WILD OUTLANDER writes:

Some … thoughts occurred to me this morning while I was listening to a mourning dove outside the kitchen window. As I listened to the bird’s song I started trying to mimic his call. The more I imitated him the more I noticed the subtleties of his song. It was intriguing to discover the depth of his variations upon one or two themes(or perhaps there were two birds).

Later, I was discussing with my father how I’ve been beginning to find inspiration for melodies within the natural world. I demonstrated what I meant, first whistling my approximation of the bird call and then riffing a melodic structure from musical intervals within the call. The result was a satisfactory fiddle tune which borrowed from the bird song and melodic devices I’ve heard in other tunes.

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  FITZGERALD writes:  Joanna Blythman, of The Guardian, writes about nutrition studies: With salt, as with sugar, the public health establishment is too cowardly to take on the powerful processed food companies and their lobbyists by drawing a distinction between home-prepared food cooked from scratch and industrial convenience food. The crucial phrase "avoid processed food" appears nowhere in government nutritional guidelines, yet this is the most concise way to sum up in practical terms what is wholesome and healthy to eat. Until this awareness shapes dietetic advice, all government dietary guidance should come with a tobacco-style caution: Following this advice could seriously damage your health. I would suggest the implication that home cooked meals, lovingly prepared are critical to good health, even by extension good psychological health, runs afoul of more than just the current nutritional orthodoxy. To re-assert the importance of home cooking would implicate the modern two-earner household and make many women feel guilty for entering the workforce and therefore becoming too busy to prepare traditional meals.

JOHN HARRIS, at the Center for Literate Values, has an especially wonderful essay in the latest issue of his journal, Praesidium, on the negative effects of electronic technology on reading, writing and thought. Harris contends that working on computers has actually made him physically sick, but the cultural phenomenon is his main concern. E-culture is dehumanizing. He writes:

The electronic media have taught us, both as broadcasters and receivers, to value fireworks. Nothing else gets through. Our children send crude tweets and jeopardize their professional future by posting debauches or brawls on YouTube, all because (I am convinced) they want desperately to demarcate some sort of individuality, and the only means of distinction available through Internet and iPhone is strident vulgarity. I believe, indeed, that this search for difference at all costs accounts for excessive and obscene tattooing, wearing of rings in noses and lips and foreheads, spiking and bizarre coloring of hair, shaving of heads, and other kinds of repellent self-defacement so common in young people now. That is, e-culture has left them so alone and insignificant at their various “world at your doorstep” terminals that they settle for drawing any kind of notice. To be remarked as a “freak” is at least to be remarked.

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SEE Novus Ordo Watch’s report on the performance of Suor Cristina, an Italian Ursuline “nun” who appeared on the Italian talent show The Voice of Italy. As you probably already know, Sr. Cristina Scuccia belted out Alicia Keys’ pop song “No One,” about a woman holding a man close, before a panel of painfully ugly celebrity demons. It’s a TV update of Dante’s Inferno. But she’s a real nun and so it must be good. Here is the Catholic News Agency’s shamelessly approving article of the performance. Don’t be surprised if there’s more of this kind of thing on a pseudo-altar near you.

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THANKS very much to the readers who sent notes of concern this week. I was in Florida taking care of an elderly aunt who just got out of the hospital. My aunt, who has lived alone most of her life and has many serious, chronic health problems, just got out of the hospital and needed intensive help. I thought I might be able to post while I was away but it was all too much, not only caring for my aunt but trying to survive the week without being attacked by her small dog. According to the American Kennel Club, the Havanese is “a small sturdy dog of immense charm.” My aunt’s Havanese must be an anomaly. No matter how good I was to “Bo” (short for Bonaparte) — taking him for walks, petting him on my lap, feeding him hot chicken — he still snarled, yapped ferociously and lunged at me whenever I approached or walked away from my aunt. Bo was fine if I had him on a leash. He was a terror when he was free. One night he loudly barked at me, as if I was an intruder who had just broken in, on-and-off throughout the night as I tried to sleep on the couch. He bit me twice. My aunt’s remedy for his misbehavior was to feed him treats and cuddle him. Bo is her baby. The psychodynamics of this kind of relationship, once set in place, are inalterable.

So, dear reader, I was too overwhelmed to pay any attention to the rest of the world.

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  DUE to an illness in the family, I have not been able to post much. I hope things will get back to normal very soon.

ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

Academic achievement in the “world’s largest democracy” involves so much cheating that the police monitor exam sites.

These are the people that U.S. high-tech corporations are seeking to import under H-1B visa and ‘training’ schemes to replace supposedly nonexistent qualified Americans – at far lower wages than Americans would command.

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  HERE is another excellent reading for this Lenten season. Fr. Chad Ripperger describes the importance of detachment: Holy Indifference means that when it comes to the created order we are completely indifferent as to what happens to it and to us. We are not indifferent or detached than for any other reason than God alone. We are not detached because these things are evil; we are detached because they are good and since they are good they can come between us and God. This detachment has to be complete. Some people give up some things but remain attached to others.

LAURA E. writes:

I enjoyed your post on the importance of fasting.  To that end, I thought I might share with you the homily from my cousin’s wedding in June 2013. The Nuptial Mass, a Latin high mass, was presided over by the groom’s brother (also my cousin).  He is a cloistered monk (and a priest, obviously) at a monastery in the Midwest.

My cousin’s homily argued that the ability to fast is the most important trait to seek out in a marriage partner. The full text is rich in themes that would be well-appreciated by your readers. Here it is.

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ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

Neither the press nor Adam Lanza’s father, in his recent heavily publicized interviews with The New Yorker, will admit the roles of separation, divorce, and accommodative parenting in the Sandy Hook school shooting. 

[Peter Lanza and his wife, Nancy, separated when Adam was nine.  Peter moved an hour away and later remarried. In the interview, he says, “The funny part is that the separation didn’t really change things for the kids very much.”]

If I’d ever tried to tell my mother how she ought to behave, as Adam Lanza repeatedly did when he was living in isolation with his mother for years, she would’ve slapped me silly, and my father would’ve turned me over his knee.

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TEXANNE writes:

I have been reflecting on the Book of Genesis, and it strikes me that it seems to be such an apt allegory of the way in which feminist ideology was introduced into Western consciousness and has been received into the culture without resistance.

The woman knows God’s command, but the most cunning of creatures plants in her mind the seed of cynicism and mistrust — the possibility that God’s motive is not really for her own happiness, but to keep her in her place.  Until this consciousness-raising session, it had not occurred to Eve to think in terms of power, and to think of herself as subservient, and naive, a victim of the oppressive patriarchy.

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Does Your Professor Respect You?

— Richard Cocks

Interestingly, when I googled this question the responses I found involved advising students how to address respectful emails to their professors. One response took the intuitively plausible line that since in emailing your professor you are likely to be asking for something, you should do so politely. However, on teaching evaluation forms, the question is as asked, although the exact wording may differ.

To respect someone is to show them the appropriate degree of social honor. If a child goes to see the high school principal, I would like to imagine that a parent might hope that the child was properly respectful, not; ‘I hope the principal showed you respect.’ Imagine a student approaching a karate or kung fu master, asking to be instructed, and then demanding that the teacher respect him. Or, better yet, a new army cadet telling his sergeant major that he is hoping to be treated with all the respect he deserves. What a malicious gleam in the eye that sergeant major could be expected to have and what respect the new recruit would be obliged to show the toilets with his toothbrush. (more…)

FROM “Mortification of the Appetite” by St. Alphonsus Liguori:

The ancient monks, as St. Jerome relates, thought it a great abuse to make use of food cooked by fire. Their daily sustenance consisted of a pound of bread. St. Aloysius, though always sickly, fasted three times in the week on bread and water. St. Francis Xavier, during his missions, was satisfied each day with a few grains of toasted rice. St. John Francis Regis, in the great fatigues of his missions, took no other food than a little flour steeped in water. The daily support of St. Peter of Alcantara was but a small quantity of broth. We read in the Life of the Venerable Brother John Joseph of the Cross, who lived in our own days, and with whom I was intimately acquainted, that for twenty-four years he fasted very often on bread and water, and never ate anything but bread, and a little herbs or fruit. When commanded, on account of his infirmities, to use warm food, he took only bread dipped in broth. When the physician ordered him to take a little wine, he mixed it with his broth to increase the insipidity of his scanty repast.

I do not mean to say that to attain sanctity it is necessary to imitate these examples; but I assert that whoever is attached to the pleasures of the table, or does not seriously attend to the mortification of the appetite, will never make any considerable progress in perfection. They who neglect the mortification of the taste will daily commit a thousand faults.

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INTERVIEWED on Meet the Press yesterday, the anti-Catholic “Cardinal” Timothy Dolan said that “Pope” Francis’s  recommendation that the Church “look into” the reasons why homosexual civil unions have been adopted was wise. Here is the full transcript. And here is another nugget from the interview:

DAVID GREGORY:

Michael Sam, from your home state, the football player– revealed that he was gay, first in the NFL. And you saw the celebration from the President, the First Lady, and they were saying what a courageous step that was. How did you view it?

CARDINAL DOLAN:

Good for him. I would have no– no sense of judgment on him. God bless ya. I don’t think– look, the same– the same bible that tells us that– that– teaches us well about the virtues of chastity and– and the virtue of fidelity and marriage also tells us not to judge people. So I would say, “Bravo.”

This man’s mind is mush. The same Bible also tells us that sinners go to hell. And the Church — ever hear of it, Mr. Dolan? — teaches that one who praises or flatters a sinner is an accessory to sin. Just imagine him in the confessional. “You did what? Oh, God bless ya! Bravo!”

Dolan also whines that the Church is being picked on for its pedophiliac priests, as if the Church shouldn’t be held to a higher standard than the rest of the world. How ironic that he defends homosexuality, a major cause of pedophilia, at the same time.

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JOHN G. writes:

Thank you for your continued efforts. I also appreciate your growing understanding of the crisis in the Church.

In your item, “The Innate Power of Women,” Pete F. wrote, “Men are naturally barbaric; left to their own devices, many males are perfectly happy to live in relative squalor (Those disinclined to believe this are urged to hang out with a young single guy sometime).”

Paul seconded that comment by writing, “Most men are naturally barbaric.  We need our mothers to teach us how to become civilized and how to treat women.”

This is a serious error, and one that is sufficiently fundamental that believing it will undo and destroy the good that may come from any other truths which we may have comprehended.

It is simply a fact of history that all civilization comes from men. All art, all culture, all beauty, all music, all education, all literature, all painting, all sculpture, all philosophy, all abstract thought — they all come from men, and from men alone, not from women. All government, all law, all civilization, all religion — they all come from men, and from men alone, not from women.

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KARL D. writes:

According to this article, a rather mannish looking female neuroscientist has declared that there is no difference between the male and female brain. Any differences are mere creations of social constructs. I guess we can all go home now since the issue has been settled. Yet if we take her argument to its logical conclusion, then wouldn’t that mean that homosexuals aren’t born that way, but created? And if so, doesn’t it follow that they must be abnormal?

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  AS everyone on Planet Earth now knows, "Pope" Francis, the sloganeering papal impostor, has given his fifth lengthy interview in the press, proving once again that his famous humility does not preclude a seemingly insatiable love of publicity. In his talk with a reporter from the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, Francis, who at one point approvingly quotes that great enemy of the Church, Sigmund Freud, describes some of his vision for meeting the needs of "contemporary man." That vision is explained with characteristic ambiguity and mumbo jumbo. However, even in the dense vapor of revolutionary ambiguity, one can see that it involves divorce, homosexual civil unions, and euthanasia as acceptable innovations. In other words, it involves denial of infallible Catholic teachings, which are so much "casuistry." Francis alludes to the Church's previous unambiguous stand on the indissolubility of marriage, a dogma which no pope has the authority to overturn as it comes from Christ himself and which has stood as a bulwark in the modern world against the overwhelmingly destructive effects of divorce and its unraveling of fundamental social bonds, as "very superficial theology." He thus nonchalantly dismisses 2,000 years of tradition and the sacrifices of Catholics who remained in difficult marriages to uphold that "superficial theology." Alexander the Great was humble in comparison. Francis, as the guardian of souls, is a conqueror of a much more devastating nature. I recommend two excellent posts elsewhere. "Divorce Bergoglio Style"…