Autumn on the Ramapo River, Jasper Francis Cropsey

“NOW, children, it is very necessary that we should thus practice self-examination; for man has many a little nook within, which covers up the ground of the heart, and is so overgrown, that it hides the truth from the man himself; so that, though he knows many other things, he does not really know himself. These sins surely resemble thirty or forty skins or hides, like those of an ox, which cover up the ground, lying one upon another, and so thick and hard that ye can neither confess them nor rid yourselves of them as ye imagine. What are these skins? They are all those things that thou hast in thyself, that thou thinkest of, and that thou usest, but of which God is neither the true beginning nor the end. They are all idols, images of things, such as self-will, self-pleasing, and the enjoyment of things pertaining to the senses. Man clings to these, as Rachel did to her idols when she sat upon them. Presumption, heedlessness, want of resignation in divine things, all these sins help to form the skins. They should not be all confessed outwardly, but man should examine his own heart about them, and acknowledge them humbly before God, meekly falling down in self-abasement at His Feet. If man will only thus fully acknowledge that he is guilty, all will be well with him; that is, if he seeks diligently to turn away from them, as far as he is able, with help of Almighty God.

— Fr. John Tauler, The Inner Way

Delaware Valley, William Lathrop

FROM The Inner Way by Fr. John Tauler:

Children, look to yourselves. This is not a question of small things. If ye were to be kept in a hot room a night and a day, ye would think it very hard; I say nothing of burning heat for many a year, or perhaps for all eternity. Therefore commune with your own selves, for the kingdom of God is within you. See with whom ye associate, with whom ye readily stay; and examine the reasons and the tendency to all evil habits. For if a man gives way to a fault for a year or two, that fault takes such deep root in his heart, that he can scarcely overcome it with all his might. Therefore young men should guard themselves carefully, so that no evil tendencies may take root in them. They must root out all infirmities at the beginning, when it is far more easy to do so than later. Now there are four things, especially, which man must guard against, four powers which are so injurious and evil that they are like jagged teeth.

The first is the love of visible things; and in this lies the strength of desire. It is scarcely possible to imaging or describe the harm men do to themselves thereby. Men who desire to be good, begin with this or that, with one thing or another, and are so occupied with the seed-sowing, that they do not keep to the full truth. They do not look into their own hearts, which are closed up, like some unknown thing a thousand miles off; there outward and visible things are of more importance to them. Thus they go on avoiding themselves, so that they do not know where they are. Read More »

“OF all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

— C.S. Lewis

“An overwhelming majority – 86% of respondents, including 79% of coalition supporters, said the surprise attack from Gaza is a failure of the country’s leadership, while a staggering 92% said the war is causing anxiety.

“Furthermore, almost all the respondents (94%) believe the government must bear some responsibility for the lack of security preparedness that led to the assault, with over 75% saying the government holds most of the responsibility.” [Source]

$1.7 million: What the average American makes over the course of his entire life.

$1.7 million x 10: What the U.S. pays Israel every day to occupy Palestine.

Read More »

JUDITH Sharpe, at In the Spirit of Chartres, and I talked this weekend about the prevalence of tattoos today. More than 30 percent of adults in the U.S. now have one or more tattoos. It’s hard to believe that less than three decades ago, tattooing was illegal in New York and other parts of America.

How things have changed since the day when Captain Costentenus, above, appeared in freak shows as a human curiosity.

One of the main causes of the rise in tattooing, I contend, is immodesty in dress. Primitive people of the distant past did not fully cover their bodies either and they turned to crude forms of ink and paint to ornament themselves.

Judith is a very pleasant and astute person to talk with about the world around us. She was kind with my unpolished efforts to sum up this subject and I thank her for the time. Read More »

St. Paul Writing at a Desk, Lambert Jacobs

DOM PROSPER Guéranger, in his commentary on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, offers a profound description of these times, when there is “an almost universal falling off” from infinite and unchangeable truth:

It is then more than at all previous times that the Faithful will have to remember the injunction given to us by the Apostle in today’s Epistle; that is, they will have to comport themselves with that circumspection which he enjoins, taking every possible care to keep their understanding, no less than their heart, pure in those evil days. Supernatural light will, in those days, not only have to stand the attacks of the children of darkness, who will put forward their false doctrines; it will, moreover, be minimized and falsified by the very children of the light yielding on the question of principles; it will be endangered by the hesitations and trimmings and human prudence of those who are called far-seeing men. Many will practically ignore the master-truth, that the Church never can be overwhelmed by any created power. Read More »

MUSIC can profoundly change a society, more rapidly and deeply than any other form of human expression. Music amplified, mass produced and mass promoted has a power that the ancients who wrote of music’s influence on the formation of character could never have imagined.

In 1972, author Bob Larson in his book, The Day Music Died (Creation House, 1972) predicted rock and roll would have overwhelming effects. Rock, he said, disarms the powers of reason, sanity and tranquility. As Janis Joplin wrote before her death from a drug overdose at the age of 27, “I couldn’t believe it, all that rhythm and power. I got stoned just feeling it, like it was the best dope in the world. It was so sensual.”

Larson spoke of teenagers as the main audience for rock, but today that is no longer the case. Adults and even the elderly willingly listen to rock music and everyone is compelled to listen to it in stores, restaurants, offices and practically every kind of public venue.

An excerpt from the book:

As other parts of this book will show, there is a definite ethical and moral connotation to music. The spoken word must pass through the master brain to be interpreted, translated, and screened for moral content. Not so with music—especially with rock music. Such pounding fury can bypass this protective screen and cause a person to make no value judgment whatever on what he’s hearing. Many a teenager says to me, “But I listen to rock all the time and it doesn’t bother me.” My answer is simply that they are in no position to judge whether or not it is affecting them. The effect may be on a subconscious, psychological level. The teenager may be totally unaware of it. Proper discretion in musical tastes should be a serious consideration of everyone. Read More »

See also “KGB Fingerprints all over Israel-Hamas War.”

The Wilkinson Family & their Dog, Francis Wheatley

“THE modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. It is propelled towards the coming time; it is, in the exact words of the popular phrase, knocked into the middle of next week. And the goad which drives it on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity Futurity does not exist, because it is still future. Rather it is a fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seem to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. The older generation, not the younger, is knocking at our door. It is agreeable to escape, as Henley said, into the Street of By-and-Bye, where stands the Hostelry of Never. It is pleasant to play with children, especially unborn children. The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity. And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.”

— G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World Read More »

ROCK and Roll; An Unruly History (Harmony Books, 1995), by rock critic and enthusiast Robert Palmer, provides some insight into the rhythms of rock and roll.

The idea that certain rhythm patterns or sequences serve as conduits for spiritual energies, linking individual human consciousness with the gods, is basic to traditional African religions, and to African-derived religions throughout the Americas. And whether we’re speaking historically or musicologically, the fundamental riffs, licks, bass figures, and drum rhythms that make rock and roll rock can ultimately be traced back to African music of a primarily spiritual or ritual nature. In a sense, rock and roll is a kind of “voodoo,” rooted in a vigorous tradition of celebrating nature and spirit that’s far removed from the sober patriarchal values espoused by the self appointed guardians of Western culture. Rock and roll’s “jungle rhythms” — its rich and sophisticated rhythmic heritage — traveled from specific African cultures to the Caribbean (particularly Cuba) to the black churches of the rural South, from there into the local dance halls, and finally, through recording and broadcast media, into the popular culture at large. This journey, or process, is a central rock and roll paradigm.

Lionel Hampton’s tale of Whirling Willie is a perfect illustration of this rock and roll process at work. The whirling motif is reminiscent of an important Yoruba ritual from Nigeria and Dahomey, which Robert Farris Thompson’s African Art in Motion describes as “the whirling return of the Eternal Kings of Yorubaland.” This whirling dance is said to have originated with “a rich and powerful magician-king” who “turns round, round, round, round to show he has power.” (The Yoruba made up a substantial proportion of Africans brought as slaves to Cuba and the southern United States, and their highly developed urban culture and elaborate religion and metaphysics were influential far beyond their immediate tribal and kinship groups.)

More concretely, one can trace the same fundamental rhythm patterns from Yoruba to Afro-Cuban ritual, to the “ring shouts” of southern backwoods churches, to the “shout” rhythms of sanctified musicians such as Whirling Willie, and on into rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, funk, and hip-hop. During the late 1950s, shout rhythms surfaced in a particularly pure form in rock and roll hits such as the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say.” Before they were records, these songs were onstage improvisations, with performers and listeners “getting down” together in creative call-and-response communal ecstasy. (pp 55-56)

(By posting this, I am not suggesting blacks should be blamed for rock.)

Read more here. Read More »

“While the world changes, the cross stands firm.”

– St. Bruno, Founder of the Carthusian Order of Monasteries

“FINALLY, the Church of Christ can be considered in a twofold aspect. It contains within itself a body of clergy which has the office of instructing and ruling, called the Church teaching, or the Church governing. The Apostles represented this body and to them were addressed the words of our Lord, “To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.”…The Church likewise has a body, the laity, who are taught, who listen and obey, called the Church hearing, or the Church obeying. To this body St. Paul speaks in these words, ‘Obey your prelates, and be subject to them’… This distinction between clergy and laity is clearly marked where the same Apostle says, ‘We are God’s coadjutors: you are God’s husbandry.'” [bold added]

                                    — The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Rev. Thomas Cox

A DELUGE of words has burst from the marauders in Rome.

You can get a taste of it in the “National Synthesis of the People of God in the United States of America for the Diocesan Phase of the 2021-2023 Synod.”

It’s a synthesizing synod on synodality for the synodally synodal. Or is it a synthesizing synod for synodal synodality? Only the synodal can say.

Socrates died rather than face tricks of language like those emanating from the sinfully synthesizing Synod of Apostasy. The ancient Greeks with an affinity for reality hated this kind of thing. Indeed, death seems like a picnic by comparison.

Failing businesses often resort to focus groups to tell them what they are doing wrong. The participants in focus groups haven’t given the slightest thought to the company’s problems. But the company listens reverently to their every half-baked observation and then compiles them in a formal report.

Soon the failing business is the bankrupt business.

So it is with the synodal synod. So it is with its “Listening Church.”

The Listening Church listens to the “People of God” but not God. Read More »

Jayant Bhandari, an Indian immigrant to Canada, reflects on the effects of immigration now that 26 percent of the country is first-generation immigrants:

Did I leave India because of its utterly venal and oppressive government? Not really. They [sic] are utterly stupid, and bribes take care of everything. But the character of the government is a symptom of the underlying society. It was the Indian society that I ran away from, which has no concept of honor, integrity, moral values, rationality, or interest in anything except the material, which is money and sex.

More precisely, I ran away from Indians.

With time, the institutions the British left behind have been hallowed out in India, and the civilizational constraints that they had imposed have fallen apart. With time, India is bound to become increasingly barbaric and savage. Not because of so much because of the Indian government but because of Indians.

India provides 27% of Canada’s new immigrants. Most other immigrants come from other Third World hellholes and have similar cultural backgrounds, one rooted in materialism and the absence of civilizational constraints and moral values.

Every Indian city today has at least one high-rise building devoted to housing agencies that help people immigrate to Canada, most offering help creating fake documents or getting admission to colleges structured not for education but for assisting people to stay in Canada long enough to become citizens.

Crazy, isn’t it, that Canada has given itself away to those who faked documents? So much for the much-touted skilled-class immigrants!