“IT is as much life-long with us as anything can be. It is a prominent part of our first turning to God, and there is no height of holiness in which it will leave us. It is the interior representation of our guardian angel in our souls, and the disposition and demeanor he would fain should be constant and persevering in us. It is quiet. Indeed, it rather tranquillizes a troubled soul than perturbs a contented one. It hushes the noises of the world, and rebukes the loquacity of the human spirit. It softens asperities, subdues exaggerations, and constrains everything with a sweet and gracious spell which nothing else can equal. It is supernatural. For it has a natural motive to feed upon. It is all from God, and all for God. It is forgiven sin for which we mourn, and not sin which perils self. And this very fact makes it also a fountain of love. We love because much has been forgiven, and we always remember how much it was. We love because the forgiveness has abated fear. We love because we wonder at the compassion that could so visit such unworthiness. We love because the softness of sorrow is akin to the filial confidence of love.”

— Frederick William Faber, Growth in holiness; or, The progress of the spiritual life, 1864

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THE letter below, dated May 16, 2000, was written by the writer Lawrence Auster to a minister of the prominent St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Mr. Auster died ten years ago yesterday at the age of 64. Born and raised Jewish, he followed Eastern religious beliefs for years as a young adult. He was then baptized at St. Thomas in the 1990s after a powerful mystical experience of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Here he addresses the pastor of the church, honing in with his characteristically unsparing intensity on its atmosphere and beliefs. In the letter, among other interesting things, he notes the infuriating tendency of modernists (or postmodernists) to speak out of both sides of their mouths.

A letter from Lawrence Auster was not always welcome by its recipient (and often went unanswered). Perhaps in reading this you can sense why.

Here is the letter:

Dear Fr. —-,

If you were wondering what I was talking about with Bishop S. in the narthex after Sunday services, this is what I said to him: ‘Where in the Bible does it say that we discover the meaning of Christ’s resurrection by ’embracing our particularity’?

He replied: ‘That’s my interpretation.”

When I objected to his interpretation, he clarified that he did not mean that it’s about all of us just going off in our own direction (which had been my impression), but that we live ‘in Christ.’

I was glad he said this. Combined with his evident sincerity of manner, it mollified me somewhat. However, that’s not what he said in his sermon. In his sermon, he said nothing about living in Christ. In his sermon he threw out an endless series of rhetorical and sophomoric-sounding questions (there must have been about twenty of them), such as ‘How do we know what the meaning of the resurrection is?’, ‘How can we tell tht Christ is risen?’ and so on and on. They were questions that led nowhere, questions that to my mind betokened a lack of genuine engagement with the Gospels. They were posed not in the spirit of a man who is looking for the truth or who is leading up to an exposition of the truth, but in the spirit of a man who is saying that there isn’t any truth.

If that suspicion seems extreme and unfair, it was confirmed at the end of his sermon when he said — yes, he actually said this — that there is no answer, that each of us must find the answer for ourselves, by living our lives, meeting the diversity of life, being kind to people, blah blah blah. (I’m not quoting exactly but this is very close to what he said.) Finally he said by living this way, by “embracing our particularity,” we would understand that Jesus was risen and with us.

This was not quite as bad as Bishop G.’s remark in his 1998 Christmas Eve sermon, that we come to the truth of Christianity by realizing that it’s ok to be ‘fat and sloppy,’ since Christ loves us any way we are. But it was in the same ballpark. Read More »

(Video link)

ASHBEY Beasley & Shaundelle Brooks are two citizen lobbyists, alleged survivors of mass shootings, who just happened to show up at the scene of the alleged shooting in Nashville, Tennessee this week. Ashbey — is this a character in a British satire? — was all ready with a soapbox speech to be aired on national television. What is the likelihood of such a coincidence? How often do people make media-ready political speeches on the scene of an allegedly gruesome massacre?

Indeed, the whole event was so stagey, as seen in previously posted videos, there are seemingly elements of mockery and gamesmanship in it. Here are some reasons why you can confidently conclude, even though the idea of children being murdered pulls at your heartstrings and short-circuits your critical faculties, that no one was killed and that the event was more campy, political theater and psychological warfare aimed at disarming Americans and inciting diversionary chaos. Not only is it not insensitive to point out these facts, it is highly insensitive not to point them out:

1. No people — no students or teachers — were visibly in the school when alleged shooter entered.
2. Shooter walked through empty hallways, as seen in footage conveniently provided by police.

3. Audrey Hale, a woman described as a shy and sensitive artist with no known experience with firearms, is alleged to have delivered instantly fatal shots to six people in about three minutes, a feat highly difficult for even expert marksmen. This is the single most important fact about this event. The shooter is skilled enough to execute this remarkable feat, while dumb enough to wear a red hat.
4. No blood anywhere.
5. No bodies anywhere, except for un-bloody corpse said to be that of Hale, who was immediately killed (a standard element in staged shootings).
6. No realistically wounded or dead taken to ambulances.
7. Surveillance footage and police cam footage instantly provided to media. No date/time stamp/officer ID number on bodycam.
8. TV anchors pervasively and insistently call the footage “horrifying,” “chilling” and “graphic” when it is clearly none of those things. Calling it “graphic” deters viewers from viewing it and seeing how obviously staged it is.
9. Shooter caught on camera in two different pairs of sneakers, suggesting event was filmed in two sessions. (This may have been deliberately mockery and besides shoes are used as Masonic symbols in many of these events, as Ole Dammegard has shown.)
10. Shooter wrote a manifesto, a standard prop of staged shootings even though no one writes manifestos.
11. Police immediately identify shooter and victims, faster than the fastest police investigators.
12. Photos and bios of victims and shooters instantly available.
13. Shooter is a “tranny,” and the school is at least nominally Christian — incendiary plot elements seemingly cooked up by scriptwriters.
14. Masonic numerology used heavily (lots of sixes, threes and nines; school address is 33; three adult victims are ages 61, 61 and 60; three student victims, ages 9, 9 and 9.).
15. Photos of victims appear to be computer generated: one of the victims and an alleged father of a victim clearly have the same eyes. (See photos below.)
16. The President, so unmoved that he jokes about ice cream, addresses the public and calls for more gun restrictions.
17. Fake tears and teddy bears (see videos in previous post).
18. Witnesses and bystanders smile during interviews and parents seen apathetically and with obvious boredom waiting outside.
19. Ashbey and Shaundelle on scene, their scripts ready for interviews.
20. Full-blown, non-stop media coverage is itself a sign of an orchestrated hoax.

Are we living in a comedy or are we living in a nightmare?

I’m going for the comedy.

Normally one should ignore the latest hysteria on TV news and focus on reality. The problem in cases like this is that you are going to hear about it everywhere and it may be helpful to have the basics. These events are going to continue, full steam ahead. There are going to be lots of fake shootings, medical panics and staged environmental disasters. Buckle your seat belts! And remember — your taxes are footing the bill.

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I WENT to Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Springfield, Pennsylvania yesterday and gave the tombstone of my departed friend Lawrence Auster a serious scrubbing. Lichen and green mold had accumulated. The granite was still wet and in need of another rinse in this photo, but it should look much better today. I wanted it to be as new for today’s tenth anniversary of his death. Mr. Auster died of pancreatic cancer on Good Friday, March 29, 2013 at the age of 64.

It is a chilly spring day here in Pennsylvania. The magnolia trees are in bloom, the grass greening, the sun shining and other trees visibly budding, creating a soft, hopeful haze of grayish-green. The section where he is buried was empty ten years ago, but is now almost full. It is a peaceful spot, no better place to be.

I know Larry is fondly remembered by his friends, family and fans of his brilliant, combative writings against multiculturalism and other idols of the modern world. I am going to return today. I will do one last scrub and leave the fond regards of those who cannot make it or have long since forgotten.

Incline, O Lord, Thine ear to our prayers, in which we humbly beseech Thy mercy; that Thou wouldst place the soul of Thy servant, Lawrence Auster, which Thou has caused to depart from this world, in the region of peace and light; and unite him in the fellowship of Thy saints. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

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A READER sends his version of Hail, Holy Queen in honor of yesterday’s Feast of the Annunciation:

Hail Gabriel, hail; a thousand hails
For thine whose music still prevails
To charm the list’ning ear;
Angelic word, sent forth to tell
How He the Eternal Word should dwell
Amid His creatures here.

Heaven’s voice of sweetness, uttered low,
Thy words like strains of music grow
Upon the stilly night;
Clear echoes from the mind of God,
That steal through Mary’s blest abode
In pulses of delight. Read More »

 “IF you wish it, the blood of your Lord was given for you; if you do not wish it, it was not given for you.”

— St. Augustine

“EARTH may be an unhappy place; but it is not the pressure of God’s providence which causes most of the unhappiness, nor the roarings of the devil going about seeking whom he may devour. It is the human spirit operating in quarrels, coldness, conceit, rivalry, envy, strife, jealousies, misunderstandings, and an exaggerated idea of little slights and wrongs. Now the suffering of all these things, and it is very acute, comes from fretfulness about our reputation. The excessive care of our reputation is naturally a besetting sin of times whose spirit of publicity does really make a Christian duty of the preservation of our good name. But let us consider what this fretfulness brings in its train. It is obviously quite inconsistent with interior peace, which is the soul of the spiritual life. For how can we be at peace if we make ourselves responsible for what is not in our own power, but escapes from us on all sides? It breeds an exaggerated idea of our own importance, and so destroys humility.”

— Fr. Frederick William Faber, Growth in holiness; or, The progress of the spiritual life, 1864

“ALL life is a tension of apparent opposites. Life abides and life advances by a sort of counter-pull — what I have called a tension — between forces that seem to be the negation of each other. Thus our life is conditioned by death: the animal dies and the man eats it and lives; man dies to himself in order to live to God, and living to God finds himself too. Again our freedom is made perfect by obedience; thus a man is free to live if he obeys the laws of nutrition, is free to build himself a home, to sail the oceans of the world, to fly in the air, if he obeys the laws that govern the universe. One might go on endlessly listing such things. And no one of them is accidental or incidental. Our life is truly seen as a tension of opposites. We ourselves, like all created things, exist because omnipotence made something of nothing. We are best expressed as nothingness worked upon by omnipotence, the two most ultimate of all opposites.”

— Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity (Sheed and Ward, 1946)

Video link

WAS THE Cold War a lie?

This video presents the evidence that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were firebombed, not destroyed by nuclear weapons. Read More »

A YOUNG child on a subway learns about the double standard in social manners.

Aelbert Cuyp, Landscape with Trees, 1640’s

SPRING
—— Christina Georgina Rossetti

Frost-locked all the winter,
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
What shall make their sap ascend
That they may put forth shoots?
Tips of tender green,
Leaf, or blade, or sheath;
Telling of the hidden life
That breaks forth underneath,
Life nursed in its grave by Death.

Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly,
Drips the soaking rain,
By fits looks down the waking sun:
Young grass springs on the plain;
Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees;
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
Swollen with sap put forth their shoots;
Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane;
Birds sing and pair again. Read More »

“YOUTH is a perfectly wonderful commodity and far too valuable, as Shaw has pointed out, to be wasted on the young. Yet like all human benefactions, it has its penalties, which in today’s urgent society have frighteningly increased. I don’t think I am merely nostalgic when I contend that being a child nowadays is a tougher proposition than it was when my generation and I compared arithmetic answers between classes or devoured bread-and-pickle sandwiches on the front porch after school. For one thing, it isn’t as much fun.

“On the surface this assertion may sound like gibbering nonsense. Never before in history has childhood had so much attention paid to its welfare and its amusement. It is cosseted, pampered, immunized against unhappiness as against polio or whooping cough.

“Also on the surface, its pattern of traditional play seems not have changed very much since my time …. But there is a difference in the way games are played.

“That nimble child with the skip rope may not be bounding merely for the pleasure of physical activity. Perhaps she practices leaps so that at ballet class on Saturday morning she can  improve her tour jeté and be able to star in the spring show. There is a contest arranged for kite flyers, with cash awards donated for the winners by the chamber of commerce — so reeling a paper toy in and out of the sky is serious business.. The champion builder of snowmen has his picture in the paper. That ballplayer exercises his arm apprehensively. Will he or will he not be included in the Little League, where he and the rest of his team can own uniforms and a coach and listen to parents cheering from genuine grandstands? The swimmer vies for medals. Those vague dreams and rewards of “When I grow up” have suddenly become concrete goals, scaled to child’s size. The play has turned professional. And the ordinary competitive instinct of the young is being channeled into a frenzy of keeping up with, or learning to surpass, all the little Joneses in the neighborhood.

“There is nothing wrong with healthy competition. But there is, it seems to me, something both wrong and unwholesome about harassing those below their teens into too early an insistence on success.”

— Phyllis McGinley, Sixpence in her Shoe; Macmillan Co., New York; 1964

St. Joseph; Salvatore di Franco (active 18th century)

“FROM the moment that the angel had revealed to him the mystery of the Incarnation accomplished in his august spouse, his life was a continual contemplation. What did he contemplate, if not the love of God for us, impersonated in the Word made flesh? ‘God has so loved the world.'”

—-  Pierre Chaignon, 1907; Source

“SLOWNESS is the grand characteristic of the Creator as seen by the side of His creatures. Were it not for His slowness, where should we have been long since? We forget this, when His slowness makes us impatient. He is slow; we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been from eternity. Thus grace for the most part acts slowly, and mortification is as long as levelling a mountain, and prayer as the growth of an old oak. He works by little and by little, and sweetly and strongly He compasses His ends, but with a slowness which tries our faith, because it is so great a mystery. We must fasten upon this attribute of God in our growth in holiness. It must be at once our worship and our exemplar. There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them.”

— Fr. Frederick William Faber, Growth in Holiness, or the Progress of the Spiritual Life

Saint Joseph and the Christ Child, Nicolaas van der Veken

IN the supernatural, as in the moral and physical order, the infinite wisdom and power of God suit the means to the end. God gives grace and sanctity to His Saints to fulfill the office and rank for which His Divine Providence has destined them.* The nearer a soul is destined to approach God, and the more intimately and largely she enters into the scheme of Redemption, the greater is her dignity, and in proportion is her sanctity. In the above principles we have the origin and the source of the sanctity, privileges, and choicest graces, showered, in all the plenitude of their abundance, upon the soul of St. Joseph by the Almighty. 

St. Joseph: His life, His virtues, His privileges, His power, Thomas H. Kinane

Meditations on St. Joseph for March 20th, his Feast Day this year.