Again, the "babies being stabbed in their incubators" bull is being trotted out again

Every time the usual forces of chaos want to gin up propaganda, be it against the Kaiser, Saddam Hussein or now Bashar Assad, we have to endure another round of the "babies being killed by those evil bad guys".  Tears and videos abound.  [Funny that those behind all these stories of supposed atrocities against children usually see nothing wrong with abortion.]

So here we go again:

Syria is making gains in eliminating the head-chopping US/Israel proxies in their land and so, in panic, they have to trot out stuff like this.   And so many will fall for this....again.

From Consortium News:

"Late in the day, on Nov. 15, one week after the U.S. elections, the lame-duck Congress convened in special session with normal rules suspended so the House could pass House Resolution 5732, the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act” calling for intensifying the already harsh sanctions on Syria, assessing the imposition of a “no fly zone” inside Syria (to prevent the Syrian government from flying) and escalating efforts to press criminal charges against Syrian officials.

HR5732 claims to promote a negotiated settlement in Syria but, as analyzed by Friends Committee for National Legislation, it imposes preconditions which would actually make a peace agreement more difficult.

The West Front of the U.S. Capitol

There was 40 minutes of “debate” with six representatives (Ed Royce, R-California; Eliot Engel, D-New York; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; Dan Kildee, D-Michigan; Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; and Carlos Curbelo, R-Florida) all speaking in favor of the resolution. There were few other representatives present, but the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated that the resolution was passed “unanimously” without mentioning these special conditions.

According to Wikipedia, “Suspension of the rules is a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills in the United States House of Representatives … such as naming Post Offices…” In this case, however, the resolution could lead to a wider war in the Middle East and potentially World War III with nuclear-armed Russia.

Most strikingly, the resolution calls for evaluating and developing plans for the United States to impose a “no fly zone” inside Syria, a sovereign nation, an act of war that also would violate international law as an act of aggression. It also could put the U.S. military in the position of shooting down Russian aircraft.

To call this proposal “non-controversial” is absurd, although it may say a great deal about the “group think” of the U.S. Congress that an act of war would be so casually considered. Clearly, this resolution should have been debated under normal rules with a reasonable amount of Congressional presence and debate.

The motivation for bypassing normal rules and rushing the bill through without meaningful debate was articulated by the bill’s sponsor, Democrat Eliot Engel: “We cannot delay action on Syria any further. … If we don’t get this legislation across the finish line in the next few weeks, we are back to square one.”

The current urgency may be related to the election results since President-elect Donald Trump has spoken out against “regime change” foreign policy. As much as neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist allies are critical of President Obama for not doing more in Syria, these Congressional hawks are even more concerned about the prospect of a President who might move toward peace and away from war."

Read the whole article.                              

"Western laws now clash with the moral nature of man"

An interview with Patriarch Kirill.

         


Wouldn't be nice to hear a Pope of Rome talk like this once in awhile?

Wake me when this is over

His Immense Eminence, Cardinal Lou Costello, is really a shining star in the Church firmament.

The Church's Clown Prince is again making a complete ass out of himself and demeaning the honor of the Church...again.

I know I am living through an awful recurring nightmare.  If I am wrong, please God, escort him out the door and out of our lives.

[h/t Dymphna's Road]

The Beginning of our salvation

What pleases me about this recording is that the voices begin at the far distance and slowly grow in volume, signifying the coming of Christ, closer and closer.  It is the song of hope.  I've mentioned this recording before on the blog but I can never tire of recommending it.

This music portends the beginning of our salvation.  It is a fine way to reflect upon Advent.



         

David Lean's OLIVER TWIST

The opening sequence of David Lean's 1948 film Oliver Twist is so striking, so evocative of the time and the place and so gripping that the viewer, even a casual one, cannot look away for the rest of the picture.

We see deep storm clouds gathering in a bleak sky, the silent but growing rumbling of thunder is heard on the soundtrack.  Dead tree branches twist in the rising wind.  Over to the top of a high hill emerges the tiny figure of a woman walking, struggling with each step.  Closer views reveal her to be a young woman who, we soon discover, is now in labor, lost on the wild moors.  Director Lean shows us a close shot of her in pain then cuts to a shot of a thorny branch stretching in the growing wind, which makes the audience experience her pains.  Flashes of lightning accentuate her suffering.  She stumbles forward, hopeless, every step a struggle, her mind filled with anxiety not knowing how she and her unborn child can possibly survive this ordeal.

Finally she glimpses a light coming from the window of a building off in the distance.  In agony she finds the strength to make it there.  It is the parish workhouse.  She rings the bell pull as the rain breaks and drenches her.  At last she is let in.  In the following scenes we see she has given birth to a boy and after kissing her newborn dies in bed.

That description does not do justice to the cinematic power of the combined abilities of Lean, his editor, his cameraman and his designer.  It must not be written about; it must be seen.

Oliver Twist is the finest screen version of this Dickens story and is, perhaps, Lean's greatest film. After that brilliant opening sequence we are soon plunged into the darker world of Victorian poverty as we witness the growth and adventures of a young child born out of wedlock, thrust into the tender mercies of the masters of the workhouse, escape and finding himself lost in London, falling into the clutches of the sinister Fagin and his band of child thieves and finally, after a life of fear, hunger and intrigue, is finally taken in by a family who loves him.

Art Director John Bryan's sketch for the opening sequence.

British films reached their summit in the 1940s and with a very few exceptions never again reached such heights of art and craftsmanship so evident in films like Oliver Twist.  Lean went on in future years to make three-hour-long epics but never again equalled his earlier achievements, especially in his two Dickens adaptations (the other one being the superb Great Expectations of 1946).  What makes this film so memorable is its exact depiction of life among the lower classes in England at that time.  Dickens himself was appalled at what he saw around him when he wrote his novels and in those writings he drew the world's attention to the pitiful state of the poor and children - especially children who were forced for one reason or another to do hard, brutal labor. This Lean depicts with simple clarity, with the exquisite black and white photography the perfect medium for expressing it. Color film (readily available in films from the late 1920s) would not have worked at all. It would not have had the same dramatic effect; it had to be in black and white, and it had to be photographed by cameramen who understood black and white, as most cinematographers did in those great days. [Today's cameramen, oblivious to the possibilities of monochrome photography, usually botch the job terribly on those rare occasions when black and white is used.  Put more prosaically, they don't know what they're doing.]

The other thing the British film industry had going for itself in those days was a rich supply of the finest acting talent available anywhere, before or since.  Modern audiences accustomed to the mugging and miserable acting so common (and so accepted) today will be quite shocked at the rightness, the quality of the performances in this film.  There are far too many perfect performances to discuss in detail here so let us focus on the ones that occupy the most screen time.

As the notorious Fagin, leader of the band of child thieves, we have Alec Guiness in a performance so faultless that one hardly believes one's eyes.  When Guiness went to Lean and asked him for the part Lean scoffed at the idea.  He stopped scoffing when Guiness returned to present himself to him in full makeup.

His Fagin is a real living and breathing person.  It is the actor's art to make an audience forget they are watching acting and Guiness accomplishes it.  He is believable.  He brings out the villainy of Fagin yet manages to make us at times sympathetic with such a creature.  This is a difficult task for any actor even one as skillful as Guiness.  Like others in the cast Guiness imprints upon your memory a vivid character that will stay in the mind.  You won't forget him.

[Whenever discussing Guiness as Fagin one must, alas, trudge through the fetid swamp of name-calling and manufactured outrage.  His performance was denounced as "anti-semirtism" and an ignorant, vicious campaign was raised up against the film due to it.  Dickens wrote Fagin as a villainous Jew and Guiness played the part as written.  Eventually this whole denunciation was seen as the nonsense it was and the movie played as filmed all over the world, except in America.  The hoopla in America was so over-the-top that a fearful distributor sat on the film for two years and only released it after twelve minutes were cut from it, twelve crucial minutes, simply because of the unjust charge laid against Guiness and the film.  Fortunately the recent dvd release of the film restored all the cuts.]

There is no gainsaying the rightness of Guiness in this role as there is no gainsaying the rightness of everyone else in the picture.  Robert Newton is the villain Bill Sykes.  It is his special brand of bulging hatred that makes Newton's role so compelling.  Nasty, brutish, cunning, all these come out with great force in Newton's delineation of the character.  The scene of Sykes' murder of the prostitute Nancy is a powerful one.  I will not spoil it by describing it in detail but will say that it does not sink to the level of sadism so common in today's movies, ones made by sensationalists and incompetents like Scorcese or that overblown amateur Quentin Tarantino.  It is all the more powerful for avoiding the splattered blood of which today's directors are so fond. But it is powerful.

Newton as Bill Sykes

Can such a dark, powerful film be considered entertainment?  Yes.  But it is not time-wasting entertainment.  It will leave viewers profoundly affected by its story and will be genuinely unforgettable to those who experience it. It will stay on the mind and be the catalyst for fascinating discussions.  Some may, happily, turn to the book. Some will reflect on its theme.  Most will find it, I believe, a rewarding experience.

Why is this film so remarkable?  Because it was made by artists and craftsmen, artists and craftsmen whom we should name:  the sets (so crucial to the picture) were the work of designers John Bryan and Wilfred Shingleton, it's camera work and lighting by Guy Green who was fortunate to have such superb sets to photograph, its editor Jack Harris who knew a thing or two about putting films together, its score by Sir Arnold Bax so well suited to the visuals.  The sets which one can never tire of praising were built in what is called "forced perspective" so that one is actually drawn into them. They are complemented by the shooting of them with low camera angles in order to emphasize this perspective, this vastness.  It is what gives the movie its striking look.

This is art and artifice of the choicest kind, the kind that has all but vanished  from the screen.  If you want to see how movies were once made by men with skill and imagination and originality, you could do no better than to see this one.  It is a pity that there are no theatrical showings (at least in this country) of the film on a big screen which would give it its best effectiveness.  Second best, of course, is the dvd.  If you do plan to view it on dvd I suggest finding a quiet evening, watching it on the largest tv screen available and with the telephone off the hook.  Watching this film, according to film critic Leslie Halliwell, is like reading the book in a particularly fine binding.

Lean and his writers have somewhat simplified the story but without losing any of its power. Charles Dickens would I am sure be proud.

I bring up this wonderful film as an antidote to the cinematic Dark Ages now upon us, an age which is incapable of making such a fine thing as this.  It cannot be recommended highly enough both as entertainment and as an experience worth having.  Give it a look.

John Howard Davies as Oliver Twist

The Dance of the Modernists continues...

When Pope Paul VI of tragic memory was preparing to inflict upon the Church his Novus Ordo Missae permanently in 1968 he and his advisers made a very smart move.  To tamp down or eliminate the firestorm of protest that they knew would come by the illegal suppression of the Ancient Rite they created as it were a preemptive strike to gain worldwide sympathy for them, thus blunting the reaction against the suppression of  a Rite organically developed from the time of Christ.

That preemptive strike was the issuance of Humanae Vitae.  In issuing this encyclical worldwide respect and admiration for the Holy See jumped to the high heights virtually guaranteeing that any criticism of future papal actions would be minimal.  Cynically, they never intended to enforce the encyclical as was immediately evident when prominent Churchmen and priests publicly decried it and subsequently ignored it, confident in the knowledge that Rome would never take them to task. But the impression made upon Catholic minds was the important thing, and Pope Paul was regarded thenceforth as a hero - even while he, without fanfare, connived to bring about the most egregious abuse of episcopal power in all Church history, namely: the "abolishing" of the holiest thing on earth, the Mass of all time.

This two-step "dance" has been a Vatican favorite for five decades now and almost every time it has worked like a charm.  John Paul II was a great practitioner of this subterfuge.  First the faithful are lulled by a benevolent, sensible papal speech, encyclical or action and then promptly knifed in the back by the drivers of the real agenda.  Thus, following some wonderful words from Rome we would get Assisi, or craven apologies to Christ's enemies for the "evils" the Catholic Church has inflicted, or the installation of terrible men to high positions.  Every Pope since Paul VI has been doing this, if we want to honestly admit it.

This strategy is now being trotted out again - and then some - by the current regime.  After a number of benevolent gestures toward the Society of St Pius X, the Pope has now minimized the atrocious crime of abortion, downplaying its seriousness not only in clumsy papal interviews but by making it "easier" to be forgiven for this crime.  In what many call an act of mercy, the Pope has granted all priests the faculty of forgiving this mortal sin rather than the extremely solemn, dreadful meeting with a Bishop.  The fact that the forgiveness of this abominable act was left to the hierarchy underlined and emphasized its awful seriousness.  Now one can go to Confession - or what passes for Confession these days - and chat up the priest about not helping out the wife enough with family chores or losing one's impatience over the misdemeanors of the kids.  Imagine Mom in the Confessional (sorry, "reconciliation room"!) reciting a few minor offenses and then saying, "Oh by the way, I also had an abortion."   Your average priest today, sadly, will slough it off as just another offense, maybe adding a few not-too-stern words, and then giving her the Three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys penance.  Yes, of course she will receive absolution (provided the priest does his job) but isn't the gravity of the offense sort of minimized by this approach?

Not so, according to Msgr Fisichella who explains in this article from Vatican Insider.

The Pope’s decision to make the ability of priests to absolve the “grave sin” of abortion permanent, means Canon Law is to be updated too. Francis had granted priests this power as an exception during the Jubilee Year. The man in charge of co-ordinating the Holy Year of Mercy, Mgr. Rino Fisichella, explained this in his presentation of the pastoral letter “Misericordia et Misera”, with which Francis concluded the Jubilee that ran from 8 December 2015 to 20 November 2016. 

 “Canon Law currently stipulates that absolution for the sin of abortion is a faculty that lies with the bishop of the diocese concerned and in some instances, the bishop may delegate some or all priests in his diocese to absolve this sin,” explained the President of the Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation. “During the Jubilee, Pope Francis had granted all priests the power to absolve this sin, as a concrete sign that God’s mercy is boundless. Therefore, even people who commit this sin – which the Pope reiterates, is extremely grave – will have no trouble obtaining God’s forgiveness if they are repentant. Canon Law is a body of laws and whenever the Pope introduces a measure that alters the dictates of the law, the article that specific measure concerns, necessarily needs to be changed”. More specifically, Fisichella explained, responding to journalists questions, “a latae sententiae excommunication is revoked”. The provision, Fisichella added, does not only apply to women but also to “doctors, nurses and those involved in carrying out the abortion”, as long as they repent: “The sin applies to everyone, so forgiveness of this sin also applies to everyone practically involved.” 

 But isn’t the Pope concerned about the criticisms? “I don’t see why granting the faculty of absolution for a sin like this to priests, who are ministers of reconciliation and forgiveness, should give cause for any concern,”

Well, it concerns many of us, Monsignor.

It is gratifying to hear from Msgr Fisichella that the Pope considers abortion a "grave sin".  I wonder, though, if he has considered that making it much easier to be absolved from it (similar to his desire to see marriages dissolved also much easier) he hasn't trivialized it somewhat.  I don't know.  I have long given up trying to decipher what is in Pope Francis' mind.

Thanks to the poor job of catechizing the Church has been doing since the late 19th century too many Catholics really have no idea of the nature of sinfulness, and this ignorance plays well with the program of the revolutionaries.  The notion of sin for many has become a dead letter not only to the people in the pew but far too many priests.  And Bishops, too.  Moreover, when was the last time you heard someone in the Vatican use the words "mortal sin"?   We have become essentially protestantized: "yeah, I guess sin does exist, but we're pretty much forgiven so I'm not going to lose a whole lot of sleep over it".  Ergo, Confession is a minority taste in today's merciful Church where in some parishes there is not even a regular time set aside for the Sacrament of Penance.

The Pope shows kindness of a sort to the SSPX and then drops this bomb.  In his own mind he may sincerely believe he has done well.  But we must never forget that Bergoglio, too, is one of the Great Uncatechized.

There is nothing new under the sun especially in a Rome deeply infected with Modernism.  Prudence therefore demands that the next time a kindly papal gesture is offered to long-suffering Catholics we should hang on for dear life, for the stiletto cannot be far  behind.

Conservatives and the Homosexual Agenda

We would like to recommend - but not for the fainthearted - the following article over at Chronicles by Mr Jack Trotter.  Before we go on we must warn the reader that sections of this article are repulsive in the extreme, so be warned of that.

If you can get through it you will find an eye-opening account of how this particular sex perversion has found acceptance in our country.  Some conservatives will not like the answer.  But when it is read dispassionately and with an awareness of what has been going on around us for a very, very long time we believe the reader will find it to be a convincing answer to the question, "Why has this horror descended upon us so suddenly?"

The article does not get into specific religious reasons for this acceptance of aberration, but regular readers here will see clearly that the phenomenon that Mr Trotter describes is very much at the heart of the current homosexual problem afflicting the Catholic Church.  If we read Mr Trotter's article and then read how Dr E Michael Jones described the Great Indiana Sellout recently we can see that a common theme runs through both pieces [see Jones' "Hoosier Hysteria" in the May 2015 issue of Culture Wars].  It is the connivance of Big Business (among others, obviously) that is at the heart of the promotion of this unnatural vice.  That theme tells us much.  Those who uncritically support every aspect of Capitalism may be disturbed by Mr Totter's shocking article. And those Bishops who hide behind the meaningless term "sexual orientation" may also be in for a shock.

For example, Jones re the Indiana Bishop's lacklustre response to the Indiana fiasco:

If by “sexual orientation”, the bishops are referring to a tendency or a temptation, the term is completely irrelevant to the debate because the law cannot adjudicate states of mind. If, however, by sexual orientation they mean homosexual behavior—the only meaning that makes sense in this debate—then the bishops had no choice but to condemn sodomy as immoral and proclaim discrimination against those who practice that unspeakable vice as justified. Instead of doing that, the Catholic bishops, who supported the RFRA during the run-up to its passage as law in Indiana, evaded the real issue by their equivocal use of the term “sexual orientation,” which allows Catholic bishops to speak out of both sides of their mouths whenever the gender ideologues provoke a church-state crisis.

We as a nation have been the victims of yet another "color revolution", with the colors of the rainbow doing the dubious honors.  That Revolution has engulfed nearly everything even, to be sure, numerous Catholics, clerical and lay.

The Cardinal Dolan Affair from last December is the prefect example of what happens when, as Jones puts it, Bishops speak out of both sides of their mouths.

The Trotter article is here:  http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2015/October/39/10/magazine/article/10829598/

Travel Tips when visiting the Holy Land

Travel brochures are often rather vague about what to expect when travelling in foreign countries and for that reason we thought that these tips for travelling in the Holy Land might be useful.

If you become injured while there, and have any Arab ancestry, this might be helpful to know:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/israel-paramedics-accused-medical-violations-160419061726256.html

In case Tel Aviv decides to start bombing innocent Christian Arabs in Gaza while you're there, you will need to find a good place to watch the killing and destruction...like these folks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html?_r=0

When there you may wish to sample the local TV fare.  Here is an example:

https://youtu.be/9RY83mAr5uA   [Please note this WARNING:  this is an extremely offensive, risque and blasphemous mockery of Our Lord's Crucifixion.  Personally, I wouldn't bother watching it, unless you have a very strong stomach.]

The travel brochures also probably don't mention that it might be a good idea to stay away from Israeli soldiers.  A good reason might be this one:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/24/middleeast/video-israeli-soldier-palestinian-suspect/

(Of course, if you think such things are good ideas, you could join the protest: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-soldier-idUSKCN0XG2N2 )

If you wish to watch parades in the very land where Christ walked, this would be a plus:

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/tel-aviv-boasts-one-the-worlds-largest-gay-pride-parades

Tel Aviv is also a favorite destination for many diverse groups:

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/travel/tel-aviv-declared-world-s-best-gay-travel-destination-1.406699

Other than that, enjoy your trip to the Holy Land!

Memo to Antonio Spadaro SJ: Drop Dead

A Church of wannabe Napoleons.  Funny, really.

I get a kick out of watching these nonentities, these little dictators who have assumed positions of power and/or influence in the Vatican, acting like the Martinets they have always longed to be. This particular martinet, one Antonio Spadaro, is dismissing the people in the pew again.

One has to wonder if he takes a deep breath and beats his chest before gracing us with his pronouncements.

To say that I have lost my patience with these people would be giving them a certain kind of respect.  Do they deserve respect?  They deserve none.  They deserve to be driven bodily out of Rome by Catholics holding torches, tar and feathers. They insult our intelligence.  Their arrogance is laughable in a sick, twisted sort of way.  They revel in that arrogance.  They serve a Pope who is unfortunately very much like them so they feel quite at home among the poseurs, the hypocrites and the weirdos the Pope has appointed.

But who is Spadaro, really?

By any standard of measurement Spadaro is a failure.  His academic career was undistinguished, his journalistic skills meagre.  He is one of those mysterious men who "has risen without trace". He came from nowhere but clearly had the right contacts.  Looking at his Weakland/Cupich-type face I shudder to think of what kind of contacts.

Mr Spadaro, who has the ear of the Pope, is telling us, with the smugness so characteristic of agenda-driven men, that Amoris Laetitia is what it is and we should deal with it.

Uh-huh.

It is not a stretch nor an excercise in hyperbole to state that Amoris Laetitia will be responsible for souls ending up in Hell since it directly contradicts the words of Jesus Christ about adultery.  Is he really comfortable with that?

I would imagine Spadaro has never really considered Hell as anything but a medieval abstraction. It would be revealing to know if he even believes there is such a place.  Or is he like our current Pontiff who believes there is a Hell but nobody actually goes there.

Really, at this point I could care less what he believes or doesn't believe.  He is nothing and one day will be dead like the rest of us.  I did have to snicker at his "tweets" aimed at the four Cardinals who are asking for a simple clarification on certain points of the Pope's Amoris Laetitia. He likened them to "witless worms" in what he apparently imagines to be a scintillatingly clever retort to the Cardinals.  Junior High School stuff.  Note to Spadaro: worms generally crawl out of the woodwork. Where did you crawl out of?

So, Mr Spadaro your words will not have the slightest effect on the truth of Christ's words, even if in you personal fantasies you may think they do.

Just go away.  Or drop dead.  Either way works.

A Liturgy never at rest

Several years ago the late Anthony Fraser reproduced on his blog a piece which awakened in this writer the sudden realisation that what the overriding idea of the liturgical revolutionaries at the Second Vatican Council must have been was an attack on our peace and our solace.

The millenia-old Catholic Latin liturgy provided the stability that gave us that peace and that solace, and ever since that ancient Rite was suppressed by a brutal abuse of episcopal power, an abuse which continues unabated to this day, our souls have been increasingly troubled.  I don't for a single moment believe that those who find the ever-changing, always new New Mass to their liking have peace in their hearts.  How could they, when almost every month brings us another change in the "style" of saying Mass, another banal musical composition thrown into the mix, ever more relevant and up-to-date vocalized responses of the Mass goers who are obligated to spout forth their uninteresting and mostly ill-considered thoughts, their gripes, to ride their favorite hobby horses, and who are obliged to grab and shake the hands, shoulders, head and who knows what of their neighbor in the pew?  It is to keep us continually off-balance, waiting for the next shoe to drop, the next "improvement" to be implemented, that was the true goal, I am certain, of the liturgical iconoclasts.

Psychologically, this never-ending state of flux in which Catholics find themselves can be dangerous not only spiritually but, dare I say, mentally.  What average mind can concentrate on prayer when the Mass is a kaleidoscope of lousy music, forced participation (so forced that it becomes an embarrassment to the participator as well as everyone else), uninspiring architecture and decor and a priest who might feel more at home at the London Palladium rather than at the altar of God.  That, I am coming to believe, was the main point of those who brought to the Church this pseudo Mass: never to leave us in peace, or solitude, never allow us to contemplate what is supposed to be happening at the altar. (I use the word "suppose" deliberately.  At so many new Masses one really doesn't know what is happening at the altar, if anything.)

Lest I be accused of lack of objectivity on this I hasten to point out that in some Ancient Rite Masses I have attended one can find this same forced participation, usually in the form of an usher ceremoniously placing some hymn book into your hands as you enter the Church with the expectation that you had better be singing with everyone else when the time comes.

I am aware that this is only a personal opinion, open to disagreement from Catholics who see things very differently on this matter. And I will add that Congregational singing, if done reasonably well, and done at the right time, and done only briefly, can be edifying.  [I am reminded of the lovely, spontaneous Congregational singing of the Pater Noster during a priestly ordination Mass in the Ancient Rite which I had the pleasure of attending in Wigratzbad, Bavaria, using the musical setting proper to the Mass.  The people were not hectored into doing this; it was spontaneous, it came from their hearts.] But in this writer's view it must not dominate the traditional Mass.  Equally doubtful is the use of the early 20th century innovation called "the dialogue Mass", where the congregation is expected to answer all the responses to the priest, leaving the altar boys with little to do but sit at he foot of the altar like mute dummies. This kind of Congregational chatter can have the effect of demolishing any attempt at quiet contemplation by those in the pew who might like on occasion to adore their God in silence.

But the authors of the Novus Ordo, I do absolutely believe, wanted us to never have a moment's peace.  This bowdlerization of a Mass is truly bad performance art. It so suited their larger bad ideas of updating everything else in the Church.  Their updating has been a complete success: the Church is in chaos, hundreds of thousands are apostatizing, not one in a thousand Catholics have even a nodding acquaintance with their Church's history or doctrine, and who have joined the merry band of unbelievers who can without pang of conscience accept the homosexual buggering of the entire earth or drop few if any tears over the aborted children thrown into trash heaps (or, more efficiently, used as fuel to heat buildings, as is done here and there in England) and who can be relied upon to act like zombies whenever a national election takes place and vote in some monster or another to lord it over us.   If your mind can never be anchored to the quiet beauty of the Mass, the ancient one, of course, it becomes nearly impossible to collect your thoughts, indeed it becomes difficult to reflect upon anything that matters. Those few who attend such performances in their churches and still come out sane and thoughtful are indeed a very special group.  I know some of them; they are remarkable.  The fact that there are only a few of these people suggests that the liturgical innovators have achieved the success they wanted.  They have reduced most Catholics into Mass-going Protestants and some (most of whom must write for Patheos) into gibbering idiots.  Their Mass will certainly not "restoreth our soul".

Cries of anguish over this sad farce of a Mass are being heard more and more, such as this heart-wrenching piece over at Vox Cantoris.  Attendance at it troubles us, wounds us inside.  Yes, I have heard the argument that attending this weird spectacle they call "Mass" can be like kneeling before Our Crucified Lord, joining in His sufferings, and therefore a good act.  It is possible I imagine to do this....for a time.  But not indefinitely.  Even the mourners eventually walked away after Our Lord was dead on the Cross.

A liturgy never at rest means a soul that is never at rest.

A few thoughts on this latest Fatima news

[This post was written in May of this year when the Father Dollinger/Cardinal Ratzinger controversy vis-a-vis the Third Secret was in full swing.]

The first thought being that it is not news.

The mystery of the Third Secret has yet to be fully and definitively solved but even so we have enough information to know that it certainly has something to do with the present crisis in Holy Church, and that this crisis had been brewing for years before the Fatima visitations.

The article by Maike Hickson making the rounds is interesting even though some of it is material that was rehashed from previous sources.  Thirty five years ago the eccentric but fascinating Abbe Georges de Nantes, not to mention numerous other serious scholars of the Fatima apparitions, had pretty much concluded that the famous third secret was being kept hidden by Rome precisely because it would call into question their cherished Vatican II and every thing that has flowed from that putrid lake. The late Brother Francis, MICM had grave suspicions about the contents of that secret and reasoned that the reason Rome is sitting on it is because it must deal with one of the great "taboos" that Rome refuses to talk about any more.

In Hickson's article the author reveals that she had a personal conversation with Father Dollinger, a confidant of Cardinal Ratzinger, and that he states that the secret spoke of a "bad Council and a bad Mass".  Without something more substantial than Hickson's hearsay to go on we have to say two things.  First, that the statement is a bit too pat.  Second, that in any case great tragedies would obviously flow from a Church gone off its rails (certainly the conclusion of many serious Fatima scholars regarding the hidden Secret) which would surely include disaster in the Liturgy and a doubtful Council.  The question then arises that if, as Father Dollinger says, Cardinal Ratzinger himself knew all this how do we explain his subsequent actions as Cardinal and Pope?  These stories related by Hickson in her article raise far more questions than answers.

Between the words and writings of prudent people like Frere Michel, Brother Francis, MICM, Hamish Fraser (and his late son, Tony), Father Joaquin Maria Alonso, CMF (see his The Secret of Fatima, Ravensgate Press) we have more than enough to conclude that the Third Secret of Fatima, the hidden one, most definitely refers to the tragedy we are now living through.  If this Dollinger revelation is true, well and good.  It confirms what many others have suspected anyway.

Whenever some new "startling revelation" is reported my first thought is to be skeptical and keep my thoughts to myself.  In this case while I keep my skepticism I have opened up my thoughts merely for the purpose of reminding some readers that there is nothing that new in these allegations and that others have already done the long, hard, patient digging to come up with sensible conclusions based not on mere hearsay but solid factual investigation, not to mention good old horse sense..  I believe Dr Hickson would have done her readers a service by making allusions to previous studies on this matter which we may be allowed to think she was already aware of.

It is not my intention to denigrate either Mrs Hickson or any of my fellow internet colleagues who have taken up the story, all of who certainly have a great interest in matters relating to Fatima and who are correct to write about these matters.  But historical perspectove must always be kept in mind whenever we put pen to paper.

Here is a fine article from 2008 which does a much better job at explaining these mysteries of the Third Secret:

http://catholicism.org/the-third-secret-of-fatima.html

I highly recommend it.

Is the Banana Republic finally over?

One hopes so even if severe doubts remain.  Frankly I expect no drastic changes with the new administration simply because Mr Trump has not demonstrated yet, at least to this writer, that he actually understands the forces which propelled him into power.  His recent interviews would seem to confirm that.

Yes, he has vague notions about this or that policy issue, but the platforms, planks and suggested appointments (thus far) do not bode well for conservatives sick and tied of sodomy, war-mongering and control by unelected elites.  Mr Trump walked, I believe somewhat unwittingly, into a nation-wide revolt against the sickness and filth of our government.  I say "unwittingly" because many of his pronouncements did not seem to gel with what the voters wanted.  nevertheless the voters gambled on him and he won.  We will now have to wait and see what happens.

Everyone is on edge over what he is going to do or not do.  The Queer Brigade ostensibly is worried though I cannot for the life of me understand why.  Has he not made it abundantly clear in his campaign and at the convention, and in recent interviews, that he has no interest in tackling their nation-destroying proclivities?

The war-mongers who want unlimited death and destruction in the Middle East are worried.  But why?  Mr Trump is appearing to surround himself with the same types who created all that death and destruction.  Even the execrable and truly psychotic John Bolton is trying to worm his way into the new administration.  Can Trump withstand this kind of pressure to keep us out of these immoral and unjust wars of aggression against nations and people who have done us no harm?  I hope so but have my doubts. (This writer hopes we will not have four more years of Bush/Obama: http://www.fff.org/2016/11/14/trumps-foreign-policy-four-years-bush-obama/)

Prudence and realism should be our attitudes now.  And if we wish to act we must keep the pressure of The Donald to "drain the swamp" as he so colorfully put it.

Music for The Rigid

      


      

Imagine a man who has contempt for this, and all it represents, and sits on St Peter's Chair.

Gary Potter on the election

"Although these lines won’t reach readers until after the event, in real time they are written prior to the November 8 presidential election. The voting won’t affect what is said because neither of the major-party candidates, not the one who can’t be trusted nor the other who is corrupt, is a person a Catholic would want for U.S. President, not a Catholic who understands that the laws of a nation should buttress Christian living, not militate against it – the kind of laws that existed when Christendom did and Jesus Christ was recognized as King of society.

From the point of view of such a Catholic the ideal presidential candidate would be one who campaigned for an end to legal abortion on demand, no-fault divorce and same-sex marriage, among other things.

Of course such a candidate is inconceivable today. No fringe party would nominate him or her, let alone the Democrats or Republicans. If one did, he or she would not be elected. The American people, to the extent such a people can still be said to exist, aren’t that Christian anymore. Modernity has them too strongly by the throat.

They aren’t unique in this respect. Though Russia is the one major country left in the world in which Christianity plays a visible role in its public life, a poll a few days ago showed seventy percent of Russians opposed to making abortion illegal. This even after the head of their Church, Patriarch Kiril, went before the State Duma (parliament) to appeal to legislators for it.

In Catholic Poland, leaders of the governing Law and Justice Party let it be known in early October that they planned to introduce legislation that would outlaw all abortion for any reason, including the life of the mother, but backed down when thousands of women went into the streets of Warsaw and other major cities to protest.

Is there any country where women wouldn’t protest against such a law, or where the government wouldn’t knuckle under when they did? Not these days. These days are dark and promise to become darker (the choice facing voters on the 8th testifies to that). Will Christians ever see light again? France’s great nineteenth-century prelate Cardinal Pie knew when they would."

Read the whole article.

Election Day, 2016

Everyone on the internet is talking about the American election, especially today, and the temptation to dive in and comment is hard to resist.  It is certainly true that what happens today in the US will affect the world situation.  But I would like to call attention to the fact that, important as the presidential election in the US is, what happens in Europe is even more significant.

I am not necessarily speaking of European elections though they are important.  What I am trying to convey is the idea that in the grand scheme of things Europe is far more important than America. America has always been from the time of the founding fathers a plutocracy governed by a rich elite with only a facade of "democracy".  When in the beginning of the nation the people were still somewhat sane and religious, and the wealthy had a few more scruples than they do today, things were fairly peaceful and prosperous.  That did not last too long.  With an insatiable thirst for land-grabbing (think California, Mexico, the Spanish South, etc.) followed by the temptations of despotism America soon changed completely from its founding principles, such as they were, and ended up by driving a stake through the heart of the country, that stake being the Civil War.

America's plutocrats of old, of which George Washington was one, perhaps had misgivings about what they must have suspected was coming but in the end their pocketbook ruled over their hearts. [As an aside there is a charming , if doubtful story about Washington converting on his deathbed to Catholicism.  It's a nice story but given the man's background it is more than a little doubtful.  But even if it is true, his conversion only helped his eternal soul possibly to enter Heaven.  It did nothing to undo the damage he had done as president and founding father.] America went rapidly downhill after it began and the Civil War was the death knell.

We are not the "indispensable nation" as our last several presidents have so grandieloquently stated. [Mr Obama doesn't agree.  He believes America does the work of God.  Here in perfect harmony the delusional and the perverse meet.]  A nation that would believe that cannot see the destruction that awaits them.

Does this mean we should not love our homeland?  Of course not.  But we deceive ourselves if we believe that our homeland will be anything but a troubled land in its present state.

Now Europe has a long, centuries-old tradition of Catholicism, and though it has been attacked, divided, corrupted and unfaithful still has something, the Faith left, which can be built upon.  It can be rebuilt as a Catholic continent.  And if Europe returns to its Catholic roots it will have so great an effect upon the world that not even the nuclear arsenal of America will be a match for it.  It is what happens in Europe that will determine the fate of mankind on earth, not a US election.

To illustrate the importance of Europe one needn't go into a long study of European history (though I would advise it strongly); one only needs to look at the forces working together to eradicate Europe as a Christian Thing. Rich billionaires are funding an influx of antagonistic strangers into a Catholic land, and as Catholicism now hangs by a thread in Europe these oligarchs believe they can finish the job by importing an invading army of non-Catholics.  The Oligarchs are not stupid. They understand the importance of Europe as an enemy to be utterly destroyed.

And if the billionaires cannot achieve this by themselves they will always have the help of the treasonous clergy of the Catholic Church.  In this they are extremely lucky: they have a feminized, homosexualized, perverted clergy high and low who are only too happy to join in the festivities of destruction in what must be called the most amazing act of collective suicide in history, material as well as spiritual.  They now have a Pope who will perform cheap stunts like the recent one in Lund, Sweden, to demoralize those Catholics left who still cling to the Faith with their last chipped fingernails.  They are riding a crest and enjoying it.  The sickening Catholic clergy who cheer Christ's bitterest enemies on and even help them behind the scenes must enjoy their work because the trajectory of self-destruction is heading inexorably and swiftly to its awful conclusion.  They are intoxicated by their own perfidy.

American voters be aware: take note of the tragedy of Ireland.  The people of Ireland recently - and happily - voted their own obliteration when the so-called Catholic populace voted overwhelmingly to bring sodomite "marriage" into the land of Saints and scholars.  There was talk noised around that they did this due to their understandable disgust at the homosexual scandals among the Irish clergy.  If that is true, and the Irish character can be a bit perverse at times, then there is a classic cast of biting off your nose to spite your face.  To express their resentment of homosexual scandals Irish voters committed collective suicide.  So we Americans should not be surprised if a perverted murderess like Hillary Clinton gets elected today.  We need only look at Ireland.

The buck, as it always does, stops in Rome, specifically in the Chair of Peter.  It is the lack of governance or downright treason and stupidity that has brought the world to its present tragic state. The temptation to blame all this on Vatican II is a common one, but it is not true.  As this writer has written before, Vatican II was the festering sore that finally broke spilling its pus all over the world. The infection began at least a century before 1962.  Why else were Popes Pius IX and St Pius X so appalled by the Masonic inroads in the Church in their time?

But in spite of all this there is still a core of the Faith left in Europe which can be the basis of rebuilding Christendom.  America never had that so to expect it to suddenly become a beacon of hope in unrealistic.  I am cynical enough to believe that America has had its day and is now a dying, thrashing Empire in its final stages, a wreck that cannot be brought to life.  I hope I am wrong.  It can still bring on another World War by antagonizing Russia or continuing to destroy Middle Eastern countries that Israel does not like.  So it has the potential to bring more untold death and destruction to the world to satisfy the super-rich and the enemies of Christ. [I am told that Donald Trump wants to avoid war.  I am glad to hear it, if true.  I am a little doubtful of that as long as he continues to pander to the Tel Aviv madmen, the ones who goaded America into the destruction of Libya, Iraq and now Syria, whom it is said he has great love for.  We shall see.]

A Catholic Europe can trump even an anti-Catholic Empire which is why I believe the key to our survival as people lies in the rebuilding of Europe - but first and foremost a rebuilding of the Church. Right now it is clear as daylight that God is punishing us with the worst collection of clerics in the Church's history.  How long will He allow this to go on is anybody's guess.  But He is telling us something.  The Faith must be rebuilt.  We can only begin rebuilding it by getting on our knees with the beads.

I trust it goes without saying that I am truly worried about what is coming to my homeland in the wake of a Hillary victory.  There will be  more dead babies, more tyranny, more race riots, more persecution, an elevation of every form of sexual degeneracy to unimaginable levels.  The middle class will be gutted even more, the rich will get much richer, fatherless thugs will be more emboldened and more chaos will come to the last remaining peaceful areas of our country.  Yes, I am concerned by these things.  But I recognize that a land that had bad beginnings is doomed to have a bad end, unless God intervenes as a response to fervent prayer and sensible action.  One form of action can be elections. In today's election we know only two things: Trump is a gamble; Hillary is a certainty.

Today we Americans have a choice between a fellow sinner and a truly diabolical person. Those who would vote for a monster like Hillary Clinton are asking for evil, and if she wins they'll get it.

Political Endorsement

Lund: Truth Exiled

From James Larson:

Lund: Truth Exiled

There is no need to conjecture as to the primary goal of Pope Francis’ recent ecumenical visit to Lund, Sweden. It is explicitly stated in the Joint Statement on the Occasion of the Joint Catholic Commemoration of the Reformation to be found on the Vatican website. It reads:

“Many members of our communities yearn to receive the Eucharist at one table, as the concrete expression of full unity. We experience the pain of those who share their whole lives, but cannot share God’s redeeming presence at the Eucharistic table. We acknowledge our joint pastoral responsibility to respond to the spiritual thirst and hunger of our people to be one in Christ. We long for this wound in the Body to be healed. This is the goal of our ecumenical endeavours, which we wish to advance, also by renewing our commitment to theological dialogue.”

Nor are we left without a very specific agenda as to how this is to be accomplished – with the aid of compliant, heterodox theologians, and especially I think, with the compliance of the radically restructured Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. This methodology is very succinctly stated in the Common Ecumenical Prayer at the Lutheran Cathedral of Lund, which is also found on the Vatican website. It reads:

“Certainly, there was a sincere will on the part of both sides to profess and uphold the faith, but at the same time we realize that we closed in on ourselves out of fear or bias with regard to the faith which others profess with a different accent and language…With this new look at the past, we do not claim to realize an impracticable correction of what took place, but “to tell that history differently”.

The document From Conflict to Communion, upon which the entire Lund ecumenical event was based, has largely accomplished the “telling of history differently” through employing liberal theologians to simply lie about both Catholic and Lutheran doctrine, and by confining the condemnations of the Council of Trent to the dustbins - thus reducing any former conflicts to “different accent and language”. For a comprehensive understanding of these lies, I highly recommend a careful reading of my two articles linked below. [at Mr Larson's website, Ed.]

There is an additional, very important, methodology which is being used to complement this perversion of history and doctrine. It is succinctly stated in an interview conducted by Ulf Jonsson, S.J. (editor of the Swedish journal Signum) with Pope Francis just one week prior to the latter’s journey to Sweden, and published in La Civilita Catholic just three days before the Pope's journey. This very disturbing passage reads:

“I have asked Patriarch Bartholomew if what was told about Patriarch Athenagoras was true, what he said to Paul VI: 'Let the two of us go ahead and we will put the theologians on an island to discuss among themselves'. He told me that it was a true remark. But, yes, theological dialogue must continue, even if it will not be easy. Personally, I believe that enthusiasm must shift towards common prayer and the works of mercy….There is a policy we should have clear in every case: to proselytize in the ecclesial field is a sin. Benedict XVI told us that the Church does not grow by proselytism, but by attraction. Proselytism is a sinful attitude.”

In other words, it is not theologians across-the-board who are to be exiled to an island, but rather the primacy of Truth itself that is to be exiled, and of course the theologians who hold to such a primacy. It is quite clear from what has been said above, and especially clear from the tissue of lies which constitute the long document From Conflict to Communion, that heterodox theologians will not at all be exiled, but will have a pre-eminent place at the Pope’s table.It is in the light of this agenda that we may view the unprecedented total recasting of the membership of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

What all of this entails, as very clearly stated and examined in my articles, is the militant promotion of silence in regard to doctrinal differences, and instead, simply moving forward with the pastoral implementation of this agenda - just as the Pope earlier had instructed the Lutheran lady (who asked about the possibility of receiving Holy Communion with her Catholic husband) at an ecumenical service in Rome’s Evangelical Lutheran Church,: “One baptism, one Lord, one faith. Talk to the Lord, and then go forward”.

What is demanded of us therefore is that we do everything possible to escape the island prepared for us, and clearly speak the Word:

“But men that speak truth shall be found with her [Wisdom], and shall advance, even till they come to the sight of God. Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner. For wisdom came forth from God: for praise shall be with the wisdom of God, and shall abound in a faithful mouth….(Ecclesiasticus 15:19-20)

And leave the rest to God, with peace and joy in our hearts, rooted in the certain knowledge that He shall triumph.

[Mr Larson's website is at http://www.waragainstbeing.com/ where you will find the articles that give the background to the betrayal at Lund]

Homosexual rape of a boy is OK in Austria. Mr Putin objects.

President Putin is appalled by what is going in in Europe, and has some words to say about it..


       

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/vladimir-putin-condemns-europe-upholding-child-rape-video/ri17334

Guess who is funding the "White Helmets"

To ask the question is to answer it.

The latest propaganda ploy of the nations trying to destroy Syria is the creation of a so-called humanitarian army called "The White Helmets".  These selfless souls are said to be rescuing the innocent from the carnage of war in poor Syria but the reality is that they were formed by one of the bigwigs connected with Blackwater/Academi mercenaries and their ilk.  They are in fact, and have been from Day One, working with the terrorists to bring down Assad and murder Syria.

And who is opening up his checkbook to support these noble souls?

From the article:

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American columnist and political analyst said Syrian civil defense volunteers, known as the White Helmets, are nothing more than terrorists masquerading as humanitarians.

“They (the White Helmets) are nothing more than a terrorist support group. White Helmets was founded by James Le Mesurier, an admitted former British army officer and mercenary with the Olive Group, a private contracting organization that is now merged with Blackwater-Academi into Constellis Holdings. Although White Helmets half-heartedly attempts to hide its source of funding, the organization is linked to George Soros through a PR firm named Purpose Inc., a pro-war firm that argues for Western intervention against Assad. The co-founder of Purpose is Jeremy Heimans, who also helped found Avaaz, a “pro-democracy” group connected to Soros’ Open Society Foundation, SEIU, and MoveOn.org,” Brandon Turbeville told the Tasnim News Agency.

Read the whole article here.

[Goodness, you'd think Soros would get tired of spreading all this misery and destruction around the world, wouldn't you?  He is certainly a hard worker.  Or maybe he is possessed.]