Dyce - PRB

Man of Sorrows (1860) - William Dyce

Bishop Fenwick - Ambition & Calling

TO HAVE MUCH AMBITION is a great cross: it is prodigious folly for one to think himself capable of everything. Our capacity and abilities are limited: God, says Saint Paul, divides his graces. When he sends us to labor in his vineyard, he gives us precisely what is necessary for us. When he places us in any office, he assigns us that portion of grace requisite for us to discharge it well. Thus to speak correctly we possess talents only to do what God commands us to do; in any other thing, we are as incapable of succeeding as a bird is of flying without wings. Take away the blessing of God, and of what avail will your talents be?

And what is it that gives this blessing, but obedience? If you do not succeed in your office there is reason to believe that it is not the one God has laid out for you; that you intruded yourself into it; that ambition prompted you to seek it; that favor thrust you into it; at least that you did not beg of God his grace and blessing, and that you secretly sought your own satisfaction in it rather than his ...

Never intrude yourself into an office to which you have not been called, and never refuse any one that is given you. By following this rule, you will enjoy wonderful peace. God will bless all yourr exertions and the success with which your labors are crowned will not anywise diminish your merit ...

Do then what you wish, but bear this in mind that your labor will be in vain if you do not do what you ought. Your duty, once more I repeat it, is to do what God wishes, and to acquit yourself faithfully in the office he gives you. You will discharge it well if you receive it from his hand, if you enter upon it by his orders, if you rely upon his grace, if you implore his blessing, if you covet not another office, if you perform your labor with gaiety, quietly, courageously, constantly: with gaiety, without ill-humor; quietly, without uneasiness; courageously, without baseness; constantly, without disgust and without relaxation. What is your defect?

- Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick, S. J.
Magnificat, 11/16/08

Burne-Jones PRB

Charity - Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Losing Keyes in the Fog

Anthropologically speaking, the fogs of mythological incense in the sacred precinct around the shaman-king are so intense at this time that one should not waste time thinking that this will happen.

Burne-Jones, PRB

Hope - Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Chivalry in the Meantime

Saint Michael, pray for us.

Michelle Malkin, unlike the MSM, notes the way opponents of Proposition 8 are becoming increasingly rabble-rousers who continue to wreak havoc on Mormon churches in several cities and states, blacklisting peaceful voters who supported the ballot measure.

Apropos to this, mimetic theory posits that it is precisely when mobs feel specially righteous, when individuals within said mobs have willingly relinquished their baseline consciousness in this abaisement de nouveau mental, that they are most apt to go a-hunting for certifiable victims. In this case, any who opposed them. As Gil Bailie has observed,

“Anything one does to champion the cause of the victim creates new victims, so then you have a shift in the marker, and the moral boomerang comes back upon those who were trying to champion the cause of victims and therefore made victims and therefore became victimizers and therefore the whole thing begins to shift again.”

Poor fighters against "H8" - they must use (self-) righteous violence and hate against those who see the marriage between one man and one woman and Natural Law as of a piece with revealed knowledge from a loving God who does not will us to be enslaved to our instincts and desires (Gr. epithumeia).

In the meantime, be brave, carrying out a faithful witness in Marian chivalry.

UPDATE: By the way, the so-called homosexual community doesn't have an epistemological leg on which to stand (biding by Mark Twain's dictum: "A dangling preposition is something up with which I shall not put"). Who are THEY to dictate the terms of discourse? What Archimedean fulcrum do they possess that gives them access to truth?

They are counting on the vast center of the American bell-shaped curve to have no truck with philosophical presuppositions, merely a guilty conscience due to an over developed victimological point of view.

Skubalon (Gr.) Tripe. Piffle. Look them squarely in the eye and deal with bullies the usual way.

Burne-Jones PRB

Faith - Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Slumdog Millionaire

Every once in a blue moon comes a film one knows instinctively one will have to see. Cat at Brits at Their Best provides the entree to the newest (save your money; Bond stinks): Slumdog Millionaire.

Okay, Cat. I'll bite. And buy the popcorn.

Bernstein at Harvard

Leonard Bernstein was invited to speak at a Harvard banquet in 1986.

Bernstein, a 1939 graduate of Harvard, agreed, with certain caveats: that then Harvard president Derek Bok be present, along with at least 15 students and two bottles of scotch. Seventy undergraduates turned up for the speech, delivered at 2 A.M., and, as reported in The Harvard Crimson, the event lasted an hour and a half.

He delivered his talk on terrorism and truth. One need not agree with everything the great man said to remember him with gratitude and fondness. [ht: Arts and Letters Daily]

Sawing the Limb One Sits Upon

Pope Benedict XVI said that if western countries separate themselves from the Christian faith they will be ”starting down a blind alley.”

Any wonder, then, that one observant online journal sees America fast turning European?

The Storm Begins to Break

In a one sense, no one is surprised by the violent lashing out of homosexuals in reaction to the passage of Proposition 8 in California, supposedly "Fighting the H8" by displays of hate and threats particularly toward churches and Christians.

As friend and mentor Gil Bailie has stated,

Lately the violence incubated by sexual hysteria has been tearing through our society, to the utter amazement of those who swallowed hook, line and sinker the notion that sex and violence were alternatives to one other.

The anthropological powers and principalities associated with knocking over of prohibitions - particularly those related to sexuality - do not like it when humans enlightened by the biblical Spirit of truth begin to raise those same prohibitions once again.

The sense of entitlement engendered by the success of the neo-pagan's candidate of choice is going to stagger the remaining center of American society. The mimetic influence vast, the number of innocents sucked into the vortex deplorable, the damage to other innocents tragic. This cultural storm will, I fear, make world wars with clear lines of demarcation seem civil and comprehensible by comparison.

If you have the time, I highly recommend that you read the three segments on paganism in this post. A grasp of René Girard's mimetic theory will, at the very least, help one maintain a sense of equilibrium during the storm. For more compleat ballast, one must, however, turn to the source and summit of true ontology, epistemology, anthropology, and soteriology.

It's Here

Fr Richard Neuhaus says that that storm I left Christianity Lite for when I entered full communion with the Catholic Church is here.

The aggressor in the opening phases of this Kulturkampf is the Obama administration. The initial response to the aggression was evident in the meeting of Catholic bishops this week in Baltimore. There were refreshingly bold statements by bishops, and by Francis Cardinal George, president of the conference, on the imperative to protect the integrity of the Church’s teaching and to employ every legitimate means to resist the further advance of what John Paul the Great taught us to understand as the culture of death. Some bishops even invoked the venerable tradition of martyrdom, sounding very much like the successors to the apostles that they are.

The Christ against culture model does not come naturally to Catholics. The Church is much more disposed toward conversion, providing moral guidance, and the transformation of culture. The Christ against culture model is never chosen, but sometimes there is no choice. Pushed to the wall by the Obama aggression, it seems evident that most of the Catholic bishops are, in the words of Paul to Timothy, prepared to “fight the good fight.”

In this contest of coming months and years, it seems certain that cooperation between Catholics and evangelical Protestants will be greatly strengthened. And their efforts will enlist the support of many other Americans who are only now awakening to the fact that the unlimited abortion license imposed by Roe v. Wade and its proposed expansion by its hardcore supporters is indeed unlimited. If President-elect Obama does what he says he wants to do, this champion of national unity will preside over one of the most divisive periods in American history.

Pearl Poet - Milne

Nick Milne, @ The Daily Kraken, waxes poetic on the Pearl Poet.

A long time ago there was this guy. Nobody really knows who he was, though of course there are theories. All we definitively know about him is that he was appallingly smart and completely awesome, and we know this because of the poetry he wrote.

Read more of The Thin Green Knight ....

Junior Neo-Paganism on the March

14-year old Catherine Vogt carried out an experiment wearing an "Obama Girl" tee-shirt. Then she wore a "McCain Girl" tee-shirt. That was when the fit hit the shan.

Will Somebody Make Up His Mind

The NYT now warns that the next Ice Age will be a very, very long one. Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report gives his two bits, and and his wife’s not going to be happy about it.