vital interest in Crimea? Zero. From Catherine the Great to Khrushchev, the peninsula belonged to Russia. The people of Crimea are 60 percent ethnic Russians.

And should Crimea vote to secede from Ukraine, upon what moral ground would we stand to deny them the right, when we bombed Serbia for 78 days to bring about the secession of Kosovo?

Across Europe, nations have been breaking apart since the end of the Cold War. Out of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia came 24 nations. Scotland is voting on secession this year. Catalonia may be next. (more…)

MORE evidence that feminism is anti-woman. We’re supposed to believe that interfering with the complex hormonal system of women is progress. It never ceases to amaze how the enlightened promote the use of oral contraceptives while insisting on pesticide-free broccoli.

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    ATILA SINKE GUIMARÃES, in this older entry at Tradition in Action, contends that the medieval knight succumbed to vanity: This was the means the Revolution used to change the humble and serene medieval man turned toward the glory of God into a proud and superficial peacock absorbed in himself and his own exploits and talents, spending a considerable amount of his time catching up with the latest fashions. This is how the medieval man became the Renaissance man.

“CONSERVATIVE” columnist Ross Douthat writes in The New York Times that those who risk financial ruin if they refuse to approve of same-sex unions should not complain of persecution:

Christians had plenty of opportunities — thousands of years’ worth — to treat gay people with real charity, and far too often chose intolerance. (And still do, in many instances and places.) So being marginalized, being sued, losing tax-exempt status — this will be uncomfortable, but we should keep perspective and remember our sins, and nobody should call it persecution.

Since homosexuality is objectively immoral and harmful, this is similar to saying that people who refuse to be accomplices to embezzlement or burglary should accept government coercion because the Church has always condemned embezzlement and theft. To rephrase his statement:

Christians had plenty of opportunities — thousands of years’ worth — to treat burglars with real charity, and far too often chose intolerance. (And still do, in many instances and places.) So being marginalized, being sued, losing tax-exempt status — this will be uncomfortable, but we should keep perspective and remember our sins, and nobody should call it persecution.

Douthat is a useful idiot for the liars, moral imbeciles and propaganda artists at the Times.

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I don’t mean to interfere with your pre-Lenten festivities (which may resemble the Dutch painting by Jan Steen above), but here, as a bit of foreshadowing, are some words of Dom Lorenzo Scupoli from his famous work The Spiritual Combat. First published in 1589 and once a hit bestseller, this is a practical manual on spiritual warfare and the struggle to overcome self. This section is titled Of the Way to Rule the Tongue:

It is very necessary that the tongue be well bridled and regulated because we are all much inclined to let it run on upon those things which are most pleasing to the senses.

Much speaking springs ordinarily from pride. We persuade ourselves that we know a great deal; we take delight in our own conceits, and endeavor by needless repetitions to impress them on the minds of others, that we may exercise a mastery over them, as though they needed instruction from us.

It is not possible to express in few words the many evils which arise from overmuch speaking.

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  Julie writes: Just wanted to share some pictures of teenage girls from my hometown playing basketball. They're a reminder of how our society encourages this unfeminine behavior. I loved sports as a teenager and was a competitive swimmer, but to me it seemed there were just some sports that were more suitable for males. I actually swam on the boys' high school swim team as a freshman in the 1970s. There was no team exclusively for girls at that time, so it was allowed. Although I had a competitive spirit, I recognized the difference between my abilities and theirs. It was not commonplace for a female to be a bodybuilder in order to compete with men. We had a mutual respect for one another and functioned as teammates. A year later the first girls' swim team was formed.

  RYAN D. writes: I stumbled upon this.  It's evidence of the Pizza Industrial Complex and its hold on feminism. Keep up the good work. I enjoy your writing very much.