HYMN OF THE ANGELUS At morn, at noon, at twilight dim, Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and woe, in good and ill, Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee and thine. --- Edgar Allan Poe

  A collection of paintings and illustrations at my favorite art blog, It's About Time

PRESERVE, then, O husbands, a tender, constant and cordial love towards your wives, for the woman was drawn from that side of the first man which was nearest to his heart, to the end that she might be loved by him cordially and tenderly. The weaknesses and infirmities, whether bodily or spiritual, of your wives, ought not to provoke you to any sort of disdain, but rather to a sweet and loving compassion, for God has created them such, so that, since they are dependent upon you, you may receive more honour and respect thereby, and may have them as companions in such sort that you may be nevertheless their heads and superiors in authority. ---- St. Francis de Sales

A READER writes: Not certain how I came upon your blog, but I am so very interested in your thoughts. I am a working mother, first by naive, 90s liberated-young-woman choice and then by necessity, and now it's a given. There has never been a part of me, however, that did not wish I could stay home fully, and it is nice to learn from you how I can more fully relish my housewifely duties rather than resent them.

SOME MAY CALL last week’s fake massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida just atrocity propaganda aimed at dispossessing Americans of their guns. But I call it community theater and a needed platform for drama talent.

The 17-year-old student David Hogg has been all over the news since the bloodless massacre. Hogg is a handsome senior and as head of the school’s news television station is apparently no stranger to premeditated manipulation. (His father is a retired FBI agent. His mother, Rebecca Boldrick, reportedly has high level connections at CNN.) In his debut on the national stage, Hogg mostly executed highly polished performances on news programs, reciting the prepared script cleanly, including political talking points on gun control. Here he is at his best, calm and collected after carnage unimaginable to most of us, his hair perfectly coiffed: (more…)

THE Parkland shooting hoax had it all — except the excellent actor Harrison Hanks. (more…)

YOU HAVE to hand it to those involved in the staged shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Applause, please. Their performances have been top notch. These two sisters — the sisters Carbocci — do a fine job in this CNN interview on Friday, aided especially in the case of the teary-eyed Hannah by her thick, watery-lensed glasses, which make her tears all the more realistic. Hannah and Kaitlin recount the dramatic tale of how they exchanged 77 text messages during the eight-minute shooting. As Hannah lay under the teacher’s desk, she sent dozens of remarkably legible and coherent texts, mostly sentimental messages to her family. She wasn’t tense and alert to what was happening around her, as a normal person who might be shot any minute would be, she was sending messages to her sister. (more…)

A COMMENTER at Fellowship of the Minds writes:

My 14-year-old daughter got off the bus yesterday after school and we watched this [shooting in Parkland, Florida] unfold pretty much from the beginning, live. I have always talked to her about all the false flags and media manipulation over the years, she would laugh at me and roll her eyes especially after I called Sandy Hook a bunch of [nonsense], I never believed in the conspiracy stuff, until I was home and watched that live also on TV and I was like [what]!?!? (more…)

BEFORE Catholic neighborhoods were ethnically cleansed and Catholic worship consigned to the new catacombs. [Image source]

THE CONVERGENCE of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day was too much for the gun-grabbing massacre mimics to pass up. Yesterday’s supposed shooting of 17 students in Parkland, Florida has all the hallmarks of another Sandy Hook Hoax. Could it be real? The burden of proof is on those who say it was. Mere photos of parents and children crying do not prove any murders occurred. Nor, sadly, in this age of sinister secrecy and mass propaganda, do mere reports by government officials. (more…)

STEPHEN IPPOLITO writes from Australia:

Apart from the issues you and your commenters rightly flagged in your post on the Olympic games, it seems to me that another problem is that so few these days view competitive sporting spectacles through the lens of perspective and proportion – which is how properly-formed and thinking adults naturally view everything.

Too many now look care about sporting displays for the superficial appeal: valuing the mere mechanical exercise of showing who can run the fastest or  jump the highest or hit a fuzzy ball most accurately. To do so is to miss the true point and value of sport entirely.

Unless the mechanical exercise displays some higher transcendental value then sports are nothing more than childrens’ games played by grown ups. There is a word that stands for the process of imbuing physical activity with transcendent value. I heard it a lot when growing up but it is now seldom heard, if at all: sportsmanship. (more…)

EVERYONE reading this now will be gone in a hundred years. So will their relatives and friends. All will vanish, including the greatest of accomplishments. The only permanent act that you or anyone else performs in this world is prayer, or those things that lead to prayer: AH, foolish man, why do you plan to live long when you are not sure of living even a day? How many have been deceived and suddenly snatched away! How often have you heard of persons being killed by drownings, by fatal falls from high places, of persons dying at meals, at play, in fires, by the sword, in pestilence, or at the hands of robbers! Death is the end of everyone and the life of man quickly passes away like a shadow. Who will remember you when you are dead? Who will pray for you? Do now, beloved, what you can, because you do not know when you will die, nor what your fate will be after death. Gather for yourself the riches of immortality while you have time. Think of nothing but your salvation. Care only for the things of God. Make friends for yourself now by honoring the saints of God, by imitating their actions, so that when you depart this life they may receive you into everlasting dwellings. Keep yourself as a stranger here on earth, a pilgrim whom its affairs do not concern at all. Keep your heart free…

DANIEL McADAMS writes:

The Olympic Games are these days just another opportunity for the warfare state to push pro-war propaganda.

Who can forget just four years ago, where the games at Sochi in Russia provided a venue for US commentators to relentlessly pummel everything and anything Russian. It was the pre-Russiagate psychological preparation of battlefield, brought to you by the military-industrial complex that pulls the strings of its mainstream media puppets.

This year the target is still Russia, whose athletes innocent of doping are still forbidden from wearing their country’s colors or being identified as citizens of that country. It seems Orwellian.

But the big target of the warmongers in this year’s Olympics is North Korea. Neocons — and even many “non-interventionists,” “libertarians,” and even “progressives” — have worked themselves into a frenzy simply because the North Korean leader has sent his sister down to “turn on a charm offensive” with the South in hopes of an ultimate reunification of the long-divided country. How DARE Kim’s sister be allowed to observe at the games! “The North Koreans are killing millions of their own people, they need regime change!” (more…)

KYLE writes:

The National Portrait Gallery unveiled two new additions to the presidential art collection today: Barack and Michelle Obama. The new portraits confirm again that this nation made a grave error in assuming this man would be a “racial healer.”

The pictures have been described as “breaking tradition” with presidential portraits of the past. The primary portrait shows a seated Barack Obama, arms folded in lap, enveloped by a wall of greenery and flowers blooming around him. Michelle’s portrait, equally garish, shows her seated in a long, flowing dress with black and gray triangular designs. The commissioned artists, both African American, have portfolios that exclusively feature African Americans. Both artists have been candid with how much race influences their style and choice of subject matter. Surprise–their work is critical of white people.

Kehinde Wiley, an artist from Los Angeles and painter of Barack’s portrait, has painted images of black women holding the severed head of white women on at least two occasions. [Ed. — He is shown above making a Masonic hand sign — too obviously.] (more…)

IT IS WRONG and immoral to watch the Olympic Games currently taking place in Peongchang, South Korea. When on our own, we should avoid them like the plague. We should avoid them even though the participants often make great sacrifices and exhibit true athletic excellence that may be thrilling and inspiring to witness. The athletes are not to blame for the decadent, increasingly occult atmosphere of Olympic competition. It is wrong to watch the games for the following reasons:

** The athletes dress and sometimes perform with extreme immodesty, whether they are wearing form-fitting skiing outfits or skimpy skating costumes. This immodesty is especially degrading of the women athletes.

** The training of Olympic athletes has reached an inhuman level of supposedly scientific fine-tuning that too often physically harms participants. There is a freakish quality to the Olympic ideal of athletic excellence.

** The Olympic ceremonies are riddled with occultism. (See more here.) The public, international worship of Satan is the end game.

** The games celebrate multiculturalism not true diversity, especially when it comes to Western nations.

** The intense commercialism of the games is contrary to the spirit of amateur athletics. The games are too much about money and promote indebtedness.

** The Olympics create ugly and expensive buildings (see here, here and here) that often become ghost towns afterward, such as the $51 billion Sochi Olympic park.

** The nations gathered to foster international harmony give no recognition to the only source of true peace and harmony: God and the Mystical Body of Christ on earth. The Olympics are a manifestation of One World-ism, which fosters apocalyptic conflict. (more…)

  "Paganism regards woman as a slave, and this is the result of failure to appreciate every human being as a distinct, living personality. When personality is overlooked, a slave ceases to be an intelligent being, and becomes merely a thing, or at best a domestic animal. Where woman is regarded as the slave of her husband, polygamy results, for he may have several slaves and consequently several wives. ** The number of his wives and slaves is as unimportant as the number of his domestic animals and of the utensils employed in his business. A further result of this theory is that marriage ceases to be permanent. A worn-out utensil is thrown away, a worthless slave is got rid of in one way or another, and so is an animal which is no longer required. If the wife is nothing but a chattel belonging to the husband, he can keep her or dispose of her as he chooses. "Someone may feel inclined to exclaim that all this has nothing to do with us; no wife is now her husband's slave. Of course she is not legally, but is she not sometimes practically a slave? Do not men allow their wives to toil in order to support the family? Do none amongst us heap upon women cares and burdens such as the men alone are qualified to bear? Men are very apt to relieve themselves of their troubles; and women…

THIS anecdote appeared this week in the Catholic Tradition Newsletter and is reprinted with the kind permission of its author, the Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier:

ON a flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles this past week there was a woman who asked if she could take the seat next to me. Being on a plane and without observing who it was in particular, I replied out of courtesy that it was fine. After she had settled in she made it known that she was a porn star and comic stand-up and wanted to use the opportunity to sit next to a priest to get material for one of her next gigs. Being that now I had little choice but to be patient—she didn’t seem to be immodestly attired besides pants—I went on with my work and prayers. This woman soon began to extol her work in the sex industry and her rise in the stand-up comedy stage with a male neighbor and, further, how she wanted to make her lifestyle as acceptable in society as the LGBT had made theirs. She explained that when she was a teenager she left her mother because her mother was too strict and religious. She went to live with her father, a Freemason she said, who always approved of whatever she wanted to do. She also expressed she was disappointed that her mother still refused to approve of her lifestyle and even now would refuse to accept whatever she sent because it was gotten as a result of her immoral trade. (more…)

  "IMMACULATE Heart of Mary, perfect Model of Sanctity, take my soul and mold it according to thy sublime perfections. Purify my heart and set it free from every obstacle to holiness, so that detached from self and the pleasures of sense, thou mayest adorn it with the virtues and perfection of thy own Immaculate Heart. Then, lead my soul to that divine intimacy which alone can satisfy the immense capacity for love and union with which God has created the human heart. From thee, I confidently hope for this grace of holiness, and I entrust my eternal destiny to thy Immaculate Heart."