IN THE 16th-century, Catholics in England took serious risks to continue to receive the sacraments. Some hid priests in tiny compartments in their homes in order to practice their banished faith. Eric Grundhauser writes:

Surprise inspections and raids of wealthy family homes were not uncommon. If a priest was found, he would face torture and eventual execution.

To escape this fate, a number of homes installed hidden compartments called priest holes, where Catholic leaders could conceal themselves in the case of an inspection. These small hideaways were often built under staircases or inside fireplaces or behind false walls. (Even if you weren’t harboring a religious fugitive, the priest holes made a great place to stash your candles, crucifixes, and other Catholic accoutrements.) Some homes would have multiple priest holes scattered throughout, with at least one, Hindlip Hall, maintaining 12 separate holes. Some priest holes would even be hidden behind secret panels in other priest holes as an added precaution. The hiding places were generally very small, with barely enough room for a full-grown adult to fit, but they did the trick. (more…)

  "The principle of Christian civilization is the existence of evil in the heart of man, and the necessity of authority in order to combat it and to establish the reign of virtue. The principle of revolutionary civilization is the immaculate conception of man and his right to liberty and equality. See there, the two roads; 'they are not only different,' a certain author of many evil books acknowledged, 'but two very divergent lines,' the author, Michelot, concluded, 'that must always remain apart, even unto infinity.'" -- Msgr. Henri Delassus, Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes at The Orthosphere:

Atheism is a strictly derivative proposition. If every single theist of every kind were at last one day to die off, leaving a human population of atheists only – the atheistic proposition would still, historically, conceptually, and grammatically be a strictly derivative proposition. Being a derivative proposition, atheism is necessarily prone to resentment, and what atheism resents is the originality of theism, or theism’s firstness, whose status it can never usurp. Indeed, atheism can have no status at all, not even its derivative status, except for the prior existence of theism. (more…)

JEWEL writes:

I watched this catchy little lip sync by midshipmen from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. At 1:49 in the video, I despaired of our military capabilities. Over-the-top sodomites and petite women do not give me hope. (more…)

  BROTHER NATHANAEL surveys the machinations over the GOP nomination. Looks like it's time for the "Neocon Song," By Dr. E. Michael Jones:  

KATHERINE writes:

My belated comment on “The “Sex is Healthy” Myth” post:

Several years ago I cancelled my membership in AARP because they frequently ran articles in their journal promoting “sex is healthy” for senior citizens. These articles advocate promiscuity and other perversions. The magazine often has ads for “adult” videos, presumably to teach old people new tricks.

The AARP magazine used to be called “Modern Maturity.” I can see why the name had to be changed.

As always, God bless you for your excellent website! (more…)

ANOTHER DAY, another explosive statement from Jorge Bergoglio's "Ding Dong School of Apostasy." According to the "pontiff," the Arab invasion of Europe is an opportunity for cultural exchange. Much else of what the pretend pontiff said on the migrant crisis in an interview with a French magazine, judging from reports, was characteristically confusing but boiled down to his familiar condemnation of "ideology" and pointed criticism of right-wing nationalist groups. But then Jorge would have called the Crusaders ideologues for their rigid close-mindedness. He said the migrant crisis will not lead to "great change." The full text of the interview is not yet available, but here are some quotes: "If Europe wants to rejuvenate itself, it must rediscover its cultural roots … But forgetting its own history, Europe weakens itself. And that's when it risks becoming an empty place," the pope told Jean-Pierre Denis, editor-in-chief of the French magazine "La Vie." "Today, we can speak of an Arab invasion. It is a social fact," the pope said in response to a question on why he believes Europe risks becoming an "empty place." He immediately added that anyone looking for a "'great change' - those dearest to the far-right - will remain disappointed." "How many invasions has Europe experienced in the course of its history? It has always been able to overcome them; moving forward and finding itself better through the exchange between cultures," the pope said, in an apparent reference to Europe's Renaissance, which…

MIKE King points out that in a CNN debate between Van Jones, a former Obama staffer, and Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan staffer, about Trump and David Duke’s affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, Lord never attacks Jones’s for his admitted past as a Communist. Whatever crimes were committed by the Ku Klux Klan, which was started after the Civil War at least in part to protect Southern women from black rapists, they pale in comparison to the crimes of Communism, which led to the deaths of tens of millions of people in the 20th century.

But if Lord had responded this way would viewers have gotten it? Probably not.

Most Americans have been steeped in scary imagery of the Ku Klux Klan. They know little or nothing about the crimes of Communists.

The media, Hollywood and publishers don’t educate them about them. Wonder why? “Some call it Marxism – I call it Judaism,” Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, said in the American Bulletin of May 15, 1935. “It would be absurd to deny the intensity of the Jewish participation in the Russian revolutionary movement,” wrote Leon Dennen, in The Menorah Journal (New York), July-September 1932, p. 106.

(more…)

DONALD TRUMP donated to an organization that promotes homosexuality to five-year-olds and “fisting” to middle school students, Lifesitenews reports.

In related news, here’s more on Trump’s family values from Jonathan Van Maren:

Consider the following:

Donald Trump has appeared on the cover of Playboy, and actually mused about whether or not his daughter would pose for the porn magazine, noting that she had “the best body.” He’s mused creepily that, “she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father …”

Donald Trump has bragged about his promiscuity, even telling radio host Howard Stern that he feels “lucky” not to have contracted an STD while engaging in sexual escapades.

Donald Trump has bragged about sleeping with the wives of other men, writing in The Art of the Deal that, “If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller.”

Trump casinos were some of the first casinos in Atlantic City to come featuring strip clubs. (more…)

AN authentically Catholic perspective on "Pope" Francis's intervention in U.S. politics with his comments on Trump's wall is available in this latest episode of "Francis Watch" at True Restoration Radio. It's free but you have to sign up.

THANK YOU for your contributions.

ESSAYS in the semiofficial Vatican newspaper call for women to have a greater role in the pulpit, overturning an 800-year-old tradition of male-only preaching. [Correction: The tradition of male-only preachers dates back to the Apostolic beginnings of the Church, when St. Paul condemned the idea of women preachers.]

What a surprise! (more…)

“Museums and galleries of art are undoubtedly necessary for the preservation of valiant heritages; if these were lost or destroyed, they could never be replaced. However, we consider such institutions somehow inadequate and would willingly have them replaced with something else. We sustain the idea that the artistic and historical works of art should remain in the places for which they were created. To displace them frequently distorts the purposes for which the artists intended them. Even more, in our opinion, distributing these inspired works of human genius throughout a country would be one of the best means of cultivating the people’s taste and of awakening natural gifts of other possible artists. “When this lesson can only be learned from the privileged walls of a museum in a large city on the infrequent occasions that they are visited requiring expenditure and inconvenience, then actually only a few people benefit. As a consequence of this tendency of our times, the gradual process of an unconscious assimilation of culture that prevailed in the past no longer exists.” (Memoirs of Pope Pius X, by Cardinal Merry del Val, pp. 79 -80.) From an essay, "Are Museums Sepulchers for Culture?" By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

A READER AT Tradition in Action writes:

In the Postface of the edition of Revolution and Counter-Revolution by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, which can be found here, I read the following predictions that I think will be of interest to TIA readers.

It was written in 1992. After discussing the Fall of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent rise of the 4th Revolution (Tribalism, anarchism) and the 5th Revolution (chaos, Satanism), he talks about things to come:

“Moreover, the international media continues to publicize the eventual migration of famished semi-civilized – ergo semi-barbarian – hordes to the prosperous European countries living under the regime of Western consumerism.

“Starved not only of food but of ideas, what do these pitiable people understand of the free world, at once super-civilized and gangrenous? On meeting it, would they not clash with it? And what would result from this clash, both in an invaded Europe and, by extension, in the old Soviet world? A self-managing, cooperationist, structuralist-tribalist revolution or an immediate world of total anarchy, of chaos and horror, which we would not hesitate to call the Fifth Revolution? (more…)

KATHLENE M. writes:

Elite hand-wringing about the dangers of Trump presupposes that average Americans actually care enough to vote on behalf of a corrupt and pornified America 2.0 that has alienated them. What’s clear to many Americans is that America 2.0 hates average middle-class Americans.  America 2.0 has successfully turned truth into lies and lies into truth, so when authoritarian elites warn us about the dangers of authoritarian Trump, why should we believe the propaganda this time? (more…)

AN unhinged editorial today in The New York Times looks at Trump’s “politics of rage:”

They are leaning, in unbelievable numbers, toward a man whose quest for the presidency revolves around targeting religious and racial minorities and people with disabilities, who flirts with white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan, who ridicules and slanders those who disagree with him.

Making fun of one disabled reporter does not constitute “targeting … people with disabilities.” I don’t care for Trump, who doesn’t always act civilized and has a poor record on moral issues, but this is  exaggeration. Trump can beat Hillary and they know it. Many young voters, indoctrinated in political correctness all their lives, will see through it. With enemies such as this, they will want to be Trump’s friend.

[Revised] (more…)

HOW often have you heard or read that it is psychologically and physically unhealthy for someone to go without sexual relations? College newspapers especially like to run articles making this point. The idea is not new. It was prevalent in the late nineteenth century too. The Rev. Arthur Devine, writing in 1897 in his essay “The Virtue of Chastity,” challenged it:

I shall notice one or two other excuses that are so false and misleading, but, nevertheless, are often used for the worst of purposes–that is, the falsehood that ‘all young men exceed the bounds of morality,’ and that those amongst them who have lived pure and chaste have been mere ‘prigs,’ ‘milksops,’ ‘weaklings,’ ‘muffs,’ men whose society must have been uncommonly ‘slow’ (to use the slang phraseology of the vicious). On the contrary, many can look to old acquaintances who as young men lived pure, chaste lives, uncontaminated by the grosser vices which constitute dissipation, and these, in the words of Mr. Hime, who refers to them, ‘were the first specimens of the young men at the time I refer to in the University . . . and were acknowledged superior to the large majority of their class fellows in all respects–physically as well as morally and intellectually. (more…)