IN Creator and Creature (1856), the Rev. Frederick Faber wrote:

… There is a hell already upon earth; there is something which is excommunicated from God’s smile. It is not altogether matter, not yet altogether spirit. It is not man only, nor Satan only, nor is it exactly sin. It is an infection, an inspiration, an atmosphere, a life, a coloring matter, a pageantry, a fashion, a taste, a witchery, an impersonal but a very recognisable system. None of these names suit it, and all of them suit it. Scripture calls it, “The World.” God’s mercy does not enter into it. All hope of its reconciliation with Him is absolutely and eternally precluded. Repentance is incompatible with its existence. The sovereignty of God has laid the ban of the empire upon it; and a holy horror ought to seize us when we think of it. Meanwhile its power over the human creation is terrific, its presence ubiquitous, its deceitfulness incredible. It can find a home under every heart beneath the poles, and it embraces with impartial affection both happiness and misery. It is wider than the catholic Church, and is masterful, lawless, and intrusive within it. It cannot be damned, because it is not a person, but it will perish in the general conflagration, and so its tyranny be over, and its place know it no more. We are living in it, breathing it, acting under its influences, being cheated by its appearances, and unwarily admitting its principles. Is it it not of the last importance to us that we should know something of this huge evil creature, this monstrous seabird of evil, which flaps its wings from pole to pole, and frightens the nations into obedience by its discordant cries? (more…)

"American cemeteries have developed creative ways to draw visitors, holding horror movie nights, concerts in mausoleums, fun runs and yoga classes in chapels. Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemeteries hosts bird walks, twilight tours, family fun nights, an annual dog day and designated times for Segway riders. In Bridgeport, Conn., people still stroll the pathways around the pond at Mountain Grove Cemetery to admire the flowering dogwood trees in the spring or the brilliant foliage in the fall." --- The New York Times, Jun. 7, 2016

ALAN writes:

The lawlessness depicted in the movie “Blackboard Jungle” (1955) did not exist in American public schools in the 1930s, nor in all-white schools or all-black schools in the 1940s, and the lawlessness that is found in public schools today did not exist in those schools in the 1960s.  The more power over schools that Americans have surrendered to their central government, the worse their schools have become.

Here is my chronology of 60 years of learned helplessness:

1956:  A five-month study of the effects of government-mandated racial integration in Washington, D.C. schools revealed “a marked increase in truancy, theft, vandalism, and sex offenses in integrated schools.  Dances and dramatic presentations have been quietly given up by most high schools.  [Note:  Spineless capitulation by those running the schools instead of militant enforcement of rules.]  Senior and junior class plays have been discontinued.  Inter-racial fights are frequent and constant vigilance is required to prevent molestation or attempted molestation of white girls by Negro boys or girls.  In contrast, the schools outside the integrated neighborhoods have no more such problems than they had four years ago.”

   [Sam M. Jones, “Caution: Integration at Work”, National Review, Oct. 6, 1956, p.10 ]

1959:  In her essay “Reflections on Little Rock”, Hannah Arendt wrote:

“Children are first of all part of family and home, and this means that they are, or should be, brought up in that atmosphere of idiosyncratic exclusiveness which alone makes a home a home, strong and secure enough to shield its young against the demands of the social and the responsibilities of the political realm.  The right of parents to bring up their children as they see fit is a right of privacy, belonging to home and family.  [Note: Belonging to individuals, not to any department of government or group of do-gooders.] (more…)

A PROTESTANT family has over the years sought to understand the vocation of farming:

Here is one small highlight from our study:

Genesis 3:23 “God sent him (Adam) forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”

• The first occupation was farming.

• Farming is an occupation that is commissioned by God. It is essential for life. Therefore, it is important that as farmers we view our job as a very essential and important job. We must not merely have a focus on making money and increasing production, but rather have a focus on producing quality crops and food that will provide the nourishment for life and health that others need. (more…)

  FRANK REGA writes at The Shield of Faith: This is a poem I composed when I was able to see in perspective the summer of 1967 (THE Summer of '67), which I spent as a true drop-out in the East Village. As a former Yale graduate school student in Psychology, that summer I got to know, meet, and/or rub shoulders with Harvard drop-out Timothy Leary, artist Peter Max, Alan Ginsberg, Ed Sanders and Tuli of the Fugs, Abbie Hoffman, Nico of the Velvet Underground, Louis Abalofia - artist and "King of the Hippies," Paul Krassner, Lenny Horowitz - N.Y. Times art critic, Diahnne Abbot (before she married De Niro), poetess Anne Waldman, and many of the early and original spiritually-oriented hippies and anonymous drop-outs and Village denizens,  some of whom I met at the old Paradox Restaurant on E. 7th street - a popular macrobiotic eatery and gathering place. That summer the "flower child" movement had a distinctive Franciscan flavor, until it succumbed to the forces of hedonism and sunk into the abyss of Woodstock two years later. Ironically, it was a book called The Little Flowers of St. Francis that restored my Catholic faith, as the decade of the 70s began. This poem was inspired by my love for P. M. [cont.]

DON VINCENZO writes:

There was a time when the U.S. Military Academies were thought to have one – and only one – purpose: to send its graduates, grounded in a “warrior culture,” to aid and abet the security of this nation.  But that was then and now is now.

At the recent graduation of the midshipmen (I will not say or write, (“midshippersons”), the current Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, announced that two of the graduates, Keenan Reynolds and Joe Cardona, would be allowed to “defer their military service” in order to fulfill their dream: play professional football. The fact that these two men knew that, upon entering the academy, there was a five year commitment to serve in the Navy as the quid pro quo of having drawn a monthly wage, as well as having their room and board paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, would not now be applied; Secretary Carter said so. The ruling applied retroactively to Cardona, a 2015 graduate, who has “fulfilled” his service obligations by working once a week at a Navy prep school and the rest of the week for the Boston Patriot football team. Yes, today’s “warriors” come in all shapes and sizes. (more…)

WHEELER writes: As I write these words, I am looking at a vase full of this year's peonies, short-lived beauties that they are. They have passed their so-brief prime and are waiting with simplicity and patience to be reclaimed as dust. I find them more beautiful now than they were when nodding in my wife's garden, hostesses to battalions of ants. They are beautiful in the way that some old people are beautiful, with their knowing eyes hooded by a map of wrinkles and betrayals. I will let them sit here in their vase as long as I can before I take them outside and place them on the ground up in the woods. I cannot bear to put dead flowers in the trash. There is something melancholy about even the bare possibility that they might be even a tiny bit aware, and that they might be dejected at having to sit in reeking quiet in a plastic bag, among coffee grounds and Discover Card envelopes and potato peelings, looking with flower-hope for something merciful to occur, for a hole to appear in the bag and let in the catalyst of air, hoping for decomposition and a chance to touch holy dirt again.

THE CONTRITE HEART THE LORD will happiness divine On contrite hearts bestow; Then tell me, gracious God, is mine A contrite heart or no. I hear, but seem to hear in vain, Insensible as steel; If aught is felt, ’tis only pain, To find I cannot feel. My best desires are faint and few, I fain would strive for more; 10 But when I cry, “My strength renew!” Seem weaker than before. O make this heart rejoice or ache, Decide this doubt for me; And if it be not broken, break,— And heal it if it be. -- William Cowper (1731-1800)

PREVIOUS entries on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is observed today, can be found here, here, and here.

As Charles A. Coulombe has written:

Veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has gotten a bum rap. For many people, Catholics and otherwise, the seemingly effeminate images of Our Lord pointing to His — literally — bleeding heart were dismissed as purely private devotional images best suited for old ladies. For others, such things as placards identifying the driver of a car as a member of the Auto League of the Sacred Heart were the worst kind of kitsch. For still more folks of a thoughtful nature, it was all well enough in its way, but a relatively recent devotion without deep roots in Catholic history. All of these notions are dead wrong. [cont.] (more…)

THE elderly need the truth of God’s love.

To “Pope” Francis, they need jazz and “solidarity” (code for the One-World, Masonic Cult of Man.) (more…)

DR. THOMAS DROLESKEY provides some interesting background at Christ or Chaos about Hillary Clinton’s work for the House Judiciary Committee at the age of 27, during impeachment proceedings against Nixon. Jerome “Jerry” Zeifman, a Democrat, who was a senior attorney on the Committee, wrote about it in his book “Hillary, As I Knew Her,” and is quoted at length.

The sordid history of the Clinton machine is almost too much to absorb. Dr. Droleskey writes:

The gates of Hell have been let loose, and Madame Clinton’s recklessly self-centered disregard for the protection of American national security and classified intelligence information pales into insignificance when one considers the guilt she bears for her many years of supporting the willful murder of the innocent preborn, including her recent unqualified defense of Planned Barrenhood’s Aztec-like savagery, and her full-throated embrace of the agenda of what Mrs. Randy Engel rightly calls the homosexual collective. (more…)

  SEE more spring art at It's About Time.

THE Internet is filled with good websites and pages that offer instructions about basic home repairs. For those of us who are embarrassed to ask too many questions at the hardware store, it’s great to be able to look up things and learn the names of all those pipes, fasteners, cutting tools, circuits and valves that make up an ordinary home. For instance, I had no idea what the little collar around a pipe that extends from a wall to a bathroom faucet or toilet is called. I looked on the Internet and found that it is an escutcheon. 

Those things are disgusting when they get rusty. Here is one woman who does much of the repair work and remodeling around the house herself, an example of what you can find on the Internet. She explains how to replace an escutcheon. (more…)

FROM the BBC: More than 45 million people are living in modern slavery, with Asia accounting for two thirds of the victims, a new report says. The 2016 Global Slavery Index, from the Walk Free Foundation in Australia, defines slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception". Modern forms of slavery can include debt bondage, where a person is forced to work for free to pay off a debt, child slavery, forced marriage, domestic servitude and forced labour, where victims are made to work through violence and intimidation. The BBC looks at five examples of modern slavery. [cont.]

BROTHER NATHANAEL, the (formerly) Jewish critic of Jewish power who has been seriously considering running for president in 2020, responds to an article by Paul Craig Roberts, in which Roberts says that Americans have become “serfs” to the “One Percent.” The “One Percent” is Roberts’ term for the shadow government.

Brother Nathanael writes:

May I ask a stupid question? What is this entity, the “One Percent” that PCR keeps citing over and over?

I don’t recall ever seeing such a thing, have you ever seen it? And if so, what does this “One Percent” look like?

And if this is the ‘thing’ that has conquered the American people making them into serfs, then how can we ever have this “revolution” that PCR calls for if we don’t even know what this oppressor looks like? Who do we “revolt” against? Does this “One Percent” have a hideout that we can surround?

Which brings me to another perplexity.  (more…)

AN INTERESTING interview with Paul Fromm, director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression who has fought "hate speech" laws and excessive immigration in Canada for many years, can be found here.

THE BABYLON BEE reports important developments in the Bible Belt. Here's the latest: According to reports coming out of Grace Fellowship, church intern Greg Barona completed the eighth perfect tech performance in Evangelical history Sunday at the church’s 10:30 a.m. service. Barona looked totally in control from the very first song all the way until the benediction, according to multiple sources. The congregation reportedly held their breath as the pastor gave the verbal cues for media like illustrative pictures, movie clips, and seemingly endless sermon points, but Barona held it together, retiring all slides with no delays, errors, or false starts. The second the 28-year-old Barona fired off the final slide, the audience erupted in emotional, wild cheering, knowing they had witnessed history. After the teaching pastor dumped a vat of old coffee over his head, the congregants swept him up on their shoulders and carried him outside, where the unrestrained celebration continued. “It looked dicey there for a minute when the worship leader called an audible and went right into the chorus of ‘Good Good Father,’ but Greg pulled through. A real clutch player,” head tech Paul Stark told reporters during the post-service bash, shouting over the cheers from the congregation. “Guys like Greg make it look easy.”

COOL celebrities love Francis!

But then, in general, the more a person rejects Catholic faith and morals, the more he loves Francis. Celebrities and politicians literally drool over Francis the Fake because they crave the approval of the Catholic Church, which they secretly know is the most powerful institution on earth, without paying any of the costs, even the cost of believing in it. Fortunately for them, Francis doesn’t require that.

Doesn’t that tell you something?

Here’s a quick quiz to test your logic on all this. (more…)