“We need to push for the opposite of this massive and Orwellian increase in centralisation, by decentralising money power. Hence the creation of community banks across countries, operated and controlled locally, accountable to local communities, and not-for-profit. “The best working example is Germany, where for the past almost 200 years about 70 per cent of banking has been in the hands of not-for-profit community banks.” -- Prof. Richard Werner
THE CHRISTMAS season is by no means over. Or rather, the commercial Christmas season is over but the liturgical season continues until the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin on February 2. Please don't let your observance of Christmas be desupernaturalized by following the schedule determined by the retail world, which has no interest in Christmas once the gift-buying frenzy has passed. Here is a wonderful version of "Maria Wiegenlied" or "Mary's Lullaby" sung by the soprano Kathleen Battle. An English translation of the German song: Amid the roses Mary sits and rocks her Jesus-Child While amid the treetops sighs the breeze so warm and mild And soft and sweetly sings a bird upon the bough Ah, Baby, dear one Slumber now Happy is Thy laughter; holy is Thy silent rest Lay Thy head in slumber fondly on Thy mother's breast Ah, Baby, dear one Slumber now
There were no moral grays in the Hoppy westerns. Evil was always depicted as evil. Lawbreakers knew perfectly well that they were doing wrong and expected to be trailed and punished if caught. Sob stories, evasions, and excuses were so unacceptable in the moral code upheld in the Hoppy westerns that villains never even offered them.
ALAN writes:
One day in 1955, my mother took a few snapshots as I stood on the white stone steps in our front yard wearing a black shirt, black pants, and cowboy boots, ready for western action with my two-gun holster. At such moments, the heroism of TV western stars like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger was uppermost in that 5-year-old boy’s mind. “Hoppy” was one of those heroes. I vaguely recall having a Hopalong Cassidy writing tablet or jigsaw puzzle in the early 1950s. A retired bookseller friend of mine told me how fondly she remembers watching the Hoppy westerns when she was a girl and hearing his wonderful, distinctive laugh.
William Boyd appeared as “Hopalong Cassidy” in 66 western films, all of which were filmed in black and white. He appeared in most of them dressed in dark shirt, dark trousers, dark hat, and dark boots, a stunning contrast with his silver-white hair and white horse Topper. Sixty-six motion pictures between 1935 and 1948, and not a word of profanity. Select at random any 66 motion pictures made since 1965 and tell me how many include no profanity.
The story of actor William Boyd and the Hoppy character is a fascinating one. After achieving stardom in the silent film era, Boyd became very fond of wine and women. At one point he was the victim of some undeserved bad publicity concerning a different actor with the same name. (more…)
AN article by George Holiday at American Renaissance describes the decline of a Catholic high school. Entitled “How Blacks Changed Our School,” it would be better titled, “How the Novus Ordo Church Changed Our School.”
None of the outrageous misbehavior by disruptive black students recounted vividly by Holiday (language warning) would have occurred 60 years ago, when Catholic school students sometimes received corporal punishment for minor disobediences such as not having their hands folded and a spirit of reverence came from the liturgy. Catholics were also having plenty of children (as the Church taught them to) so there was no need to recruit or pander to non-Catholics.
Sports were not idolized (Holiday mentions how that has contributed to the school’s decline) and blacks were also not held to different standards, as is described here. Holiday writes: (more…)
END-of-year articles are so often founded on the assumption, as Nicholas Pell writes, that humanity is tending toward moral progress. The evidence is to the contrary. Pell states in The Washington Post (of all places):
The broad assumption in the “current year” argument is that time inevitably ticks toward moral betterment. It’s a view that’s been espoused in different forms by the likes of Immanuel Kant (who wrote about “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”), Karl Marx (who talked about emerging consciousness) and Martin Luther King Jr. (“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” ). If you’re a progressive, you probably take moral progress as an article of faith.
If you’re a conservative, a member of the political right or maybe just a working-class person who pines for a sunnier past, however, there’s a decent chance you’re skeptical of this concept. Mockery of the “current year” argument — especially as regularly employed by comedian John Oliver — has become a meme in some far-right circles. But you don’t need to be on the political extreme to perceive a world in decline. And in this context, 2016 was not one of those “meandering points of bewilderment” that King described but the continuation of a troubling trend. (more…)
The Book of Hours, Flemish miniaturist (1470-1500)
I HAVE been in the sick bay on and off for a couple of days, but I wanted to get to my computer this morning and wish you a very Happy New Year. May you and your families have peace and many blessings. May your homes be preserved from all evils and misfortunes this year.
New Year’s Day is a secular holiday, but it has beautiful mystical significance as well. Today is the Feast of the Circumcision. A little primer:
Why is this day so called?
Because the secular year begins with this day, as the ecclesiastical year begins with the first Sunday of Advent.
What should we do on this day?
An offering for the new year should be made to God, asking His grace that we may spend the year in a holy manner, for the welfare of the soul.
Why do we wish each other a “happy new year?” (more…)
A 17-year-old boy is the new face of Cover Girl cosmetics. And the National Women's Hockey League now accepts "men." Writes Mike King: The subversive war on the institutions of marriage and family has been raging for decades, and with devastating results. But this war on sexual identity strikes even deeper. You see, normal men are not attracted to butchy manly women; and normal women are not attracted to girly boys. By tampering with natural roles -- transgender confusion being the most extreme manifestation -- the Globalists are screwing up the minds and spirits of our young people so badly that most of them will never attract (beyond the momentarily physical, if even that) and get married in the first place. Loneliness, alienation, depression and state servitude await the vast majority of millennial and subsequent generations to follow -- and it is all by design.
A LIST of pro-Trump hate-crimes has been allegedly debunked. The list includes the "Texas family whose car and motorcycle were burned, and whose garage was spray-painted with “n—-r lover” and a "University of Louisiana at Lafayette student who now admits she fabricated her claim that men wearing Trump hats attacked her, knocked her down, and stole her headscarf."
CHORUS
Come we shepherds, whose blest sight
Hath met love’s noon in nature’s night;
Come lift up our loftier song
And wake the sun that lies too long.
To all the world of well-stol’n joy
He slept; and dreamt of no such thing.
While we found out Heaven’s fairer eye
And kissed the cradle of our King.
Tell him he rises now, too late
To show us aught worth looking at. (more…)
MAY you be as simple as the shepherds, may you be as wise as the Kings. May the Divine Baby honored this glorious day help you know the approachability of God. Because by the mystery of the Word made flesh the light of Thy glory hath shone anew upon the eyes of our mind; that while we acknowledge Him to be God seen by men, we may be drawn by Him to the love of things unseen. -- From the Preface to the Christmas Mass I send wishes for a happy and blessed Christmas to readers of this site.
“Encountering a mortally-wounded B-17 limping back to England, Luftwaffe ace Franz Stigler anticipated an easy kill and another opportunity to avenge his brother’s death at the opening of WWII. As he approached the virtually helpless American plane [four days before Christmas in 1943], however, he saw the faces of the dead and wounded crewmen. Then, Stigler’s eyes met those of pilot Charles Brown. Despite the potentially severe consequences of letting an enemy plane escape, Stigler felt that he had to answer a higher call of honor . . . mercy. (more…)
The Christmas Truce of 1914 is an extremely inspiring story. It is an inspiration to Christians the world over that those soldiers on that cold night in Flanders Fields, initiated by the Germans, came together in a spirit of chivalrous brotherhood with their opponents on the other side of the trenches and laid down their weapons in honor of the Birthday of the Prince of Peace.
It was perhaps the greatest example in world history of a large number of men, particularly soldiers, following Christ’s commandment to be peacemakers, as you can see in this New American article. [More at Lew Rockwell.] The 2005 Joyeux Noel movie doesn’t show that the German soldiers took great risks to get the British to agree to the truce.
This story needs to be better told as an inspiration to all, especially in the dangerous and eerily similar world we find ourselves in exactly 100 years later, with the same Rothschild bankster forces that started the First World War now trying to start the third. The decent Germans were utterly demonized by malicious British and American hate propaganda, falsely accused of ‘bayonetting Belgium babies,’ raping nuns, crucifying British prisoners, and creating ‘cadaver factories’ and using the body parts of Allied/Entente soldiers for industrial use.
This utterly depraved lying about the German nation is largely responsible for the world we live in today. (more…)
