A POPE who ain't Catholic ain't a pope. It's elementary, my dear Watson. See more at Novus Ordo Watch.

"WHEN everything is a marriage, nothing is a marriage." Consider more reflections by Edward Feser.

THOMAS DROLESKEY writes at Christ or Chaos:

Today’s Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption ought to be a major national holiday in all of the countries of the world. Our Lady is the Queen of Heaven and of Earth. Her Divine Son is meant to be honored as the King of all men and of all nations. Each country, without exception, is meant to be confessionally Catholic, thus giving God His due and affording men an opportunity to fulfill the duties of their states-in-life with a view to their eternal destiny, all aspects of national life being referred to our First Cause and our Last End. What redounds to Christ the King is to be given to the Queen Mother, that is, public honor and recognition, especially through her Most Holy Rosary and public processions and pilgrimages in her honor. No man can get to Heaven without Our Lady. No country serves God truly except by means of giving public honor to His Most Blessed Mother. God will never truly bless any country that does not honor His Most Blessed Mother, Assumed body and soul into Heaven on this very day.

Orestes Brownson’s essay, Moral and Social Influence of Devotion to Mary, speaks of this exact point. No society is “civilized” unless it refers all of its actions to the Mother of God, she who was assumed body and soul into Heaven:

The whole order of Christian civilization is founded on humility, and on respect for the humble and compassion for the poor and friendless, the needy and the helpless. The Greek and Roman civilization was founded on pride, on respect for the successful, and favored only the favorites of fortune. (more…)

ALAN writes:

Toys representing monstrous and ugly creatures “should be banished from every toy box and tossed into incinerators,” you wrote in “The Occult in Children’s Toys.” Am I alone among your readers in suggesting that the same advice may apply to television?

“It would be better to play with sticks and mud” than with such toys, you wrote.

Precisely correct.  Children must be made stupid; they are not born that way.  And contrary to what many parents believe, “child’s play” is not frivolous.  It is serious business to children, and properly so.  They will make toys of what nature provides for them—sticks, mud, trees, hills, sand, flowers, snow, animals—and of common things in daily life—boxes, paper, crayons, rags.

Thirty years ago, Erma Bombeck wrote: (more…)

DON VINCENZO writes:

  IN a short video, the organization Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth shows raging fires in skyscrapers around the world that did not result in buildings collapsing: This three-and-a-half-minute video — "9/11 In Perspective"— presents footage of eight buildings, ranging from nine to 62 floors, that have been either partially or fully engulfed in flames and yet remained standing despite massive internal destruction. Their major fires shown in these clips range from 1988 to 2008, and took place in U.S. cities (Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) and abroad (Caracas, Madrid, Beijing, Delft). Seeing the stubborn resilience of these high-rise steel structures makes one question the U.S. government's contention that the Twin Towers were leveled by jet crashes and kerosene-fueled fires, and that a third building, World Trade Center 7, was destroyed by fires alone on September 11, 2001.

A writer at Henry Makow's website argues that suburbs are "sinister places" because they offer so little meaningful social interaction.

TOMORROW is the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, so I thought I would, for the sake of those who mistakenly believe that Catholics practice idolatry in their devotion to Mary, post this clear and brief explanation of the reasons for veneration of Mary. This is by Adolphe Tanquerey in A Manual of Dogmatic Theology (quoted here):

III. DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

843 A. State of the Question.

1. Errors. The cult which Catholics pay to the Blessed Virgin Protestants bitterly attack as superstitious, illusive, even idolatrous.

2. Catholic doctrine. The cult of the Blessed Virgin is not the cult of latria, which is due to God alone, nor is it the simple cult of dulia due to the saints. But it is the cult of hyperdulia because of her singular supernatural superiority. Therefore devotion to Mary embraces:

1) Veneration and reverence because of the dignity of the divine maternity conferred on her and because of her outstanding holiness; (more…)

FOR many years now, major toy manufacturers have been producing demonic “action figures” for children, particularly for boys. This is not a new story. But it is still a shocking story.

Just to give you an idea of the latest, here are a few figures that Walmart recommends for children between the ages of two and four. In other words, these are recommended for toddlers.

What are we to think of these hideous “toys?” We are to think of them as child abuse. They desensitize children to extreme ugliness, impoverish their imaginations and acclimate them to the satanic. It would be better to have no toys at all. (more…)

CHERYL SULLENGER at Tradition in Action writes about the "full, uncut video of the undercover visit to the Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Houston, Texas." "That longer video contains new revelations that some aborted baby remains sold by Planned Parenthood go to biotech companies for the purpose of creating 'humanized' mice."

WILLIAM writes from the Netherlands:

After the unveiling of the satanic ‘Baphomet’ statue in Detroit, people can now also rejoice in the projection of the Hindu goddess Kali on the Empire State Building.

The Kali projection was part of a visual show on the building’s exterior last weekend, a display on threats to endangered species and Kali was included for “giving mother nature a fierce avatar against pollution.’ I suppose the fact that ‘mother’ nature pollutes the world much more than humans by way of volcanic eruptions or that humans, in the modern view, áre nothing but mammals, i.e. themselves part of ‘mother nature,’ does not make anyone pause for a second.

So now we have the goddess Kali to project ‘change.’ Her name means “black, time, death, destruction” and could be connected with “hell” and the Germanic goddess ‘Hella’ or ‘Holda.’ She, like Kali, was a goddess of death and associated with the (skin) colours blue and black, being the same in ancient understanding.

In recent years, the people who have tatto-ed or body-painted themselves with skeletal features have increased tremendously and Hella was often half skeletal. There is a skeletal goddess or aspect of Kali in Hinduism too (Chamunda). (more…)

THE former public school teacher and well-known anti-school crusader, John Taylor Gatto, explains his views of mass schooling. The primary purpose of modern schools, he argues, is not knowledge, but social engineering. There are many other videos of his talks here and here. I don't understand his points about eugenics, but his general idea of the industrializing of schools is his most important criticism.

FROM an essay by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira: “Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” Both faces were close to each other at the memorable moment of this infamous kiss and terrifying question. Giotto depicts this scene in another painting in the same chapel. With his low forehead, flabby flesh, grim look, vulgar nose, loathsomely soft and drooping lips, Judas reveals an inexpressible infamy in his whole being. Jesus-noble, infinitely superior, and possessing an ineffable moral loftiness-looks upon him with a gaze wherein a sparkle of love, rebuke, severity, and total repulsion can be found. Poor, miserable Judas, who did not want to open his soul to the love or fear which this gaze elicited and to which this doleful and pungent question invited him. And, because his soul resisted every invitation to love and to fear, it sank from theft to deicide and from deicide to despair.

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

In a poem so oft-quoted that it embarrasses me slightly to quote it again, W. B. Yeats, gazing with a prophetic eye on the disintegrating world of modernity, writes

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.  (more…)

ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

I guess black lives don’t matter, after all, since the race of this perp and his victims has been completely downplayed by the media. (more…)