See How the Mighty Will Fall

There are, it seems clear, certain personages for whom Catholic truth seems a "doable" target for expunging. They sent their point man to Notre Dame; they have their flunkies in both houses of Congress; they see picking off the stragglers as easy, and dividing the Papal house as not a problem.

But they forget their mortality, their creatureliness. Heed well the words of a wiser head than my own:

So long as we retain the Catholic faith we have always one interest, one loyalty, one enthusiasm in the world to keep us alive ... It does commit us to a philosophy; but it does also take us out of ourselves by throwing our reliance on ... the Personality of Jesus Christ ... by identifying us with a movement, whose triumphs are our triumphs, whose anxieties are our anxieties; life can never be dull for us while the Church is still militant, still has a battle to fight and a position to be vindicated.

- Monsignor Ronald Knox

Our Lady of the Rosary

Our Lady of the Rosary

On this feast day, we commemorate the miraculous victory granted the Christian forces over the Scimitar at the Battle of Lepanto. Here is Chesterton's epic poem about it.

Shroud Story

CNA has a story on the Shroud of Turin in response to the claim of an Italian scientist who purports to know how to reproduce it here. [ht: Fr Z]

Keeping the Landlords Happy

I am beginning to think the man isn't capable of making a good decision. He keeps compounding poor discernment with poor judgment.

Do even his old lefty bedfellows driving around with "Friends of Tibet" Virginia tags agree with dissing the Dalai Lama?

Opportunities of Economic Crisis

Nevertheless, one must work like there is no praying, and pray like there is no working. On current events, I am at one with Creative Minority Report on this. There will be ample opportunities to answer the man testing Our Lord (!) in Luke 10: "Who is my neighbor?"

Memento Mori

A Little Guide for Your Last Days

Just a reminder. We not only have to live with our decisions. We have to die with our decisions.

Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi and the Heavenly Melody - Frank Cadogan Cowper

Conservatism AND Liberalism Dead?

Steven Hayward in today's Washington Post Op/Ed has a piece that asks, "Is Conservatism Dead? No - Just Brain Dead." He writes,

The best-selling conservative books these days tend to be red-meat titles such as Michelle Malkin's "Culture of Corruption," Glenn Beck's new "Arguing with Idiots" and all of Ann Coulter's well-calculated provocations that the left falls for like Pavlov's dogs. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these books. Politics is not conducted by Socratic seminar, and Henry Adams's dictum that politics is the systematic organization of hatreds should remind us that partisan passions are an essential and necessary function of democratic life. The right has always produced, and always will produce, potboilers.

Conspicuously missing, however, are the intellectual works...MORE>>

Hayward elsewhere dismisses the tea party phenomena as "unfocused" and, as per above, sees Malkin and Beck as not sufficiently "intellectual" to warrant attention (he may have a point there).

Mr. Hayward sees only "Happy Meal Conservatism," which will, he posits, melt away very soon with the morning mist. What he fails to see is the "Happy Meal Liberalism" that he himself espouses. In the doubling rivalry in which he is caught, he fails to see that his stance is the equal and opposite of the conservatism that he and the WaPo scorn and flail at with incessant effort.

If Mr. Hayward wants to find true intellectual vigor, he will have to look to what he and other supposed gatekeepers of public discourse rejected and abandoned long ago; namely, the thinkers and writers of the Catholic Church. One could do worse than the likes of René Girard, recent inductee into L'Académie français, or the Holy Father, Benedict XVI.

But that would take a paradigm shift for Mr. Hayward, not to mention peeling his eyes off of his mimetic rival dance-partner, "conservatism".

NOT

This should make you more than a little slightly ill. Now we are seeing the squirm meter well into the red. NAMBLA - North American Association for Man-Boy Love Association - is not simply about queering. It is advocacy for the normalization of pedophilia.

And thus his royal I Wun-ness takes the country farther down the spiralling vortex of cultural meltdown. Well done, sir. Well done.

Hidden in Dorset

Daniel Mitsui tells of (and shows) A Hidden Chapel Where the Catholic Faith Never Died during and after the so-called English reformation.

Celente - Main Street Revolution

Gerald Celente - the most trusted name in trends - sits down for an exclusive interview with RT's Anastasia Churkina to talk about what the future holds for America:

Yellowstone - Supervolcano

We know that the supervolcano that IS Yellowstone - its caldera is vast - erupts on the average every 600,000 years. We are overdue at present for another eruption.

If you enjoy fiction based on fact, and a good disaster flick now and then, I recommend Supervolcano – It’s beneath Yellowstone and it’s going to blow. I discovered this little made-by the BBC gem this summer and have since purchased the DVD. It's based on good science and, in my opinion, a better romp than Dante's Peak if for no other reason than it IS going to happen. It's just a matter of time.

If it gives you a case of the heeby-jeebies, you can always console yourself with a copy of my book, A Little Guide for Your Last Days. Cheers!

Feast of the Guardian Angels

Guardian Angels by Monsignor Charles Pope.

Leighton - PRB

The Shadow (1909) - Edmund Blair Leighton

And I'm Not Talking Col. Sanders

As The Anchoress presents, and a psychotherapist and self-proclaimed "recovering liberal" says:

The economy is tanking -- Obama laughs. We are accumulating crippling debt -- he and the other Democrats go on a spending spree.

Millions take to the street for a peaceful 9/12 march. He doesn't notice. We oppose the government controlling our lives, especially health care, but he rams legislation down our throats anyway.

Our allies have started to realize that Obama doesn't care about them either. He snubs Gordon Brown, returns a statue of Winston Churchill (how disturbing is this?), and insults the Brits with DVDs and iPods. He betrays the Poles and the Czechs, and leaves Israel hanging from a limb.

Obama does have sympathy for the devils, though, the Chavez's and Castro's of the world. Maybe he views them as brothers, fellow victims of the monstrous United States. Perhaps Obama is all Vive le Revolucion.

There are endless red flags, aren't there? The covert government of antisocial Czars; the cozy ties to Bill Ayers, maybe George Soros. And who knows what else, because Obama's private world has been hermetically sealed...MORE>>

One more thing: One of my basic suppositions is that true conversion is only possible according to the proximity of one in relationship to and with the Blessed Trinity. No amount of education, training, cerebral prowess, or noble mindedness can truly alter one at the deepest levels unless it takes place with deep regret, remorse, contrition, and a resolve to align oneself to the life of Our Lord. And this with sacramental grace aplenty.

Without the above, we merely use what we learn to work the template with which we're born. In my case, I will probably always write and speak with a Protestant accent; a weary and grateful refugee in the realm of Mother Church. In the case of President I Wun, I agree, it seems, with the reflections of a perception and observant chap-ette, one I. E. Ikenga in her essay, Obama, the African Colonel.

This is going to get really bad.

Promiscuity and Politics

A reflection from long-time mentor and fine fellow, Gil Bailie:

Promiscuity means the lack of standards by which to judge or sort out things. Psychological promiscuity ... is the kind of involvement in mimetic contagion and mimetic desire which reaches the point [that] the self becomes unstable, because of the multitude of its influences. We do not have to be influenced by a multitude of people [in a negative way]; all that influence simply needs to be thematized. We do not want to turn off the influences of other people; we need other people ... The way the Christian economy works is we reach God through Christ, we reach Christ through each other. So we don’t want to be stopped being influenced, but that influence needs to be thematized or else it becomes polymorphously perverse -- and that is the mimetic crisis.

Politicians, by the way, depend upon promiscuity to confusticate the voting public. It is like spinning someone around with a blindfold on. Thus, the more citizens who are bewitched, bothered, and bewildered - or, in a word, promiscuous - the better for the politician.

It pays to have too many influences. It keeps the voting public helpless and more easily "governed".

As He Knew They Would

The Democratic Party politicians yesterday made President I Wun a liar.