MORE AND MORE Catholics are coming to the inescapable realization that Jorge Bergoglio, aka "Pope" Francis, is --- to use an old-fashioned, but indispensable word --- a heretic. Very few, however, have drawn the logical conclusions from this fact: 1. By divine law a public heretic cannot be pope. 2. The root of Francis's heresies lies in the Vatican II Council, which is responsible for the less obvious but no less outrageous heresies of his immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. 3. Francis's open contempt for Church teachings on sexual morality has pushed many Catholics over the edge and prompted these latest accusations of heresy, but equally egregious are Vatican II heresies on the nature of the Church, on religious liberty, on ecumenism, on the historical events of the Incarnation and more, of which all the Vatican II claimants to the papacy, not just Francis, are guilty. The papal chair is empty. Papal succession continues in the material sense only. Jorge Bergoglio doesn't even want to be pope. See more from Fr. Anthony Cekada here and here. He writes: Vatican II represented the triumph of the modernist heresy, dominated as it was by theologians who were, as the Louvain professor Jürgen Mettepennigen said, “inheritors of modernism.” The poisoned seeds of theological error were sown during the Council with all its yes/buts, existentialist blathering, equivocations, ambiguities, work-arounds, silences, poisoned neologisms, redefinitions, false equivalences, destroyed distinctions and the rest. Bergoglio is…

FROM “The Culture of Tyranny” by Joe Sobran:

Thought-crimes differ from ordinary crimes in several respects.

First, they aren’t defined. Nobody knows exactly what “racism” is; it can mean anything the accuser wants it to mean. And it rarely refers to overt acts; usually it refers to the alleged thoughts or attitudes of the accused.

Second, nothing has to be proved — and since the word has no clear definition, nothing can be proved. So the accuser bears no burden of proof, as he would in cases of ordinary crimes. The accused is presumed guilty as long as the accusation is sufficiently strident. And, given the vagueness of the charge, he can’t prove he isn’t racist. (more…)

THE NEW YORK Times plays up the racial angle to the max with the reported birth of a son to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle:

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex — better known as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle — on Monday welcomed their first child, a boy, the first multiracial baby in the British monarchy’s recent history.

Reporters Ellen Barry and Palko Karasz hyperventilate over the implications for multicultural Britain:

For many, the new baby’s importance will be indelibly linked with race.

Britain is 87 percent white, but multiracial children make up its fastest-growing ethnic category, and will soon be the country’s largest minority group. The entry of Meghan Markle, the descendant of plantation slaves, into the royal family resonated deeply with many people of African descent, who almost immediately began to anticipate the birth of the couple’s first child.

The future is bright for America too. There is positive jubilation that the child is not white:

“It’s hopeful for people of my kids’ generation to see a princess of mixed race,” said Lise Ragbir, who is black and has written of her own experience raising a lighter-skinned child.

Repeatedly, beginning when her daughter was 6 months old, she said, strangers have approached her to ask, “Is that your baby?”

“It will be such a recognizable baby that it could shift people’s awareness,” said Ms. Ragbir, 45, a gallery director in Austin, Tex. “When one of the most famous families in the world does not have the same skin tone, people might pause before asking a stranger, ‘Is that your baby?’”

And then there’s this queer statement from the alleged father, Prince Harry:

(more…)

EVERY SPRING he would emerge from his underground cave and bust open the lattice. He would look out over his kingdom and plan his dining experiences, his digging adventures, his waddling trips through field and highway, his naps in the sun. He was as fat and sturdy as any creature who lives off the land could be. They don’t call them ground hogs for nothing.

Last week, we took down the old shed he used for cover. We are trying to upgrade — and the changes don’t include him.

Where will he go?

Fatso probably has little anxiety about his survival. I am sure he is still alive. I am sure he is as confident as he has always been. The sun and the earth will provide for him. And so will lots of hard-working gardeners. From spring to spring, he is at home in the world. His life is a lesson in domestic ease. (more…)

FROM the 1950 pamphlet “Know Your Enemy” by Maj. Robert H. Williams, an American military intelligence officer:

Revolutionary political activities in the [Russian] ghettos began to be organized in the early part of last century. So “promising” was the ghetto force that Heinrich Heine, Jewish-German poet, leader of the Communist youth and collaborator of Karl Marx, foretold with breathtaking, if sadistic, accuracy in the 1840’s the future destruction of Russia by Communism:

“Communism, though little discussed now and loitering in hidden garrets on miserable straw pellets, is the dark hero destined for a great, if temporary, role in the modern tragedy ….

“It would be war, the ghastliest war of destruction . . . The second act is the European and the World Revolution, the great duel between the destitute and the aristocracy of wealth; and in that there will be no mention of either nationality or religion; there will be only one fatherland, the globe, and only one faith, that in happiness on earth . . . How could the drama end? (more…)

E. MICHAEL JONES discusses his book Home Alone: A Neighbor’s Thoughts on Pete Buttigieg. Jones and Our Interesting Times host Tim Kelly talk about why South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is preparing to run for president. The book’s blurb on Amazon:

Presidential aspirant South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg poses the question “What would my next-door neighbors think of all this?” in his political autobiography Shortest Way Home. In Home Alone, E. Michael Jones, who has lived with his family on the very block where Buttigieg grew up since before Buttigieg was born, answers that question, and his answer is devastating. For “virtually every … claim in [his] book, the facts stubbornly resist the paradigm Mayor Pete brings to bear to interpret them,” writes Jones, as he picks apart the fallacies in Buttigieg’s self-serving autobiography. After reading Home Alone, you’ll never look at Buttigieg or his presidential hopes in the same way again.

(more…)

MAINE has becomes the seventh state to replace Columbus Day with "Indigenous People's Day." The Anti-New York Times reports on this romanticizing of the past before the Big, Bad White Man showed up: Even the most libtarded academic eggheads do not deny the brutality and human sacrificing that was going on throughout pre-Columbian times. They just downplay or ignore it. But it was this brutality which enabled the Spaniards, with such ridiculously small numbers, to overthrow these vicious tyrants. That's because so many oppressed natives were eager to join the ranks of the Spaniards and throw off the murderous yoke of their Aztec, Mayan and Incan tormentors. The fact is, were it not for the arrival of Whitey and the Christian doctrine, these demonic mass-torture-murders would likely still being going on today. And that is why we, Whites and descendants of natives alike, should continue to honor the voyage of Columbus and those who came after him.  

  Sweet Stewardess of God, thy prayers We beg, who are God's ransomed heirs. O Virgin-born! O Flesh Divine! Cleanse us, and make us wholly thine. Mary, dear Mistress of my heart, What thou wouldst have me do, impart. Thou, who wert pure as driven snow, Make me as thou wert here below. O Queen of Heaven! obtain for me  Thy glory there one day to see. Oh then and there, on that bright day,  To me thy womb's chaste Fruit display. Source

Note: I have been unusually busy fixing up our house, which was built in 1953 and has all the problems that houses built quickly in that era have. Due to the mess, we have had no internet or phone connection for almost two weeks. I hope to resume regular blogging shortly, as soon as this exhausting and rewarding effort is over. 

In the meantime, a reader whom many of you know from this site was kind enough to notice that this month is the tenth anniversary of this blog.

Alan writes:

This month marks the tenth anniversary of The Thinking Housewife.

It was at Lawrence Auster’s blog View from the Right that I first read the name Laura Wood.  Much of what Mr. Auster wrote seemed eminently reasonable to me.  He was out-of-step with the contemporary zeitgeist fully as much as I was.  Reading many of Laura Wood’s comments at VFR and then discovering The Thinking Housewife made it clear to me that she, too, had strayed far from Right-Think and Right-Speak (which is to say:  Left-Think and Left-Speak). (more…)

SPRING QUIET Gone were but the Winter, Come were but the Spring, I would go to a covert Where the birds sing; Where in the whitethorn Singeth a thrush, And a robin sings In the holly-bush. Full of fresh scents Are the budding boughs Arching high over A cool green house; Full of sweet scents, And whispering air Which sayeth softly: ‘‘We spread no snare; ‘‘Here dwell in safety, Here dwell alone, With a clear stream And a mossy stone. ‘‘Here the sun shineth Most shadily; Here is heard an echo Of the far sea, Though far off it be.’’ ---- Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)  

ALAN writes: “When people sing by themselves less, write poetry less, play musical instruments less, they finally end by thinking for themselves less.” --- Eric Sloane, The Second Barrel, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969, p. 90 Pre-packaged music, pre-packaged poetry, and pre-packaged thought:  A winning trifecta for modernists.  

PAUL MICHAEL CLARK writes:

Given your post about The Brady Bunch and prime-time propaganda, you might find interesting the following extract from Barry Williams’s memoir Growing Up Brady. Mr. Williams, who played the eldest son on that show, here recalls a pre-production meeting between Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz and ABC bosses regarding Carol Brady, the mother character:

“Sherwood and the network locked horns over the fate of Carol’s first husband. Sherwood wanted him alive, well, and happily divorced from Carol, but the network demanded his death. Sherwood met with the brass, smiled, nodded, and was extremely polite, but paid no attention to the suggestions: he left the fate of the girls’ father uncertain. You may notice she never refers to the guy as being dead. In Sherwood’s mind, Carol Brady was television’s first divorcee!”

As an unwitting chronicler of social decline, however, Barry Williams displays a curious ignorance about his era’s TV history, odd for a man whose fame is buried there. Seven years before The Brady Bunch first appeared, actress Vivian Vance made her debut as divorced mother Viv Bagley on CBS’s The Lucy Show. This was no cameo, but rather a multi-season, co-star role as sidekick to Lucille Ball’s title character. In addition, a couple of years after Miss Vance left the program, she reprised “Viv” for guest appearances in which the character was by then “remarried.”  (Off screen, Vivian Vance was on her fourth “marriage” while Lucille Ball had recently divorced Desi Arnaz. To locate The Lucy Show in our cultural timeline, it premiered the same month as did Vatican II.) (more…)

MICHAEL from New Jersey writes:

I am enjoying the posts of Eric R. (here, here and here) who seems to have become the resident music critic at THW dot net.

I quite agree, “classical music” is ambiguous for the reasons stated; and that “European art music” is the preferred term.

But surely not “Western European….” That I have never seen. Where does that leave Brahms? Vienna is not Western Europe. Chopin? Warsaw is not Western Europe. Dvorak? Prague is not Western Europe. Vivaldi? Venice is not Western Europe, and the whole of Italy is not either.

“European art music” is simple, descriptive, accurate, basically coterminous with the practice of written music — musical notation being a European invention dating from ca 1035. (more…)

A MOTHER of five on the verge of death in 1925 was suddenly restored to health as the Easter bells rang. Shield of Faith tells the story of Padre Pio and the sick woman's miraculous recovery.  

  IN CASE you missed it: the architect who oversaw restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in 2013 and was chief architect of France's historic monuments says the ancient oak timbers of the cathedral could not have ignited and burned so quickly without "a lot of kindling:" “Oak that is 800-years-old is very hard – try to burn it,” Mouton said. “Old oak, it is not easy at all. You would need a lot of kindling to succeed… It stupefies me.” Asked to present an explanation for how the blaze spread so quickly and with such strength, Mouton asserted that there were no additional precautions that could have been taken to ensure such a “quick” incineration could be prevented. “In the Nineties, we updated all the electrical wiring of Notre Dame,” Mouton said. “So there is no possibility of a short circuit. We updated to conform with the contemporary norms, even going very far – all the detection and protection systems against fire in the cathedral.” Mouton also revealed that there are two watchmen on duty around the clock who monitor for any chance of fire, adding that the technical and security measures taken to protect monuments like Notre Dame are unprecedented. [Source] The New York Times blamed the fire on Mouton. This video supposedly shows the effect of a blow torch on old oak. Hmm, the fire may have been a case of "some people doing something." In related news, a…

  I WAS walking through the lobby of an "assisted living" facility about two years ago when I saw a touching and beautiful sight. Someone had brought in a glass tank filled with straw and placed it on a table in the lobby, where the residents gathered to watch television and stare off into the distance. Racing about in little circles inside the tank were several small, fuzzy, energetic, and bewildered baby chicks. An old woman -- partly balding, no longer in possession of her full mind, clearly out of touch with the important and complicated world beyond this place -- sat in front of the tank, which was lit with a warming incubator light. She was riveted. Every particle of her being, it seemed, was concentrated on the sight before her. Sitting as close to the tank as possible and hunching over to see as much as she could, she stared at the chicks without moving or speaking. It was genius and great kindness on the part of whoever brought the chicks there. They were filled with an energy and newness the old woman no longer possessed. And, like her, their existence was caught up in the tiniest of things. The sight of them gave her new life. We all possess within us the capacity for rebirth. Whether we are old or young, rich or poor, happy or sad, smart or senile, we have the capacity for resurrection. In…

  "JESUS on the cross! O stupendous sight for heaven and earth of mercy and of love! To see the Son of God dying through pain upon a cross of infamy, condemned as a malefactor to so bitter and shameful a death, in order to save sinful men from the penalty that was due to them! This sight has ever been, and will always be, the subject of the contemplation of the saints, and has led them willingly to renounce all the goods of the earth, and to embrace with great courage sufferings and death, that they might make themselves more pleasing to a God who died for love of them. The sight of Jesus despised between two thieves has made them love contempt far more than worldings have loved the honors of the world. Beholding Jesus covered with wounds upon the cross, they hold in abhorrence the pleasures of sense, and have endeavored to afflict their flesh in order to unite their sufferings to the sufferings of the Crucified. Beholding the patience of our Savior in his death, they have joyfully accepted the most painful sicknesses, and even the most cruel torments that tyrants can inflict. Lastly, from beholding the love of Jesus Christ in being willing to sacrifice his life for us in a sea of sorrows, they have sought to sacrifice to him all that they had, possessions, children, and even life itself." --- St. Alphonsus De…