“THERE is no tradition of casualness in the liturgy of any Catholic Rite. In fact there is no tradition of casualness in the religious ritual of any group in the world, no matter how pagan, how primitive, or how polytheistic. Reverential fear is the most elemental attitude of anything which purports to be worship. (more…)
"IT WAS not necessary for her love to exert itself by any extraordinary emotions. As the slightest shock causes the fully ripe fruit to drop down from the tree, so was this blessed soul culled, to be suddenly transported to heaven. Thus the holy Virgin died by a movement of divine love: her soul was carried to heaven on a cloud of sacred desires. Therefore the holy Angels said: ‘Who is she that goes up… as a pillar of smoke of aromatical spices, of myrrh, and frankincense?’ (Canticles iii. 6). — a beautiful and excellent comparison admirably explaining the manner of her happy, tranquil death. The fragrant smoke that we see rising up from a composition of perfumes, is not extracted by force, nor propelled by violence: a gentle, tempered heat delicately detaches it and turns it into a subtle vapour which rises of its own accord. Thus was the soul of the holy Virgin separated from her body: the foundations were not shaken by a violent concussion. A divine heat detached it gently from the body and raised it up to its Beloved.” --- Bossuet, First Sermon on the Assumption (quoted here) "There is no one in existence who is able to praise worthily the holy death of God's Mother, even if he should have a thousand tongues and a thousand mouths. Not if all the most eloquent tongues could be united would their praises be sufficient. She is greater…
Kathy G. writes in this entry: As a rural dweller, it always amazes me how city people know best how "redneck," rural people should live, how people who live in concrete-coated metropolises ship their mountains of trash "away" to the ocean or rural areas, even other countries; how they have so little wildlife habitat, but demand rural areas accommodate their ideas of how much habitat must be provided to wildlife and how wetlands be preserved, etc.. It is irksome. Maybe if they kept some lions and tigers in cities, these animals could eat the millions of rats infesting them. Possums and coons love garbage. Maybe every apartment building should be required to house one or two? Provide habitat for something other than rats?
"WHEN God created the world He commanded each tree to bear fruit after its kind; and even so He bids Christians,—the living trees of His Church,—to bring forth fruits of devotion, each one according to his kind and vocation. A different exercise of devotion is required of each —the noble, the artisan, the 9servant, the prince, the maiden and the wife; and furthermore such practice must be modified according to the strength, the calling, and the duties of each individual. I ask you, my child, would it be fitting that a Bishop should seek to lead the solitary life of a Carthusian? And if the father of a family were as regardless in making provision for the future as a Capuchin, if the artisan spent the day in church like a Religious, if the Religious involved himself in all manner of business on his neighbor’s behalf as a Bishop is called upon to do, would not such a devotion be ridiculous, ill-regulated, and intolerable? Nevertheless such a mistake is often made, and the world, which cannot or will not discriminate between real devotion and the indiscretion of those who fancy themselves devout, grumbles and finds fault with devotion, which is really nowise concerned in these errors. No indeed, my child, the devotion which is true hinders nothing, but on the contrary it perfects everything; and that which runs counter to the rightful vocation of any one is, you may be…
RESIDENTS of the historic town of Buxton in Northern England have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to house foreign migrants in a former student residence at the University of Derby. The university, which would have profited from the deal, canceled its plans due to the backlash. Not only that, but townspeople are insisting the building be used for inexpensive housing for local residents who are poor. They apparently reject the idea that it is "racist" to protect the organic diversity of one's own community, defend it from crime and use taxpayer funds to aid actual citizens.
"FAR BACK in ancient times we were the first to cry among the masses of the people the words 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,' words many times repeated since those days by stupid poll-parrots who from all sides round flew down upon these baits and with them carried away the well-being of the world, true freedom of the individual, formerly so well guarded against the pressure of the mob. The would-be wise men of the goyim, the intellectuals, could not make anything out of the uttered words in their abstractness; did not note the contradiction of their meaning and inter-relation; did not see that in nature there is no equality, cannot be freedom; that Nature herself has established inequality of minds, of characters, and capacities, just as immutably as she has established subordination to her laws; never stopped to think that the mob is a blind thing, that upstarts elected from among it to bear rule are, in regard to the political, the same blind men as the mob itself, that the adept, though he be a fool, can yet rule, whereas the non-adept, even if he were a genius, understands nothing in the political—to all these things the goyim paid no regard; yet all the time it was based upon these things that dynastic rule rested; the father passed on to the son a knowledge of the course of political affairs in such wise that none should know it but members…
“WOMEN, I contend, are not men’s equals in anything but responsibility. We are not their inferiors, either, or even their superiors. We are quite simply different races. We live by an impulse separate from that of men. A separate tide beats in our blood. Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working-out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point. Yet, for the first time in history, society takes no cognizance of it.” — Phyllis McGinley, “The Honor of Being a Woman,” The Province of the Heart; Viking Press, 1959, pp 13-14
"A MAN who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either command them or be enslaved to them. It is better to be the hammer than the anvil." -- St. Dominic
FROM The Plot Against South Africa by Klaus D. Vaqué (Varama, 1989):
The first phase in the long march to power was the adoption of the ANC and its incorporation in the socialist world revolution. For the second stage many “useful idiots” were enlisted: churchmen, liberals and socialists, who could not see what was afoot in South Africa. The controlled mass-media saw to the rest by softening up the country with a constant barrage of propaganda in readiness for the final charge and driving it into world-political isolation and economic ruin.
A whole army of Eastern agents who had been training for their task for decades was dispatched to South Africa. One of them. Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, the senior naval officer in Simonstown, had kept the Russians informed for over twenty years about modern Western weapons systems and the South African “ear to the world”, the communications centre at Silvermine in the Cape. (more…)
FROM “In Defense of Monogamy” by George Gilder (Commentary, 1974):
The sexual liberals purport to be the “open,” the “creative,” the “genitally liberated” facing the “repressives,” the “paranoids,” the “anal compulsives.” The liberals are against power games and for the sharing of love. They are for “universal kinship,” in Alex Comfort’s phrase, and equality.
Why then is there such a disparity between this hopeful vision and the reality of the single “liberated” life? The reason is that the removal of restrictions on sexual activity does not bring equality and community. It brings ever more vicious sexual competition. The women become “easier” for the powerful to get—but harder for others to keep. Divorces become “easier”—but remarriage is extremely difficult for abandoned older women. Marriages become more “open”—open not only for the partners to get out but also for the powerful to get in.
Monogamy is central to any democratic social contract, designed to prevent a breakdown of society into “war of every man against every other man.” In order to preserve order, a man may relinquish liberty, prosperity, and power to the state. But if he has to give up his wife to his boss, he is no longer a man. A society of open sexual competition, in which the rich and powerful—or even the sexually attractive—can command large numbers of women is a society with the most intolerable hierarchy of all. In any polygamous society some men have no wives at all; denied women and children, they are in effect deprived of the very substance of life. (more…)
"THE essence of perfection is to embrace the will of God in all things, prosperous or adverse. In prosperity, even sinners find it easy to unite themselves to the divine will; but it takes saints to unite themselves to God’s will when things go wrong and are painful to self-love. Our conduct in such instances is the measure of our love of God. St. John of Avila used to say: “One ‘Blessed be God’ in times of adversity, is worth more than a thousand acts of gratitude in times of prosperity.” Furthermore, we must unite ourselves to God’s will not only in things that come to us directly from his hands, such as sickness, desolation, poverty, death of relatives, but likewise in those we suffer from man—for example, contempt, injustice, loss of reputation, loss of temporal goods and all kinds of persecution. On these occasions we must remember that whilst God does not will the sin, he does will our humiliation, our poverty, or our mortification, as the case may be. It is certain and of faith, that whatever happens, happens by the will of God: “I am the Lord forming the light and creating the darkness, making peace and creating evil” From God come all things, good as well as evil. We call adversities evil; actually they are good and meritorious, when we receive them as coming from God’s hands: “Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord hath not…
IN LIGHT of today's well-funded, Communist-style, racial rhetoric and the violence it engenders, the 1966 movie Born Free, based on a true story, is a shockingly positive portrayal of kind and humane white settlers in Africa. How things have changed.
