I pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for them whom thou hast given me; because they are thine.

— St. John 17:9

THE subjects of Heaven and Hell are always worth pondering. We can’t think about them too much. We can’t overestimate how much reflection upon them can set us in the right direction, like a compass pointing the way in a storm. Countless problems would be solved if more people spent 15 minutes a day meditating on Heaven and Hell, as they really are.

Sadly, fear, ignorance, prejudice and a lack of God’s grace keep people away.

I recently came across a sermon by an Episcopalian minister in the course of research and in it, she point-blank said to her prosperous congregation gathered beneath an historic, white steeple, “You may have noticed that we don’t talk much about Hell here.” Of course, they noticed it. They probably wouldn’t have been there if she talked about it. Hell is not a successful product in the religious marketplace. The slightest suggestion of it is enough to send a shopper to another retailer down the street. Still, I thought, “That’s sad.” If they don’t talk about Hell, well then, they must not understand a thing about Heaven. I wondered anew at this phenomenon by which the most important and interesting subjects are averted, subjects Jesus Christ placed in the forefront again and again of his sublime and unexpected message.

One aspect of Heaven that people don’t consider enough is the friendships to be found there.

Heaven is a place of love. Not the sentimental, false thing often called love. The moment Adam and Eve fell from grace they institutionalized betrayal. They wounded our capacity for love and brought about this meretricious imposter. No, not that, but love that is true and deep. The closest bonds of earth are a pale foreshadowing of this love. Yes, the happiness of heaven is supremely social. There is no unwanted isolation, no dissension, no conflict, no distrust and no disappointment. No cliqueishness, no gossip, no stabs in the back. No desire for understanding or acceptance is unmet. The social joys to be found there will be, after the general judgment, all-encompassing: intellectual, emotional, physical — on every plane of a glorified being.

Albert H. Dolan, O. Carm., in his little book St. Therese Returns (Carmelite Press, 1932) writes quite profoundly on this issue:

Love, historically, is the strongest human passion, the greatest natural motive power on earth; yet the purest and holiest of earthly loves, yes, the love of all lovers on earth together cannot equal the love of the lowest soul in Heaven. In Heaven we shall love and be loved with a great, indescribable love, of which earthly parental, filial, conjugal, and fraternal loves are only poor imitations, and only represent some portions or elements.

Have you considered how often you take a utopian view in social matters? Have you considered that if you kept this truth of Heaven always in sight, you might bear with the disappointments of this life, realizing they are only a passing phase?

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“A government functioning independently of any supernatural authority, as if the supernatural did not exist, floats in a utopian dream from which the ultimate, transcendent reality is excluded on principle. It is not a political state at all, but a deranged state of mind.”

— Solange Hertz, Apostasy in America 

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“WHEN a country’s Christianity is reduced to the proportion of domestic life, when Christianity is no longer the soul of public life, of the power of the state and of public institutions, then Jesus Christ will treat such a country as He himself is treated. He will continue to bestow His Grace and His blessings on those who serve Him, but He will abandon the institutions and authorities that do not serve Him. And such institutions, authorities, kings and races become like sands in the desert or like the dead leaves of autumn which can be blown away by a gust of wind.”

— Cardinal Pie, Bishop of Poitiers (1815-1880)

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“BUILT squarely on equality and religious liberty as governing principles, democratic government in due course of time proves utterly incapable of protecting its citizens from harm within or without, for a system which grants equal rights to individuals and freedom to all beliefs has no legitimate means of excluding either error or its consequences from the body politic. In other words, democracy promotes and encourages evil by the very way it works, without necessarily intending it. Sooner or later republics auto-destruct for want of an auto-immune system. To dissolve them, nothing beyond the original sin at the heart of each of its citizens is required. Democracy is to politics what usury is to economics.

— Solange Hertz, Apostasy in America 

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[Reposted from Jan. 22, 2020]

BERNARD Nathanson (1926-2011) was one of the most influential people in the movement to legalize abortion in the 1960s and 70s. Not only did he help found the National Abortion Rights League in 1969, but for two years he was the director of the largest abortion clinic in the world. By his count, he was personally involved in about 75,000 abortions in his work at the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health in Manhattan. Calling an abortion clinic a center of “reproductive health” was one of the brilliant propaganda moves of that era which continues to this day.

By a miracle of God’s grace, Nathanson had a profound change of heart. He later campaigned against abortion and was immediately shunned by the media outlets which had previously so warmed to him.

Today, on the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we remember those who like Nathanson have given themselves to the fight against abortion. “Since 1973, there have been over 61,679,000 abortions performed in the United States alone. Since 1980, the worldwide total number of abortions exceeds 1,562,298,000.” [Source] (more…)

Let this maiden, Agnes, convicted of sacrilege and blasphemy against the gods, be stripped and led thus to be exposed in the place of shame.

                    — Symphronius, a Roman magistrate, in 304 A.D.

“AS Agnes concluded her prayer the flames subsided, leaving her untouched, and the holy virgin remained unmoved, prepared for the next act of barbarity which the fiendish mob around should prepare for her. Their fury and hatred were in no degree lessened by the last phase of their cruelty. The yells, Death to the sorceress! Destruction to the Christians! were again caught up. They re-echoed through the palatial halls around the square. Aspasius was nervous and embarrassed. He felt that the mob was well-nigh beyond control. To postpone the sentence was out of the question, and yet they had been so often baffled that he feared a fresh failure and a renewed outbreak on the part of the populace. Meanwhile the demands for the virgin s blood grew fiercer, and the judge, fearing for his own safety, called upon a lictor to put her to the sword.

“Whatever may have been the feelings of the executioner, he had no option but to obey his instructions.

“He stepped forward with a show of boldness to the spot where the maiden was still standing. At his approach she fell upon her knees, her eyes turned towards heaven.”

— Aloysius J. Smith, Life of St. Agnes, Virgin and Martyr,** 1906

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“THE depth psychologist Carl Jung, possibly as early as the 1920s, based on a trip he made to America, predicted that American whites would eventually be unable to resist the heavy downward pull of the primitive life of blacks.

“Jung predicted that whites would eventually ‘go black’: ‘

“‘What is more contagious than to live side by side with a rather primitive people? Go to Africa and see what happens. When it is so obvious that you stumble over it, you call it going black… The inferior man has a tremendous pull because he fascinates the inferior layers of our psyche, which has lived through untold ages of similar conditions… Blacks remind us not so much of our conscious as our unconscious mind—not only of childhood but of prehistory.'”

What Jung could not foresee at the time was that American culture would later celebrate integration as its greatest moral triumph and encourage whites to ‘go black’ as proof that integration was succeeding, that America was the exceptional nation that had perfected its liberal constitution — creating, as Obama put it, a ‘post-racial’ culture in which, as Michael Jackson sang, ‘it don’t matter if you’re black or white,’ since whites now behave like blacks.

— Dr. Ricardo Duchesne

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FROM a piece by Olga Lautman at Substack:

When Trump first came to power in 2017, I repeatedly and publicly asked a question that has only grown harder to dismiss over the past decade: if someone deliberately set out to destroy the United States from within and dismantle its position in the world, what actions would be taken differently from what we are witnessing now? Trump’s conduct has never resembled mere incompetence, impulsiveness, or even corruption. Instead, it has always been a sustained pattern of national sabotage carried out through strategic chaos—one that Russia openly welcomes and is publicly celebrating as they watch America’s power, alliances, and credibility erode.

The current crisis surrounding Greenland only reaffirms this. Greenland has become the clearest test yet of whether NATO can survive when the danger comes from inside the alliance, because Trump’s renewed threat to invade allied territory cannot be dismissed as bluster or theatrics, particularly given that NATO was created explicitly to contain and deter the Soviet Union and to prevent precisely this kind of coercion against Europe by a dominant power. (more…)

IN THE Princeton University Art Museum’s collection of Ancient Mediterranean Art, a stone mosaic floor from the 3rd century A.D. depicts the ancient Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo.

The beautiful stone floor is displayed in a prominent, backlit glass case so you can walk above it and examine it closely.

As retold by the Roman author Ovid in his Metamorphoses (I.438–567), the story, as you probably know, involves the god Apollo, who has been struck by an arrow from Cupid’s quiver. Under the influence of Cupid’s magic lance, Apollo falls in love with the beautiful nymph, Daphne. Unfortunately, she has vowed to remain a virgin. Daphne flees and Apollo follows, awed by her beauty.

Despite her not yet knowing who pursues her, Apollo seems to know exactly who she is, calling, “Wait nymph, daughter of Peneus, I beg you! I who am chasing you am not your enemy.” He comments that she is running from him as prey would from a predator, but tells her that he is spurred on by love and a desire to be with her, not destroy her, so she should have pity on him. He then says that he is worried that she will be injured in the chase and cause him guilt, so if she slows down he will too, but she continues. (Source)

Finally as the nymph approaches a river, she calls out for help to her father, the river god Peneus. Seeing his daughter’s predicament, he turns her into a laurel tree.

Apollo loves her still. As Ovid recounts it:

Even like this [Apollo] loved her and, placing his hand against the trunk, he felt her heart still quivering under the new bark. He clasped the branches as if they were parts of human arms, and kissed the wood. But even the wood shrank from his kisses, and the god said ‘Since you cannot be my bride, you must be my tree! Laurel, with you my hair will be wreathed, with you my lyre, with you my quiver. You will go with the Roman generals when joyful voices acclaim their triumph, and the Capitol witnesses their long processions. You will stand outside Augustus’s doorposts, a faithful guardian, and keep watch over the crown of oak between them. And just as my head with its un-cropped hair is always young, so you also will wear the beauty of undying leaves.’ Paean had done: the laurel bowed her newly made branches, and seemed to shake her leafy crown like a head giving consent. (more…)

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FROM The lives of the Fathers of the Eastern Deserts, or, The wonders of God in the wilderness by Richard Challoner:

Accordingly, as often as be could hear of any one that labored with more diligence than ordinary in the pursuit of virtue and perfection, he was sure to visit him, and to seek in his conversation and method of life, some lesson for his own instruction and edification. In the meantime he labored with his own hands for his daily food; and all that he gained over and above what was necessary to purchase his pittance of bread, he gave to the poor. He prayed very much, and endeavoring quite to forget the world and all his worldly kindred, he turned all his affections and desires towards purchasing the hidden treasure of true wisdom, and the precious pearl of divine love. In order to [do] this he gave diligent attention to the word of God, contained in the holy Scriptures, which he heard, and by meditating thereon, laid up all these precepts of our Lord in such a manner in his soul, as never to forget any of them; but to have them always written in his memory, as in a book. He envied no one, (more…)

From The Framework of a Christian State by Fr. Edward Cahill, S.J. (McGill and Son, 1932); pp. 42-44:

The mediaeval law of Just Price is another example of the altruistic spirit which permeated the social and economic life of the middle ages. Individuals were not permitted to use freely the property they controlled in ways that might be detrimental to the common good. They were compelled, when the needs of others required it, to place the goods they had to dispose of at the service of the public under equitable conditions. The poor and weak were protected against unfair competition, so that all might be secured a fair access to the material goods of the community.

The laws of Just Price had to be observed in wages, buying and selling and every contract of exchange; otherwise the contracted was accounted unjust and invalid in conscience, and the aggrieved party had a claim to restitution. ‘Whoever,’ writes Trithemius, a well-known fifteenth century author, ‘buys up corn, meat and wine in order to drive up their prices, and amass money at the cost of others, is, according to the laws of the Church, no better than a common criminal. In a well-government community all arbitrary raising of prices in the case of articles of food and clothing is peremptorily stopped. In times of scarcity merchants who have supplies of such commodities can be compelled to sell them at fair prices; for in every community care should be taken that all the members should be provided for, lest a small number be allowed to grow rich, and revel in luxury to the hurt and prejudice of the many.’

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I NOTICED in the news that “Pope” Leo XIV took time from his busy schedule to meet with families of the devastating fire at a ski resort bar on New Year’s Eve in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.

Forty young people were killed and more than 100 experienced severe injuries in the most horrible way after the bar exploded into flames. A sparkler held high by a young waitress sitting on someone’s shoulders touched the ceiling and all of the bar’s flammable materials ignited at once. Here is a news story that is all too tragically true. The faces of the families cannot hide their real grief. The photos of the victims are not professionally staged. There is no government political agenda or call to disarm citizens.

Presumably Leo was offering genuine sympathy, not conspicuous compassion for the cameras. Though a true pope, in the case of a tragedy such as this, would presumably offer private and not public sympathies, given the nature of the bar celebration, I do not doubt the sincerity of Leo’s sympathy. He is generally a restrained and dignified figure, especially in comparison to the scattershot vulgarity and coarseness of his predecessor, Francis.

There was nothing objectionable in Leo’s consoling remarks to the families of victims. Well, wait a minute, yes, there was:

Dear brothers and sisters, nothing will ever be able to separate you from the love of Christ (cf. Rom 8:35), nor your loved ones who suffer or whom you have lost.

On this score, “Pope” Leo is not one to offer consolation. He and his brothers in theological revolution have caused incalculable harm to souls and separation from the love of Christ. Apostasy, heresy and other sins against divine commandments can separate us from the love of Christ. While it is not true that there was no hope for these young victims, the conciliar revolutionaries who have taken over the Catholic Church have made that hope much less realistic for people the world over, as the graces that flowed from the Catholic Church’s teachings and Holy Sacraments have been lost to them.

So far, Leo’s brief tenure has been a series of unconvincing assurances that the revolution has been good. In this regard, as Thomas Droleskey points out, he is similar to the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in his address to the 26^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on February 23, 1981. (more…)

“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”

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“YOUTH is a perfectly wonderful commodity and far too valuable, as Shaw has pointed out, to be wasted on the young. Yet like all human benefactions, it has its penalties, which in today’s urgent society have frighteningly increased. I don’t think I am merely nostalgic when I contend that being a child nowadays is a tougher proposition than it was when my generation and I compared arithmetic answers between classes or devoured bread-and-pickle sandwiches on the front porch after school. For one thing, it isn’t as much fun.

“On the surface this assertion may sound like gibbering nonsense. Never before in history has childhood had so much attention paid to its welfare and its amusement. It is cosseted, pampered, immunized against unhappiness as against polio or whooping cough. (more…)

“THE Lord is baptised, not because He had need to be cleansed, but in order that, by the contact of His pure flesh, He might purify the waters and impart to them the power of cleansing.”

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