Spot the Trend

Hey, kids! Want to see if you can spot what grown-ups call a "trend"? Go here and have some fun! Maybe.

Chivalry in Our Dark Ages

"Servants of the Enemy look fairer and feel fouler"

Lest any fall under the illusion that the goal of chivalry is a nostalgic backward sigh or, worse, a peripheral movement unworthy of true Christian vocational aspirations, Rodney Stark reminds us that no less a figure than St. Bernard of Clairvaux - theologian, head of the Cistercian order, and one-time most powerful man in Europe - helped to found the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon: the Knights Templars.

So much slander slops in politically correct circles regarding the Crusades that even well-meaning Catholic souls spout the poppycock spun by the likes of Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Fuller, von Mosheim, Barraclough, Gibbon, and, more recently, Mayer and K. Armstrong.

So it is well to read Stark's excellent introduction, God’s Battalions. And, as one who peruses the titles of books on sale at the bookshop of a near-by Cistercian abbey, Bernard of Clairvoux is still the object of great study and admiration even today. Stark writes:

Bernard was born into the nobility and raised to be a knight, but at age twenty he entered the Church. His knightly background was clearly reflected in the military structure he created for the Cistercians. Bernard also was an early and compelling advocate of chivalry, and many have suggested that he served as the model for the legendary Sir Galahad.

The Christian faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular is if nothing else (and it is a great deal More) historical. Legend in this case grew from fact. So, in the spirit of St. Bernard, let us not gainsay, gentle reader, the noble and ennobling vocation of Marian chivalry. Even in these present dark ages of neo-paganism, worship of Mammon, and shoddy thinking.

Leeke - Percival

Parsifal in Quest of the Holy Grail(1912) - Ferdinand Leeke

Negative Imitator-in-Chief

I am beginning to think that President I Won isn't merely an African colonel, or merely narcissistic, but that he is more simply an example of René Girard's "negative imitation" in the flesh ... and in the most powerful office in the human cosmos.

It requires him to cast away ostensibly at least any regard for, for example, the presidency of his predecessor, and any thinking that the ancestral voice of the father would consider mere common sense. And most telling of all, it requires that he not pay reverence for or bow in humility to a source of transcendence greater than his own source of worldly power, namely the Judeo-Christian tradition that sired all that is true, good, and beautiful in the remnants of western civilization otherwise known as Christendom.

A puer in negative imitation; the world is full of them. But one leading the Last Self-Help Administration in reforming America?

One down, three to go.

Scott Brown - Pro-choice

Told you so.

Arkes - McInerny

For the record: Hadley Arkes' Sketches of Ralph. Which reminds me, I must get aholt of McInerny's Relic of Time.

Sally Jenkins - Attack of the DOLLS

Sally Jenkins is a sports columnist for the WaPo and not a pro-life advocate herself, yet she sees the shoddy flim-flam of the seething intolerance toward the Tim Tebow pro-life Super Bowl ad:

I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on...

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell..More>>

Feast Day - Saint Brigid of Kildare

Saint Brigid of Kildare (1913) - John Duncan

McInerny

For the record: Ralph McInerny (1929-2010) - Robert Royal, Michael Novak, Bruce Fingerhut, and John O’Callaghan.

Dyce - Grail Quest

Knights of the Round Table Departing on the Quest for the Holy Grail - William Dyce

Messer Techniques from Talhoffer

Why you should wear pads and dull blades doing this, unless, of course, you are fencing against your (inner) temptations aided by sacramental grace. Then skewer them.

Abortion and Coming to Ourselves

Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman's op/ed runs in today's Washington Post, What Tim Tebow's Super Bowl ad can teach the pro-choice movement.

It is a curious piece, extremely soft-handed for the "pro-choice" folk. Perhaps they beginning to realize the way the wind is blowing. They and their MSM, progressivist ilk successfully ignored and downplayed the recent March for Life in D. C. (that's easy: be disingenuous about numbers and the intent of March attenders in their rags and mags). But they know they cannot do anything about the airwaves during Super Bowl XLIV.

The seething nature of their worship of human individualism is made clear time and time again. The attempt to "normalize" it is, therefore, understandable.

But the realization - the coming to ourselves that Our Lord referred to in His parable of the Lost Son (Lk 15,17) - of what we do when we murder our unborn children is beginning to overtake and overwhelm our shoddy thinking about living only unto ourselves in hubris and selfishness. And I say, Thank God.

Feast of Saint John Bosco

(Wiki commons)

John Bosco’s theory of education could well be used in today’s schools. It was a preventive system, rejecting corporal punishment and placing students in surroundings removed from the likelihood of committing sin. He advocated frequent reception of the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion. He combined catechetical training and fatherly guidance, seeking to unite the spiritual life with one’s work, study and play.

Encouraged during his youth to become a priest so he could work with young boys, John was ordained in 1841. His service to young people started when he met a poor orphan and instructed him in preparation for receiving Holy Communion. He then gathered young apprentices and taught them catechism.

After serving as chaplain in a hospice for working girls, John opened the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales for boys. Several wealthy and powerful patrons contributed money, enabling him to provide two workshops for the boys, shoemaking and tailoring.

By 1856, the institution had grown to 150 boys and had added a printing press for publication of religious and catechetical pamphlets. His interest in vocational education and publishing justify him as patron of young apprentices and Catholic publishers.

John’s preaching fame spread and by 1850 he had trained his own helpers because of difficulties in retaining young priests. In 1854 he and his followers informally banded together under Francis de Sales.

With Pope Pius IX’s encouragement, John gathered 17 men and founded the Salesians in 1859. Their activity concentrated on education and mission work. Later, he organized a group of Salesian Sisters to assist girls.

Comment:

John Bosco educated the whole person—body and soul united. He believed that Christ’s love and our faith in that love should pervade everything we do—work, study, play. For John Bosco, being a Christian was a full-time effort, not a once-a-week, Mass-on-Sunday experience. It is searching and finding God and Jesus in everything we do, letting their love lead us. Yet, John realized the importance of job-training and the self-worth and pride that comes with talent and ability so he trained his students in the trade crafts, too.

Quote:

“Every education teaches a philosophy; if not by dogma then by suggestion, by implication, by atmosphere. Every part of that education has a connection with every other part. If it does not all combine to convey some general view of life, it is not education at all” (G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man).

- AmericanCatholic.org

Across the Divisions

On the other hand, here is an outstanding example of Marian chivalry, Fr Vincent Nagle: born a Jew, graduate degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies, now a Catholic priest, living and ministering in Israel. Here. Good to see the Little Sisters of Charity there too. ht: CMR

Before Martyrdom

Ah, the daily life of jihadis - the rants, the murderous castigations, the photo ops with automatic weapons, the dreams of paradisal virgins .. but, um, can someone help me fry these eggs?