By Thomas Merton. ONE of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing. If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders… Read More A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann
by Stephen Hand In Evelyn Waugh’s stunning classic, Brideshead Revisited, there is a scene which presses on my mind these days as I ponder so many forces gathering against a Church weakened greatly by the sins of her own children, both clerical and lay. All of us. It is the time when Sebastian, Lord Alex… Read More Lord Marchmain’s Long Hate
Good Fences, Shared Bounty. Can it ever be wise to separate compassion, reasonable limits and common sense? If you have followed the immigration debates in the West in recent decades you will have long ago gotten a glimpse of the fears, greed, fanaticism and wars which, often enough, make many peoples in our post 9/11… Read More Immigration, Birds of a Feather and Trojan Horses
Ross Douthat writes, “He may believe that the age of American-led globalization is ending no matter what, that after the pandemic certain walls will stay up everywhere, and that the goal for the next 50 years is to consolidate what you can — resources, talent, people, territory — inside your own civilizational walls. In this… Read More Putin The New Czar?
I don’t mean to rain on Patrick Madrid’s (or anyone’s) parade. But consider. He writes in bold letters on ‘X’ that the Beatles are the “Greatest Band in History. Don’t Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Like The Beatles!“. But the Beatles cast both genius and deepest shade. I’m in my 7th decade of life. I’ve loved… Read More The Beatles and Where We Are.
Fr. Joel S. Panzer, The Catholic Answer and EWTN, 1996 When did the Catholic Church condemn slavery? According to some notable figures, the Church did not finally condemn slavery until recently. Judge John T. Noonan stated that it was not until 1890 that the Church condemned the institution of slavery, lagging behind laws enacted to… Read More The Popes and Slavery: Setting the Record Straight
Victor Gaetan is senior international correspondent for the National Catholic Register 8/21. The closer we look at decisions to deploy a second atomic weapon against Japan on August 9, [1945…] the more morally audacious the tactic appears. Step outside the American explanatory cloud—we bombed military installations to force unconditional imperial surrender—defining public understanding to see:… Read More Nagasaki Was A Strike Against Japan And The Catholic Church
“Whittaker Chambers is best known today as the veteran Soviet spy who became, in William F. Buckley Jr.’s words, “the most important American defector from Communism” when he testified against members of his underground Communist cell in the 1930s. Yet Chambers did more than reject Communism: He revealed a key problem with modern liberalism. In… Read More Mark Groubert On the Whittaker Chamber – Alger Hiss Case
Most truly moral people are shocked at the thought that leaders of a nation could engage in unnecessary wars, kill many hundreds of thousands of people, very likely millions (1) in the process, and still sleep at night and smile on the golf course for the cameras. Leroy Fletcher Prouty (January 24, 1917 – June… Read More Malthusian Wars. Fletcher Prouty.
Modern de facto Paganism often caves to the passions, but in ancient times it was not always so. Stoic wisdom is not theology, but is often good psychology in harmony with Christian ideals. The Magi also brought their gifts. “Finally, brethren, whatsoever is true, whatsoever is honorable, whatsoever is just, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is… Read More Stoic Gems: The Porch and the Cross
MIC Fleecing of American taxpayers Matthew Hoh Two press reports stood out to me this morning: the release of the names of two US Navy SEALs who drowned two weeks ago in the Arabian Sea and the Air Force’s production authorization for the B21 Raider bomber. Both stories symbolize an imperial inertia that defines American… Read More Americans Are Paying A Massive Price To Maintain Empire
Foreign Affairs: “…When Americans think of global war, they typically think of World War II—or the part of the war that began with Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After that attack, and Adolf Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States, the conflict was a single, all-encompassing struggle between rival alliances on… Read More How Today’s Regional Conflicts Resemble the Ones That Produced World War II
Be it near or still a ways off, Jesus the Lord said regarding the last times, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there… Read More Does God send wars as a punishment for sin?
This war is not like any other war. A revolution … involve[s] ideologies, dogmas and creeds. 1914 The so-called “Age of Reason” was really an Age of Unbelief for its strongest protagonists were corrosive men like Hume, Kant, Voltaire, who measured the growth of reason by its alienation from God Who Alone could guarantee its… Read More Fulton J. Sheen, 1943. War Against Christians and Jews.
Or, there are many ways to resent and persecute that which is hated. Originally Titled: Modern Art. The Goldsmith Company Lecture David StarkeyGoldsmith Lecture2017 The Inquiring Mind writes “Starkey is in great form in this lecture where he excoriates conceptual art “For the inaugural Goldsmiths’ Company lecture, Dr. David Starkey spoke on the subject of… Read More How Modern Art Took a Dump on Christian Western Civilization
“The issue [of the week] is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”–Students for a Democratic Society, Marxist SDS. Revolutionary Con Man Saul Alinsky. Inciting “Power Responses”: No boys, no girls, no mothers, no fathers, no religion…“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for‘ (Apropos of the above hymn to Obama, ironically, Black… Read More Always the Revolution
The Imaginative Conservative.Victor Orban interview excerpt. “… the Hungarian position was that there was hardly any chance that there could be a winner in this war. It will have losers, but it won’t have winners. “Russia is coming up against a brick wall, and as NATO is supplying Ukraine with weapons and money, it’s simply… Read More The Ukraine War, the Pope, & the West
David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way” “The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of… Read More Videodrome. When the Seven Deadly Sins of Excess Morphed Into “Progress”
Counterrevolution? In sickness or in health, for richer or poorer… “Tradwives, a newly coined term for traditional wives, is a subculture of housewives who believe in clear gender roles, the importance of homemaking and a patriarchal marriage, according to many women who self-identify as tradwives. Tradwives are women who honor femininity, care for their husbands,… Read More Tradwives’ push back against critics who say their viral homemaking lifestyle is ‘alarming’
For more and more people, work appears to serve no purpose. Is there any good left in the grind? [The] bullshit employment has come to serve in places like the U.S. and Britain as a disguised, half-baked version of the dole—one attuned specially to a large, credentialled middle class. In “Bullshit Jobs” (Simon & Schuster),… Read More The Bullshit-Job Boom
“Karl Marx was intent on fomenting war between economic classes; Cultural Marxists have expanded the scope of his target to races, genders, and religious Christians. Identity Politics, or Cultural Marxism, has been the core curriculum of American public and private schools for several generations now. “To distance themselves from the Communist atrocities they made possible,… Read More Fake and Dangerous “Social Justice”
John Mearsheimer and Carl Bildt. Ukraine, Russia, China and the West. A dangerous time in a dangerous multipolar world. The Holberg Debate is an annual event organised by the Holberg Prize. The debate is inspired by Ludvig Holberg’s Enlightenment ideas and aims to explore pressing issues of our time. The Holberg Debate was organised for… Read More The Holberg Debate on The War in Ukraine
Our dysfunctional society must return to the hearth. By Paul Kingsnorth. “… The Irish government is currently campaigning against households which burn turf or wood, the former on the grounds of CO2 emissions, and the latter on the grounds of air quality. As ever, the campaign is driven from Dublin, and mostly takes Dublin sensibilities… Read More Firewood Will Save the West
18 Nov 2011 The Vatican has reignited the debate over whether playwright William Shakespeare was Catholic by insisting there was ‘little doubt he was’. Historians have been in two minds over Shakespeare’s faith with splits between whether he was a Roman Catholic or a Protestant and the argument has surfaced again with the release of… Read More Vatican: there is ‘little doubt’ William Shakespeare was Catholic
By Christian Oliver For Mail online.13 Dec 2022. The Pope has warned of ‘omens of even greater destruction and desolation’. The pontiff said even more dire times for humanity are set to come in the future. He was speaking at a Mass commem- orating the appearance of Mary in 1531 The Pope has offered a harrowing vision of… Read More Pope warns ‘omens of greater destruction and desolation’ for mankind
Rod Dreher.The American Conservative.Oct 29, 2022. In maiden parliamentary speech, new Italian PM cites St. Benedict, St. John Paul II, and Sir Roger Scruton. The new Italian prime minister gave her maiden speech to Parliament yesterday, and it was magnificent. Here is a link to the transcript in Italian. I’ve google-translated some passages. Excerpts: Italy… Read More “Giorgia Meloni: One Of Us”
The will to power and the privatio boni — St. Augustine “… the worshipers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities, and are nowise concerned that the republic be less depraved and licentious. Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it flourish and abound in resources; let it be… Read More Augustine and the Nihil
There are many people who will cite the West as something which is under threat and something for which we should be prepared to fight to defend. Depending on which defender of the West is pontificating, the threat comes from Russia, or from Islam, or from China, or from some enemy within the West itself.… Read More Is the West Worth Defending? By Joseph Pearce.
Dr. Lyell Asher.June 10, 2022. “[It is] critical that we ask: In whose interest is it to persuade students that a university is a “home” where they’re not to think? In whose interest is it to persuade them that they’re fragile, that they’re threatened, that words are violence, that an imagined slight is as bad… Read More Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults
“The Unspeakable. What is that? Surely, an eschatological image. It is the void that we encounter, you and I, underlying the announced programs, the good intentions, the unexampled and universal aspirations for the best of all possible worlds. It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the… Read More Merton on The Unspeakable
Thomas Reeves, the author of “America’s Bishop,” a biography of Fulton J. Sheen, tells of Sheen’s concerns regarding what he saw as the accelerated secularization occuring during WWII. Reeves mentions in particular the bishop’s 1944 book Seven Pillars of Peace where the subject is treated. This secularization involved the breakdown of the family which Sheen… Read More Bishop Sheen, Rosie the Riveter, and the War’s Greatest Casualty
Statement on the Ukraine conflict – A Call to Peace and End to War. Los Angeles Catholic Worker. “We are anti-war. We believe war is a moral failure stemming from our unwillingness to actively work for peace. From the individual to the collective national level, the prioritizing of shortsighted self-interest has created this crisis. Victims… Read More The Russia – Ukraine Tragedy
“From free speech to “spheres of influence” to our passion for endless war, we’ve become the doublethinkers 1984 predicted…A healthy person should be able to be horrified by what’s happening in Russia and also see a warning about the degradation that ensues from using “pre-emptive” force, or from trying to control discontent by erasing expressions… Read More Orwell Was Right –Matt Taibbi
“…democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. “Democracy and freedom will be the theme of… Read More “Democracies Will Change Their Nature”
Biden to request $2.6B to promote gender equity worldwide Alex Gangitanohttps://thehill.com/ President Biden will request $2.6 billion for foreign assistance programs that promote general equality worldwide, he announced on International Women’s Day on Tuesday. The funds will be part of his fiscal 2023 budget request to Congress and will double the amount requested for gender programs last… Read More Worldwide? Who Will Define “Equity, Equality, and Gender” Globally?
Msgr. Timothy Verdon, the director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, told CNA “The images of suffering that the Pietà always implies I think will deeply touch people. I think that visitors will be moved to see these works,” he said. The image of the Pietà evokes “the personal suffering of mothers who hold their… Read More How Michelangelo’s 3 Pietàs speak to a suffering world
The Irish Have Been Bullied Into Making Themselves Extinct: John Waters On The End Of Ireland Fleshing out the deeper meanings of Irish author John Waters’ important book, Give Us Back the Bad Roads, and what has been happening to Western Civilization.
“This documentary covers experimental movements that emerged in the American Catholic Church in the wake of the 2nd Vatican Council…” It is instructive, if not so edifying, to read the Comments that attended this YouTube video. And one must wonder what we have learned, or not, in our American Catholic restlessness.
The Spectator, UK “Over the last nine weeks Vladimir Putin has moved more than 90,000 troops to the borders of Ukraine and, according to US intelligence, ordered his military planners to draw up detailed blueprints for a full-scale invasion. Putin insists the build-up is defensive. Russia is acting only in response to a ‘growing threat… Read More Putin is more rational than Nato realises
John Waters, IrelandDec 5 The desecration implicit in the proposal to reconstruct the basilica of Notre-Dame in the image of Woke may announce the culmination of a shift in human consciousness that began centuries ago. I remember well the morning of April 16th 2019, waking up in a hospital bed, to a message from a… Read More Burning Down God’s House. The Age of Unreason.
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