Loquats and Mountain Bird, Lin Chun

“I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.”

— St. Bede

[T]HE multiplicity and distinction existing among things were devised by the divine intellect and were carried out in the real order so that the divine goodness might be mirrored by created things in variety, and that different things might participate in divine goodness in varying degrees. Thus, the very order existing among diverse things issues in a certain beauty, which should call to mind the divine wisdom.

— St. Thomas Aquinas

Another blast from the past, this is from a 2012 entry.

JESSE POWELL writes:

The Economist recently featured a special report titled “Women and Work” (November 26, 2011). What struck me the most about all of the articles in the report was their anti-human utopianism. The central theme was that we are moving towards a better world of equality but that we aren’t there yet and that there are still many pesky differences between men and women in the workplace that we should try to overcome with changes in cultural practices and attitudes and perhaps with outright government-mandated quotas.

There was some acceptance by the authors that there are differences between the sexes, that men and women might have different temperaments and different preferences regarding the focus on work versus the focus on the family but even when these differences were pointed out there was a tendency to blame things on discrimination and cultural stereotypes; to suggest true inborn differences between men and women was condemned as “biological determinism.” The feeling was that maybe there are real differences between men and women but that these differences are bad and should be minimized. Read More »

“TALKING about the Jewish problem is entirely sane and sensible; not talking about the Jewish problem is what really leads to sensationalism instead of sense, and insanity instead of sanity.”

— G.K. Chesterton

“… THERE are hundreds of terms in the Hebrew Bible which are dim revelations of the Persons of the Trinity.

“The first foundations of the Hebrew religion [were] laid by the Eternal Father Yaqara. The forms of nature, the knowledge of divine things, were given by Memra, the Word of God, the Wisdom of the Father, the Son of God. The ceremonial, law, tabernacle, Temple and Hebrew Church were founded by the Shekina, the Holy Spirit. The Apostles and converts were then, by reading the Old Testament, ready to receive the belief in the Trinity, first clearly revealed when Christ said, ‘Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'”

— Rev. James L. Meagher, How Christ Said the First Mass: Of the Rites and Ceremonies of Jesus and the Apostles, Foretold in the Hebrew Passover (Pantianos Classic, 1906), p. 25

A supernatural mystery makes us feel both small and enlarged. That is true of the idea of God loving God.

There is a famous story about the complex and sublime doctrine of the Trinity — One God, in three Persons — recounted by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger:

Saint Augustine “while occupied in searching into the mystery of the Holy Trinity, took a walk on the seashore, where he found a boy, who having made a small hole in the sand, poured water from the sea into it with a spoon. After watching the boy for a long time, the Saint asked him what he was doing. “I wish,” replied the boy, “to pour the sea into this hole.” “O my child!” said the Saint: “that is a useless attempt. So small a hole cannot contain the immense sea.” “And you,” replied the boy, ” will be still less able to contain and comprehend, with your human understanding, the stupendous mystery of the Holy Trinity!” After these words, the child, who doubtless was an angel, vanished. [Recounted by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger]

If man is the measure of all things, the mystery of the Trinity doesn’t matter.

If man is the measure of all things, we should honor man. We should hold sacred his happiness. We should make his desires come true. We should surrender to his will as long as it does not infringe on the happiness of others. If man is the measure of all things then whatever soothes man, whatever celebrates his chosen path, whatever makes him a success in the world must be good and worthy of our full attention.

But if man is a creature made in the image of God, and meant to share in His divine graces, then there is nothing more important than this, even though we cannot fully understand it. Read More »

PETER A. writes:

Thank you so much for all the information (your words and others) on life and world events.

Thank you for standing up for Our Father In Heaven and speaking the truth about life in this present world. So much has been resolved and so much evil and sickness continues, both in deed and disruption of human lives, families, and faith.

The Beautiful Thing is that Our Faith cannot be discarded. God knows the workings of evil. As we seek His Forgiveness for Our Trespasses, we are Forgiven. I Trust Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Our Savior, Our Holy God and Our Holy Ghost for loving, protecting and providing His Grace.

Laura, thank you so very much for sharing your thoughts and for your support, love and kindness. Read More »

Source

Virginia Woolf is among the authors accused of anti-Semitism

THE LIST of famous authors accused of anti-Semitism at some point, either while living or dead, is quite long — so long in fact that one wonders if the whole literature racket shouldn’t be shut down, along perhaps with reading itself. Goodbye to The Great Gatsby, The Merchant of Venice, Oliver Twist and The Canterbury Tales. Anything short of a completely flattering portrayal of Jewish characters is enough to land an author in this gallery of rogues. Even Jewish authors have not escaped the charge. American author Philip Roth was accused of anti-Semitism for his negative portrayals of Jewish characters in his novels.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I did some random searches of well-known authors on the Internet and all of them except for E.B. White came up guilty. (I wasn’t surprised to find another New Yorker, the sassy Dorothy Parker, was among the charged.) It was a relief at least to know Stuart Little isn’t yet accused of being a Nazi. But I wonder about him ….  well, he was at least a white supremacist, I’d say, because of the lack of diversity in his environment and the natty way he dressed. The oldest surviving work of French literature, La Chanson de Roland, did not come up clean.

I found additional compilations (see sources below). Below are some of the literary deadbeats who, by today’s standards, belong behind bars. For Hypersensitive Hebrews, the canon of Western literature is similar to one of those shooting booths at a country fair. A figure pops up and — crack! — you try to shoot it down. It’s a sport, in a way. Contrary to what these sharpshooters believe, we cannot peer into the hearts of other human beings. But if we could, I’d be willing to bet we wouldn’t find an ounce of true hatred in any of these famous targets.

William Shakespeare
Geoffrey Chaucer
Christopher Marlowe
Charles Dickens
G.K. Chesterton
T.S. Eliot
Dante
W.B. Yeats
Mark Twain
Herman Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Balzac
George Sand
Flannery O’Connor
Frank Norris
Theodore Dreiser
Ernest Hemingway
Celine
Henry Adams
George Eliot
George du Maurier
James Joyce
Virginia Woolf
Graham Greene
Evelyn Waugh
E.E. Cummings
Henry Miller
Dorothy Parker
Byron Scott
F. Scott Fitzgerald Read More »

A dark, truthful image.

FROM Racism, Guilt, Self Hatred And Self Deceit: A Philosopher’s Look at the Dark Continent by Gedaliah Braun (2010):

I have long suspected that the concept of rape cannot mean the same in Africa as elsewhere. And now (over the Internet, MSNBC Home), I find this from Newsweek (“Breaking The Silence”, by Tom Masland, dated 9 July 2000; emphases in original):

According to a three-year study [in Johannesburg] … more than half of the young people interviewed – both male and female – believe that forcing sex with someone you know does not constitute sexual violence…. [T]he casual manner in which South African teens discuss coercive relationships and unprotected sex is staggering.

Masland is stunned by blacks’ behaviour, asking ‘Why Has The Safe-Sex Effort Failed So Abjectly?’ Well, aside from their profoundly different attitude towards sex and violence and their intense libido, a major factor has to be their diminished concept of time and their inability to think ahead, resulting in a ‘just-don’t-give-a-damn’ attitude. Read More »

“[W]HEN philosophies are bankrupt and life appears without hope — men and women may turn to lust in sheer boredom and discontent, trying to find in it some stimulus which is not provided by the drab discomfort of their mental and physical surroundings. When that is the case, stern rebukes and restrictions are worse than useless. It is as though one were to endeavour to cure anaemia by bleeding; it only reduces further an already impoverished vitality. The mournful and medical aspect of twentieth-century pornography and promiscuity strongly suggests that we have reached one of these periods of spiritual depression, where people go to bed because they have nothing better to do.”

— Dorothy Sayers, “The Other Six Deadly Sins“

FROM a 2013 post, “Seeking a New Life after Lesbianism:”

I am a young woman. As a teenager, I desperately longed for a young man to pursue me and make me his wife. I especially longed for a man to take charge and be the authority in our marriage. But I had no background for this and no idea of how to pursue it. My parents didn’t have this type of relationship, nor did anyone I knew. No one I knew was traditional. I wanted nothing more than to be married and have children, but it was lonely and no one supported me, especially since I was an overachiever in school and had a good job. They told me to focus on that and to date casually, for fun. I became deeply disillusioned and saddened by my reality. Over time, I drifted into lesbianism and other perversions. People outside the community don’t know, I think, but very masculine lesbians are ‘allowed’ oftentimes to act like men, while men in our society are afraid to or are shamed for doing so. These women are often protective and authoritative, and want to take care of a woman. I longed for that feeling so much that I became very confused. Now I feel like damaged goods and like a good man will not want me. I feel a lot of shame and disappointment in myself, but that’s also what’s keeping me from finding light.

I don’t think this makes me not guilty of any sin, but I think it speaks to the horrible sickness in our society. I think many people are getting confused for similar reasons. When men are forced to not be men, it harms them, but it also harms women. I needed masculinity in my life very badly and didn’t know where to find it. Read More »