BECOME a resister. Reject the false and meretricious in these weeks before Christmas. Observe Advent, placing limits on the exhausting, soulless, secular shopping fest. Recollect yourself every day and walk through that sublime, evergreen forest of expectation in your mind. Recall your sins with sorrow and ask God to illuminate your heart and mind with hope and true love for the divine Infant Child.

Do you ever wonder why Christmas decorations look so tawdry after Christmas? It’s perhaps because they remind us of missed opportunities. If you don’t have the spirit of Christmas within, what difference does it make how many sprigs of fake holly you own or how enchanted your children are on Christmas morning? We’re all dummies when it comes to Advent, having lived in a culture that marginalizes this phase of the year.

It’s true, there are moments of euphoria in the hectic “holiday season.” But there are moments of euphoria in a dose of heroin too. That euphoria has a price: anxiety, stress, financial insolvency and distraction from the essence of Christmas.

Thomas Droleskey explains the true meaning of Advent, and how to observe the season, at Christ or Chaos:

The principal of a fully traditional Catholic school some years ago now explained some basic Catholic teachings about Advent in a letter sent home parents to explain why the school would not be participating in a tree lighting ceremony in a nearby park:

This letter is to inform you that the students will not be participating in the annual tree-lighting ceremony.

The ceremony, scheduled for December 1st, is to be secular in tone, featuring such songs as “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Frosty the Snowman,” so as to be politically correct by modern standards. We, as faithful Catholics, do not condone the premature celebration of the feast of Christmas itself, nor do we approve of the purely secular “holiday” celebrations which the world in general promotes as a “Christ-less” alternative to Christmas. Therefore, we cannot participate in the planned festivities on Stepney Green. (more…)

FROM The Free Thought Project: What makes this noteworthy is that this is not the first time that emergency drills for the exact scenario unfolding were taking place at virtually the same moment the actual terrorist attacks began. Paris-area emergency personnel and ambulance crews were taking part in a simulated emergency exercise on the very same day the Paris terrorist attacks took place. During the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) was in the midst of a training exercise called Vigilant Guardian, which “coincidentally” simulated planes being hijacked by terrorists. The Free Thought Project has heard from a source on the ground, that the target inside the Inland Regional Center [in San Bernardino, California] was a gathering of government officials. This was confirmed by KTLA and Marybeth Feild, president and CEO of the Inland Regional Center, told the Associated Press that “the incident is in the conference area” at the center rented by an outside group, which she couldn’t identify.

FROM CNN:

President Barack Obama reiterated his call for more gun control reforms to make mass shootings in the U.S. “rare as opposed to normal” in the wake of a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

Speaking to CBS News moments after news broke of the shooting, Obama called for “common sense gun safety laws” and urged lawmakers to pass a law to prevent individuals on the “No Fly List” who are barred from boarding commercial flights from legally purchasing firearms.

“We don’t yet know what the motives of the shooters are but what we do know is that there are steps we can take to make Americans safer,” Obama said in the interview. “We should never think that this is just something that just happens in the ordinary course of events because it doesn’t happen with the same frequency in other countries.”

Obama said the pattern of U.S. mass shootings “has no parallel anywhere else in the world.”

Emergency personnel responded late Wednesday morning to reports of a shooting that killed or injured as more than 20 people, according to law enforcement. (more…)

THE HAPPY SURVIVOR is a standard fixture of the shooting psy-ops which are now coming so fast and furious it's hard to keep up. The Happy Survivor is the tear-less, dry-eyed, smiling relative or friend who has totally assimilated a violent death of a loved one within days or even hours and talks about immediate forgiveness, raves about the dead person's fantastic love of life, and stresses the importance of moving on. He may even, as in the case of one Sandy Hook mother, load up on some Sharpie pens and scribble happy messages on a coffin. Ah, the joy of the life cut down! In short, the Happy Survivor is not to be believed. Whoever the producer is, he is repeating himself. Two recent examples of the Happy Survivor are Zoe Alexander, the sister of Nick Alexander, who allegedly died at the Bataclan Theater in Paris (hilarious interview footage with mildly profane analysis by RedSilverj above) and Davey Blackburn, the photogenic Indiana "Christian pastor" whose wife, Amanda, was allegedly gunned down by two black assailants on Nov. 10 in Indianapolis. A few words about the Blackburn case: The coroner became involved before Mrs. Blackburn was dead. Coroners are never called until there is a dead body. Sorry, but that's just standard protocol. It's downright rude when a coroner gets involved too soon. That is just one tip off in this case. Here's another: Davey Blackburn, who exudes intense self-love in all of…

DR. PRESTON JAMES at Veteran’s Today writes about the globalist crime syndicate that now controls all the reigns of power in America, makes money for itself through a form of institutionalized black magic and brings the hot polloi daily doses of soul-destroying filth and distraction.

(more…)

“POPE” FRANCIS’S latest interview, given on the plane home from Africa, where he wound up his junket by praying at a mosque, is so incoherent and offensive it suggests brain damage or the effects of hallucinogenic substances. (Highlights of interview with commentary here; full text here.) But this isn’t dementia. It’s Jorge, and the inevitable incoherence of a man who takes his New World Order religion seriously.

This is like having serial nightmares. It’s not only the underhanded insults this blasphemous clown constantly throws at Catholics, or his heresies and leftist jargon, but the fact that so many Catholics masochistically consider this impostor to be a true pope. The alternative is the recognition that we have a vacancy in the papacy. So what? The papacy itself remains untouched. It will live on and on as long as this world survives. When God gave us the papacy he gave us a rock, for heaven’s sake, not a sledgehammer. (more…)

IT'S ONE thing to realize in the abstract that the Vatican II Church, found at your local parish, is not the Catholic Church. It's another thing to put that realization into practice. In this episode from the Restoration Radio network brought to you by Novus Ordo Watch, Father Michael Oswalt discusses making the leap out of the "Novus Ordo Church." "Realizing the Novus Ordo sect is not the Catholic Church requires an end to attending the Novus Ordo. There will be many obstacles, including human respect and love of comfort but continue to make acts of faith, acts of love toward God. God will help you with His grace to continue to build virtue and strength to carry the cross and follow His will as a Catholic. Father also discusses how leaving affects the duties of those who are married or single and how to seek the true Sacraments." Almost everyone who makes this leap does so from the Novus Ordo Church. Therefore the change is no more an attack on the people who remain behind than it is an act of self-criticism. At first, "it seems as though you're trying to step across the Grand Canyon," Father Oswalt says, but unexpected graces flow from the change.  It's a difficult transition but "we're not meant to be comfortable." On the bright side, Father Oswalt says in a previous episode, never before have traditional Catholic materials been so available to those who do not…

  "Conditor Alme Siderum" ("Creator of the Stars of Night") is an Anonymous chant from the 7th century used at Vespers during Advent. This recording is by the Christendom College Choir and Schola Gregorian.

Source

S. writes from India:

I have a confession to make. I am a closet Christian. I know, I know, it doesn’t count. But the day is not far when like our dear Mr. Auster I shall join the good ol’ Church. I resisted Christianity for 30 years, starting from when I first participated in the compulsory mass at our old convent. My parents were understandably incensed that their ‘Hindu’ child was forced to cross herself twice a day and pray to a ‘God’ they knew not, but they could do nothing. It was either be a part-time Catholic or find another school. Our intolerant convent gave us no choice. (more…)

ATILA Sinke Guimarães writes: Although I am a defender of the incomparable role of the woman in the home, when it comes to public affairs she fails. She fails because her nature destined her for the particular good, not for the common good; for intuition, not for logic; to pardon, not to apply justice; to be receptive and not to take the initiative, in brief, to obey and not to command. The Revolution forced woman into public life. This produced multiple disasters: Children were orphaned of maternal affection and became psychologically unbalanced; women became masculine and men feminine, and the public sphere was inundated with inordinate sentimentality.  

JOHN C. Wright describes the Middle Ages:

Maturity in a soul means the reason, the appetites and the passions act in harmony, and the more harmony is achieved, the more the maturity. It is the child who cannot control his appetites and passions, and lets a fierce mood or sudden disappointment throw him into childish rage or erupt into childish tears. Maturity in a community means that the spiritual and temporal powers are balanced, the elite and the commoners agree with mutual recrimination or mutual hatred, that the cities and the country cooperate, men and women are settled into roles fit for human life, and so on.

In the modern day, the elite hates the commons and seeks forever to destroy and enslave them, in the name, ironically enough, of freeing them. The elite and intellectuals in the Middle Ages were clerks in the Church, not vicious and deceptive pundits, newspapermen, and empty headed actors burning with a zeal to subvert and suborn middle class values, and destroy their hated enemies, the Bourgeoisie. (more…)

  MORE here. (I post these videos for their commentary on the use of crisis actors. This does not mean that I believe no one died at the Bataclan or that I endorse everything the poster says about other events.)

DONALD Trump, who as a New York City real estate developer must know that burning skyscrapers do not collapse to the ground in free fall from fire, offers some counterspin on 9/11, saying thousands of Muslims were seen on the streets of Jersey City celebrating as the World Trade Center Towers fell. No images of such celebrations were recorded and circulated at the time. There were definitely people seen celebrating in Jersey City: five Israelis who were later arrested in a van that tested positive for explosive. According to Christopher Bollyn:

The first indication that the attack on the World Trade Center was an elaborate “false flag” operation came with the arrest of the five men on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. These men, described as “Middle Eastern” in the first media reports, were later identified as Israelis.  A false flag operation is a crime which is designed and carried out so that another party or nation is blamed.

That the five jubilant Middle Eastern men, who had photographed themselves smiling and celebrating with the burning World Trade Center in the background, were indeed Israelis (namely Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Omer Marmari, and Yaron Schmuel) and that two of them were known to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies as agents of Israeli intelligence, was ignored by the mass media.

The men had been observed taking video or photos of themselves with the World Trade Center burning in the background.  Sivan Kurzberg told the police that the men had been driving in their van in the immediate vicinity of the towers that morning.  He was photographed flicking a lighter with the burning towers behind him. (more…)

ACCORDING TO the Physicians for Social Responsibility, 1.6 million people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the U.S.-led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. A full report can be found here.

HENRIQUE N. writes:

I’m from Portugal and I live and work in London. I’ve been following The Thinking Housewife for a while now. I really appreciate it and it’s refreshing to see there are still lucid people in what, from my perspective, seems a thoroughly alienated country (not that we’re faring much better here however).

I wanted to write a few times before but I always felt there wasn’t much I could add to the discussions happening. I’ve decided to do it now.

I did not know Amintore Fanfani and I will try to read some of his works, but I would like to point you to something related that you and your readers might find interesting. As you might know, Portugal was governed for about 40 years (1926 – 1974) by what is normally called a dictatorship. In reality, there was indeed a military dictatorship between 1926 and 1933 during which the armed forces actually held power. In 1933 a new Constitution was proclaimed and the country returned to constitutional rule of law. This new state called itself “Estado Novo” which literally means “New State.” The architect of all this was, as you might know, Prof. António de Oliveira Salazar. (more…)

SOME interesting posts about Advent traditions, including one on the Advent calendar, can be found at It's About Time.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to American readers of this site. May you have a happy and peaceful day with your families. Since this is a day of national gratitude, you may enjoy this essay, “National Greatness” by Orestes Brownson, who wrote in 1846:

That this is a great country, if we speak of the territory, is very true, though not much greater than China, and far less than Russia, and withal a great part of it as yet uncultivated, and no little of it even untrodden by civilized man. But whether we are a great people or not, or whether we have any special ground of self-adulation, is another and a different question; and a question which will be variously answered, according to the views which are taken of what constitutes true national greatness. Our judgments of the comparative greatness of different nations depend entirely on the standard of greatness we adopt, and by which we judge them. We call a people great or small in proportion as they do or do not conform to our standard of greatness. Vary the standard, and we vary our judgment. The people we called great, when indeed by one standard, we may call not great, if judged by a different standard. All, therefore, depends on the standard we adopt. Consequently, in order to determine whether we are really a great people or not, we must first determine what is the true standard of national greatness.

What, then, is true national greatness? We answer, that nation is greatest in which man may most easily and effectually fulfil the true and proper end of man. (more…)