Saturday, June 6, 2009

Swallow This

What seems a staple and forced diet for Americans and, now, the rest of the world with I Won's Cairo speech is a table filled with myth rather than gospel. "Let's move on" means a highly truncated selection of tasty tidbits of history, remembrance, and flavoring.

And what is our chef-in-chief preparing by way of a main course? Well, to be honest, we're not supposed to look too closely, leave that to his royal why-ness in the kitchen. In fact, a regular diet of platitudes chosen and oh-so carefully presented - he really is a master of innuendo seasoning and double-meaning - will ensure a lean, forward-thinking society.

Who wants to scour old recipe books like the Bible? The Koran is hip, growing, a force to be reckoned with; kosher is out. Judeo-Christian America? Pass. Didn't you know? America is one of the world's largest Muslim countries. Mmm, boy. That tastes great.

Let's face it. Myth just tastes better than gospel. Consider this first year a palate cleanser. Just you wait. Why before you know it, America will be feeding on a cuisine that will make you never look back. Yep.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Functional Atheism and Scimitar against ...

Listening recently to the CD of Gil Bailie's fifth Emmaus Road Initiative session (2/24/09) - Why did it take the Crucifixion to save us? - I realized again the vital distinction between the sacred and the mythical vs. the gospel and truth.

We live in a time when power is evinced by power of office, of wealth, of clout. How many divisions does the Pope have? is a question not only asked of a former Communist dictator, but every government that is a functionally atheist regime. That is, powers and principalities that look neither for an ally in Heaven nor to be judged by the same on terms not of their own choosing, but that of Heaven's (name one that does, please).

The only major world power that does - save (I hope) Israel - is no longer a temporal power in the normal sense of the word. It is the one, holy, apostolic, and Catholic Church. It occupies very little land, sum total; yet it purports to hold forth on matters magisterial to the entire human race - every man, woman, and child made in the image of God, imago dei.

That it should be such a target of venom and vitriol, such concerted efforts to divide and castigate it should - should - make every man, woman, and child made in the image of God wonder why. Why should the Catholic Church be heaped with such scorn and spite if it is merely an antiquated remnant of medieval superstition?

But, as Mark Studdock discovers in C. S. Lewis's prescient novel, That Hideous Strength, along with the powers and principalities that desire so much to arrogate and usurp for themselves the cult of power, persuasion, and permanence, the Normal (along with the True, Good, and Beautiful) has a remarkably tenacious way of rebuffing them, outnumbered, out-strategized, and out-gunned though it is.

This might be remarkable as a talking point, but right now the people of the biblical faiths - Judaism (and Israel is particular) and Christianity (and the Catholic Church in particular) are being attacked with a renewed vigor by a great many of the "functional atheist" regimes and peoples mentioned above. Even the most powerful man on the planet, President I Won, is catering hugely to Judaism's and Christianity's largest foe: the Scimitar.

Like all good politicians, he knows which way the (foul) wind blows, and he thinks he can harness it for his pitiably puny understanding of what is "good" for everyone. In this way, he merely another Protestant: he has studied under the finest progressive minds of post-modernity and has found Catholic truth, faith, and morals not to his liking. Therefore, he eschews them (read: rejects them) for another Rube Goldberg contraption. Which is passing strange, since his progressivist ideology can't possible assimilate the Scimitar's fervent intolerance for his permissive, Dionysiac values.

What they surreptitiously have in common is ... a common hatred for biblical truth. And it is always of value in politics and anthropological dealings to have a common scapegoat: someone or someones we can agree to sub-humanize and upon whom to cast blame.
And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day: for before they were at enmity between themselves. - Lk 23, 12
Who might that be? Who are those two figures left standing who believe in Heaven's authority, a Law that will not be superseded by human arrogance, hubris, and idolatry?

I think you know, gentle reader. Judaism and Catholicism.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Cartoon Demonizing and Prayer

The Anchoress correctly says this is one of Michelle Malkin's finest essays.

It is abundantly clear that the polarizing, accusatory gestures are becoming more emphatic in our hyper mimetically charged cultural milieu. Enemies are less human and more demoniac; less nuanced and more cartoon-esque (think Dan Brown Catholics stereotypes or Obots). Less human means more expendable.

About the only thing that will save us from continuing down the vortex of the sacred is prayer: for us as sinners and as our purported enemies as sinners. Once we think those who want to do away with "Christianists" are targets - or worse, gunning for us - we will be apt to attack first and ask questions later.

Henri Nouwen once said the most fearful people he ever met were incarcerated criminals doing time for violent crimes. They all had a "first strike" mentality.

Chivalry believes in legitimate defense. It also believes in the universality of Original Sin.

If it walks like a duck

... And quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.

For the Record - Scimitar at a Glance

A brief history of the Scimitar, complete with a profile of its "shining example," here.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Obamanation Parasitic on ... Domestic Church

Aristotle’s remark that man is by nature a social animal is not often paired with another of his: man is even more naturally a marrying animal. The union of man and woman with the aim of reproduction creates the most fundamental society of all, the family. Any further society presupposes the family and is parasitic on it. The mark of any society is concern for the common good, and where better than in the family do I learn that I have goods that are not simply mine but ours? Parents and children, each with their private goods, must give precedence to the shared or common good of the family if it, and they, are to flourish.

- Fr Ralph McNierny, The Marrying Animal

Chivalry, Faith, Hope, and Charity

When a commander-in-chief allows that an unstable Middle Eastern nation whose secular leader ever breathes maledictions against the survival of Israel has "legitimate" aspirations to nuclear power(/weapons?); when, structurally and surreptitiously, he wants to divide Catholics and undermine the Magisterium of the Catholic Church; when he is "outraged" over the murder of a late-term abortionist doctor, but silent when a Scimitar religionist guns down a member of the armed forces in a recruiting office on our native soil ...

Either he is pretending he knows something far past the average, common-sensical wisdom and we must play along and trust his judgment; or we are in for a very tumultuous and difficult melt down time in America.

The prophets of the Old Testament would view our time as the abomination of idolatry, paganism, and sin, ripe for punishment. The doctrine of Original Sin has not gone away, nor will it.

The Last Self-Help Administration to the contrary notwithstanding, be faithful, be charitable, be chivalrous. Christ our Lord has triumphed. We march merrily in the present darkness.

Sacred Violence

What is the difference between this and this, and this ? Structurally, nothing. They are all instances of sacred violence from an anthropological point of view. The farther we get from the influence of the Gospel, the more we had better be prepared to see it.

And, by the way, where is President I Won's "outrage" at the cold-blooded murder of one of his soldiers on our native soil by an exemplar of the Scimitar and Sudden Jihad Syndrome ?

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Feast of the Visitation

14th century wall-painting in the Timios Stavros Church in Pelendri.
The unborn John the Baptist bows before the unborn Jesus. Such depiction appears only in three more churches in Cyprus.

Except for the fact that Pentecost falls today, May 31, it is the day celebrated as the Feast of the Visitation. Like most feasts of Mary, it is closely connected with Jesus and his saving work. The more visible actors in the visitation drama (see Luke 1:39-45) are Mary and Elizabeth. However, Jesus and John the Baptist steal the scene in a hidden way. Jesus makes John leap with joy—the joy of messianic salvation. Elizabeth, in turn, is filled with the Holy Spirit and addresses words of praise to Mary—words that echo down through the ages.

Then comes the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). Here Mary herself (like the Church) traces all her greatness to God.
- American Catholic

Seiyo - Mugged by Reality

From the Brussels Journal and the desk of Takuan Seiyo comes the continuing wide-eyed, clear-headed, and must-read cultural analysis, From Meccania to Atlantis - Pt. 11: Mugged by Reality. Seiyo writes,
The grand Body Snatcher (1) project of erasing race-ethnicity-religion- culture-gender distinctions does not, of course, erase them. It merely, in the manner of a babbling baby, starts calling da-da what was previously doo-doo, as if through this onomatopaeic transfiguration shit could be turned into father.

This would be a joke, were the Snatchers not in control of the West and its destiny. Because they are, real doo-doo is being packaged as Fatherland’s Wonderful Joy of Diversity, and we eat it. Literally.

There have been several known cases of jihad-by-feces (hat tip Atlas Shrugs). The latest is Sahnoun Daifallah, 42, an Algerian unemployed chemist in England who was given to walking about with a laptop bag concealing a weed sprayer. Daifallah used this contraption to spray a mix of urine and feces on food, wine and books in stores in several British towns. There was a stockpile of this stuff in his home, in plastic bags marked with the names of different British target cities.

Caprophiliac jokes that are all-too-real abound in Snatchland. A man copulates with another, marries him and can get pregnant too. The state, freed from the discipline of the gold standard, prints a perpetual stream of pieces of paper, turning money into watered-down merde. Every Western institution now considers it necessary to consult Muslim authorities with respect to the installation of toilets in public buildings.

The willful lying about reality, the manipulation of language and images to disguise such lies, the teaching and enforcement of the lies and the persecution of those who challenge the lies is the chief occupation of the regime of Meccania.

[ ... ]

Reality will continue to discriminate, no matter what Body Snatchers say or do. And a clash between a reality-averse ideology and Reality has the same pre-ordained outcome as a test crash between a knockoff car and a wall. It’s only a question of the speed, acceleration, mass and distance of the lying car from the solid wall.

[ ... ]

Eurabia will know it has hit The Wall when the muezzin’s call issues from the tower of the Westerkerk, long after the grave of Rembrandt and the statue of Anne Frank have been removed from this church’s premises as offensive to Muslims -- the one as a maker of graven images and the other as a Jew and a symbol of a holocaust that did not happen.

Europe’s secular-socialist feminists will have experienced The Wall when they choose themselves to wear the full body chador rather than suffer spontaneous and frequent street violence. The society that swoons at transvestite politicians, gay marriage, homosexual indoctrination in schools and “empowerment” of men-hating Marxist women will know the test of Reality when its fertility rate is no longer 1.3 but 0.65 ...
Read more on the self-destruction of 'Meccania' right here.

My only critique is this: I think Seiyo's analysis is spot on, except for his bunching all people of color against "whitey". Here again, I'll take any number of Catholics of whatever race or ethnicity over those with no influence of the gospel, or westerners 2 or 3 generations away from it.