[Just ran across this post from September, 2016 in my archives. Except for the dated photo, it still works.] THE ASCENT OF women to the top reaches of the political world means exactly the opposite of what most people say it means. It is not female empowerment. It is female disempowerment. In order for a woman to be president, tens of thousands of women have to enter the lower ranks of political life and government. Most of them are relatively low-paid administrators; the top female candidate puts a pleasant spin on the hard reality. Does power for a few make drudgery for the many palatable? Does the thrill of cheering selfishly for your own sex make the years on the treadmill less unpleasant? In order for a woman to be president, most women, even beyond these workers, have to be politicized. But the strength of womanhood, as G.K. Chesterton said, is not to be found in her support for laws or rules or political platforms or abstractions. It is to be found in her defense of persons. Her natural kingdom is society itself. A woman rules best by sympathy, prejudice and wisdom. She must compromise all of these things, so tied to her intuitive strengths and deepest desires, when she rules as politician -- and she must turn the political into a socialist projection of her natural instincts. She also apparently has to surrender to ugly pantsuits. Imagine a priest giving up his vestments for a…

 LISTEN to more here.  

“PRIDE is the obstacle to man’s virtue and wellbeing. It is pride that leads us to resist God, to make self our last end, in a word, to work our own ruin. Humility alone can save us from this terrible danger. Who will give us humility? The Holy Ghost; and this, by infusing into us the Gift of the Fear of God.

“This holy sentiment is based on the following truths, which are taught us by faith: the sovereign majesty of God, in comparison with Whom we are mere nothingness; the infinite sanctity of that God, in Whose presence we are but unworthiness and sin; the severe and just judgment we are to go through after death; the danger of falling into sin, which may be our misfortune at any time, if we do not correspond to grace, for although grace be never wanting, yet we have it in our power to resist it.

“Man, as the Apostle tells us, must work out his salvation with fear and trembling (II. Philipp. ii. 12); but this Fear, which is a gift of the Holy Ghost, is not the base sentiment which goes no further than the dread of eternal punishments. It keeps alive within us an abiding compunction of heart, even though we hope that our sins have long ago been forgiven. It prevents our forgetting that we are sinners, that we are wholly dependent upon God’s mercy, and that we are not as yet safe, except in hope (Rom. viii. 24).

“This Fear of God, therefore, is not a servile fear; on the contrary, it is the source of the noblest sentiments. Inasmuch as it is a filial dread of offending God by sin, it may go hand-in-hand with love. Arising as it does from a reverence for God’s infinite majesty and holiness, it puts the creature in his right place, and, as St. Paul says, it contributes to the perfecting of sanctification (II. Cor. vii. 1). Hence this great Apostle, who had been rapt up to the third heaven, assures us that he was severe in his treatment of himself, lest he should become a cast-away (I. Cor. ix. 27). (more…)

Sequence for Pentecost

COME, Thou Holy Paraclete,
And from Thy celestial seat
Send Thy light and brilliancy.

Father of the poor, draw near,
Giver of all gifts, be here,
Come, the soul’s true radiancy.

Come, of comforters the best
Of the soul, the sweetest guest,
Come in toil refreshingly.

Thou in labor rest most sweet,
Thou art shadow from the heat,
Comfort in adversity.

O Thou light, most pure and blest,
Shine within the inmost breast
Of Thy faithful company.

Where Thou are not, man hath naught;
Ev’ry holy deed and thought
Comes from Thy divinity. (more…)

KATHY G. writes in response to this entry on the New Orleans police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick, who looks like she is wearing a ridiculous costume with an oversized cap: I see these installed agents, like this grandma chief, and what jumps out is the reality of a woman (a silly, old woman!), attempting to fill a masculine role, and instead of thinking "See? Anything he can do, she can do", I see a pathetic, anemic imitation of maleness. It screams weakness, emotional thinking, and denial of the natural order and physical attributes. It is inversion, camouflaged as "equality". It denies the unique attributes of both sexes, and attempts to impose the idea of amorphous and fungible human beings. To do this, all logic, intelligence, and biological realities must be eradicated from the thought process, made irrelevant in the minds of people. In short, it's a psyop. So true. If you had asked people 50 years ago about a woman, especially a senior woman, working as the police chief of a major city, most would have laughed. The idea would have struck them as absurd. Women in roles of masculine authority are a form of transgenderism. It's just as bad as men playing on a women's soccer team. It has a strong psychological effect on girls and young women, leading them to believe it is possible to be a man and a woman at the same time. I bet every single officer,…

WHAT are the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost? 1.The Gift of Fear 2.The Gift of Godliness 3.The Gift of Knowledge 4.The Gift of Fortitude 5.The Gift of Counsel 6.The Gift of Understanding 7.The Gift of Wisdom Read more here.  

ClOUDS are cheap. We don't pay a dime for them. We take them for granted or, even worse, misunderstand them. They entertain and enshadow, magnifying to immense proportions the proposition that life is ever-varying shades of grey. Boredom is just a state of mind -- not reality -- when clouds are in the sky. The plumes, puffs, phantasms and pillows parade across the local heavens. Few days are completely bereft of clouds in May and June, at least where I live. Brides keep planning their weddings as if thousands of June weddings hadn’t been obscured and dampened by banks of Cumulonimbus. This is cloud-denial, a common psychological condition. Cloud deniers always act surprised when spring is cloudy. They have a fixed, illusory image of a cloud-free spring --- a delusion resistant to all past experience. Spring propagandists, including many poets, have spread this myth. May skies are sometimes so overcast we turn on the lights during the middle of the day. Cumulus clouds are to June what snow is to January. They accumulate in the lower atmosphere and sometimes extend in massive, vaporous monuments upward into the stratosphere. Cumulus mediocris look like shredded cotton balls. Cumulus humilis are more reminiscent of clotted cream. Cumulus congestus create muscular heros, suggestive of so many shapes it is not surprising Zeus was believed to create the image of his wife, Hera, out of a cloud. (The cloud was violated and Centaurus was conceived.) Each Cumulus cloud is “the…

“THE child needs father and mother; but it does not need them only as some think, alternately, now the father’s influence and then the mother’s or in some things the father’s influence and in other things the mother’s. The child needs the father’s masculine influence and the mother’s feminine influence always together, the two streams uniting to pour their fructifying influence through the child’s life into the life of humanity.”    ---- Felix Adler, Marriage and Divorce, 1915  

  

ALAN writes:

A million tomorrows shall all pass away, Ere I forget all the joy that is mine today.

More than twenty thousand tomorrows have now faded away since I first heard the lovely song with those words in 1964. But I have not forgotten all the joy that was mine in years long ago — because my mother made it possible.

Which is not to say that those years were filled only with joy. Far from it.

When I was a boy, my mother gave me everything a boy could hope for, and those were years of countless joys.  But there was one thing she didn’t give me, because she couldn’t. That was paternal authority. She tried her best to provide something equivalent, but it was ersatz authority and largely ineffectual.  She gave me chores to do around the house, but they were pseudo-responsibilities, not real responsibilities like those that she and her brother learned by necessity in their childhood home in the 1920s-’30s.  Checks and balances were generally in place in my boyhood home, but were not always enforced as firmly and consistently as they might have been.

The problem with my childhood was not that it was too hard but that it was too easy. (more…)

KATHY G. writes in this entry about outdoors activities being "racist": This whole narrative makes no sense. Non-white people must be made to feel "welcomed" to the outdoors? Who welcomed whites? There was no one handing out boots and backpacks. The people pushing this nonsense have made no secret of their hatred of white people. So why are they trying to make non-whites act and value what white people do? Taking a boombox into a rural/park area to blare a particular music is an aggressive behavior, designed to intrude on the solitude and peace of nature, and is simple attention-seeking. I suspect that is really the agenda, to deprive white people of another tradition/activity that they enjoy, insinuating that there is something hateful about it. The hatred is projected, is actually against whites, and the extent of it is incomprehensible to logical, right-thinking, moral people.  

JUST a quick, visual reminder here that the inflation you are seeing today is no accident nor was it caused by some economic force of nature. I'm no economist, but I know enough to say Operation Covid is ongoing. Image source  

ALAN writes:

When everyone around you is claiming that two and two equal five, it requires both an independent mind and a good deal of moral courage to disagree and speak the truth.

It takes even more moral courage to stand confident in opposition to “public opinion”, “Liberals”, Feminists, Communists, Fabian change agents, anarchists, Do-Gooders, “innovators”, “new ideas”, “new approaches”, ad hominem attacks by trolls, character assassination by those who resent achievement and hate the good for being the good, racketeers who call themselves “The Law” and “The Government”, and last but not least, the “mass media”, who are — as Dr. Bruce Charlton wrote ever so correctly — our “enemy headquarters”.

To oppose all such adversaries and persist in thinking for oneself is seemingly a simple act but actually a heroic act, according to George Orwell, when assumed in an age of monumental decadence and lies officially called truth.

The Thinking Housewife is one such courageous voice.  For 15 years now, Mrs. Laura Wood has presented independent thought, dissenting ideas, and views on current events that are sharply at odds with the Official Truth proclaimed by the Occupation Government and it’s innumerable fronts. (more…)

From a sermon, “The Ascension of Our Lord,” by the Rev. William Graham:

In the beautiful panorama of hill country that unrolls to the eye of a pilgrim looking eastward from Jerusalem there is no point of view so picturesque or at the same time so rich in sacred memories, as Mount Olivet. Rough and narrow is the stony path winding to its summit, but its many associations more than repay the cost of ascent. On its lower slopes lies the Garden of Olives, lovingly tended by the Franciscan Fathers, who point out the spots in and around where Christ’s agony and prayer began and ended. The brook Cedron that He crossed with His disciples on the sad night of His betrayal He must also have passed in His risen body on His way to the hill, whence while they looked on He was raised up. Alas! a Mohammedan mosque now crowns the spot, and the followers of the prophet point out by favor a stone bearing the imprint of a foot, which, piety suggests, was left by the ascending Christ. Even they, however, reverence the spot consecrated by the last steps on earth of the great prophet Issa. (more…)

FROM a meditation on the Ascension of Jesus Christ from an Old English poem, Christ I, posted by Eleanor Parker at the wonderful blog on medieval England, Clerk of Oxford:

Then suddenly a loud clamour
was heard on high: a throng of heaven’s angels,
a brightly shining band, heralds of glory,
came in a company. Our king passed
through the temple roof while they gazed,
they who remained behind the dear one still
in that meeting-place, the chosen thegns.
They saw the Lord ascend on high,
God’s Son from the ground.
Their minds were sorrowful,
hot at heart, mourning in spirit,
because they would no longer see
the dear one beneath the heavens. The celestial heralds
raised up a song, praised the Prince,
extolled the Source of life, rejoiced in the light
which shone from the Saviour’s head.
They saw two bright angels
beautifully gleaming with adornments around the First-begotten,
the glory of kings. (more…)

“[T]HE famous Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has issued a warning to viewers of this John Constable painting of Hampstead Heath.

“It has a “darker side” because it implies that ‘only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong [in Britain].’ This painting is from around 1820. I guess Constable should have included some Pakistanis.

“This ridiculous ‘warning’ is part of a ridiculous fashion of claiming that the British countryside ‘excludes’ non-whites.” (Source)

(Ridiculous? I would call it despicable and dangerous agitprop with the intention of dehumanizing an entire race of people.) (more…)