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The Thinking Housewife
The Thinking Housewife
 

Evil Under the Appearance of Good

May 16, 2023

“EVIL and sin in this world do that much of homage to conscience and to virtue, that they never proclaim themselves to be what they are, and always present themselves, as it were, under the colors of their adversaries. Every giant of wickedness here calls himself the advocate of right and justice, every monstrous deed of public and world-wide wrong is done under the name of some watchword of goodness or of truth.”

— Henry James Coleridge, The Return of the King: Discourses on the Latter Days, 1894; p. 209

 

 

Perfection

May 16, 2023

THE perfection of man consists in suffering all things well, as if they happened to him of his own choice.”

— Seneca

 

 

Mind, Body and Machine

May 15, 2023

“NO bureaucrat talks of saving the taxpayers, and the reason is that the workers who provide the funds for government are not tax conscious. It takes time and thought to make a study of the cost of government. In America where commodities are sold freelv without ration tickets, the consumers may strike against high prices. In Britain the people have to take what they can get of the necessaries of life. But the Americans have not yet found out why prices are high and the purchasing power of the dollar is shrinking. It is now worth about 48¢. It is a baffling business for the rich and the poor, but there seems to be little hope that the taxpayers will set to work to learn for themselves why they are in distress.

“The modern man we hear so much about has no time to work these things out for himself. The movie, the radio, and television are on the way to destroy thought. Perhaps the real reason why the people of a hundred years ago were able to better themselves is because they were not pestered from morning till night with the distractions of the machine age. When the artisan in Oldham or in Fall River reached home for his dinner, he had a chance to think things over. He was not worried about the payment of the next installment on some gadget that did his thinking for him. He had advantages of meditation the modern man knows little or nothing about. Science was something for the intellectual, and he did not bother much about it. He never dreamed of letting broadcasters have a mortgage on his mind. As for motor cars, buses, or bicycles to give him a lift for a few miles, he would have scorned them. Perhaps he knew that walking was an aid to thinking, as poets and musicians discovered years ago.

“Before the gadget age, the average man used his eyes, and what he saw set his mind to work. His descendant, who travels in a fast-moving vehicle, has no chance to see what he saw. The scenery goes by so fast that he cannot get a proper view of anything of consequence, and this is a very serious matter. For observation is a necessary exercise for the eyes. There were few bespectacled people when men walked. Today nearly every other person over thirty must have sight aids, and the number of people whose ears are decorated with tone amplifiers is increasing steadily. John Hervey, the great racehorse expert, remarked that the gas-pushers are breeding a race that will not know how to walk. Read More »

 

Three Cheers for Liberty

May 15, 2023

“LAW is taking on a new aspect. For centuries concerned to maintain every man in his rights, it is mainly now employed to take them away.”

— C.H. Douglas, The Brief for the Prosecution, 1945

 

 

All According to Plan

May 15, 2023

ROBERT MANNING writes:

It is remarkable that in Ireland, with a total population of only five million, 87,000 (roughly 1/2%) non-European migrants claimed asylum in 2022. 

The U.S. is experiencing larger, ever-increasing average monthly illegal southern border crossings over the past two years. The 2.76 million in 2022 approaches 1% (.08) of the current U.S. population. These are mind-boggling numbers. Giant NGO and criminal organizations (governments) are funneling the inhabitants of other continents in through the open wounds of the West.

 

 

Ave Maria

May 14, 2023

 
MAY the greatest Mother who ever lived protect you forever. 

Pray for us, dear Mother of God.

 

 

Theodore Roosevelt on Motherhood

May 14, 2023

IN honor of Mother’s Day, here is an excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s 1905 speech before the National Congress of Mothers. It’s surprising that such sentiments were not so long ago acceptable on a national stage. The text is worth reading in full, but here is the opening:

In our modern industrial civilization there are many and grave dangers to counterbalance the splendors and the triumphs. It is not a good thing to see cities grow at disproportionate speed relatively to the country; for the small land owners, the men who own their little homes, and therefore to a very large extent the men who till farms, the men of the soil, have hitherto made the foundation of lasting national life in every State; and, if the foundation becomes either too weak or too narrow, the superstructure, no matter how attractive, is in imminent danger of falling.

But far more important than the question of the occupation of our citizens is the question of how their family life is conducted. No matter what that occupation may be, as long as there is a real home and as long as those who make up that home do their duty to one another, to their neighbors and to the State, it is of minor consequence whether the man’s trade is plied in the country or in the city, whether it calls for the work of the hands or for the work of the head. Read More »

 

A Paean to Motherhood

May 14, 2023

Day Is Done, Thomas Faed, 1870

Day Is Done, Thomas Faed, 1870

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE

— William Ross Wallace

BLESSINGS on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace.
In the palace, cottage, hovel,
Oh, no matter where the place;
Would that never storms assailed it,
Rainbows ever gently curled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world. Read More »

 

Motherhood

May 14, 2023

Elizabeth Corbin (Mrs. Griffin Gatliff) & Daughter Elizabeth, Gilbert Stuart; 1798

IN HIS book The Nature, Dignity and Mission of Woman, Fr. Karl Stehlin writes about the deeper significance of the institution that we celebrate on Mother’s Day:

All motherhood comes from the Mother of all mothers. The Immaculate Mother of God is the model for every mother; her motherhood is the ideal, the basis, the heart, and the goal of all creaturely motherhood. Here in a surprising new way the nature of woman proves once again to be the expression and image of God on earth. The polarity and complementariness of man and woman…, which in the interdependence of their different and often opposite characteristics reflects the all-encompassing Oneness of God, appears here in the special relation of mother and child. This is probably the most intimate relationship that there can ever be between human beings. Read More »

 

Taylor Swift: A Guy in Make-up

May 13, 2023

Read More »

 

Missa “Ave Maris Stella”

May 8, 2023

 

 

 

“A Broken Monarchy for a Broken Nation”

May 8, 2023

THE coronation was an excruciating affair, and felt like the country was just going through the motions. The history of Charles and Camilla is so sordid that it was hard to witness them parading around in crowns like paragons of virtue. A broken monarchy for a broken nation.”

Way of the World

 

 

Mary and the Revolution

May 5, 2023

FROM “The Great Sacrilege,” by Fr. James F. Wathen:

[W]e should call attention to the mere token deference given in the ‘New Mass’ to Mary, the Most Blessed Mother of God. It must be recognized that the few begrudging mentions of her represent nothing more than vestiges of the loving attentions paid her in the True Mass. The few references made to her in the “Novus Ordo” were kept only in order to placate the faithful, you may be sure. There is no more place in the “New Religion” for Our Lady than there is for Christ Our Lord. This is a point which needs further comment.

First however, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the ultimate purpose of all the sacrileges, the trickery, the lawlessness, the discord, and the scandal in religion, as well as of the overthrow of governments, the terrorism, the cruelties, the imprisonments, the murders, and the ruin of souls in the social realm, which are the stock and trade of the Revolution– the ultimate purpose of them all, I say, is the everlasting blasphemy of the sweet Name of Jesus, the God-Man. For the doctrine which inspires in Revolutionaries the most unmitigated hatred and provokes all their audacious perversities is that of His sacred divinity. Once you become aware of this fact, you will be able to comprehend the (poorly) disguised intentions of the “New Mass,” and, to be sure, of the whole drive for “renewal” in the Church. Read More »

 

Revolution from Above

May 3, 2023

“THE very leaders who are entrusted to guard the deposit of Faith and to lead the Faithful to Heaven, have rebelled, becoming the enemy itself, and they are paving the path to Hell for their followers. The enemies are, as they have always been, priests and bishops of the Church. They, as has been the repeated case in history, create the heresies and lead the Faithful away from the Church. No heresy has ever been started by a lay person. The Faithful are seduced into a stupor or misguided false trust in their spiritual leaders and seem to be willing to follow them, even to Hell. The Faithful fall into these heresies without objection, become infected with the disease of spiritual blindness and immediately become the unfaithful. At first, a few fell to the heresies, then more and more, and today, most have fallen. The great difficulty now is that spiritual blindness is so deeply imbedded, that very few will ever see their error, or be willing to admit it. Therefore, many will perish and very few will be saved, just as Christ Himself has foretold. The current conditions are so depraved, that the majority of people in the world place their complete trust in the world alone and in its allurements. People are so removed from the Grace of the True Church of God that any one who attempts to explain the situation to them for their own benefit is looked upon with scorn and rejection. But of course, this was the experience of Christ Himself during His first coming. Conditions are now ripe, as He Himself had foretold they would be, for His second coming.”

Dolores Rose Morris, 1990

 

 

The Lark Ascending

May 2, 2023

TOO freshly sweet to seem excess,
Too animate to need a stress;
But wider over many heads
The starry voice ascending spreads,
Awakening, as it waxes thin,
The best in us to him akin;
And every face to watch him rais’d,
Puts on the light of children prais’d,
So rich our human pleasure ripes
When sweetness on sincereness pipes,
Though nought be promis’d from the seas,
But only a soft-ruffling breeze
Sweep glittering on a still content,
Serenity in ravishment.

— From “The Lark Ascending” by George Meredith

 

 

How to Survive the Great Tribulation

May 2, 2023

Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying that all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity. (II Thessalonians, 2:10-11)

JAVIER Morell Ibarra in his Survival Guide and Reference Handbook During the Great Tribulation and the Operation of Error, posted at Betrayed Catholics, explains this era of deception and apostasy and describes what Catholics can do — the only thing they can do, which is cling to the truth, flee false shepherds and pray at home. Of course, everything he says applies to all people of good will, who cannot be saved outside the Catholic Church.

Those few who love the truth during this long-prophesied end to the Christian era will find much consolation in Ibarra’s guide, which correctly denounces both the Vatican II Church and “traditionalist” operations:

It is my sincere hope that this work will set a humble rule and final consideration to which everyone can turn for safe haven, a reliable guide to finally understanding where we are, how we got here, and lastly, most important of all, how to deal with the perfect storm that is beating down on all of us since the death of S.S. Pius XII, in other words, how to survive the Great Tribulation and the Operation of Error and not die trying.

May God Almighty have mercy on all of us and grant us wisdom, understanding, and much humility to understand and digest what is going to be exposed here.

 

 

The Month of Mary

May 1, 2023

AVE, GENEROSA
—-Hildegard von Bingen

Hail, girl of a noble house,
shimmering and unpolluted,
you pupil in the eye of chastity,
you essence of sanctity,
which was pleasing to God. Read More »

 

Sophistry and Folderol

May 1, 2023

ALAN writes:

Your comments and those of Robert Manning about the “transgender” Folderol are excellent.

“We are prisoners of our premises. Hence, we had better choose them carefully.” I sat in an auditorium in Syracuse, New York, on a pleasant Saturday afternoon in 1971 and heard Dr. Thomas Szasz speak those words. Truer words were never spoken.

To permit our enemies or adversaries to define our premises and vocabulary is, in effect, to surrender our independence of mind and judgment – they know it, but people who are too trusting don’t.

People who imagine they can surrender or alter their vocabulary to placate their most conniving enemies or not to “offend” them will soon surrender everything. Bet on it. I have watched gullible Americans do this over the span of my life. The “transgender” Folderol is merely a current example.

Men will not even call thugs “thugs” for fear of hurting their feelings. That is one proof not only of cowardice by grown men but of moral-philosophical bankruptcy throughout the culture. Nothing reveals moral courage or cowardice more clearly than the words men choose to speak and write. Read More »