The Descendants (the movie)

Clueless nincompoop feels very cool: George Clooney in "The Descendants"

If you want to go and see a stupid movie, I suggest “The Descendants”, which is to say I suggest you don’t.

The Descendants is the pathetic attempt of idiotic failures – you can be a failure in life, big time, even if you are a hollywood screenwriter, producer, or whatever; ask them…- to try to persuade themselves that their being cretins unable to do or think anything in the right way be, in some way, cool or at least vaguely claiming for your sympathy.

The protagonist is a chap telling you that Hawaii people’s lives and families are as screwed as everywhere else, and one would be tempted to remind him of the many, many families and lives who are not screwed because they have, erm, values and rules and do not consider it very cool to be a failed father and/or husband.

Not Clooney, of course. His character tells you of his drinking (and unfaithful) wife as if he was telling you the cat is getting old, and of his teenager daughter with her drugs and her “older man” as if there was no connection between the sluttishness of the two generations of women in his household, and as if drugs were introduced into a family by the stork.

This world is absolutely value-free and, most importantly, it is completely religion-free. Again, there’s not the slightest hint in the entire movie that an absolutely screwed up family like the one depicted might be in some way connected with the total atheism reigning within it. This atheism is so pronounced, so absolutely shouted that religion does not have the minimum space in the entire “work”, not even to criticise it. It is as if religion – every religion, not only the Christian one – had never existed, and no one knew what it is.

Which is strange, because the movie is entirely centred on the fact that this family is, undoubtedly, screwed, and screwed exactly in the way Christian families – or families with Christian values – consider things will go if no solid values and no faith in God are cultivated. Wifey drinks and sleeps around, daughter makes pretty much the same but she takes drugs too, the other little daughter shows strange signs of disturbed behaviour, but one knows there’s hope…..

In the middle of this domestic disaster is this cuckolded idiot, wondering out loud what will happen of his family members without ever giving any sign of understanding that the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children; that grown spoiled brats are the result of spineless parents, whoring wifes produce whoring daughters, and all of that is produced by the absence of family values and sense of decency.

In the end, though, the woman really dies, and never did I care less to write a spoiler. But she dies, so to speak, slowly and not without giving all the members of the family ample room for reflection. At thi spoint I thought – in my naive optimism – that the movie would then turn in the right direction and after describing the moral meltdown born out of complete laissez-faire morality would show the way to get out of the mess this very absence of morality has created.

I was wrong. In one of the last scenes – the last one by which I was awake, at least – the cremated rests of the deceased, self-centred drinking slut – because this is what she would be considered in every halfway decent Christian society, before Niceness took hold -  are thoughtfully dispersed in the sea by the three surviving family members, equipped with hawaiian garland because… no one knows exactly. Not one word of hope, not one word of even soppy and stupid new age sentimentalism. Mom kicked the bucket, let’s kick her ashes out of the bucket; but let’s do it in a way which lets us feel vaguely cool and sensitive and oh so, so wannabe profound.

In the end, what remains of this movie is the message that these people have absolutely no clue, but this is absolutely fine so, because they seem to be in very good company and because they suspect, like seventeen years old, that there be something cool in being screwed. Only, half of the characters aren’t seventeen anymore, anagraphically at least.

Unless you have a monthly card (Ha! Do you think I pay the full ticket price for such things?) I suggest you don’t waste your money for this. We live in a fallen world and I understand movies cannot all be works of Catholic apologetics and will to an extent reflect the world we live in.

But this here is a provocation.

Mundabor

Obama, Christianity, Islam.

Dear reader, you may find the Michael Voris video above of interest to you.

There are several interesting point there: about the first (how many Americans still believe Obama a Muslim, or not a Christian) I notice after many years it can’t be said anymore such answers are in the main influenced by ignorance (= not knowing what Obama says on the matter), but largely on reflection (= not believing what Obama says on the matter).  I can’t say Obama cares a lot for that, but I think it can fairly be said the nation listened, and drew its conclusions.

The second is that I envy a country where so many still have the guts of wondering whether their President is a Christian. The German have a Kanzler(in) who grew up in a communist country, from an idiot who had already completely confused belief in God and social justice; this woman has no problem whatever with open homosexuality, but she thought the best way to power was to call herself Christian, so the country at large doesn’t even wonder whether she is one (tip: they don’t do it because if they did, they should wonder how Christian they are themselves, a topic they’d rather set aside).

The third is (and I have touched this issue rather often) the progressive deterioration of the definition of “Christian” in the Western world and even – though in clearly lesser measure than in Europe – in the United States. Voris’ quotes of Obama about Jesus being such a wonderful teacher and “mediator” (a definition, by-the-by, with which every Muslim would enthusiastically agree) and at the same time not raising questions among two-thirds of the electorate. 

Still, I am very thankful to the other third. I wish such a vast number existed in Europe. At least as far as Northern Europe is concerned, I can’t say this is the case.

We live in a world where a President of the United States (who is clearly far less intelligent than his supporters believe, but not a moron) expresses his “Christianity” is a view compatible with both Islam and the secular society, and two third of the population allow him to get away with it. And where, I must say with great sadness, many leaders of the Western world are not even requested to prove their Christian identity, or do anything at all to upheld Christian values.

Christianity by hearsay.

Among us Catholics, I blame Vatican II.

Mundabor

“Nice” And Punishment

The end of "Niceness"

This is not mine, but comes from a homily recently listened to.

The reflection is very simple: was everyone in Sodom a sodomite? The rational answer is “no”. Still, we know from the Genesis that even after a rather tiring negotiation, Abraham (Abram, I think, at that point) could not bring the number of righteous people there down to the number necessary to save the city, though as a good Easterner he had negotiated down from 50 to (if memory serves) 10.

Therefore, not even 10 just people were present in Sodom, which implies the number of the unjust was certainly bigger than the number of the Sodomites.

Fast forward to modern times, and the Genesis picture is in front of our eyes. How many are the homosexual? Very probably not much more than half a percent among the adult population in average, and certainly not more than a good two-digit percentage even in places like Soho. How could, then, Sodom be destroyed? The answer is: because of the “niceness” reigning even where sexual perversion hadn’t entered; because, speaking of today, of the too many who look the other way and do not want to miss the civil partnership ceremony of the neighbour, or even congratulate him on his achievement; because of all those for whom a perfectly wrongly understood Tolerance is a new god, to whom everything, even Christianity, must bow; because of all those who just don’t care, and can’t be bothered to ask whether they could; because of all those who would not at least promise to themselves they will, at the right time, try to influence the (literally) poor sods in the right way.

The thought is rather scary if we think how many have nowadays, particularly in modern Sodoms like London, embraced the New Religion of Tolerance. It really lets one think that the day the situation gets out of control and not even a tiny number of people who still think with their own brains can be found, the next heaven-sent genocide cannot be very far away; genocide which, by-the-by, would be in itself a rather eloquent answer to the New Religion.

We are, hopefully, far away from that situation, as even in a place like London conservative Catholicism and conservative Christianity still resonate with a non indifferent minority of the population. How long will this last, is rather the question. Unless Christians (and notably Catholic) hierarchies wake up in this country, Christianity as it has been understood and practised in these last two thousand years might one day become a strange collection of old rituals no one really understands anymore, like those squares and street names everyone knows, but whose name’s origin is understood just by few. One has the impression this is already happening in vast strata of the soi-disant Christian population, as it is shown by examples like the “priestess” giving (fake) communion to the dog with most of the present finding the gesture “natural”, and only one person complaining afterwards.

Niceness is the new enemy and it is literally everywhere, corrupting every idea of moral justice into an indistinct, tofu-like, sugary minestrone whose ingredients are still written on the can, but have long disappeared from the content.

We must stay vigilant and not allow ourselves to slip by degrees into this mentality of celebrating everything. It will only attract countless disgraces in the best of cases, and a huge amount of brimstone in the worst.

Mundabor

Pressure

 

 

The girl has just been informed that she is pregnant. She is, of course, scared, as I can’t imagine many young unwedded girls rejoicing at the news. In past times, the fear would have – in many cases, if certainly not all – made place for a clear consciousness of the sacredness of human life and, perhaps, a sincere maternal desire to see this life born. Homicide was forbidden, and human life considered, well, human life. Therefore, not many young mother would choose – though some certainly did – to become the assassins of their own child. Basic Christianity, of course; part of that system of values which helps one to avoid the worst and hope in Heaven.

Fast forward to the begin of the XXI century, when one can consider the pregnancy of a young woman a “punishment” and still become President of the United States. In our age, the pressure works in the contrary direction; she does not help to keep the most basic principles of natural law but rather to pervert them, and Christianity with them.

This is where one of the most astonishing traits of modern societies come in: pressure to murder. The young girl in question will be, more often than not, be advised by her own mother – let alone by her own girlfriends – to get rid of the problem.  The basic principles which one century ago would have helped a young woman, difficult as her position was, to do what is right have now been perverted to such an extent that these mothers or girlfriends would not hesitate in claiming vaguely “Christian” principles to support their suggestion: what is such a life worth, would one ask; would it not be better that this child would be born in five or ten years time, would another one say as if lives were interchangeable; does she have the right to give birth to a child condemned to a life of deprivation, would a third one reason without asking herself what the child in question, if asked, would answer.

In countries like the UK, this kind of pressure can be really strong. A lethal mixture of forgetfulness for basic Christian principles, neglect of common humanity and staggering abuse of fake goodism (I have listed some examples above; the Nazis reasoned in the same way about euthanasia) have brought us to the point that people can suggest abortion to their own daughters and best friends without feeling more than a passing discomfort, soon cauterised with the above mentioned excuses.

The pressure increases with the push to legislation in favour of euthanasia, as it stands to reason that once it is allowed to contemplate putting old people in the (of course, environmentally friendly) bin, it must be even more so allowed to do the same with the unborn. In the end, if one can put to sleep old Aunt Agatha (Yes, I love P.G. Wodehouse!) in order that she does not “suffer”, how more legitimate will it be to put to sleep an unborn child, whom no one has ever called “aunt”, let alone with her own name?

And talking of “allowing”, isn’t the biggest element of pressure the fact itself that abortion in itself is not – within huge boundaries – a criminal offence anymore? How can we expect that when the legislator says “you can do it”, there will be many people saying to themselves “I can’t do it”? The very fact that abortion is not a criminal offence must be a great inducement to abortion to all those who find themselves in an unwanted pregnancy, particularly if young and unwed. I do not know how many girls can honestly say “even if it was allowed, I would never have an abortion”. Many certainly can, but many others…

What I do know is that if for abortion there were 20 years of jail and the stigma of having murdered one’s own child, many more young women would be helped to make the right choice. Pressure again, but of the right kind.

Do not believe the tales of the abortionists trying sell you the legend of untold mass murders, occurring in dark garages with the help of knitting needles, or coat hangers. Utter bollocks, as first of all premarital sex was by far less spread than today, and secondly the use of such practices would have led to a huge number of deaths among young women and among countless mothers, a mass involuntary suicide of which there is no historical record.

I seriously wonder how many women died in the UK of the knitting needle in, say, 1952, and how many die of perfectly legal abortions in 2012.

We live in a country where the legislator creates pressure to the homicide of the unborn, and this diabolical legislation in turn corrupts entire sectors of the country; then wise people have always known that the laws of one generation are the morality of the next one.

Still: in a country where the dominant ecclesial community is barely recognisable from the Muppet Show, can we be so surprised?

Mundabor

 

Scorned Woman Loses, Gingrich Convincingly Wins In South Carolina

Newt Gingrich convincingly won in South Carolina. Unfortunately, I do not think this was primarily due to interventions like the one posted by me a few days ago, but rather to brilliant answers like the one I post above.

Which leads me nicely to my argument: whilst Santorum is – for all of us Catholics I think – by far the best candidate, I think Gingrich is the one with the best cards to defeat Obama. As always in politics, the choice is – in the end – not between our ideal candidate and the enemy, but between the enemy and the candidate who can defeat him.

I am fully conscious that this is the mentality which has brought Romney so far, and I am not ashamed in saying that if there was no better candidate to defeat Obama, my personal support – though not my sympathy – would go to him. But I do think that there is a candidate who can – easily, I think, unless he makes something very stupid – defeat Obama by presenting a radically – if not completely – different world view than the one of the inadequate git brought to the White House on a huge wave of political correctness, coupled with a toothless and flip-flopping opponent.

Santorum is, if you ask me, by far the best. Not only because of his extremely coherent Catholic stance, but because of his extremely clear ideas in matters of foreign politics. He may not have the same tea-party credentials of Gingrich, but he wouldn’t be a squanderer unable to count like the present occupier of the White House.

My problem with Santorum is that I think it is highly improbable that he may ever defeat Obama. Why? Because of his very same extremely coherent Catholic stance, and extremely clear ideas in matters of foreign politics.

I can’t imagine Santorum suddenly converting to his right-wing stance the mainstream of the American voters. I try not to confuse my own preferences with whom I think is electable. I like Santorum’s stance on Iran like few others, but it would be foolish for me to say this is a platform on which you can be elected President. Kudos to him for being so honest, but frankly I can’t see this candidate winning a presidential race. Not in 2012 at any rate.

The results in South Carolina are, I think, an important – though not definitive – confirmation of this, with Gingrich taking away the clear majority of the conservative wing and Santorum performing extremely well all things considered, but still widely behind Gingrich.

Importantly, Gingrich seems to have been the most voted among those who consider both economy or ability to defeat Obama the main motivators of their vote: this is a candidate able to unite pragmatists who would have voted Romney in the absence of better alternatives, and hard-liners who would prefer to lose with a real Republican than running the risk of winning with a fake one.

If you add the votes, Gingrich and Santorum together got around double as much as Romney’s votes. Granted, South Carolina is more conservative than the average, but I’d dare to say the anti-Romney fraction only needs to coalesce around Gingrich and Romney will become, in time, history.

What I hope will happen now is that Santorum stays in the race for as long as money and organisation allow, and then graciously retires and supports Gingrich’s candidature, suggesting his delegates vote for him at the convention. This way the way would be paved for a strong Gingrich campaign against Romney, but at the same time stressing the robust socially very conservative component behind him.

Santorum achieved a half-miracle through his own personal qualities and the fact that his ideas resonate particularly well among a certain part of the electorate. But I still can’t imagine him becoming the candidate able to defeat Romney, much less Obama.  Too Catholic, too conservative, too much of a hawk in foreign politics matters, I don’t think he can make it, not in 2012.

What I do think is that scorned women do not have the grip on the electorate they used to have. Thank God for that.

Mundabor

The Bigotry Question

Hell Hath No Fury: Marianne Gingrich

On the day Perry makes way for him and Santorum is declared (more or less) the winner in Iowa, Gingrich’s ex-wife does (really not) surprise us with alleged “revelations” about what her former husband said to her around, let me think, twelve to thirteen years and a conversion ago. Interesting.

Nothing new of course as generally this kind of things finds its way to the media without waiting for a presidential race; but one remains with the impression that the private side of Gingrich is the one chosen by his opponent to put an end to the public one.

This is one of the rare days when I am glad I grew up in Europe, and particularly in a country where private mistakes are left to the confessional and, when they find their way to the media, are not considered the metre by which the work of a politician is judged. You may say that it has his risks (as seen recently), but I still think it reflects a more mature political culture.

I’m not sure in modern times Godfrey of Bouillon, or Richard the Lionheart, would be elected to run a crusade, as their private life probably gave rise to many questions. Rather, some inept chap with irreproachable private life would be chosen, and bye-bye Jerusalem. If you don’t like these two examples, pick whichever else you like, from the drinker Churchill to the  gambler Cavour.

Alas, I doubt many will be of my opinion, which is why if the public reacts badly to this interview in the run up to the primary in South Carolina it is now not unlikely the American people will have to decide, come November, between a godless affirmative action idiot and a flip-flopping RINO Mormon.

The private life of a politician is a matter for the confessional. Don’t let a good candidate go to waste because he would have never make  it as a Protestant pastor. Most people don’t, and I’m not sure Protestant pastors have such a good record, either.

Mundabor

SSPX Gives Second Response To Vatican

Tradidi quod et accepi: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

In the matter of the Preambolo it has now transpired the first answer delivered by the SSPX to the Vatican has been considered not to the point (that is: too long-winded), and the SSPX has been requested to present a second answer, more concise and more focused on the Preambolo itself.

This second version is being examined as we speak, though of course no immediate reaction is to be expected.

What seems interesting to me from the source (the highly reputable Italian daily newspaper “La Stampa”) is that the SSPX answer is not a simple refusal of the Vatican offer, but a partial acceptance, with the clarification of what the SSPX is not ready to accept and the request of further clarifications from the Vatican as to what they mean by certain expressions.

The crux of the disagreement seems to me in the way the SSPX and (perhaps) the Vatican understand the ordinary (which means, erm, cough: the fallible) Magisterium.

For the Vatican, it would seem that

the Catholic is called to ensure a “religious submission of will and intellect” to the teachings that the Pope and the college of bishops “offer when they exercise their authentic Magisterium,” even if they are not proclaimed in a dogmatic way, as is the case with most of the documents of the magisterium.

For the SSPX, what is not in accordance with the Tradition is just plain wrong, and therefore there can be no question of religious submission to error. As a consequence,

the Lefebvrians do not intend to give their assent to the texts of the Council regarding collegiality, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and religious freedom, because they believe these to be inconsistent with tradition

As it is acutely pointed out – oh, the difference between Italian “vaticanisti” and the bunch of politically correct ignorant idiots employed by the BBC and elsewhere! -

the concept of tradition – “Traditio” – and its value, represents the crux of the debate that has characterized the talks between the Society and the Holy See. The Lefebvrians criticize some of the Council’s provisions, considering them to be at odds with the tradition of the Church.

In simple words, I will put it in this way: if your drunk father orders you to bring him more brandy, are you obliged to comply because he is your father and you are supposed to obey him? Substitute “drunkenness” with “Vatican II novelties” and you are, I think, not very far from the nucleus of this disagreement. The Vatican seems to think you still obey to papa because you owe him obedience, the SSPX says the very love and obedience you owe to your father requires that you refuse to comply. The comparison with drunkenness might seem strong, but after fifty years of Vatican II devastation I am inclined to call it gentle.

We shall see. Don’t hold your breath. Actually an Hail Mary or three is a better idea.

Mundabor.

Why The Novus Ordo Must Go

NOT photoshopped!

After the tragedy in Tuscany, you could have bet your pint that some alternative priest would have profited to put himself at the centre of the attention and at the same time show how little respect he has for the Mass.

The feat has been perfectly achieved in the Isola del Giglio (along whose coast the Costa Concordia ran aground). In order to make of the thing an exercise which would put the attention away from Christ to direct it on the usual “gandhism” of these occasions and, of course, on himself, the celebrant of Giglio’s main church thought it fitting to put on the altar the following offerings: a life vest, a rope, a rescue helmet, a plastic tarp and some bread.

This is not even Mass as a sacred ceremony. This is a macabre vaudeville without paying the ticket.

But if we reflect attentively, isn’t this what is wanted with the Novus Ordo? Is it not so, that the desire to entertain the poor souls rather than inspire and elevate them is very high in the priority of the new rite?

What else if the meaning – even when things do not degenerate to such level of parody – of the gifts to be brought to the altar? Were the prayers offered in the Tridentine not good enough? Do we really need the cheap piece of entertainment in 3D, with some (alas, it seems to me, rather often, sanctimonious) people feeling the lead actor for a minute? What is the aim of all these antics, if not distract or positively lead away from what the Mass is about in the first place?

But you see, the priest who had the brilliant idea of being the hero of the simple for one day probably understood the Novus Ordo better than we did. He understood, namely, what the Novus Ordo was introduced for: to entertain the people in the pews and let them feel they are “actively” participating.

The rest follows automatically. If “participation” is a value, then you can have the football during the World Championship, the engine on Formula One days, and whatever other idea lets the people feel they are “sharing in the Mass”. It follows from the premise like the day follows the night. How can, then, the commingling of sacred rite and unholy show be criticised? Isn’t it all meant to let people “share in the experience”?

The Novus Ordo is what would happen if you asked a bunch of children how to change the Tridentine Mass. They’d take away the “boring” bits, make all more “entertaining”, require active participation as they did with the merry-go-round, and mix it with elements of their everyday life so it doesn’t become too much of a bore. Clap your hands, everybody! Ah, and they’do it as similar as they can to what their friends from the other school do; so you can all meet together before the football match.

If I had been one of the unfortunate souls who lost their lives in the tragedy of the Costa Concordia, I’d feel as if they had drawned me for a second time.

At Rorate Caeli, they have defined the events in a beautiful way:

No shame. No rules. No sobriety. No propriety. No sense of ridicule. No respect for God, for the living, and for the dead. Novus Ordo.

Mundabor

How Spoiled We Are

Franz Schubert, 1797-1828.

If you like the wonderful British novelists of the XIX century (Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope & Co.), or even if you are a bit interested in the past, you’ll know already that in the past, premature death was – unfortunately – a much more frequent affair than it is today.

I do not bore you with the countless examples in said literature – suffices it to say, people could predict which people could make it to a ripe age, as a sickly child or weak teenager knew his chances were rather bad -, but you might be more familiar with some of the great of the past. Beethoven died aged 52, Chopin 39, Bizet 36, Mozart 35 and the great, great, great Franz Schubert 31.

It would seem, only two centuries ago death was everywhere. Birth (for women of course, and children), disease and war were constant dangers, and the premature farewell to this valley of tears an ever-present possibility.
No rosy and healthy young wife could tell you she wouldn’t be dead in less than 12 months’ time, whether of birth or disease. People knew it, and lived with it as with something both natural, and God-given. Again, we see it in the novels of the time – in their sum, certainly a very accurate portrait of the reality of the times – and this reality must have been full of uncertainties if even in the Sixties of the XIX Century – when the medical advancements had been plentiful – Trollope could put in his character’s thought the doubt that perfectly healthy people could live for long; with which he expressed what must have been generally felt as the ever-present possibility that even young and healthy people might be carried away in a short period of time.

Why do I say this to you? Because the Trollope book I am reading – boy, the chap was good! I am astonished he should be so comparatively underappreciated nowadays – reminded me of a trailer of a movie I never saw, in which Nicole Kidman performs a mother struggling to cope with the death of her own child and – it appeared from the trailer – becoming blasphemous in the process.

It stroke – and strikes – me as shocking what absence of historical perspective must be necessary to not even write, but even think such screenplays. Nowadays, life is a man-given right, and his end an unforgivable offence. This world is the centre of everything, and therefore the end of the life on this world as a little child not the promotion to an infinitely better one, but something to be grieved to the point of hating the One to Whom this life is due in the first place. The same belief in God is negated when one doubts the goodness of the God he still says to believe in. You can’t really believe in a cruel Christian God unless you are seriously, seriously disturbed. If you believe in the Christian God, you know He loves you. If you doubt this, you doubt His very existence, and make a cruel joke of Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection. If you blaspheme Him because of what you are supposed to know comes from Him, you make a fool of yourself.

We are extremely spoiled in this day and age. Thankfully, we enjoy unprecedented health and a life expectancy that would have been a dream only two generations ago. Sadly, this has gone together with a

progressive loss of the very meaning of this now so very probable, so very long life

. I do not blame the medical advancement of course, not do I think that better life conditions made people less religious – it being very obvious that some of the places with most comfortable life conditions are among the most religious -. What I think is that the shifting of the attention to the life below led to the loss of the very meaning of both the life below, and the one above.

I blame the mentality which infected the country from – say; at least as much as one can say such things – the Sixties, a mentality which encouraged people to think that their human condition here below – not their eternal destiny up above – is in the end what really counts.

Seriously, a society which makes of child death a reason to justify blasphemy – and I do not know whether this was the content of the film, of whether it ended with a more Christian message; but you could notice the trailer strongly leveraged on these feelings – is a society which must still learn to understand the first things about life and death. I compare the movie with the reaction of the presidential candidate Santorum to the death of his child, and see the difference between a Christian and a secular world; though I do not doubt for a moment the Santorums will carry their loss with them to their grave.

How spoiled we are. How misled by bad shepherds feeding us theological double-entendres meant to appease us whatever out thinking, and to dance around truth without ever touching it (how about this: “all things on earth should be related to man as their center and crown.” You can immediately see the two ways in which it can be read. Ah, what masters of flattery the Conciliar Fathers were…..). Secularism polluted the entire Western world and instead of fighting it, the Church was polluted Herself.

We live longer and longer, but in our attitude to death we become more and more like little children who understand nothing and ask their parents in the hope of answers they will, if they are lucky enough to get them, not understand.

Mundabor