DON VINCENZO writes:

A restaurant in Italy is offering a discount to families with well-behaved children. It’s a different approach in dealing with wayward children in restaurants.

Truth is, I’ve never witnessed the kind of behavior described in this article, but there is always a “first.” I find it amusing that the owner has devised his strategy of dealing with children without the experience of having his own. (more…)

ONE OF the proofs of the immortality of the human soul is the fact that most people in history have believed in it. Even when their own culture denied it, the common people often embraced it. Perhaps God conveyed this knowledge to the earliest humans and they passed it down from generation to generation so that, while it appears in many forms, it can never disappear or fail to become a common opinion, even if ill-defined and vague. In the modern world, many people say they believe the soul is annihilated after death, but at the same time they sometimes talk, especially at funerals, as if it will live on, as if they cannot truly accept what they say they believe. This constant gravitation toward the belief in immortality suggests that it is true.

The Ancient Egyptians had a very strong sense of immortality and, as is well known, the tombs of the wealthy were intended to be actual dwelling places during the afterlife. Here is one of the remarkable true-to-life scenes that decorated the Tomb of Meketre, the royal chief steward who began his career under King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II during the Middle Kingdom. Entire model scenes such as this were created out of wood for the homes of the prosperous dead so that they would have a comfortable afterlife: (more…)

P. L. FORD writes:

I have been reading your website every day for the past couple of years. The information you provide has been very helpful and encouraging as I make my journey from the Protestant to the Catholic Church. You appear to be a very traditional Catholic, as evidenced by the content of your site, so I value your opinion and beg a few minutes of your time. I live in rural West Georgia where there are few Catholic Churches, however there is a very nice church not far from us although it is a Novus Ordo Church. Is it wrong to attend the Novus Ordo Mass?

My wife and I were both raised in the Southern Baptist Church and unfortunately both have a previous marriage that ended in divorce so we cannot be confirmed into the Catholic Church. I am 64 and my wife is 62 years of age. Since the fall of 2014 I have been reading and studying the Catholic faith and discovered that I am Catholic in my beliefs. The Protestant church is becoming more difficult to accept and attend and it seems so wrong not to attend any church at all. There are no traditional Catholic Churches within a few hundred miles from our home.

Your opinion is valuable based on the wonderful articles you have posted on your website.

Thank you for your time to read this. (more…)

HISTORICAL revisionist Michael Hoffman considers the 72nd anniversary of the Allied firebombing of the German city of Dresden in which an estimated 100,000 civilians were killed.

STUDENTS at a small Pennsylvania college are wearing white puzzle-piece symbols to remind themselves that they are beneficiaries of "white privilege." The idea came from a Lutheran pastor named Barb.

Litany of the Love of God
(Composed by Pope Pius VI, 1717 – 1799)

Lord have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father in heaven,
Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
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   DEAR Young Lovers, I am thinking of you today. I hope your troubles are few. May the Sovereign Heart enlighten your hearts. Be brave, young lovers. Red is for lovers -- and for martyrs too. I wish you -- whoever you are -- a Happy St. Valentine's Day.  

  DANISH composer Bo Holten's First Snow: You lucid, lustrous, tender snow, Who paint the landscape all one shade, The living, dead, ugly, fair, You color all things white. You fled your mother's tender arms Into the air as blueish mist; Turned home again one blizzard night, So pure, but grim and cold.

NO field, including obscure specialties in mathematics, is left untouched by feminist social engineering.

STEPHEN IPPOLITO writes from Australia:

I do hope this finds you and your family well.

A reader’s comment to you on February 7th under the post “Disgusting Pictures” was timely for me as I happened to be on the brink of writing to you at that time to express just the opposite impression of your site.

One of the most important of the many edifying features of The Thinking Housewife, it seems to me, is your regular publishing of beautiful works of religious-themed art, especially of the Madonna and Child, for which you must be commended.

As someone who daily struggles to maintain, let alone to grow, his faith, I particularly enjoy the  life-affirming devotional art you sprinkle through the site depicting Our Lady and Lord together.

Such images recall to my mind the beautiful thoughts expressed upon our Lady’s nature by both St Maximilian Kolbe and St Louis Marie de Montfort. The former ventured of her: ” The creature most completely filled with God himself, was the immaculate...” whilst the latter observed: “She is an echo of God,  speaking and repeating only ‘God’. If you say ‘Mary’ she says ‘God’ “.

These are, surely, succinct expressions of the very essence of Our Lady’s  nature and the key to the standpoint from which she must always be approached, namely that Our Lady’s will is always and wholly at one with God’s own.

We know this to be true because we first see it in her initial meeting with the divine in the form of the Angel Gabriel at the annunciation when, according to St Luke, Our Lady freely consented to God’s revealed plan for her to bear and rear Christ: “Behold I am the servant of the Lord; Let it be done unto me according to your word” and because we have the credible modern testimony of numerous seers such as the little shepherds at Fatima and of St Bernadette at Lourdes that Our Lady even today steps back into human time to bring to us her son’s wishes and counsel.

It is for this reason that I was very disappointed, although hardly surprised,  to recently read  a newspaper’s  interview with the playwright of the latest “important” play to open here, staged by what is arguably Australia’s premier theatre company. I don’t know if the subject would be of interest to your readers or not, but here are my thoughts on the play for what they are worth:

“The Testament of Mary“, based on the book by Colm Toibin, purports to explore the truth behind Our Lady’s own lived experience, as a woman and mother,  in the face of Our Lord’s final sufferings and sacrifice on the cross.

The subject matter is, of course, not necessarily objectionable of itself, as we know that Our Lady was and remains a fully human and loving mother and a person of the most exquisite sensibility and therefore must have felt immense pain as she witnessed her son’s final sufferings. Although generally a believer in the old saw that one should trust to the tale rather than to the teller, and so I will often see a play or film that has been poorly reviewed in order to judge it for myself, Toibin is so emphatic in this interview about what he was trying to achieve with the play and about how he perceives Mary, that I could not bring myself to attend it and make no apology for that. (more…)

WHILE many Americans want to stem the invasion of Mexican immigrants, the man they have elected to the presidency appears to have a personal grudge against the country. The language of his comments during the campaign were often hostile to the Mexican government itself, as if government operatives were actually sending criminals into America. Fred Reed offers a theory for this hostility: Trump was shortchanged in a business deal there.

The repeated assertion that Mexico is cheating the US, exploiting it, being unfair, (Oh! Poor widdle Colossus of the North) is either garishly ignorant, personally vindictive or, more likely, both. Mexico is governmentally weak, corrupt, and utterly under the thumb of the United States. Is NAFTA a Mexican plot against the US? Actually it forced Mexican farmers into competition with hopelessly superior American agriculture and drove them into the cities, where there are no jobs. Along the border American maquiladoras pay poor Mexicans miserably low wages. Mexico crawls with DEA agents forced on it from the north and loses countless lives fighting America’s drug war. On and on. (more…)

  FRENCH presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that if she is elected in May, French citizens will not be able to hold simultaneous citizenship in Israel. In the United States, citizens of Israel may hold dual citizenship and even hold influential government posts. This is a common sense measure that prevents conflicts of interest. Trump should do the same. In Israel, one cannot become a citizen unless one can prove one is genetically Jewish. Le Pen is, of course, being accused of anti-Semitism. Citizens of the United States and all other countries outside the EU would also have to choose between citizenship in France and their home country, she said. See commentary on other recent developments in France, including the Le Pen ad above, at Galliawatch.

ANN CORCORAN at Refugee Resettlement Watch continues to report on Trump's suspension of the refugee influx: One more thing before I give you a few snips from the “chaos” news.  Don’t allow anyone to use the argument made at the end of this article that we only take a fraction compared to say Turkey or Pakistan. Our refugees become permanent citizens and those presently swamping those countries will not be accepted as citizens.  They will be expected to return to their own countries when the conflict ends. Mark my words, if this flow from Syria to America gets going full steam, as it has for Somalia, we will still be taking Syrians for decades no matter what happens in their homeland.

I HOPE I am the first to wish you and your families a most joyous and love-filled National Pizza Day!

This is a time to celebrate. A holiday established by the bigwigs in the Pizza Industrial Complex is indeed a special occasion. And celebrate you should. Instead of having just four slices today, have eight! Instead of giving your children just pizza bagels for breakfast and Pizza Crunchables for lunch, go on and have yummy pizza burgers (above) for dinner too. It’s the patriotic thing to do. Pizza may have originated in Italy, but America has devoted so much culinary creativity and capitalist energy to this dish that pizza, in its modern industrial form, can rightfully be said to be American, not Italian. Who needs home-cooked meals when you can have a hot dog pizza with FREE mustard dip instead?! Who needs Mom when Papa Johns is just a phone call away? Pizza stands for progress.

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  "From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed toward that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that." --- Emma Goldman, "Marriage and Love," 1914 [BRIEF AND INSUFFICIENT COMMENT: Have you met many women, except those suffering from unfortunate handicaps, who are mute? A great many women excel -- far more than men -- at expressing their feelings and interests. As for Goldman's comparison of women preparing for marriage to animals, need we say more about the thinking of this Marxist bully whose writings are still disseminated in institutions of "higher" education throughout the American Waste Land?]

  "IF there were to be any difference between a girl's education and a boy's, I should say that of the two the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects; and that her range of literature should be, not more, but less frivolous."  --- John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, 1865

KATHERINE writes:

Regarding your reader who objected to your posting the picture of Lady Gaga and the reference to Mike King’s website — I applaud your gracious accommodation to the reader. And, of course, you do not recommend your website for children because of the serious and worrisome content.

Good grief! For that matter, I don’t recommend your website for me!!! I find the content too serious and worrisome, and I am 70. Same goes for Tomato Bubble.

You are so correct, however. You can’t “cover the cultural apocalypse without objectionable evidence.”

More disturbing content on your website: “Kabbala Comes to the White House.” Dr. Drolesky nails it. And that’s a really disgusting picture — LGBT for Trump. (more…)

OUR monetary system places great burdens on families and makes it difficult for men to be providers and women to be nurturers. Furthermore the policy of full employment is ineffective and unnecessary — and difficult to achieve with advanced technology, which eliminates many jobs. The basic problem is not simply jobs, but availability of money.

Michael Watson at the Clifford Hugh Douglas Institute for the Study and Promotion of Social Credit writes that there is a better way.

Social Credit, by wresting control of the overall policy of the monetary system from the private banks and placing it back in the hands of the public via the establishment of a National Credit Office, would break the monopoly of the private banks regarding the issuance of new money. The NCO’s new compensatory consumer credit (meant to balance the flow of incomes with the flow of prices) would be ‘debt-free’ and it would be issued in the form of a national or citizen’s dividend that is distributed equally to every individual, employed or unemployed, as a kind of credit for the work of the vast and abundant production made available by machinery. All citizens who receive the dividend are effectively shareholders in the total national production. The National Dividend will ensure at least basic economic security for individuals and by extension, their family units, without making employment a strict necessity. (more…)