Watts PRB

Galahad - George Frederick Watts

Yellowstone Watch

Meanwhile, at Yellowstone National Park, the bulge continues over one of the world's most dangerous supervolcanoes.

Back to the Swamp

Why, do you suppose, this happened? From a mimetic theory viewpoint, it points to the expulsion of a designated and acceptable sacrificial victim - in this case the Christian faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Oddly, the latter alone comprises over a billion human beings, and yet the Gnostic EU overlords (so accurately depicted in C. S. Lewis's prescient book, That Hideous Strength) curiously believe that they can will out of existence belief in Jesus Christ - or, at least out of public discourse - by their hubris-filled chicanery.

It points again not only to human folly and pride; but to the deeply embedded roots of the primitive sacred in our fallen human condition.

Those EU ministers should listen, in my opinion, to a different sort of minister: Rene Girard, an Extraordinary Eucharistic Minister who also happens to be a member of the L'Académie française. His work in mimetic theory not only brings broad understanding to the cultural conflagration upon which the EU is throwing kindling, but is in full submission to the Magisterium of Mother Church.

The more "modern progressives" (sic.) try to out-distance Christian truth, the more their actions show a recrudescence and regression into the pagan swamp that our Lord and His Church succeeded in pulling us out of ... for a time.

Mammoth Hubris

File this one under: "We just wondered what would happen ... "

A Return, Yes - Not a 'Reunion' - Knox

ALL ... TALK ABOUT REUNION assumes, necessarily, that the one Church which Christ founded on earth has, in process of time, been split into a set of fragments - the Easterns, the Anglicans, the Wesleyans, and so on. Each of these will have preserved some part of Christian truth, some more than others. But since it is impossible now to determine which was right in the old dead controversies, we ought to sink our differences as far as possible (it is argued) and remake the Church out of its fragments once more. To us Catholics such language is meaningless; we have not so learned Christ. For us, the Church is nothing less than his Temple, his Bride, his own Body; and the idea that it could, by any conceivable historical circumstances, be split into fragments, is a blasphemy. The reunion of the Churches is to us not merely impossible, it is unthinkable. You cannot reunite what has never been divided. For the Catholic Church to take part in a reunion of the Churches would be a paradox, a contradiction in terms.

... (L)et us sympathize with their difficulties, let us give them credit for good intentions. By doing that, we shall perhaps help forward more than we know the day when Christians will really be reunited in obedience to the Holy See, and the martyrs will come to their own, and England will be our Lady's Dowry once again.

- Ronald A. Knox

Great News from England

Extraordinary good news: the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is up and running. I may have to do away with the category 'Poor Old England' in my sidebar ...

The Glare of World Hostility - Knox

WE CATHOLICS ... ARE APT to grow exasperated at the continued existence of other religious bodies, and to ask God why he allows people to go on believing in these half-truths, to the dishonour of the Catholic Church. We forget that God, in his Providence, may permit these other religious bodies to exist, and even to flourish; for the reason, if for no other, that their existence is in some sort of a protection to the Catholic Church, in days when the atheist and the materialist are making such determined attacks upon every form of organized religion. Is it possible that the Protestant Christianity of our country, instead of being a menace to us Catholics, as it was in the centuries gone by, is now a protection to the Church, a breakwater against the flood of infidelity, a gourd whose shadow stands between it and the glare of the world's sun? Are we sure that we want the breakwater destroyed, the gourd withered away, so soon?

We cannot expect to live much longer under the shadow of the other Christianities; as time goes on, we shall have to face, more and more, the glare of the world's hostility. For that reason, we must rally closer than ever round our bishops, our clergy, our churches, our schools; we must be active Catholics, instructed Catholics, if need be combative Catholics, to meet the demands of the new age. And in the meanwhile, let us beg the prayers of our blessed Lady and of the English martyrs, that more and more of our fellow countrymen may receive the gift of faith, and be brought out of images and shadows into that eternal Truth whose guardian on earth is the one Holy Catholic Church of Christ.

- Ronald A. Knox

Millais PRB - Esther

Esther (1865) - Sir John Everett Millais

The Old Road of England - Knox

Icknield Way

IT WAS A PROTESTANT England that achieved that greatness among the nations which began with the triumphs of Elizabethan seamanship and ended, perhaps, with the Treaty of Versailles. And in reading the history of that development you only come across the Catholic Church now and again, crossing the page of our history for a moment, just as the Icknield Way will cross, just at one point, the great arteries of our modern road transport. The Gunpowder Plot, the Titus Oates Plot, the reign of James II, the rebellion of '15, the rebellion of '45, the Gordon Riots - you realize with a shock, at such points, that there were still Catholics in England even in the days when they were unrelentingly persecuted by the Government. But for the most part, you hardly come across the mention of them; they have disappeared from view, like an old road that has lost itself in the open fields.

And yet it was the old road. It is bitten deep into the soil of English history; you cannot obliterate the landmarks. During a thousand years and more of our history England was but a part of the Catholic Commonwealth of Europe; all the institutions which we revere as old, our Parliament, our civic procedure, our universities, still reek of a Catholic origin. The old road, but it had served its turn, men thought, three hundred and fifty years ago; and they struck out on newer paths, and let the old sign-posts rot away and the old milestones become grass-grown. The Catholic faith became, in England, a thing of by-ways and of retired corners; it flourished most where new movements were felt least; it was remote, provincial, unfashionable ... Like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy-story, the religion that had been England's pride was moss-grown now, and grass-covered; it would never, you thought, be used again ...

(But t)hese are days of stumbling and hesitation; men look for guidance to the faiths in which they were born and nurtured, and too often they find none; or, if guidance is offered, there is a confusing variety of utterance; one preacher extols what another preacher condemns, and one generation burns the idols which the last generation worshipped. Is is possible that the faith in which Europe was cradled is after all the faith which man was made to live for; that all the improvements which men have devised upon it have shown themselves worthless, like short-cuts that tempt the wayfarer, only to mislead him, and leave him to hark back, as best he may, to his starting-point?

- Ronald A. Knox

Feast of the Ass

Feast of Asses

More from Daniel Mitsui

Memorial or Pep-Rally

My thoughts exactly - thematized most ably by Monsignor Charles Pope.

Parrish - Mill Pond

Mill Pond - Maxfield Parrish

In the Name of the Prophet

The bomb that killed at least 21 Egyptian Christians on New Year’s morning was packed with sharpened metal, iron balls and razor wire.

Many of those that the device didn't rip to death will never see, walk or function properly ever again. With terrorist bombs, euphemisms such as "wounded" and "traumatized" are hideously misplaced. These are not, however, the only banalities being tossed around when this latest attack is discussed. Words like "rare," "surprise," and "extremist" seem similarly absurd to those who know anything about the plight of Christians in large chunks of the Muslim world. Remember, more than 50 Iraqi Catholics were murdered in November; on Christmas Day in the southern Philippines on a Muslim-dominated island a church was bombed and parishioners hurt; and in Pakistan just weeks ago a 45year-old Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death for "defaming the Prophet." Not bad for a little over a month! Keep reading here.

Bl William Carter

Remember with me today Blessed William Carter. In a day not unlike his of the sinful, banal, and evil, he - as many of us today still do - tried to keep alive Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Bl. William, pray for us.

Baptism of the Lord

Baptism of Jesus (1486-90) - Domenico Ghirlandaio