ALAN writes:

One day two weeks ago, I went bowling with three friends. That was highly improbable, because the last time I bowled was in 1964.

The outing prompted me to remember my Uncle Gus. He died at age 70 more than half a century ago.  He and his wife, my Aunt Leona, created for themselves a lifelong marriage and a lovely home.

Uncle Gus was opinionated as could be, and therefore a man after my own heart. He had zero tolerance for nonsense and excuses. He enjoyed baseball, fishing, and bowling. The syndicated program “Sea Hunt” was one of his favorite TV shows (and mine) in the late 1950s.

Remembering him prompted yet another memory from the years 1953-’54. On Friday nights in those years, my uncles and grandfather would watch the “Gillette Cavalcade of Sports”, either at our home or on the television in the corner tavern.  What I remember especially from those nights are the sound of the advertisements for Gillette Blue Blades and the voice of “Sharpie”, the Gillette parrot. The melody played in those advertisements was that of “The Look Sharp March”, a cheery melody that projected a feeling of confidence and optimism. (more…)

O THREE in One, and One in Three,
Who rulest all things mightily:
Bow down to hear the songs of praise
Which, freed from bonds of sleep, we raise.

While lingers yet the peace of night,
We rouse us from our slumbers light:
That might of instant prayer may win
The healing balm for wounds of sin.

If, by the wiles of Satan caught,
This night-time we have sinned in aught,
That sin Thy glorious power to-day,
From heaven descending, cleanse away.

Let naught impure our bodies stain,
No laggard sloth our souls detain,
No taint of sin our spirits know,
To chill the fervor of their glow.

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BOB PREVOST, the aging Marxist hippie scandalously and blasphemously impersonating a pope of Holy Roman Catholic Church, urged his thoroughly cheated followers earlier this week — all those millions so easily impressed by celebrity status and the mere outward appearance of religious authority — to embrace the heathen religion of nature worship.

“Green communism” is not a new program at the usurped Vatican, but Prevost is dutifully taking it to the next level.

All “Leo XIV” said in his homily delivered during the “Holy Mass for the Care of Creation” in the lovely pontifical gardens which have been outright stolen from Catholics was as boring and uninspiring as any of the thousands of bureaucratic reports on sustainability funded by the United Nations.

He stated,

On this World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the readings chosen for today’s liturgy offer us two invitations to contemplate the works of the Lord — a task that is certainly not difficult in the setting of these beautiful gardens.

The Book of Wisdom encourages us to contemplate the beauty and power of creation, in order to appreciate its Creator (cf. Wis 13:1–9).  It would be superficial to marvel at fire, wind, rushing waters or the stars of heaven, without allowing our gaze to rise to the Creator of such wonders.

Psalm 18 urges us to lift our eyes to contemplate the heavens, which proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament, which declares the work of his hands.  All creation speaks to us of the greatness of its Creator, if only our eyes and hearts remain open to such a great mystery.

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“EVERY child born into this world is given a body and soul. This soul, for which the body was created, and which will rise with it at the last day, be judged with it for the acts done in life, and be happy or unhappy with it for all eternity, is, in consequence of the ‘fall,’ turned away from God, and the body, no longer acting in obedience to right reason, seeks its own gratification, like any irrational animal. Religion (from religio) is the means provided by a merciful God to reunite the chain broken by the sin of our first parents, and bridge over the chasm opened between man and his divine destiny. To give this knowledge of religion is the principal purpose of education. Without this it is mere natural instruction, but no education at all. It would be worse than giving, as we say, ‘the play of Hamlet with the part of the Prince of Denmark left out.’

“Religion, then, forms the spirit and essence of all true education. As leaven must be diffused throughout the entire mass in order to produce its effects, so religion must be thoroughly diffused throughout the child’s entire education, in order to be solid and effective . Not a moment of the hours of school should be left without religious influence. It is the constant breathing of the air that preserves our bodily life, and it is the constant dwelling in a religious atmosphere that preserves the life of the youthful soul. Here are laid the primitive principles of future character and conduct. These religious principles may be forgotten, or partially effaced, in the journey of life, but they will nevertheless endure, because they are engraved by the finger of God Himself.”

— Fr. Michael Mueller, C.S.S.R.; Public School Education, 1879

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ALAN writes:

My grandfather, my father, and my uncles never used a computer or a cellphone.  I imagine they would have looked upon such things with a combination of doubt and suspicion. That they would have regretted living without those things is highly improbable.

All of them read newspapers. My father read newspapers every day of his adult life except for the years he spent in the South Pacific during World War II.  Friends told me that whenever they saw him in the 1940s-’50s, he was always carrying a newspaper.

When attempting to read “news articles” on the Internet today, you may have to navigate through a maze of blurbs, codes, and distractions merely to have the article appear in front of you, after which the item you are reading (1) may appear and then vanish momentarily and then reappear, (2) may bounce up or down on your screen, (3) may be blocked from view by more advertisements, (4) may be written by semi-literate adolescents, (5) may omit critical information, such as exact locations, which evidently is now classified as Top Secret, judging by all the articles I have read in which a team of private eyes could not find that information, (6) may still be there if you look for it two hours later or may vanish without notice into oblivion, (7) may inform you about events on the other side of the planet while purposely and at the same time withholding information on significant events in your own town or neighborhood, and (8) may reveal not a trace of awareness of the newspaper reporter’s traditional obligation to report the Who, What, Where, When, and How.

To which my father, grandfather, and uncles would say:

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“THE reading of the Holy Gospel hath set a scene of cruelty before our eyes even the head of St. John in a charger; a message of death sent forth to discharge the bloody commands of one that hateth the truth; a damsel dancing, and a mother rabid; a rash oath sworn in the midst of uncleanness and the revels of a supper, and a wicked fulfillment of the oath so sworn. It befell unto John according to his own saying. For he had said concerning the Lord Jesus Christ: He must increase, but I must decrease John iii. 30, so John decreased by an head, and Christ’s height was made higher upon the Cross. The truth drew hatred. It could not be borne in patience that the holy man of God should utter a rebuke, albeit he sought by his rebuke nothing but the soul’s health of them to whom he addressed it. They repaid him evil for good.”

— –St. Augustine on the beheading of St. John the Baptist

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“THE Lord would have us understand how that men do lose their power of savouring others with righteousness when they are willing to place their eternal welfare in jeopardy for the sake of any temporal advantage, like as attainment of ease or luxury, or escape from suffering or toil. For that which is eternal, unlike things of this world, can neither be bestowed by men, nor by them taken away.”

— St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

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[To argue that the example of Hitler and National Socialism are no solution to the problems of contemporary life, that they led Germany to disaster and that they embraced godless paganism is not to justify all that was done to Germany during the world wars and their aftermath nor to deny all the lies and exaggerations about that time.]

FROM Between the Church and the Third Reich, by Rev. Julio Meinvielle, 1937:

“Hitler stated explicitly in 1924 that the new German church must be an Aryan church, not a universal church like the Catholic Church, but a strictly German one. ‘We want no other god than Germany,’ he declared. ‘Fanaticism in our faith, in our hope, and in our love for Germany—that alone is our religion.’ Ludendorff, always brutal in his expression, declared, ‘In the Catholic Church we find our most dangerous enemy. The black peril in Germany is greater than the red peril.’ This was simply following a directive from the German episcopate: Catholics were prohibited from being registered members of Hitler’s party, and the sacraments were denied to party members. When the party officially inquired about the basis for these prohibitions, the bishop replied, ‘We must give these instructions because the program of the National Socialist party contains principles incompatible with Catholic doctrine.’ The National Socialist party program contains principles incompatible with Catholic doctrine, especially paragraph 24, which no Catholic can accept without renouncing their faith. This paragraph states that the party grants freedom to creeds that do not endanger its existence, and recognized party leaders include the Catholic Church among the creeds dangerous to the state … (more…)

[Reposted]

THE SECRET of existence — a golden rule that will never fail no matter what happens  — is to remain always, in some essential part of one’s being, a child.

Not a child physically or intellectually, of course. But in the supernatural order, in the depth of our souls, we should always be children. Children are immature, willful, stubborn, emotionally unstable and unknowledgeable. But, most important of all, they are trusting. They are highly conscious of the benevolence that lies behind all things. A child knows he is loved and he loves in return with an undivided heart. He has momentary fears, sometimes they are severe, but he does not suffer from existential anxiety or dread. He is not plagued with constant worry. It is often when adults don’t understand the complete trust and love of the child that they mistreat him. The child has confidence that he is protected even when he lives in miserable surroundings or has irresponsible parents.

And so it is with us — or should always be with us.

We are loved and protected. Benevolence surrounds us — and if we are not conscious of it, something is terribly wrong with us. Everything that happens expresses the will of God. He wants the best for us in his fatherly protectiveness. But we cannot know him as a true Father unless we are true children. We can turn everything to good if we trust in his love and fatherliness.

Even when we are in our busy prime years, with important affairs and responsibilities, and even when we are old, this beautiful truth holds — we are children all the same.

He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater: and he that is unjust in that which is little, is unjust also in that which is greater.

[St. Luke 16: 10]

Yoga instructors say we should empty ourselves. But nothingness cannot love us. Nothingness cannot satisfy us. Nothingness is nothing. The child knows there is something. He is never seduced by blankness. His heart is too full for blankness. He cannot attain that aridness.

Instead we should seek to fill ourselves. (more…)

Now when he was at Jerusalem, at the pasch, upon the festival day, many believed in his name, seeing his signs which he did. But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men, And because he needed not that any should give testimony of man: for he knew what was in man.

(John 2:23-25)

From Bible commentary by Bishop Juan Straubinger (quoted and translated here):

“When we are still unfamiliar with the language of the divine Master and the Bible in general, it is surprising to constantly find a certain pessimism, which seems excessive, regarding the wickedness of man. Because we think that people who act out of love for evil must be very rare. Our surprise stems from ignoring the immense scope of the first of the biblical dogmas: original sin. The Church has defined it in very clear terms (Denzinger 174-200). Our upbringing, with its mixture of proud humanism and materialistic sentimentality, leads us to confuse the natural order with the supernatural, and to think that it is charitable to believe in the goodness of man, when in fact such a belief lies the Pelagian heresy, the same as that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the origin of so many contemporary evils.

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Hymn {from the Psalter for the season of the Church year}

Who madest all and dost control,
Lord, with thy touch divine,
Cast out the slumbers of the soul,
The rest that is not thine.

Look down, Eternal Holiness,
And wash the sins away,
Of those, who, rising to confess,
Outstrip the lingering day.

Our hearts and hands by night, O Lord,
We lift them in Our need;
As holy Psalmists give the word,
And holy Paul the deed.

Each sin to thee of years gone by,
Each hidden stain lies bare;
We shrink not from thine awful eye,
But pray that thou wouldst spare.

Grant this, O Father, Only Son
And Spirit, God of grace,
To whom all worship shall be done
In every time and place,
Amen.

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THE following applies to all “Traditionalist” sects, including Society of St. Pius X and various other alphabet soup groups such as SSPV, CMRI and RCI, that lure in the unsuspecting with false promises of true sacraments in this terrible period of apostasy and apocalyptic chaos:

“It is universally known that the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church is founded on the solidity of Saint Peter, the Rock, but these sects want us to believe that we must disobey His Holiness Pius XII, the Foundation Stone of the Church, and that we must follow them, they who claim to know the spirit of the letter, which is none other than disobedience and the ‘non serviam’ (I will not serve), that we must follow them to their dens of thieves, intruders, foxes, and wolves, sail on their rafts, and let ourselves be guided by these pirates, buccaneers, corsairs, filibusters, thieves, and desecrators of the treasures of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church, that we must be deceived by the glitter of their miters, hooks, and their plunder and loot, under the guise of ritual, incense, and pomp, and that we must defect from Saint Peter, Prince of the Holy Apostles and Foundation Stone of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church, who speaks in his successors assisted by the Holy Trinity in its entirety; these treacherous thieves who came out of the depths of Babylon the Great want to kidnap us through sophistry and disguises to take us back from where the One and Triune God took us out for free without us deserving it.

“What a betrayal of the good God and such compassion it would be to return to that place from which we were taken for our health, that is, salvation!

“May the Triune God grant that we do not fall through our personal sins and be lost, and that He keep us firm in not abandoning His Holy Church founded on Peter, on the solidity of the Rock, and entering into the false churches of feet of clay and shifting sands, abandoning the Mystical Body of Christ our Lord!”

Source

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“LOUIS IX, King of France, was born on the 25 th day of August, in the year of our Lord 1215. At the age of twelve years he lost his father. He was brought up under the godly care of his mother, Blanche of Castile. In the twentieth year of his reign he fell grievously sick, and the thought then occurred to him of delivering Jerusalem out of the hands of the Moslems. On his health being restored, he received a banner from the Bishop of Paris, and crossed the sea (to Egypt) with a very great army. In his first battle he put the Saracens to flight, but, a great number of the soldiers perishing by disease, he was himself conquered and taken prisoner.

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LOVING your country is nothing compared to loving your race because when your country becomes completely nonwhite you’re not going to love it.

— Mark Charlton

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From the Book of Moral Reflections on Job by Pope St. Gregory the Great [540-604 AD]:

Some there are who are careless concerning their true life, greedy of the things which pass away, but as to the things which are eternal, either understand them not, or, understanding them, holding them to be but of little moment they feel no sorrow, nor know how to take wise advice and, in forgetfulness of the heavenly possessions which they have lost, they deem themselves — alas, poor wretches — happy in their goods. They lift not up their eyes to the light of truth for which they were created; no keen desire ever maketh them to cast a longing look toward the everlasting Fatherland. Leaving alone the chief end for which they were made, they fix their affections upon the exile which they are enduring, instead of upon their home, and make merry in the blindness which they are suffering, as though it were glorious day-light.

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