"THE CONVERSION of Saul" by Caravaggio is one of the world's great dramatic paintings. It depicts St. Paul (Saul) on the road to Damascus, when he is struck blind and thrown off his horse, forever changed. Caravaggio completed the painting in 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome.You may never make it to Rome to see this incredible painting but you can experience it online. Here is a basic introduction in a video lecture. One of the interesting characters in the painting is the horse. He overwhelms Paul. What is Caravaggio suggesting? Nigel Halliday writes: Why is the horse so important? He is huge, filling two thirds of the canvas. He is clearly not there just as a prop to emphasize Saul’s fall from human pride. The light catches his flank and he is beautifully painted – Caravaggio’s realism at its best. Writers often comment that the horse is oblivious to what is happening, just a dumb animal. But that would mean that Caravaggio has devoted a huge amount of brilliant painting to a subject that is peripheral to the action. To me what is most striking about the horse is how careful it is not to harm Saul. The horse’s eye is clearly on the prostrate figure. The horse is posed with its front right hoof raised and twisted out towards the viewer as if it is being specially careful…

"HOLOCAUST revisionism, for the time being, will have to be a personal vision quest. Each of us will have to take the journey from belief to disbelief alone. Germans, Jews, Americans, everyone! Revisionists are not going to force governments, or anyone dining out on the Holocaust story, to admit the Holocaust is, in most of its particulars, a lie. Salvation from this emotional conditioning - this brainwashing – lies not in the power of revisionism, but within yourselves. The roadmap to freedom is on the internet. Revisionist websites are packed with the tools with which to break the mental chains that bind you to liars and thieves who have preyed upon your credulity for so long. Take them up. Freedom beckons." --- John Weir, "The Holocaust as Myth: Betraying the Public Trust"  

  "A TRAMP may become a hired soldier, but he can hardly rise to the promptings of patriotism. His life has too little in it to be worth much defending. His life is cheap. He waits for whatever may happen. When a man has a home he becomes immediately interested in the peace of a community. He has given hostages against mobs. It is important for him that the pavement stones should keep their places, and not go flying through the air. Both heads and windows acquire a sacredness from those in which he is interested. A man without a home has little motive for standing against public perils. If a land does not furnish a man so much as a home, he can drift away when it becomes dangerous to remain anchored. Fill any land with good homes and it must be a good place in which to live. ... The walls about the hearth shut out all the world, and shut in a kingdom. This is the fort; keep it clean and free, and religion will thrive and liberty will dwell in the land forever. --- C.H. Fowler and W.H. De Puy, Home and Health and Home Economics, (Phillips & Hunt, 1880); p. 10.  

  "ABBOT Antony pointed out to a brother a stone and said to him, 'Revile that stone, and beat it soundly.' "When he had done so, Antony said, 'Did the stone say anything?' "He answered, 'No.' "Then said Antony, 'Unto this perfection shalt thou one day come.'" [Sayings of the Saints of the Desert, Cardinal John Henry Newman, St. Athanasius Press, 2017]  

  "THE FORCE of the wind will carry the inhabitants of the earth off their feet, and whirl them aloft in the air; trees will be uprooted, houses unroofed. Long peals of thunder will resound in the Heavens, the flashes of lightning, like serpents of fire, will light up the sky, and with their forked tongues, playing about the dwellings of mankind, will kindle a general conflagration, amid the crash of thunder. The waters of the ocean will be so agitated that their waves will rise mountain-high, towering almost to the clouds. The roaring and raging of the storm-swept billows will last for some time. All the beasts of the earth will lift up their voice, and their dismal howls will fill the air, so that the hearts of men will stand still for terror. "Yet this is but the beginning of sorrow, Our Lord tells us. What will next occur He describes in these words: 'Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from Heaven, and the powers of Heaven shall be moved.' --- Rev. Martin Von Cochem, O.S.F.C. The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell and Heaven  

  THE commercial Christmas season has ended, thank goodness, and the stores are filling up with pink hearts. But the liturgical season lasts until February 2. Rejoice and be glad. We embrace suffering --- and thereby embrace joy. We are meant for joy, as the bird is meant for the open sky.  

FROM a recent article by Andrew Joyce at The Occidental Observer: It was very gratifying to see Tucker Carlson’s recent attack on the activities of Paul Singer’s vulture fund, Elliot Associates, a group I first profiled four years ago. In many respects, it is truly remarkable that vulture funds like Singer’s escaped major media attention prior to this, especially when one considers how extraordinarily harmful and exploitative they are. Many countries are now in very significant debt to groups like Elliot Associates and, as Tucker’s segment very starkly illustrated, their reach has now extended into the very heart of small-town America. Shining a spotlight on the spread of this virus is definitely welcome. I strongly believe, however, that the problem presented by these cabals of exploitative financiers will only be solved if their true nature is fully discerned. Thus far, the descriptive terminology employed in discussing their activities has revolved only around the scavenging and parasitic nature of their activities. Elliot Associates have therefore been described as a quintessential example of a “vulture fund” practicing “vulture capitalism.” But these funds aren’t run by carrion birds. They are operated almost exclusively by Jews. In the following essay, I want us to examine the largest and most influential “vulture funds,” to assess their leadership, ethos, financial practices, and how they disseminate their dubiously acquired wealth. I want us to set aside colorful metaphors. I want us to strike through the mask. [cont.]  

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  "ONE night when Joseph was peacefully sleeping at Bethlehem, an Angel's voice aroused him from his slumber, and he saw before him one of the messengers of the Most High, who said: "Arise, and take the young Child and His Mother, and fly into the land of Egypt, for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him." Hence observe: That God's ways are very different from ours. We should have expected that He would exert His Divine power in behalf of His only-begotten Son, and that the soldiers of Herod would be struck with blindness on the road, or would somehow fail to discover where Jesus was, or perhaps would come and fall prostrate at the feet of the new-born King. How different the course enjoined by the Angel! Apparently so clumsy a way of saving Jesus from His enemies. Yet such are God's ways--clumsy in the eyes of men. What strange presumption it is that I should criticize the Divine arrangements as I sometimes do. Then the conditions of safety seemed so unnecessarily hard. Why to Egypt? A pagan land, the very name of which was a synonym for bondage and misery. Was this the only way to preserve the life of the Son of God? To all this one answer: It was God's will, and that was enough. But after all it was but a vision of the night, perhaps a dream or a mere subjective fancy.…

  "LOOK AT a pilot in a storm, a soldier on the field of battle, an athlete in the arena. No one can tell what you are capable of, no, not even your ownself, unless you are exercised with afflictions of various kinds. There is need of trial in order to become acquainted with oneself. No one has ever learnt what he could do except by trying. Great men rejoice at times in adversity, just as brave soldiers exult in battle. Virtue is greedy of danger, and thinks of whither it is advancing, not of what it will have to endure, since whatever it endures is a part of its glory. How can I tell what advance you have made in Trust towards God, if all things turn out as you desire? How can I tell what courage you have to bear poverty, if you are rolling in riches? How can I tell what constancy you have to endure ignominy, and disgrace, and universal hatred, if you reach old age amid the approbation of all, and pass your life without an enemy? In good truth, there is need of trial for the knowledge of self. There is no great difficulty in saying in prosperity, 'The Lord  is my Firmament, my Refuge, and my Deliverer.' If a beggar begins for the first time to say,'I am now easy in my mind; this week, at least, I shall not be starved,' when…

"IT IS, therefore, not a matter of indifference what religion a man professes; he must profess the right and true religion, and without that there is no hope of salvation, for it stands to reason, my dear people, that if God reveals a thing or teaches a thing, He wants to be believed. Not to believe is to insult God. Doubting His word, or believing even with doubt and hesitating, is an insult to God, because it is doubting His Sacred Word. We must, therefore, believe without doubting, without hesitating. I have said, out of the Catholic Church there is no Divine faith ----- can be no Divine faith out of that Church. Some of the Protestant friends will be shocked at this, to hear me say that out of the Catholic Church there is no Divine faith, and that without faith there is no salvation, but damnation. I will prove all I have said." --- Fr. Arnold Damen, S.J., "The One True Church"  

RABBIS call for eating kosher food in response to "global warming."

MY latest comments on a recent review of the 1975 movie, The Stepford Wives, can be read at the bottom of this entry.

E. MICHAEL JONES, in this interview at the Patriarchy Podcast, has interesting thoughts about the effects of pornography, including social isolation and passivity in men. Increased personal indebtedness and pornography are "two sides of the same coin," he says. Start the interview at minute 26:00.

I WAS in the dentist’s chair today, undergoing torture, when the announcer on the pop station playing overhead interjected between two songs, “If your wife’s angry, tell her she’s over-reacting! Try it!! It works.”

I had to laugh at the way he just tossed that in there and moved on to other things. I bet electricians, roofers and other tradesmen listen to that particular radio station all day. As they are working, some of them are probably thinking, “What did I do wrong?”

I don’t mean to make light of men who have lost almost everything because their wives are mad. Those serious cases aside, is this a good suggestion for the ordinary kind of anger a husband may encounter? No, I don’t think it is — even if she is over-reacting.

Men may be genuinely perplexed or taken off guard when a wife gets mad at them. They may truly not understand why she is so upset. The worst thing they can do in response is 1) get angry themselves or 2) just dismiss a wife’s feelings. Saying, “You’re just over-reacting,” is a form of dismissal. I think it will just make things worse. (more…)

In Saucerology, as in much else in modern life, there was a passionate desire not to know and not to learn.  I saw this in the way journalists and Saucer Fans reacted when it was determined that a certain Flying Saucer incident involved the planet Venus. It was typical for them to say “It was just Venus” or “It was only Venus.” The key words there are “just” and “only.”  

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ALAN writes:

Nearly half a century has gone by since I last spoke with my friend Arthur. He was a chemist who worked for a company in south St. Louis. I never called him Arthur. He called himself “Art” and encouraged me to do likewise, even though he was old enough to be my father.

He was born in St. Louis but at one point moved to California and attended Hollywood High School. He then came back to St. Louis and worked as a teacher, swimming instructor, and with the Boy Scouts.

We met in 1967 because of our mutual interest in science and the Flying Saucer controversy. Separately, each of us had read many accounts by people like military and commercial airline pilots who said they had seen extraordinary objects in the sky.  Each of us had read the 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by USAF Captain Edward Ruppelt, whose job it had been to investigate and evaluate such accounts.  I bought my paperback edition at a small bookshop next to the Ritz Theater on South Grand Boulevard (both demolished years ago).  I remember reading that book in my bedroom on the night in January 1967 when a tornado struck St. Louis County.

I was a misfit at age 17. Nearly all teenage boys liked sports, cars, and girls. I liked girls but had zero interest in sports and cars. I preferred to read and to think. The Saucer Mystery provided an opportunity to do both.

While eating breakfast on the morning of Nov. 2, 1966, I heard a radio news announcer say that a UFO was in the sky at that very moment.  So I went outside to see it, and there it was: A small silvery object high in the clear, blue southwestern sky.  But it wasn’t a UFO.  It didn’t even have the letters “UFO” painted on it. I was rather disappointed that no alien beings were standing on the top deck and waving to me. (more…)

“IT IS much to be regretted that persons who have many important things concerning their spiritual welfare on their minds, from pride and false shame, would rather go to perdition than ask advice, solely for fear of showing their ignorance.”

— Leonard Goffine, 1871 (more…)