ONE OF the common arguments against school uniforms is that they do not allow children to express their individuality. I remember a mother at a school my older son attended stating that she strongly believed her six- and eight-year-old daughters would be stifled in their creativity and self-awareness if they were ever to wear uniforms. As Marian T. Horvat points out in this article today at Tradition in Action, this is a quite laughable argument given the extreme uniformity and herd-like fashion schoolchildren exhibit in their choice of clothes. Fashion is fascist in its dictates to the young. A girl’s entire identity hinges on adequately displaying not her creativity but her conformity. Dr. Horvat writes:

[I] was quite irritated when I picked up the Los Angeles Times one morning recently and found a law professor taking a strong stand against school uniforms in an editorial titled “Dressing down school dress codes.” (September 5, 2013). Her dressing down of uniforms centers basically on the same old worn-out arguments that uniforms stifle individuality and are anti-democratic. (more…)

IN THE previous entry on Pope Francis, a reader recommended this article by George Nuemayr at The American Spectator.  Nuemayr is not among those Catholic commentators dismissing the seriousness of the un-orthodox views recently expressed by the Pope. However, he believes there is hope in the possibility that he will undergo correction. He writes:

Even if given the most charitable reading, Pope Francis’s recent interview with Jesuit publications was alarming in its spirit-of-Vatican II liberalism. Catholicism is not a personality cult and so Catholics, following the example of St. Paul, don’t need to ooh and aah over unsound, non-infallible remarks, which were made incidentally to publications like America known principally for their heterodoxy. (more…)

STEVEN T. writes:

I discovered this website today, and I just had to inform you of it. “The Dahesh Museum of Art is the only institution in the United States devoted to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting works by Europe’s academically trained artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Dahesh serves a diverse audience by placing these artists in the broader context of 19th-century visual culture, and by offering a fresh appraisal of the role academies played in reinvigorating the classical ideals of beauty, humanism, and skill.”

I believe that you would enjoy this immensely, as will I.

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IT is an enduring and unshakeable doctrine of the Catholic Church that anyone who rejects part of the faith, even one article of the faith, rejects the whole. Can a non-Catholic, someone who rejects the faith, legitimately be a pope? The answer seems obvious. Nevertheless, it is urgently, now more than ever, in need of articulation.

In 1559, Pope Paul IV proclaimed that a non-Catholic cannot be the Roman Pontiff. His words are a definitive statement on the issue in general. Paul IV wrote the following in his Apostolic Constitution “Cum ex Apostolatus Officio:

[I]f ever at any time it shall appear that any Bishop, even if he be acting as an Archbishop, Patriarch or Primate; or any Cardinal of the aforesaid Roman Church, or, as has already been mentioned, any legate, or even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his elevation as Cardinal or Roman Pontiff, has deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy:

(i) the promotion or elevation, even if it shall have been uncontested and by the unanimous assent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, void and worthless; (more…)

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

Here is a telling vignette of a new cold war between an America hell-bent upon tearing herself up by the roots and a Russia striving, however unevenly, to reconnect to her roots. Last month, The Thinking Housewife posted a comment about homosexualists’ threats to disrupt the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera of New York’s 2013-2014 season, a gala performance of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin featuring Valery Gergiev at the podium and Anna Netrebko on-stage, to protest recent Russian laws restricting homosexualist propaganda.

According to The New York Times, which we must acknowledge as expert in matters both New York and homosexual, if not Russian, the homosexualists made good on their threat: (more…)

  GOD did not realize when he created the world out of pure nothingness, when he dignified human nature above all else, when he entered into history to become an actual human being, when he offered a path to salvation and eternal bliss to both men and women, when he spoke in the person of Jesus Christ to men and women on the shores of the Galilee, when he miraculously cured women of sickness, when he himself suffered torture and murder, when he further elevated all of nature by entering into inanimate matter in the form of simple unleavened bread and offered this miracle of deepest and most tender affection for both men and women to enjoy and revere for all of time, or when he inspired female saints to mystical visions and heroic self-sacrifice, that he was not creating a "profound theology of the woman." Fortunately, Pope Francis has assured us that the Novus Ordo Church can come up with something more profound than all this. In his recent interview, he stated: "We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman." He then suggests what is involved: power.

  THREE of the attackers involved in the Nairobi mall assault were Somalis from Minnesota, the Kenyan government confirmed yesterday. Read a report by The Daily Mail here.

COMMENTS have been added to the original entry on the 12,000-word mega-interview with Pope Francis, an event of great significance. Here is an additional comment by a reader:

Catherine H. writes:

I am particularly taken aback by discovering how many of my husband’s and my friends and family, who generally agree with us on our “ultraconservative” stance in most other areas, see Pope Francis and this particular interview in a completely different light. (more…)

SERENA HUDSON writes:

Yet another feminist breaks down under the stress of working and having a family and passes the buck to society at large. In this article about Katrina Alcorn and her book Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink, one thing stood out for me:

“If you’re feeling on your edge, you need to figure out how to take care of yourself by any means necessary. I heard a story recently about a mom who took a vacation from her family for a month. She felt she had to completely remove herself and stay with friends for a month and recoup.”

I could not imagine leaving my family for a month! I could not imagine having a husband who would let me either.

Thank you for all the work you do – have a lovely weekend!

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THE front page headline in The New York Times is like something out of The Onion, except wait, it’s actually true: “Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control.” It can’t get any better than this, except perhaps if the entire Arctic ice cap melted in a day, proving once and for all that Al Gore was right.

The blogger Mundabor dissects the “papal enchilada,” the 12,000-word interview of Pope Francis that appeared in a Jesuit magazine, an interview which hardly anyone is likely to read in its entirety, even though I can honestly say I did. Mundabor wisely cautions readers against defining heresy as a total rejection of orthodoxy. Sure, there are reassuring statements in the interview, but then there are so many whoppers, there is so much rubbery cheese, that this truly did belong on the front page of all the major newspapers. If the Pope’s statements were authoritative doctrine, then the Vatican would be post-Catholic — and for many people, that would be wonderful news.

Mundabor writes:

The sum total of all these assertions – all of them, word for word quotations – and of all that Francis has said, and omitted to say, since the beginning of the pontificate – is clear: don’t fight it. Francis espouses a defeatist line somewhere between Chamberlain and Quisling, with some very worrying streaks of Grima Wormtongue. (more…)

IN a massive, 12,000-word interview with Fr. Antonio Spadaro of La Civiltà Cattolica, Pope Francis expounds upon the worldview that has emerged in his confusing statements in recent months. His remarks in the interview, which has no authority as Church teaching and represents his personal views, lack clarity also. But the Pope makes it clear just how deep his liberalism runs. He calls for a “dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualizing its message for today.” (more…)

ALAN writes:

The supine surrender of their legitimate authority by American white men is one of the most sickening spectacles I have witnessed in my life.

One day not long ago my cousin and I were reminiscing about our grandfather, who died many years ago at age 89.  “He was strict,” my cousin remarked when remembering him from our boyhood years. I imagine he meant that remark not as a criticism but simply as an observation.

When I was young, I too probably imagined him to be strict. But “strict” in comparison with what? Was he ever a petty tyrant?  Never. Not even remotely. He was “strict” in the sense of being disciplined and principled. (more…)

IN this recent entry on idiotic, meaningless names, a reader mentions a blogger who keeps track of the names of babies born in Rexburg, a largely Mormon town in Idaho. Parents in Rexburg outdo each other with novel spellings and ugly names such as Sharlee and Jaxson. The blogger, named Jessica, writes:

My husband and I used to live in a little town in Southeastern Idaho called Rexburg. There’s a culture there, and in surrounding areas (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, UTAH) of people giving their children all manner of atrocious made-up and misspelled names. (People outside of Idaho and Utah do too, of course, but these two states are trendsetters – see here if you disagree.) (more…)

ALEX A. writes from England:

ACCORDING to news reports, Aaron Alexis, the 34-year-old man who allegedly shot 12 people at the Washington D.C. Navy Yard yesterday, believed he was the victim of racial bias and was angry about it. See this Los Angeles Times report:

Ty Thairintr, 52, a Fort Worth tooling design engineer, said he met Alexis about five years ago, when Alexis was still in the Navy. “He told me he believed he had superior abilities to his co-workers but he didn’t get promoted,” he said. “He complained about the rank and file not giving him respect.”

Alexis felt discriminated against because he was black, he said.

However, it is much more likely that Alexis was the beneficiary, not the victim, of racial bias and that this massacre was due in part to racial affirmative action. How else to explain the hiring of Alexis by the IT company “The Experts” even though he was without significant IT experience, even a college degree. The company gave Alexis security clearance despite numerous arrests for aggressive behavior and despite his discharge from the Navy for what a naval spokesman said was “a pattern of misconduct.” Without the security clearance, Alexis could not have entered the office building yesterday. From the Wall Street Journal: (more…)

MS. FOX writes:

We Canadians have age-old rivalries between the Anglophones of western Canada, and the Francophones of the east. Quebec has, several times over the years, wanted to become its own nation. So far, it has failed in this project, but now it has more pressing concerns.

Islam is one of them. In Quebec, a new “Charter of Values” has been unveiled by the Parti Quebeçois and it would forbid civil servants to wear overt religious symbols such as head scarves, burkas and large crucifixes on the job. According to Maclean’s, thousands of Muslims have protested. It has not been the first incident. Earlier in 2013, there was controversy about Islamic sheikhs wearing headgear during soccer games. According to the official rules, they were not allowed to wear the coverings for their safety and others’, but they did not want to hear it. A protest was launched, and a thousand Muslims wore headgear to a game. (more…)

NINA DAVULURI, the beautiful and talented daughter of Indian immigrants, was crowned Miss America yesterday. Some anonymous commenters on social media have criticized the choice of an Indian woman and have been branded racist. Most Americans, if asked, would probably agree that it is “racist” to object. They would not view Indians as “racist” if they refused to choose the white daughter of American immigrants as a national symbol. But cultural pride is for others. Cultural pride is for those who are not white.

Miss Davuluri says she has always seen herself as an American first. But this does not appear to be true, nor should it be true, given that most Indian immigrants naturally feel a strong connection to India. In the talent competition, Davuluri did a Bollywood fusion dance (I did not see the pageant) and her comments afterward suggest that she is proud that the pageant chose her as a symbol of “diversity.” In other words, she is proud that she is not a white American. “I’m so happy this organization has embraced diversity,” she said. “I’m thankful there are children watching at home who can finally relate to a new Miss America.”

But if there are children at home who relate to her purely because she is Indian and not white, then there also must be children at home, namely white children, who do not relate to her because she is Indian and not white. In other words, Davuluri admits that instead of being a universalist, she is for a particular culture. Multiculturalism, as is so often the case, is a cover for the erasure of a specific culture. Davuluri’s platform was “celebrating diversity through cultural competency,” an inherently contradictory statement and an admission of the truth, which is that human beings are incapable of “diversity.”

It is just the kind of political newspeak, however, that one would expect from a Miss America contestant. The increasingly tawdry pageant has always gone with the zeitgeist and with whatever sells in corporate America. Today the contestants brag about their planned careers and wear bikinis. Miss Kansas is an Army sergeant with tattoos. The pageant struggles to hold the public’s interest in an age when half-naked women are no longer a novelty. Unsurprisingly, Davuluri plans to be a doctor, joining the ranks of the many female Indian doctors in America, women for whom education and career are the highest goals in life and who are often ruthlessly pressured by their parents. They belong to a distinct American subculture. They are part of America, but at a deep level they are Indian.

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