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The Thinking Housewife
The Thinking Housewife
 

A Bit of Chesterton

April 19, 2024

“MORAL issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.”

— G.K. Chesterton

 

 

Rituals of Humiliation

April 16, 2024

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The Religion of Humanity

April 16, 2024

False Pope Paul 6 during his visit to the UN symbolically sits below the dais.

I DON’T pay much attention to the documents issued by the anti-Catholic Vatican in Rome these days. Lacking the sublime clarity of Church teachings, cleverly mixing truth with error, reassuring the simple with denunciations of abortion while simultaneously undermining the very moral and economic foundations of the family and unabashedly employing Marxist buzzwords and slogans, these statements are depressing, boring and far too long. They do not emanate from the Catholic Church.

I have, however, read the recent, highly-publicized Vatican declaration, Dignitatis Infinita, On Human Dignityout of a sense of possibly misplaced duty. At 15,000 words with just eight mentions of Jesus (one more mention than the seven of “migrants”), this document, steeped as it is in ambiguity, is arguably dangerous to the free exercise of human dignity. But I won’t go there. Let’s just say, it was a slog. I did it and I would like to make a few comments here, for whatever they’re worth. Perhaps I have a point to make that no one else in the extensive news commentary has made.

Most important regarding this document, as is stated from the beginning, is that it was written to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, issued by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. The mere fact that a body that claims to be the Catholic Church is promoting a secular, world parliament that explicitly denies the rights of God is so immensely significant, so overwhelmingly meaningful that most people can’t even see it.

From Dignitatis:

As we commemorate the 75th anniversary of that document, the Church sees an opportunity to proclaim anew its conviction that all human beings—created by God and redeemed by Christ—must be recognized and treated with respect and love due to their inalienable dignity. The anniversary also provides an occasion for the Church to clarify some frequent misconceptions concerning human dignity and to address some serious and urgent related issues. [bold added]

This is the single most important thing you need to know about this expensively-publicized declaration.

Paul 6 stood before the UN in 1965 in one of the most significant acts of his (false) pontificate and declared that the parliamentary body — not the Catholic Church — was “the greatest hope of the world.” And so it has been ever since. Dignitatis is part of a stream of revolutionary, Vatican II verbiage all dedicated to the same idea: the Religion of Humanity. “We too, more than anyone else, have the Cult of Man,” said Paul 6 at the closing session of Vatican II. Sadly, what claims today to be the Catholic Church has become the religious wing of secular world government founded on utopian, Marxist ideas and financial control of the weak — a super-government never dreamed of even by the most ambitious of emperors and pharaohs of the past. Read More »

 

Report from a Hospital Billing Department

April 16, 2024

A FORMER MEDICAL coder who was responsible for filling out patient hospital bills for insurance reimbursement describes her experience under Covid protocols.

She claims that financial incentives and government mandates led to many unnecessary deaths in the hospital where she worked. Having worked with the case histories of thousands patients over the course of years, she was able to see remarkable differences. The role of money in all this, she reports, is staggering.

 

 

A Pharmacist No More

April 16, 2024

A PHARMACIST describes her tragic story, including the sudden death of her 29-year-old daughter, in an interview at Children’s Health Defense.

The pharmacist has left her job, refusing any further involvement with government-enforced medicine.

 

 

Movie Night: “The Music Man”

April 12, 2024

ALAN writes:

Timewise, the 1962 motion picture The Music Man is only seven decades removed from the filth and junk that Americans today agree to accept in the name of entertainment. Morally, metaphysically, and esthetically, it is light-years removed.

It is from the summer of 1962 that I recall seeing advertisements on our black and white television for that new motion picture.  It seemed the ads were shown repeatedly.  One brief scene showed Robert Preston marching toward the camera in front of a large brass band.

But for whatever reason, at that time the promotional blurbs did not inspire my desire to see the movie. At age 12, I had yet to develop an appreciation for such entertainment; that would come several years later.

The movie was released that summer and played at the ornate Ambassador Theater at Seventh and Locust Streets in the heart of downtown St. Louis. (It was demolished in 1996. Architect Robert Powers wrote: “….the Ambassador was, in its day, perhaps the most spectacular of the St. Louis movie palaces, easily in league with the Fox. It was the last remaining movie palace in downtown…..” Source) Read More »

 

The Idea as Weapon

April 11, 2024

“THE idea is the weapon. And to be a weapon it must be an idea at variance with the natural trend of life. It must be a theory opposed to the facts of life. And no theory so opposed can be expected to take root and become the ruling factor, unless it appeals to the mind as reasonable, inspiring and good. The Truth frequently seems unreasonable; the Truth frequently is depressing; the Truth sometimes seems to be evil; but it has this eternal advantage, it is the Truth, and what is built thereon neither brings nor yields to confusion.”

Henry Ford and the Editors of the Dearborn Independent

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The Standard of Antiquity

April 11, 2024

TEACH nothing new, but instill into all men’s breasts things which the Fathers of revered memory have with harmony of statement taught . . . both in the rule of faith and in the observance of discipline, let the standard of antiquity be maintained throughout.”

St. Leo the Great

 

 

The Cross Fulfills

April 11, 2024

WHOEVER is humiliated on earth, is in Heaven and on the Cross; whoever has the first place on earth, has the last before God. He who knows the Cross, desires it; he who does not know it, runs away from it.”

St. Gemma Galgani

 

 

What Money Costs

April 9, 2024

PROFESSOR Dr. Margrit Kennedy describes how flaws in the money system cost us all about 40% extra for everything – interest costs. Interview by Dimitri Devyatkin.”

 

 

The Annunciation

April 8, 2024

The Annunciation, Zanobi Strozzi; c. 1453

WHERE Eve was pride, she was humility.

Where Eve was assertion, she was surrender.

Where Eve was revolution, she was eternity.

Where Eve was outward, she was inward.

Where Eve was earthward, she was heavenward.

Where Eve was death, she was birth.

Where Eve was self, she was compassion.

Where Eve was shame, she was modesty.

Where Eve was materialism, she was love of poverty.

Where Eve was fallen, she was mystical rose.

Where Eve was suspicion, she was trust.

Where Eve was folly, she was wisdom.

Where Eve was liberation, she was restraint.

Where Eve was impulse, she was contemplation.

Where Eve was confusion, she was clarity.

Where Eve was virtue-signaling, she was virtue.

Where Eve was slave, she was queen.

 

The Annunciation, Zanobi Strozzi

 

 

Doubting Thomas

April 7, 2024

The Incredulity of St. Thomas, Caravaggio

[Reposted]

FROM Dom Prosper Guéranger’s “Quasimodo Sunday,” The Liturgical Year:

“To return to our Apostle — Thomas had heard Magdalene, and he despised her testimony; he had heard Peter, and he objected to his authority; he had heard the rest of his fellow-Apostles and the two disciples of Emmaus, and no, he would not give up his own opinion. How many there are among us, who are like him in this! We never think of doubting what is told us by a truthful and disinterested witness, unless the subject touch upon the supernatural; and then, we have a hundred difficulties. It is one of the sad consequences left in us by original sin. Like Thomas, we would see the thing ourselves: that alone is enough to keep us from the fullness of the truth. We comfort ourselves with the reflection that, after all, we are Disciples of Christ; as did Thomas, who kept in union with his brother-Apostles, only he shared not their happiness. He saw their happiness, but he considered it to be a weakness of mind, and was glad that he was free from it! Read More »

 

It Was Worth It

April 6, 2024

 

Life in the Big Auditorium

April 6, 2024

ALAN writes:

Fifty-seven years ago, I sat alone in a high school auditorium during the noon hour and tried to read — not reading required for classes, but books of my own choice. It was hard to do that because elsewhere in that auditorium at that hour were other students who took delight in being loud and boisterous. I was never one of them. I purposely chose a seat on the other side of the auditorium to get as far away from them as I could.

I was not a joiner or a “group person”.  By 1967 I had graduated from loud and boisterous and never regretted it. I found something much better: Silence and solitude in which to think, read, question, weigh and consider in realms of knowledge, history, philosophy, science, and current events.

I did not realize it then, but I had discovered (and preferred) the interior voice at a time when cultural forces like the “mass media” and mass entertainment were doing their best to overwhelm or extinguish the interior voice.

I was not the only such individual in that school, but we added up to a tiny percentage of the school population. In the 1930s-’40s, most of that loud and boisterous crowd would have been working at some productive job.  But in the 1960s they were reveling in a form of prolonged childhood made possible for them by their too-lenient and too-accommodating parents, those in the so-called “greatest generation”.

Most of those in that generation said little and did even less to oppose the conversion of high schools, colleges, and universities into playpens for prolonged adolescence.

Those in the “greatest generation” believed in the 1960s that the future for their children looked bright and promising. I heard them say so at the New York World’s Fair in 1965. Read More »

 

Shifting the Blame

April 5, 2024

VIDEO link

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The Good Are Happy

April 4, 2024

Abraham Bloemaert, Landscape with Peasants resting; 1650

 PSALM 111

1. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord: he shall delight exceedingly in his commandments.
2. His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the righteous shall be blessed.
3. Glory and wealth shall be in his house: and his justice remaineth for ever and ever.
4. To the righteous a light is risen up in darkness: he is merciful, and compassionate and just.
5. Acceptable is the man that sheweth mercy and lendeth: he shall order his words with judgment:
6. Because he shall not be moved for ever.
7. The just shall be in everlasting remembrance: he shall not fear the evil hearing.
His heart is ready to hope in the Lord:

8. His heart is strengthened, he shall not be moved until he look over his enemies.
9. He hath distributed, he hath given to the poor: his justice remaineth for ever and ever: his horn shall be exalted in glory.
10. The wicked shall see, and shall be angry, he shall gnash with his teeth and pine away: the desire of the wicked shall perish.

 

 

Easter Thursday

April 4, 2024

Correggio, Noli Me Tangere; 1525

‘GOD is all-powerful and delights in showing himself in that which is weakest; he is infinitely good and glorious in rewarding such as love him. This explains how it was our Jesus gave to Magdalen and her companions the first proofs of his Resurrection, and so promptly consoled them. They were even weaker than the Bethlehem shepherds; they were, therefore, the objects of a higher preference. The Apostles themselves were weaker than the weakest of the earthly powers they were to bring into submission; hence they too were initiated into the mystery of Jesus’ triumph. But Magdalen and her companions had loved their Master even to the Cross and in his tomb, whereas the Apostles had abandoned him; they therefore had a better claim than the Apostles to Jesus’ generosity, and richly did he satisfy the claim.””

— Dom Prosper Guéranger, Thursday in Easter Week

 

 

Daffodils

April 4, 2024

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD
By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. Read More »