ALAN writes:

I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. — Pascal, Pensées 139

That statement, often rendered as “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”, was written nearly five hundred years ago. But it applies especially well today to a population drunk on distraction, commotion, and noise-making.

Pascal’s thought occurred to me when I read the following remarks written in 1991 by St. Louis radio announcer and amateur historian Ron Elz:

“A couple of years ago while working on behalf of Dr. Charles Bryan, then director of the Mercantile Library, I occasionally spent some time late at night long past the library closing hours, just sitting alone in that darkened two story balconied Victorian era room contemplating how close we can be to what’s past.  There, six stories above the street and out of reach of the eerie rays emitted by our modern streetlights, it was easy to imagine you could almost travel to days gone by.  ….I recommend such an experience to help add perspective to the meaning of life and just to offer deep relaxation in these trying times…..”

[Ron Elz, “The More Things Change in St. Louie, the More They Stay the Same,” St. Louis Inquirer, January 1991 ]

Ron Elz was writing about the Mercantile Library, the oldest subscription library in St. Louis. It was not “open to all”, as today’s public libraries describe themselves.  It was exclusive, not “inclusive”.  It was open to those who purchased membership for an annual fee.  Men who spoke in the Mercantile Library Hall during its early decades included Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, and Matthew Arnold.  Read More »

“THERE is no tradition of casualness in the liturgy of any Catholic Rite. In fact there is no tradition of casualness in the religious ritual of any group in the world, no matter how pagan, how primitive, or how polytheistic. Reverential fear is the most elemental attitude of anything which purports to be worship. Read More »

                                                  The Dormition of the Virgin Mary, Fra Angelico

“IT WAS not necessary for her love to exert itself by any extraordinary emotions. As the slightest shock causes the fully ripe fruit to drop down from the tree, so was this blessed soul culled, to be suddenly transported to heaven. Thus the holy Virgin died by a movement of divine love: her soul was carried to heaven on a cloud of sacred desires. Therefore the holy Angels said: ‘Who is she that goes up… as a pillar of smoke of aromatical spices, of myrrh, and frankincense?’ (Canticles iii. 6). — a beautiful and excellent comparison admirably explaining the manner of her happy, tranquil death. The fragrant smoke that we see rising up from a composition of perfumes, is not extracted by force, nor propelled by violence: a gentle, tempered heat delicately detaches it and turns it into a subtle vapour which rises of its own accord. Thus was the soul of the holy Virgin separated from her body: the foundations were not shaken by a violent concussion. A divine heat detached it gently from the body and raised it up to its Beloved.”

— Bossuet, First Sermon on the Assumption (quoted here)

“There is no one in existence who is able to praise worthily the holy death of God’s Mother, even if he should have a thousand tongues and a thousand mouths. Not if all the most eloquent tongues could be united would their praises be sufficient. She is greater than all praise.”

— St. John Damascene, Sermon on the Dormition of Mary 

Virgin of all virgins,
To thy shelter take us,
Gentlest of the gentle,
Chaste and gentle make us.

Prayers and Devotions for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin

LINK Read More »

Kathy G. writes in this entry:

As a rural dweller, it always amazes me how city people know best how “redneck,” rural people should live, how people who live in concrete-coated metropolises ship their mountains of trash “away” to the ocean or rural areas, even other countries; how they have so little wildlife habitat, but demand rural areas accommodate their ideas of how much habitat must be provided to wildlife and how wetlands be preserved, etc.. It is irksome. Maybe if they kept some lions and tigers in cities, these animals could eat the millions of rats infesting them. Possums and coons love garbage. Maybe every apartment building should be required to house one or two? Provide habitat for something other than rats?

                                                  Beach Scene, Coney Island; Edward Potthast

“WHEN God created the world He commanded each tree to bear fruit after its kind; and even so He bids Christians,—the living trees of His Church,—to bring forth fruits of devotion, each one according to his kind and vocation. A different exercise of devotion is required of each —the noble, the artisan, the 9servant, the prince, the maiden and the wife; and furthermore such practice must be modified according to the strength, the calling, and the duties of each individual. I ask you, my child, would it be fitting that a Bishop should seek to lead the solitary life of a Carthusian? And if the father of a family were as regardless in making provision for the future as a Capuchin, if the artisan spent the day in church like a Religious, if the Religious involved himself in all manner of business on his neighbor’s behalf as a Bishop is called upon to do, would not such a devotion be ridiculous, ill-regulated, and intolerable? Nevertheless such a mistake is often made, and the world, which cannot or will not discriminate between real devotion and the indiscretion of those who fancy themselves devout, grumbles and finds fault with devotion, which is really nowise concerned in these errors. No indeed, my child, the devotion which is true hinders nothing, but on the contrary it perfects everything; and that which runs counter to the rightful vocation of any one is, you may be sure, a spurious devotion. Aristotle says that the bee sucks honey from flowers without damaging them, leaving them as whole and fresh as it found them;—but true devotion does better still, for it not only hinders no manner of vocation or duty, but, contrariwise, it adorns and beautifies all. Throw precious 10stones into honey, and each will grow more brilliant according to its several color:—and in like manner everybody fulfills his special calling better when subject to the influence of devotion:—family duties are lighter, married love truer, service to our King more faithful, every kind of occupation more acceptable and better performed where that is the guide.

— St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life

RESIDENTS of the historic town of Buxton in Northern England have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to house foreign migrants in a former student residence at the University of Derby. The university, which would have profited from the deal, canceled its plans due to the backlash.

Not only that, but townspeople are insisting the building be used for inexpensive housing for local residents who are poor.

They apparently reject the idea that it is “racist” to protect the organic diversity of one’s own community, defend it from crime and use taxpayer funds to aid actual citizens.

“FAR BACK in ancient times we were the first to cry among the masses of the people the words ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ words many times repeated since those days by stupid poll-parrots who from all sides round flew down upon these baits and with them carried away the well-being of the world, true freedom of the individual, formerly so well guarded against the pressure of the mob. The would-be wise men of the goyim, the intellectuals, could not make anything out of the uttered words in their abstractness; did not note the contradiction of their meaning and inter-relation; did not see that in nature there is no equality, cannot be freedom; that Nature herself has established inequality of minds, of characters, and capacities, just as immutably as she has established subordination to her laws; never stopped to think that the mob is a blind thing, that upstarts elected from among it to bear rule are, in regard to the political, the same blind men as the mob itself, that the adept, though he be a fool, can yet rule, whereas the non-adept, even if he were a genius, understands nothing in the political—to all these things the goyim paid no regard; yet all the time it was based upon these things that dynastic rule rested; the father passed on to the son a knowledge of the course of political affairs in such wise that none should know it but members of the dynasty and none could betray it to the governed. As time went on the meaning of the dynastic transference of the true position of affairs in the political was lost, and this aided the success of our cause.”

— Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, transl. Victor Marsden

“WOMEN, I contend, are not men’s equals in anything but responsibility. We are not their inferiors, either, or even their superiors. We are quite simply different races. We live by an impulse separate from that of men. A separate tide beats in our blood. Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working-out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point. Yet, for the first time in history, society takes no cognizance of it.”

— Phyllis McGinley, “The Honor of Being a Woman,” The Province of the Heart; Viking Press, 1959, pp 13-14

“A MAN who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either command them or be enslaved to them. It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.”

— St. Dominic

FROM The Plot Against South Africa by Klaus D. Vaqué (Varama, 1989):

The first phase in the long march to power was the adoption of the ANC and its incorporation in the socialist world revolution. For the second stage many “useful idiots” were enlisted: churchmen, liberals and socialists, who could not see what was afoot in South Africa. The controlled mass-media saw to the rest by softening up the country with a constant barrage of propaganda in readiness for the final charge and driving it into world-political isolation and economic ruin.

A whole army of Eastern agents who had been training for their task for decades was dispatched to South Africa. One of them. Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, the senior naval officer in Simonstown, had kept the Russians informed for over twenty years about modern Western weapons systems and the South African “ear to the world”, the communications centre at Silvermine in the Cape. Read More »

FROM “In Defense of Monogamy” by George Gilder (Commentary, 1974):

The sexual liberals purport to be the “open,” the “creative,” the “genitally liberated” facing the “repressives,” the “paranoids,” the “anal compulsives.” The liberals are against power games and for the sharing of love. They are for “universal kinship,” in Alex Comfort’s phrase, and equality.

Why then is there such a disparity between this hopeful vision and the reality of the single “liberated” life? The reason is that the removal of restrictions on sexual activity does not bring equality and community. It brings ever more vicious sexual competition. The women become “easier” for the powerful to get—but harder for others to keep. Divorces become “easier”—but remarriage is extremely difficult for abandoned older women. Marriages become more “open”—open not only for the partners to get out but also for the powerful to get in.

Monogamy is central to any democratic social contract, designed to prevent a breakdown of society into “war of every man against every other man.” In order to preserve order, a man may relinquish liberty, prosperity, and power to the state. But if he has to give up his wife to his boss, he is no longer a man. A society of open sexual competition, in which the rich and powerful—or even the sexually attractive—can command large numbers of women is a society with the most intolerable hierarchy of all. In any polygamous society some men have no wives at all; denied women and children, they are in effect deprived of the very substance of life. Read More »

THE answer to this question is yes.

Here’s why. Read More »

Christ in the Storm, Rembrandt

“THE essence of perfection is to embrace the will of God in all things, prosperous or adverse. In prosperity, even sinners find it easy to unite themselves to the divine will; but it takes saints to unite themselves to God’s will when things go wrong and are painful to self-love. Our conduct in such instances is the measure of our love of God. St. John of Avila used to say: “One ‘Blessed be God’ in times of adversity, is worth more than a thousand acts of gratitude in times of prosperity.”

Furthermore, we must unite ourselves to God’s will not only in things that come to us directly from his hands, such as sickness, desolation, poverty, death of relatives, but likewise in those we suffer from man—for example, contempt, injustice, loss of reputation, loss of temporal goods and all kinds of persecution. On these occasions we must remember that whilst God does not will the sin, he does will our humiliation, our poverty, or our mortification, as the case may be. It is certain and of faith, that whatever happens, happens by the will of God: “I am the Lord forming the light and creating the darkness, making peace and creating evil” From God come all things, good as well as evil. We call adversities evil; actually they are good and meritorious, when we receive them as coming from God’s hands: “Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord hath not done²²?” “Good things and evil, life and death, poverty and riches are from God.”

— St. Alphonsus de Liguori, Uniformity with God’s Will