YESTERDAY was the 100th anniversary of the death of Pope St. Pius X, the formidable adversary of religious modernism and a man of great wisdom and sanctity. You can find links to all his great encyclicals here. Here is an excerpt from his encyclical E Supremi, On the Restoration of All Things in Christ, of Oct. 4, 1903: 

6. Verily no one of sound mind can doubt the issue of this contest between man and the Most High. Man, abusing his liberty, can violate the right and the majesty of the Creator of the Universe; but the victory will ever be with God — nay, defeat is at hand at the moment when man, under the delusion of his triumph, rises up with most audacity. Of this we are assured in the holy books by God Himself. Unmindful, as it were, of His strength and greatness, He “overlooks the sins of men” (Wisd. xi., 24), but swiftly, after these apparent retreats, “awaked like a mighty man that hath been surfeited with wine” (Ps. Ixxvii., 65), “He shall break the heads of his enemies” (Ps. Ixvii., 22), that all may know “that God is the king of all the earth” (Ib. Ixvi., 8), “that the Gentiles may know themselves to be men’ (Ib. ix., 20).

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AT The Orthosphere, Kristor writes:

On the one hand, you have the ephemeral symptoms of nihilism: tattoos, piercings, sex change operations, and soon no doubt random unmotivated pointless amputations of this or that. On the other, you have askesis, that cuts away everything that is not of the Truth.

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  IF Home Secretary Theresa May has her way, spouses may go to jail for "controlling behavior." There aren't many spouses left in Britain, but still this raises almost inconceivable scenarios of domestic revenge.

ENGLISH MANIF has posted “300 Articles You Have to Read to Understand What Is Meant by the Term ‘Homofascism.'”

Also, the Wedding Cake Wars continue in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.

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HERSCHEL SMITH, military blogger, fondly remembers James Foley, the journalist who was beheaded by ISIS after saying he was ashamed to be an American, and disputes the idea that he was a “terrorist sympathizer.”

ISIS had demanded millions of dollars in ransom money for Foley, but the Obama administration, to its credit, refused to pay.

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DAVE BLOUNT writes at Moonbattery:

One looter who came out of a QuikTrip told The Washington Post that he was proud of what he was doing.

“I’m proud of us. We deserve this, and this is what’s supposed to happen when there’s injustice in your community,” DeAndre Smith told The Post.

Injustice. The word has no more meaning than racism. It is just a magic incantation that grants phony moral license to criminals.

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    "The feminine soul is a fountainhead of grace, delicacy and sensibility, which enriches the moral and social life of humanity with spiritual values that man does not give it. The equilibrium of mankind demands women with a rich mental structure displaying all the gifts proper to their sex, just as it demands men with profoundly virile souls. It would be absurd to educate a generation of boys in the most effeminate way possible. No less absurd would it be to educate a generation of girls with the intention of making them as masculine as possible." ---- Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira 

TK writes:

I’m not sure when it all started, but I know when I first started noticing it. It was the first time I heard the term “carjacking.” What? Someone came up to a car, pointed a gun at the driver and pulled him out of the car and took it? That’s outrageous! To me that was something that crossed an important line. Then came the shootings over pairs of sneakers.

Fast forward, and there are no lines anymore. Now we’re at a point where the police are afraid to enforce the law because they’re afraid of how they are perceived by some members of the “community.”

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KARL D. writes:

The cover of Sports Illustrated has for the first time in its history given its cover photo to a Little League baseball player. And whom might that child be? But a girl of course: the 13-year-old superstar Mo’ne Davis. I suppose the media self esteem machine simply couldn’t resist. I as well as generations of young boys have played in little league baseball. But I guess that in all that time there has not been one male who could match her achievement. Just think how helpful a Sports Illustrated cover would have been to a little boy who’s life ambition is to one day go pro? Nah. That would be a waste, wouldn’t it? Little boys already have the world by the tail for simply being born male.

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  ALAN writes: The hard-drinking, twice-divorced American novelist and short story writer Jean Stafford, writing in the midst of the turmoil of the late 1960s-early 1970s, said the following: “….I believe our society is an utterly decadent one.  And I believe so because I believe any society is decadent in which the family is not the basic unit—the basic moral, social, economic unit.   ….  Of course families cause us great pain, but unless we are decadent we must be willing to suffer for principles.   …. The structure of the family, of whom the woman is the architect, has been weakened to the point of debility ….  Nothing obliges us to love our parents or our cousins…but, plainly, the individual must be nurtured within an edifice, within a form.” [The Interior Castle: The Art and Life of Jean Stafford, Ann Hulbert; Knopf, 1992, pp. 350-51 ]

  IN 2009, Luka Wall Kang, a 50-year-old Sudanese refugee, drove into a group of children walking home from school in Salt Lake City. He told police at the time that he was depressed and couldn't find a job. Kang is not the only Sudanese to have trouble adjusting to life in America or involved in violent incidents. Refugee Resettlement Watch has a long archive of newspaper articles from the U.S. and Canada on the subject. It includes articles about AIDS, murder, and hostility American blacks have shown toward the Africans. This fall, the Ron Howard film, The Good Lie will be released. Reese Witherspoon stars as an American woman who helps four Sudanese men resettle in this country. Judging from the trailer, it is fair to say it does not tell the whole story.

  ACCORDING to The Daily Mail: ISIS militants and their supporters are using social media to encourage protesters in Ferguson to embrace radical Islam and fight against the U.S. government. Jihadists in Syria and Iraq and their sympathisers in the West have taken to Twitter to send messages of support to hundreds of demonstrators taking part in a ninth night of angry protests in the U.S. city following the shooting by police of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.  Other developments in the Michael Brown case: Autopsies show that he was shot in the front, not in the  back, and, according to The Washington Post, Brown tested positive for marijuana. You can listen to rap songs allegedly recorded by Michael Brown here. WARNING: Graphic content and photos.

  RICHARD NEWMAN writes at Public Discourse: Later this fall, the UK’s Department of Health will be launching a national sperm bank to “meet demand,” using £77,000 in public funds to effectively subsidize fatherlessness. British women can reduce their child’s father to the conveniently assorted drop-down menu categories of ethnicity, eye color, hair color and education level with just the click of a mouse.

THE Anonymous Us website collects first-person accounts of the reproductive industry. Here is a letter from a person conceived with an anonymous sperm donor. It reads in part:

Dear Father,

I thought I saw you the other day.

I was standing in the hall of the DMV office, waiting for someone, when a man walked past me to reach the door. And, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

This had never happened to me before. Mainly, I had never seen anyone in public who was so close to your height, but this man was very tall, like you. He was naturally tan, like you. And he was young, like you. I had never seen anyone who could have so easily been you.

So I stood there for a moment, not breathing, and waiting for something, though for what I don’t know. He disappeared around the corner of the door, but the tears that had begun were still there as I stared at the spot he had occupied. It scared me slightly, this encounter, because he could have been you. It scared me how easily any man could be you. (more…)