Evil Clown, once again drunk on DEI, is on record with saying that “the Lord blesses everyone, everyone, everyone.” This is, clearly, his pathetic attempt to deflect the attention from his Argentinian friend, Faggopervert Tucho Fernandez, whom he evidently continues to defend.
Let us dwell for a moment on this “everyone” stuff.
Besides the Imprecatory Psalms, and other old and New Testament parts which are absolutely not inclusionary and in no way blessing anybody, I thought we should give the word to Our Lord Himself, and see what he has to say about whether he “blesses everyone, everyone, everyone” or not.
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Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. [14] [b]
15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
16 “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ 17 You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18 You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’ 19 You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21 And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. 22 And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.
23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
29“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30 And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!
33“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation
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This is not the result of an extensive research. This is just the result of a lightning-fast try. If there is something you can say of Christianity, is that the word “everyone” is not – at least as the final result is concerned – part of it. It’s not a free-for-all. It’s not a game where everyone wins.
In fact, the Church exists exactly because of this. If God did not exclude anyone, there would be no need for any Church.
Many are called, but few are chosen.All the others are excluded and not blessed at all.
Some are saved, many are damned. Damned is the contrary of blessed. Cursed is also the contrary of blessed. Search a bible online for “curse” and you will have an idea.
Same as everything else in Catholicism, blessings are not given for the asking. They never were, they never will be. “Bless me, father, because I am a faggot living in sin with my male partner” is something that lives only in the dirty, perverted minds of the Pervofaggot and the Evil Clown.
Is Francis really that dumb? Alas, it looks like he is.
Mind, this is not the kind of dumbness of the guy who does not understand what damage this is doing to him. Rather, this is the kind of dumbness of the guy who does understand, but still prefers to go his way, in a huge middle finger stretched out to all of us, rather than doing what everybody else, who is not as evil as he is, would.
In case you are wondering, this is more evidence that this guy does not believe in God, at all. He believes that when he is gone, he is gone. This is, in the end, the reason why he just does not care about the way he will be remembered, or about will happen to his soul the moment he dies. His petty vengeance on Catholics, his cruel joy at seeing them angry but unable to do anything, is enough for him.
They say homos are the bitterest, cruellest people. I am not an expert, of course, but I’d say the anecdotical evidence would confirm this.
A new year has just started, and this day marks the end of my extended Christmas holiday (yes it was good, thanks; no, I will give no details, thanks; yes, I got some weight, but not really much, thanks; no, I tried not to think about bad things and problems, thanks).
A happy new year to all my readers.
What do I wish for the Church in 2024? If you need to ask, you haven’t been paying attention.
Often I have prayed that he would die. Not out of personal hate for him (whom, let us be clear, I hate with every cell of my heart and with every neuron of my brain), but for the good of the Church and for the good of the souls entrusted to Her.
I keep praying. He keeps not dying.
Perhaps I am not praying enough. I confess that I don’t pray for his painless death every day. The guy is just not part of my daily prayer routine, nor will he become because I don’t want the thought of him to make me angry in my evening prayers.
However, this is no excuse. I should have prayed for his painless death more often. This is a beautiful New Year proposition: pray more often for his painless death. Possibly every day. The First of January has been already ticked out. Let’s hope it continues.
You might ask: what if he dies? Will not what follows be just as bad, or worse?
I don’t know. It might. But I want him to die because I want the daily recollection that, like him, this period shall pass and, one day, things will get back to normal. I want him to die because I want to have at least a chance that, after him, things will slowly, but actually, get better and we will, one day, mark his death as the nadir of the satanic mess. I want him to die because I forbid myself to not wish the end of a horrible situation, merely because of the risk that the situation might become even more horrible.
I am, also, a born optimist. I never got a new hand of cards without a new hope. When he dies, a new deck of cards will be brought on the table and a whole new game will begin. You might say that the card company has rigged the deck of cards. I say that God can un-rig every deck of cards, no matter how rigged. Particularly if we pray.
Let us, therefore, start 2024 with a solemn commitment to pray more often for his death.
“Sacred Scripture itself confirms that sulfur evokes the stench of the flesh, as it speaks of the rain of fire and sulfur poured upon Sodom by the Lord. He had decided to punish Sodom for the crimes of the flesh, and the very type of punishment he chose emphasized the shame of that crime. For sulfur stinks, and fire burns. So it was just that Sodomites, burning with perverse desires arising from the flesh like stench, should perish by fire and sulfur so that through this just punishment they would realize the evil they had committed, led by a perverse desire.”
Saint Gregory the Great
“Truly, this vice is never to be compared with any other vice because it surpasses the enormity of all vices.… It defiles everything, stains everything, pollutes everything. And as for itself, it permits nothing pure, nothing clean, nothing other than filth.…
Saint Peter Damian
[…] but these wretches not only do not bridle this fragility, but do worse, committing that accursed sin against nature, and as blind and fools, with the light of their intellect darkened, they do not know the stench and misery in which they are. It is not only that this sin stinks before me, who am the Supreme and Eternal Truth, it does indeed displease me so much and I hold it in such abomination that for it alone I buried five cities by a divine judgment, my divine justice being no longer able to endure it. This sin not only displeases me as I have said, but also the devils whom these wretches have made their masters. Not that the evil displeases them because they like anything good, but because their nature was originally angelic, and their angelic nature causes them to loathe the sight of the actual commission of this enormous sin.
This is a welcome occasion to repeat something I have said very often but would like to repeat now, before Christmas: too many Catholics have blinded themselves to the horror and filth of sodomy, or – which is even worse – live in such a depraved mind space that sodomy does not faze them at all.
I really, really hate it when I hear the “argument” against sodomy that a homosexual person is called to chastity “just as a heterosexual person is”. This argument ignores and, therefore, simply whitewashes the perversion. There is a fundamental difference between a sin that goes with nature and a sin that goes against nature. Everybody who does not get this fundamental difference has – homosexual or not – a perverted mind, full stop.
I come from a generation that held these things as so obvious, that there would never, ever be any need to explain them. But no, nowadays you have people who call themselves “catholic” vomit that horrible word, “gay” (in the sense of “faggot or dyke”), as if it was one of those things that just happen, like having red hair, or small hands! I really, really wonder what kind of filth they harbour in their little heads, to be able to even mention that stuff without feeling sick.
These days leading to Christmas, which are linked, for most of us, to the innocence and simple joy of a more innocent age and of a far more innocent era, are particularly fitting to remind our listeners that there is no place for filth – particularly that filth – anywhere near a Catholic mind.
In your conversations with friends, relatives and acquaintances, please take care that you point this out to everyone you hear casually mentioning that dreaded word, “gay”.
The perversion of the mind starts with the use of the language of the perverts.
And by the way, the picture above shows God’s accompaniment of those people.
Let us forget for a moment that I live in the United Kingdom and, whenever I watch advertisements on Youtube, it looks like I live in Nigeria. This is, in fact, a development that always makes me smile, as it caused the loss of countless business opportunities for smug leftist actors full of the rayyycisssm narrative, who now finally manage to (unwillingly) put their job where their ideology is.
What I am talking about today is different: the stealth, but steady perversion of the Westerner’s mind.
It’s only two seconds, or three. It’s the “guests” ringing the doorbell who are, in fact, two women. It’s the “couple” loading a car that is, in fact, made of two beards. It’s the sequence of pictures of “families” where a “family” made of… those people appears. It’s the holiday company showing the two extremely fat, black lesbians (congratulations, faggots: that’s three PC checks in one!) enjoying their cruise (note to self: if you ever go on a cruise, delete those pervos from your list now).
Do you think it does not work? I am very sorry to disagree.
Look at how easy it is to make people digest perversion just by calling it “gayness” and repeating it often enough. Look at how people are now full of tattoos in order to look like the tough guys they have seen in movies, whilst having a perfectly meek, and often perfectly miserable, existence as baristas or fitness instructors. Look at the stupid “peaky blinders” haircut that went so viral in London among young people eager to look like criminals. People are very easy to manipulate and there is nothing they can’t be made to swallow, given one – or one and a half – generation and enough money.
This is very ominous for Western Democracies.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think that people were, in principle, just as gullible one hundred years ago as they are now. The big difference is that, one hundred years ago, all those gullible people a) knew they were largely uneducated (and were, therefore, more guarded towards carpetbaggers of all kinds) and b) had a robust set of fundamental beliefs which, again, were very difficult to sabotage or hollow out.
Not so today. A generation that doesn’t believe in anything can easily be shaped into everything their masters want.
Perversion? Climate Change? Vaccines and Lockdowns? This has all worked pretty well up to now.
“You’ll have nothing and be happy?” Well, this is the current experiment, and it feeds on perversion, climate change, and even lockdowns. It’s a mass experiment in testing the gullibility of the people and their ability to believe everything their masters want.
The chances aren’t bad. This United Kingdom produces countless “degree holders” who can’t make 12X5 or 68-20 without a calculator, have barely heard of Adolf Hitler but can’t associate him to anything historical or specific, and give you a blank stare when hearing words like “Holocaust”, or “Joseph Stalin”. Their brains consist of thin air, common places like “diversity and inclusion”, and little else. They are the perfect food for their billionaire masters. They will live and die without even realising it.
Everything has its basis in Christ. A person well grounded in Catholicism (or even Christianity at large) may be fairly dim and easily gullible, but he will draw a line in the sand at what impacts the values that define him. With many people like this, democracies tend to work.
With the modern “tattooed empty brain” types, democracies become highly dysfunctional; and when this happens, they start their way towards decay and death.
There is a very simple reason for this: there will always be enough people who are actually able to think, for the tyranny of the small number of the wire-puller to go on forever. You can steal an election, two or even five. You can create one, three or even ten artificial “emergencies”. You can run several Countries, for a while, on the strength of the sheep’s support. But this is not how, in the long term, human nature works. If anything, history tells us that the tyranny ends when enough people of enough smart and courage coalesce together to put an end to the previous regime. And then there is, very often, blood on the street, and it is blood literally invited by the tyranny with its stubbornness.
I look at the world around me, at the EU and the US, at the UK and Australia, and wonder how long an increasingly imposed and artificial system, that has only the semblance of democracy, is going to last. I wonder if it will be able to reform itself before it’s too late, or whether it will (in my lifetime, or not long after) drown in a sea of violence and very, very brutal settlement of disputes.
But one thing I know: Democracies that are not based on solid Christian values are very ill already, and on their way to rapid senescence.
This is what we are experiencing now all over the West.
I have not watched Charles’ coronation. Firstly, I am allergic to Welby, and secondly, I was mindful of what happened to Elizabeth’s funeral.
This Country seem to be so, that the same people who sanction abominations like the so-called same sex marriage also enjoy the pomp and circumstance of Royal ceremonies, and make themselves beautiful giving a fake show of Christian allegiance, and nobody calls them out for their hypocrisy. This likely happens because everybody knows it’s only a show.
Therefore, those self-important, self-appointed representatives of Catholicism in England, who say that the ceremony was a reaffirmation of Christian values, have understood exactly zippo of what this was all about: the respect of traditional forms now largely devoid of significance.
The Romans did that, too, and they still had solemn appointment of the Pontifex Maximus and other religious as well as political figures (even of tribunes, consuls, etc.) long after these appointment had ceased to have but a symbolic role, a tribute to a past long gone.
State organisations want to perpetuate themselves. If they threw away today the traditions of yesterday, people would start to wonder why more radical modernisations should not be introduced. The British Government has divested itself of its Empire, but it has remained the same: there was never a breach, or a revolution, or a dramatic change like the Weimar Republic when the Empire was euthanised. Hence, the same kings and queens, and the same solemn funerals and celebrations, and the same pomp that the tourists like so much, and is so reassuring to the average citizen.
But look a bit deeper, and you will see a Country changed beyond recognition since Elizabeth’s coronation, and in which Christianity is, de facto, the preserve of a minority of the population, all others thinking that it is absolutely fine to be a pervert (they don’t even use that word anymore, they say “gay”) and so on. Plus, the millions of Muslims and of the members of other religions, some of them actually believing in it (let me reassure my readers that, in the UK, most Muslims are pretty much as disinterested in Islam as the official Christians are in Christianity, and are twenty years behind us at the most).
So no, the Coronation has not “reaffirmed” absolutely anything, and in order to believe that one needs a big injection of copium.
There have been articles recently stating that Christians are now less that 50% of the British population. It is, of course, nonsense. Christians are likely less than 10%, even including the lukewarm ones, and they are rapidly decreasing. Millions of official Christians are atheists; mainly, they are Anglicans, waiting to die.
We are now in the Christmas season, and you see absolutely nowhere a link between Christmas and Christ. It is done in order “not to offend”.
The same happens in absolutely everything else. Christianity is offensive. You are still allowed to say that you are Christian, but this might, in the next years, be challenged via the so-called “hate” legislation, which is proving a real cancer for the Country. Of course, Muslims haven’t much to fear from it. They have both machetes (very few) and victim status (all). They will likely be fine.
Why I say all this to you? Do I think that the so-called Church of England can reverse her decay? Of course not. Anglicans cannot, but Catholics still can.
There is still enough critical mass in England for Christians to go on the offensive. However, in order to do that it is necessary that the Church in England remembers what her role is, and acts accordingly.
You seldom hear of a controversial homily; when that happens, the bishop will be very fast in apologising; when you hear a Catholic bishop in the public sphere, it is normally concerning social issues.
Of course the Country dechristianises itself. Christianity is not preached anymore. At least it is not preached in everything that makes it specifically Christian, in all the matters in which Christ offends the world.
Every time you hear a homily, or a prelate on the radio, you know you will hear words chosen exactly for their lack of controversy. Even when they choose (and they are a minority) to voice a mildly Christian point of view, the priest or bishop will always be very minded to soften the blow and, therefore, unavoidably neuter the message.
If a talk about sodomy needs to begin using words like “compassion” and “inclusion”, you have lost already and it would have probably been better to shut up in the first place.
Paradise is not really inclusive, and in hell there is absolutely no compassion. In fact, not even the blessed souls in paradise have any compassion for the damned. The damned have obtained what they have deserved. That’s it. Every form of “sadness” for the damned is simply not compatible with the unimaginable (to the human mind) happiness the souls enjoy in paradise; a happiness that is fuelled by the constant knowledge that everything is exactly as it should be, and no damned soul is allowed to disturb this perfect harmony in the least degree.
In paradise, no mother has any sadness, and therefore any compassion (that is: the ability to suffer with another one), for her damned son. Let that sink in.
Does any bishop tell you that? If he does, does he think it? I doubt, because if he did, his interviews and newspaper articles would look very different.
The decline of Christianity in the UK is not the fault of the many atheists. They are doing their (literally, damned) job. It is the fault of the Catholic clergy who are not doing theirs.
It would be so easy, so easy! Believe you me, there is a quiet, desperate search for answers all around me. There is a spread, but barely expressed desire for a solid grounding, a solid meaning, a scope in life that goes beyond promiscuity, divorce, financial ruin (for the male) or desperate search for intimacy (for the female), old age, decay, nursing home, death, cremation, and utter disappearance.
Brits want, like every human, to confront themselves – at the very least, they long to be forced to confront themselves – with the main issues of life, beyond the stupid virtue signalling that is such big part of the modern, vastly practiced religion of goodism. But they never have anybody willing to give them what they confusedly feel they need. When they listen to a supposed Christian voice , they hear the same rubbish they hear everywhere. It’s not easy, here in Blighty, to get a rooting in the faith unless you already have one, or are, out of your own, God-willed volition, determined to get one for yourself.
The emasculated Church in England has completely neglected the Christian message. The Protestant Mickey Mouse outfits actually mostly hate it, or are embarrassed by it. The BBC (almost no day without some article about some “good pervert”) have taken over the role of educators and moral guides. Nobody challenges the atheists and the worldly without telling them how good they still are, and how many points of common they think there are with Christians.
Let me put me bluntly: you can’t try to find points in common with the enemies of Christ. It is fully irrelevant that, in their own stupid way, they want “a better world”. The problem is exactly that they don’t want Christ and His commandments in it.
We are called to be Catholics in season and out of season.
To my knowledge, not one single prelate, here in England, is up to the task.
I read an article purporting that conservatives are happier than liberals. The reasons addicted were several, and marriage and religion played an important role. I don’t know about marriage, but I would like to add my thoughts on religion.
Let us take two guys, Atheist Guy and Christian Guy. Christian Guy is the guy we all know. We can leave him aside for now, but keep him in mind as a contrast.
Atheist guy believes that he was born because of a bizarre combination of coincidences, that have no rhyme and reason and merely, in a sort of statistical freak case, happened. As a consequence, he believes that all the human feelings and experiences – like falling in love, believing in lurv, and the like – are but the consequence of that other statistical freak, his own DNA, trying to keep living and perpetuate itself.
Atheist Guy, who thinks the fact that Earth is inhabitable is the result of another freak statistical case, is terrified that this might end at any time. Too many cows farting, too many cars around, too many aeroplanes around the Skies, and all this will end! Boy, there is enough to have your day utterly ruined by breakfast time!
Nor does Atheist Guy have any consolation in sight. If he was born relatively poor, as most people are, he will see the immense difference in born wealth around him as a sick joke of that Statistical Freak, his DNA. The same if he is, say, ugly, or physically disadvantaged, or in any way less privileged than others. One is born rich, smart, and beautiful. Another is born poor, dumb and ugly. There is nothing behind it but the sick joke of one’s DNA. What a cheering, consoling thought!
His problems, though, do not end here. Aware that, at some point, his heart will cease to beat and he will be just as gone as the fly captured and eaten by the spider, Atheist Guy will feel a desperate thirst for purpose and meaning for his – that much is clear to him – fundamentally senseless existence. He will, in a way, try to cheat the obvious absurdity of his entire Weltanschauung with a fabricated, man-made religion. Now, he has something vaguely resembling a purpose; still a self-deception, of course, as every Atheist who stops and thinks must realise; but a pleasantly numbing one and, in any way, everything he’s got.
Plus, Atheist Guy still has a mighty reproduction urge and, absurd or no absurd, he will look for ways to satisfy it. Virtue Signalling is, clearly, the way, a clear mechanism for the Male of the Species to procure copulation opportunities for himself (he is, of course, fully aware that this is his DNA working on its own project; but he is horny anyway, so he doesn’t care).
The Atheist Activist is, by now, born. Every man-made cause will be good enough, and will provide for another little flag to add to his Twitter profile. From inequaliteee to cliiiimate chaynggg, and from ge-yn-der stuff to cow advocaceeee, Atheist Guy will do all he can to show that he cares, without ever stopping to think that, if he thinks it through, the only thing he cares about is for his and other people’s DNA to keep manipulating everybody and perpetuating themselves.
Atheist Guy will become a Celebration Master. He will celebrate every life of which he knows it is, if he thinks it through, just as absurd as everybody’s else. He will be the cheer girl for every wrong cause. He will, in fact, hate those pesky Christians and their judgmental belief, because he will see that they have that kind of quiet, unassuming, fundamental serenity forever denied to him.
It does not end here. Having expunged the concept of sin from his consciousness as superstition, Atheist Guy will likely drown in a sea of filth. From drowning in porn, to taking drugs of various degrees of addiction, to non-judgmental approval of any and all perversion, to the forced approval of everything he is not supposed to be judgmental about (his buddy screwing his wife; other guys screwing his wife; other guys’ wives screwing his wife; and his wife taking him to the cleaners when she decides to be his ex-wife, because patriarchy), our guy will have his head so full of filth and PC rubbish that he will soon not even know what human orifices are for, or that a guy born with a little friend is actually a male. The flags, meanwhile, will keep growing in number, rotating away when they have served their purpose, and some New Great Cause beckons.
I could go on for a long time, but you get the drift.
That one would need to even make a statistical survey to prove that religion, common sense and mental sanity are the only way to a purposeful, fulfilled life truly is beyond me.
Look, I am not Russian, or Ukrainian come to that. But I know that the entire region (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus) shares a common cultural heritage, moulded by the same Christian matrix. They are the same historic cultural area, divided by political boundaries and moderate language differences.
When this starts to change, thing may get serious, because it’s not far away from, say, Sicily wanting to become Muslim. There will be resistance. There will be, likely, conflict.
It gets worse – and I would say much, much worse – when this process of cultural estrangement away from the historic cultural matrix is actively pushed by foreign entities. It is, to continue the comparison, as if the States of the Arab League tried to push the islamisation of Sicily. In this case, the reaction will be harsher still.
I am a Christian. I believe that a primary Good like Christ should always come before secondary values like the modern god, democracy, whenever Democracy has forgotten, or ever betrayed, Christ.
I also think that the European Union is a satanical machine bent on the total deChristianisation of Europe, in order to substitute it with a sort of oppressive, big brother dystopia where abortion, sodomy and euthanasia are human rights, and your betters can lock you at home, deprive you of every freedom, and subject you to any medical experiment they want, or else.
I don’t give a Biden for a democracy of this sort.
Give me Putin every day.
If this is what I, born and bred in a pre-EU democratic environment, think of the situation in the Ukraine, imagine what most Russians, and likely a sizeable majority of Ukrainians, think of it.
The EU has tried to make inroads in the Ukrainian society for very long now. The NATO has tried to encircle Russia for a couple of decades now. The perverted political project of the EU is marching hand in hand with a fully unnecessary military imperialism of NATO. I hope that it will not work, and I think that it will not work.
Oh and by the way, just in case you wonder: I am on Putin’s side on this, and hope that the EU and the NATO get the (unbloody) kick in the Low Countries they so, so richly deserve.
It should not be said that we support dystopian, semi-dictatorial overlords with a hang for forced medical experiments, baby killing and all sort of perversions over Christ.
Helen McCrory had just died of cancer, aged 52. Your prayers are, I am sure, appreciated by the angels in heaven.
One of the most famous actresses in the UK, and married to an even more famous actor (Damian Lewis), her death is very sudden, in the sense that very few people knew, and the news was kept from the public until the moment of death. Her young age makes this even more worth of a reflection or two.
The first reflection: modern “science” and the “miracles” of medicine do not allow anyone to escape his appointment with his Maker. Not even if a lot of money is available. One day, we will be called, too. That moment has been already set in stone. Every day, we march towards it.
The second reflection: I do not know whether the lady died at peace with the Lord, at least in the sense in which anybody can know, or hope, that anybody died at peace with the Lord. But I notice this: whether she was Christian or not, this does not seem to interest anybody, nor does it seem that she was interested in letting other people know. Religion has just flown out of the conversation. People die, they’re gone, everybody says how “courageous” they were, but they’re… gone.
It’s like saying that Rin Tin Tin was courageous. Look here, pal. The issue here is whether Mrs McCrory had an immortal soul, or not. If she had, forget “courageous” as there are other issues at stake now. If she (absurdly) hadn’t, then everything is absurd and meaningless, even “courage” at the end of an absurd sting of existence allowed to us, in this absurd perspective, to try to perpetuate our DNA.
The third reflection: apart from some Catholics, no one seems interested anymore in knowing in which state one’s soul has likely departed from this vale of tears. I think the milquetoast “Christians” have this bizarre idea that everybody goes to heaven, unless he is Stalin, whilst the Atheists prefer to blather about “courage”; something very strange, by the way, seen that undergoing three years of chemotherapy is seen as “brave”, but refusing to undergo it is “brave”, too. Everybody is so brave, and left the world such a better place. One wonders how the world has not become paradise on earth yet. Oh wait, I know why. But they don’t.
Fourth reflection: the chariteees. It seems that nowadays if you are not involved with a charity you are a selfish bastard. Charity work is the way irreligious people, and certainly a lot of atheists, define their own “goodness”. Even when the charity is serious, and not just a part of the immense, corrupted, charity machinery currently thriving in this Country, it does show a completely earth-bound thinking. Inevitably, not only was McCrory involved with a couple of charities, but this is seen, if you read around, as the other quality defining her (besides being, of course, an actress). “Wife and mother” is purely a factual event, that we don’t talk much about because very much, you know, old school. “Actress and charity worker” (which means: power woman and oh so sensitive) are, today, the defining traits of the deceased.
I do not know what Mrs McCrory thought about her immortal soul. If she believed in God, sin, and the like, it would have been very good not to keep this private as a help to others who might be in the same situation. If she did not believe in anything of that, well, I am sorry to rain on your parade but 400 years of charity work would not save her from hell, and the tributes that will now pour in are but a hollow, horrible theatre enjoyed by Satan alone.
A famous actress dies at 52, and it seems this is no encouragement to some serious reflections anymore.
But hey, famous and oh so good. And so courageous.
It seems to me that, if she had the real courage, it was the courage of looking at eternity in the face and make sure that she enters it reasonably prepared.
Strangely, this type of courage is not considered anymore.
Tomorrow 22nd February is the feast of the Chair of St. Peter. Whilst St. Peter’s feast day is the 29th June, the feast of the 22nd February is more directly aimed at celebrating the Petrine Office. This feast is, therefore, as Catholic as they come.
This feast day might be an occasion to explain to some non-Catholic in your circle of acquaintances why you are Catholic. When requested, I proceed more or less in this way:
1) And I say to thee: that Thou are Peter…. Jesus doesn’t say to Simon that he is a nice chap; or that he is very perceptive; or that he himself is surprised that among the apostles Simon was the only one to give the right answer to his question “Who do people say that I am?”. No, he changes his name and calls him a rock.
2) and upon this rock I will build my Church…. Jesus doesn’t say “I will build my first church”, nor does he say “I will build my provisional church”. Jesus picks a rock, and builds upon him One (1, Una, Eine, Une) Church.
3) and the gates of Hell shall not previal against it….. It, that is: the very same Church built on Peter, the “rock”. That one, and no other. Jesus doesn’t say “the Gates of hell shall, in around fifteen centuries, prevail against the Church I built on you”, nor does he say “the Gates of Hell shall prevail against the Church built on you but hey, let us be happy with a generic term of “church” so it can work even when yours goes astray”. He is very specific: he builds one Church upon one man and gives his promise of indefectibility to this – and no other – organisation.
4) And I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven….. This is also dumb-proof: keys are a very obvious symbol of power and authority and it is clear here that Jesus is speaking with extreme solemnity. He doesn’t say to Peter: “Peter, you keep the key for the moment” or “look mate, gotta go; keep the keys until I find you or yours unworthy, will ya?”. No, this is a solemn promise evidently made for all times, as his just pronounced promise about indefectibility must make clear to the dumbest intellect.
5) ….and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. For those who should at this point still not have gotten what is going on, Jesus becomes even more explicit: Peter has the keys, and the keys mean authority upon the faithful now and forever; an authority given in the most emphatic terms possible.
The meaning of these phrases; the clear solemnity Jesus gives to his words; the crescendo of emphatic declarations of such a broad and clear scope do not leave room for any possible doubt and as a result, Protestants have nowhere to hide. Whoever reads Jesus’ words with a minimum of intellectual honesty cannot avoid to recognise that the Only Church of Peter’s time (and of the following fifteen centuries) is the Only Church of today and that as a result whatever grievance against the men who run the Church does not change a iota concerning the position of authority of the Church. As to the complaint that some Popes were oh-so-bad (not much worse than many a tv-preacher I’d say, but laissons tomber….), Peter wasn’t immaculate either, but his shortcomings didn’t prevent Jesus from promoting him to rock of His Church.
To believe anything different from the fact that the Only Church founded by Jesus is.. the Only Church means to believe one or more of the following:
1) that Jesus made a mistake in founding His Church on Peter;
2) that Jesus was mistakenly persuaded that Peter’s successors would be good chaps, but had his toy ruined by the baddies who succeeded Peter;
3) that Jesus couldn’t count;
4) that Jesus’ words had a sell-by date, or
5) that Jesus made his promise of indefectibility without taking it seriously.
Or perhaps one could decide to read and understand the only possible meaning of such emphatically worded statements, as Jesus repeatedly made.
There is only One Church, folks. It’s the only one founded by Jesus. Simple, really.
Forbidden. Ten years in jail. Brutal enforcement. See Islam start to recede fast in a matter of one or two decades.
I will leave the duckduckgo-ing to you, but in the last days three news have emerged: the French justice system has rejected the ban on the “burkini”. In Britain, a proposed ban on Friday prayer in jails has been abandoned. Lastly, in Germany it has been pointed out that a ban on full-face cover might trigger a ban on Father Christmas costumes (the extreme ones, which cover all the face behind a very thick fake beard).
The reasons for this are all too obvious: taken in isolation, the Western system of freedoms opens the door very wide to an – ultimately always – aggressive Muslim invasion. Our Western democracies have no legal antibodies protecting them from the infection of Islam. The bacteria are actually invited to enter the body, in the name of freedom.
Mind, I do think that, at some point, the body will react. When the fever breaks out in earnest, the body of Western democracies will, in fact, start to produce the necessary antibodies all right. This must be so because – as we have seen all too clearly in the past in Germany, in Spain, and in Italy with the RAF, the ETA and the Brigate Rosse respectively – European democracies have a successful record of “bending the freedoms” with overt or covert operations meant to – not to put too fine a point on it – “do what you gotta do”. I have read of these “adaptations” concerning Germany (Stammheim anyone?) and Spain (with the covert ETA killings). I have lived them directly, concerning Italy, in many ways.
However, I do not think that this reaction will happen until a point has been reached where the pain is substantial and widespread. A pity, because there is a much simpler way to stop this cancer from exploding.
The way is to recognise the special place owned by Christianity in the West. Nay, the acknowledgment of Christianity as not only religious, but cultural matrix of the West. This special role would, without a doubt, justify a special treatment without this causing the cherished principles of freedom of expression, freedom of religion etc being imperiled.
The realm of applications would be vast: for example, it is allowed to dress as Father Christmas (thus completing covering one’s face in public) but not to wear a burka. It is allowed to wear a catholic veil on one’s head, but not a chador. It is allowed to build monumental churches, but it is not allowed to build purpose-built mosques. It is allowed to have Sunday laws, but it is not allowed to have “Friday laws”. There are Christian public holidays, but no Muslim ones. There is no right to interrupt work for Muslim prayer times. Halal meat is forbidden because of the cruelty to the slaughtered animal.
The list is very, very long.
All this would stem, in a perfectly reasonable way, from a fundamental principle: the West recognises traditional Christian customs as its cultural blueprint, and protects them accordingly. This is what many Countries did in the past both when they had Catholicism as State Religion (Italy) or they hadn’t (the German Halal ban in the Nineties). They did this without anyone questioning their democratic credentials. They did this following one of those thinking principles which might be unspoken, but are deeply felt; that are, in fact, unspoken exactly because they are deeply felt.
There would be no need to kick out anyone per se. But there would be need to enforce these rules whatever the noise – or worse – made by the Muslims. When enough perverts and atheists have been massacred, I think there would be a number of them actually ready to embrace this thinking without hesitation.
Also, the same rules would have to apply to every non-Christian religion: Hindu, Sikh, the whole lot.
The West is Christian. Get on with it, or leave.
Will it happen? Again, at some point the pain will be acute enough to cause something of the sort to happen. The “cultural heritage way” would be the easiest, most peaceful, most efficient way to deal with the cancer of Islam.
The sooner atheists understand this, the better for all of us.
I am the product of a different cultural environment than the one in which I live now. As a result, I may notice some things I do not say more rapidly, but perhaps more strikingly than others.
I seem to notice the de-Christianisation of this country in the way more and more people here simply look. If you are the PC, sensitive kind with the blue-haired daughter you can look away now, or read at your own peril.
Two words in advance: where I come from, the way we look shows our respect for others, and for commonly accepted rules of behaviour. It is not only that we want to look properly: by the way we look, we show others that we took care of appearing in front of them in the proper way, and that we share their same values. You may say that in Italy things are rather intertwined (we do like to look good, anyway) but you get the gist.
Together with this always went common rules of “appearance” which, shared by everyone, made the standard of decency and respect for others. People gladly submitted to these rules, out of a generally shared sense of what is good and proper. In fact, in those times there still was something like that: a generally shared sense of what is good and proper. It was a broadly Catholic society, you know…
When Christianity went out of the window, these rules were subverted like all the rest. Some examples among many:
1) the “drug addict” look. You know, half the head with the “Auschwitz cut”, the other half normal.
2) the “I wish I were a fag” look. This is the “as thin as I can”, “ephebophiles, look at me!” look.
3) the “I will make you look at my hair” look. Purple metallic, ivy green, cobalt blue. Everything goes.
4) the “I work for my tattoo man” look. Entire arms, entire shoulders, or the entire neck covered in tattoos. Grave matter? What’s “grave matter”? There is still some reaction here (cue the word “tramp stamp”: women are always the harshest judges of their sex…) but in general the epidemic is clear to see, and no sign of abatement.
5) the “stuck in 1968” look. Any or several of the above mentioned, but worn from people, generally women, clearly beyond Sixty. This, my friends, is what a life of marijuana does to you. I notice it far less in men, and I attribute this to the need of the old hags to carry on to the bitter and very, very ugly end an “emancipation battle” their marijuana-smoking male counterparts never needed to, ahem, “fight”.
As an addendum, I shall add the “Battleship Potemkin” look: strictly below thirty, 300 pounds or more, a belly protruding from the corners before the rest, and the attitude that says “I look wonderful as I am, and if you disagree you are a chauvinist pig”. This last comes with the small caveat that there is a small possibility that said battleship got to look that way out of sheer frailty and correctly identified rather than, so to speak, ideological gluttony. But all the others are entirely voluntary, and require time and money.
Now let us ask ourselves: how comes that our forefathers were so “judgmental”, and we (I mean: the others) aren’t? Because they were Christians, are we (I mean: the others) aren’t, is the simple answer.
In sane times, the “alternative look” immediately told them one had an alternative lifestyle; and being neither politically correct nor stupid they did not fail to notice, and to say it.
The fag look would have indicated to them one who is either a sodomite or, in case he wasn’t, creepy and outright worthy of mistrust.
The purple metallic hair would have been seen – and rightly so – as an obvious sign of rebellion to all that is good and proper.
The tattoos would have been seen as an obvious sign of godlessness.
Battleship Potemkin would have been seen as an obvious sign of gluttony.
Not anymore in the “time of mercy”. Today, being seen as “judgmental” is the only sin. Everyone is a good boy, or girl, or whatever he feels he is, until proven otherwise. When it’s proven otherwise, it’s “who am I to judge”…
Some of you might say that this is not so anymore, and that today so many good people look like bad ones; but I must disagree. The simple fact is that those very rebellions our forefathers rightly condemned are still there, but now they have become mainstream. Our forefathers saw them because they were smart; we don’t see them because we are stupid, and don’t want to look unkind; but rebellion still was, and still is; it’s just that the rebel does not even feel such anymore, merely up with the times. Nowadays it is mainstream that there is no right and wrong behaviour. It is mainstream that there is no bent or straight, no sacred or profane, no sinfulness or saintliness. It is mainstream that everyone can do whatever he pleases, “if he does, oh, not, oh, harm, oh, otheeers”….
Ugly, I know; but it used to be a church. Now it hosts sheltered housing: the former St Wilfrid’s church, Brighton.
In England you see them, if you pay just a bit of attention, everywhere: former churches.
Big and small, with or without bell tower, monumental or demure. They are transformed in cottages, flats, community spaces. At times the original purpose of the building is evident,mother times it is more or less heavily disguised. But they all tell the same story: here used to gather a Christian community, that has now vanished. Very many of these churches are, from what I can see, Protestant.
Do not delude yourself into thinking that the community has now enlarged, and has moved into bigger premises. They have just vanished as the old generation went to its judgment, and the new did not believe in any judgment not delivered by a television “jury”.
Last time I looked, Sunday church attendance for the so-called Church of England was at 3%. This number alone says it all. The official 25 or more million Anglicans in the country are, officially, a joke, and among the Methodists it’s even worse.
Where the official count says that there should be millions of Christians, there is a huge hole, filled with nothing. Or better said, filled with senseless do-gooders living in a world of easy emotions, and fully persuaded of their own heathenish goodness.
They run “against this”, cycle “against that”, jog “against that others”. They make clown of themselves, as if there were any merit, let alone dignity, in that. They wear red noses or pink bras (as men; yes, they do) and think they are “making a difference”.
They aren’t. Firstly and less importantly, they aren’t because taxpayer-funded (directly or indirectly) or corporate-funded medical research vastly exceeds do-goodism by any standard you would care to find in almost every sector of medical research, and certainly in the basic research. But it’s not even a matter of numbers. It is (secondly, but most importantly) that a human life is infinitely short compared to an eternity in hell. Therefore, to everyone who lands in hell his having died at 72 or 88 is, to all logical and mathematical purposes, infinitely small and therefore infinitesimally irrelevant.
More and more of these people around.
Is, then, not good to spend money on research? Yes, it is. But don’t make of it a religion, because there are things infinitely more important than when one dies, and for which almost no one cares anymore. Like, say, not going to hell. And for heaven’s sake, stop putting yourself at the crossroads with your freaking pink bra, like a Pharisee on cocaine.
The left hand must not know what the right hand does. If you went to church, you would know it. And no. You aren’t needed. Or do you think you can add one cubit unto your stature?
All this is ignored. As churches are transformed into town halls and flats for “modern living”, or in building for a variety of other purposes, “charitable” organisations multiply, and you see all these people – the children and grand-children of those who once would sit in the pews on a Sunday morning – running and cycling, sweating and panting, rowing and skating; all of them with the t-shirt saying to the world how good they are; all of them obsessed with lives ill-spent going on for as long as they can, and uncaring of what must be the eternal destiny of a scary, scary, scary number of people in XXI Heathen England. A country full of people so good, that God to them is a tale, an afterthought, or something for which they have really no time…
As the churches vanish and bells are hears less and less frequently on a Sunday red noses, pink bras and sundry “look at how good I am” t-shirts are everywhere. The old generations were Proddies; but they were Proddies with the fear of the Lord, and an often sincere – if always misguided – intention to live a Christian life, and to die a Christian death. What a difference to today.
Some years ago, the host of the popular UK TV show “Grand Designs”, dealing with the transformation of an old church in a house, said on TV “look, the Lord’s Prayer is on the wall!” as the camera proceeded to zoom on the wall in question.
It was the Creed.
This TV isn’t live. It is carefully edited, and made to a rather high standard. We do not know whether there was, somewhere else, really the Lord’s prayer. But the Creed simply isn’t the Lord’s prayer. Still, No one seems to have noticed.
The basics have gone. Christianity is rapidly fading away even as a mainstream religious flavour. Churches become apartments, or houses, or something else, or are knocked down. Bells are heard less and less frequently.
But look at that clown down the road; yes, the one wearing the pink bra. And another. And another.
A word that I read around more and more often is “healing”.
If I understand correctly, by that is meant that someone was said that “hurt” someone else, and this someone will now need some – or a lot of – time to allow the great wound caused by someone he doesn't know, and wasn't talking to him, has caused him.
Say someone is inverted – or divorced and remarried – and fully ok with it, but still pretending he is a Catholic. He listens to a conference or speech or whatever, where the Catholic speaker says that unrepentant sodomites go to hell, the sin of sodomy cries to Heaven for vengeance, and a couple of other things I knew as a child, before even making my first Communion.
Our “man” is then entirely incensed. As he was told facts of Catholic doctrine that apply to him, he is hurt; as a consequence, he has the right to be offended, and the world must now show solidarity and support to him, and help him in his healing process.
This happens nowadays, at least in some societies, not only in extreme cases – one understands a real trauma would require a real healing, because a real wound has occurred -, but everytime everyone hasn't liked something that can be referred to him. Then, the entire community feels bound to perform the exercise described above and finds it not only normal, but necessary.
If anyone within this very community – say, the local church – where, then, to point out that facts are facts and Truth is Truth, and those who are hurt by facts and can't hear the Truth should take a hard look at themselves rather than whining like wet pussicats would be immediately accused of being even more insensitive, even more hurtful, and causing the need of an even longer “healing”.
One truly wonders what has become not only of humanity, but of manhood.
I get promised hell with beautiful regularity on this blog, for no other reason than the author of the promise not liking some sound piece of Truth. Do you think I even consider being “hurt”, and write blog posts vilifying the commenter who “hurt” me so bad, and looking for “healing”? “Help me, dear blog readers! I am sooo hurt! Unless you show me full support, I will stop blogging, because I am soooo hurt!”
Really?
I push a button, the crap is flushed out, and that's that.
I wonder what has happened to a country where even boys and men – those who should be ready to die to defend their Fatherland and loved ones – can't even cope with abstract criticism without throwing a tantrum; and where women abandoning themselves to excesses of bitchiness are constantly encouraged to bitch even more by those – to wit: the men – to whom God has given the task to keep their bitchiness in check.
Nothing of this is to be seen anymore. It's a huge “hurting” and “suffering” and right to “healing”. Personal happiness is the new god. If anyone should cause Christ to disturb it, he should be vilified as the masses of sensitive heart bleeders run to the rescue of the wet pussicats, and feel such good people that Christ should learn from them.
What has happened in Charlotte is not only the result of a minority of bitching people; it is, tragically, the result of a diffused mentality that encourages and rewards bitching instead of taking a sound approach and react with chosen words chiselled by the wisdom of past centuries; like “take a hike”, “who cares” and the immortal, extremely pithy “shut up, bitch”.
The last controversy about Obama choosing to keep God out of his rendition of the Gettysburg Address is another very telling indicator of how the mind (or what takes that name) of this man works.
Who would, believing in the Holy Trinity, do everything possible and impossible to expunge God from every public statement? Nobody, is the easy answer. Lame excuses of wanting to “respect” those who do not believe in God are as stupid as wanting to follow the rules of Ramadan so that the colleague near you is not offended at seeing you having lunch, but then again one like that would obviously leave God in the Gettysburg address so that the Christians are not offended, too.
It is evident to everyone with a brain that for a Christian to want to expunge God from the public sphere is tantamount to be ashamed of his faith; which no Christian could ever, in conscience, be, so that of this man we could only say that he has lost his faith.
We will, therefore, have to conclude that such a man is an enemy of Christianity, bent on sabotaging it from the comfortable spot of his convenient Christian facade.
Obama, the son of an early example of liberal college slut, certainly did not get any religious education from his mother, or from his anyway absent father. He grew up in a Muslim environment, and attended schools – I am informed – reserved to Muslims, which means he either was considered such, or was such, or certainly did not have anything speaking for his being a Christian. When millions in the West were listening to the bells of the local church, he heard – and stated he is still very fond of – the call of the Muezzin. When he went back to the US – after being abandoned by his mother, too; such are liberal parents – he was raised by his grandparents, and particularly his grandmother, whose liberal ideas are well known and, by the way, clearly shown in the daughter they raised.
But did young Barry improve when he went back to the “country under God”, the United States? Not really.
His Christian facade was the one of a rabidly racist preacher, Jeremiah Wright, a man from whom even Obama at some point had to distance himself, and only after repeated controversy. Is this a good Christian credential? Not likely.
Does he attend church now that he has – finally – canned Wright? Very rarely; apparently a couple of times a year, on those TV occasions. Does he defend Christian values? Never. He would have his daughters abort if they were “punished with a baby” (my words, not his: punished. with. a. baby), and what he calls Christian values are without exceptions the flags of the atheists and liberal culture, from de facto socialism to de iure sodomy.
Not a Christian, then, for sure. Certainly not a Muslim. A clearly thoroughly secular man, very probably as atheist as Stalin, with a cultural predilection for the religion in which he grew up (Islam, of course), and just that ridiculously thin varnish of Christianity that is necessary to become President in the USA.
A whitened sepulchre like few others on this planet, Obama incarnates the hypocrisy of the liberal classes, feigning some lip tribute to Christianity in abstract whilst trying to eradicate it from the planet in concrete.
George, the baby who is supposed to, one day, open schools and kiss babies as the King of England, will be baptised today.
He is already three months old. But hey, there must have been more urgent things to do these ninety days.
I have no idea how long did it take before former heirs to the throne were baptised. It can be Protestants were as bad as that a long time ago, and I wouldn't be too surprised.
Still, I cannot avoid seeing in a baptism that takes place three months after birth, without anyone seeing anything strange in that, another sign of the decline of Christianity.
“Have the students write the name JESUS in big letters on a piece of paper,” the lesson reads. “Ask the students to stand up and put the paper on the floor in front of them with the name facing up. Ask the students to think about it for a moment. After a brief period of silence instruct them to step on the paper. Most will hesitate. Ask why they can’t step on the paper. Discuss the importance of symbols in culture”.
This is not a joke, but what has happened in a university in Florida. Apart from the fact that the “assignment” reminds one of kindergarten exercises (without the blasphemy) one truly wonders what goes in the twisted minds of certain people.
I will not spare you the very easy, but very true remark that the genius who thought this did not consider using, say, a Mohammed Cartoon as stomping material. I am sure he knows why. A shame, really, because if one wants to “discuss the importance of symbols in culture” I can barely imagine a more fitting starting point.
Still, the problem here is much vaster than stupidity. This episode shows not only a total lack of Christian feeling, but also the complete absence of every regard for Christianity as a religion. In a Christian country like the United States, this is an obvious indication of a degree of Anti-Christian militancy speaking volumes about the degree of “inclusiveness” and “tolerance” of the blaspheming classes.
The University has apologised, after the fact. The question remains what kind of University it is that employs geniuses like the one who thought this. Personally, I also wonder what kind of kindergarten is this, where people cannot start a discussion about “the importance of symbols in culture” without stomping like little children.
If this is the level of higher education in the United States, decline and fall cannot be very far away.
The ongoing controversy about whether openly homosexual boys should be allowed to be members of the Boy Scouts of America is indicative of the confusion reigning in the mind of many people nowadays. I see a lack of elementary reasoning that is simply revealing of the utter failure of modern school systems.
You can read comprehensive articles with a short google research. My comments to what I read around are as follows:
1. Sponsors will withdraw money unless the policy changes.
Come on, this is stupid. If there’s one reason why the Boy Scouts exist, is to let boys grow with a moral spine. The idea that morals should be subordinated to sponsorship is exactly the kind of thinking a Boy Scout should never have.
In addition, the argument is self-contradictory. If it is considered discriminatory that there is a national ban on faggotry, it is only a matter of time before it will be considered discriminatory that some local groups do not allow homosexuals, with the resulting withdrawal of sponsorship. Once again, those making the argument of “sponsorships” simply do not think straight.
II Membership
There has apparently been a decline in membership in the last ten years or so, which according to some implies a crisis. Now, it depends. Membership is not really an indication of real success, particularly if membership is obtained by losing one’s core values. On the contrary, every process of self-finding will cause such a phenomenon, as the organisation purges itself from elements who should not be there in the first place. A world where even the Boy Scouts constantly measure their “success” in quantitative terms is a very sad one, and I can well imagine this mentality might also be a cause of the decline in membership.
III The Rabbi
A strange Rabbi complains the Boy Scouts would, if the ban persists, continue to privilege one religious view above all others. You don’t say? Last time I looked, the Boy Scouts were clearly inspired by Christian values. The US may well be a very strange Country in many ways, but the idea that Christian, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist value should be included in what would probably be the stupidest experiment on earth is rather new to me. Another sign of the times.
IV The Method The methods used by the leadership of the organisation remind one of the way David Cameron treats his own party. The grassroots are informed of what the leaders have decided, and they are asked to implement the policy. This is the more shortsighted, as the grassroots in this case are largely constituted by religious organisations having – as they, ahem, often do – a certain way of understanding life.
In conclusion, the impression is generated that a bunch of people either professionally employed by the organisation, or with a vested interest in its membership number and cash flow, have decided that Mammon is going to be the new source of inspiration for the Boy Scouts of America, and were dim-witted enough to say it rather clearly.
If you ask me, this matter should tell the basis organisation of the Boy Scouts of America that they are being led by the wrong people, and the defenestration of all proponents of faggotry at the top of the organisation should be carried out as a matter of course.
It goes to show the extent of the de-Christianisation of the Democrats. I can’t wait they ask God to be removed from the banknotes. I actually wonder why they have not done it already.
In the end, though, the move is at least coherent. It would have been even more hypocritical for them to continue to appeal to Christian values. Now the mask is off at least.
We really need to get this election right. A funny non-Christian belonging to a funny sect is still preferable to an enemy of God.
No decency, no class, no brains, but an example for Britains’ youth: David Beckham.
I grew up in a very simple, well-ordered world. Very rarely – actually, VERY rarely – we got as children those water tattoos, that you apply on your skin with a bit of water and create a design that disappears after a short time. I actually remember we had to ask for permission to use them, even if we had found them in the crisps packet (this might be an Italian thing; I don’t know).
In those times, tattoos were the preserve of pirates and sailors – and jail inmates, I suppose; but this we did not know – and to put a tattoo on your skin was something meant to allow one to innocently “play pirates (or mariner)” for a while. Of course, that one could come to the idea of getting a real tattoo was not of this world, and I remember once feeling “dirty” after applying the water tattoo, with the result that I never had a water tattoo again. Why did I feel dirty? Because in that simple world, to have a (real) tattoo was considered sinful. Even to a child like me, this made a lot of sense, as the idea that one might be allowed to paint and scar oneself for life had a lot to do with savages, but nothing with Christian civilisation. I cannot remember whether I was explicitly told that my body is a gift from God and as such not to be abused in any way, but the fact was so self-evident that to tell a child “tattoos are very bad” already conveyed all the meaning, and I positively remember the little girl who assured us she was told people with tattoos went to hell.
Letting aside hell for a moment, I do not know whether the people who told me tattoos are very bad were theologically correct, but I do not doubt they were right.
Fast Forward to 2012. You only need to look at some of the teams of the European Football Championship (alas, Italy not excluded!) to see in what way some people can disfigure themselves, possibly for life. It is simply shocking, and the vulgarity of those carrying such tattoos is only surpassed by their truly unspeakable stupidity in thus scarring themselves.
The vulgarity and stupidity ruling the football fields is only a reflex of the vulgarity and stupidity now invading increasingly bigger parts of our lives: those taken as examples in our times are illiterate footballers and drug-addicted singers; their fans have long ceased to be the pimple-plagued teenagers one expected in days of yore, and are more and more the ageing generation of Sixty-Eighters, and of their offspring. Teenagers without pimples, and it is not a compliment.
You only need to approach a newsstand, or to rapidly browse the channels available on TV, to see to what point we have come. One can’t be too surprised the Prime Minister can tell his electors that the so-called “gay marriage” is “conservative”. He might have gauged their stupidity better than I.
Encouragingly, this fad seems not to have taken so much ground in Northern/Eastern Europe. I am now looking at Poland-Russia and well, the situation is entirely different from the one experienced looking at, say, Italy-Spain.
One day, this craze will go like many others before and after, and an army of cretins will find themselves scarred for life of their own accord. They can only hope when the moment comes laser technology will have advanced enough to allow them to get rid of their tattoos without looking like a walking scar. In any way, with their tattoos they’ll look very stupid, and deservedly so, because the tattoos are just another example of the absence of proper behaviour, proper rules, common decency and basic Christian feelings we see in so many aspects of today’s West.
Interesting film, this one, and most certainly not only for young adults.
I will not give any spoiler, but what I found striking was the following:
1) The theme (not new) of the omnipotent Central Government, the absolute ruler of its subjects. Rather an actual theme, I would say.
2) The absence of every Christian message, in a desolate world that has – leaving aside the theological implications of this – forgotten Christianity. This is not “The Descendants”, where there is no Christianity because in the mind of the writers and director everyone is too cool to believe in God. This is exactly the contrary, and you rapidly understand this world can only be cruel, because there is no Christianity.
3) The open criticism of the growing kitsch dominating our lives. The hair and general clothes of most of the “leaders” (not, crucially, of the two main and of the “positive” characters) is characterised by a grotesque absence of taste. Interesting, because the way most people dress, their haircut and , in some circles, their tattoos would have been considered disgusting and worse than ridiculous just a couple of decades ago.
4) The dig at the “inclusive” culture. The movie – I have not read the book – sends some unspoken messages: the hair and clothes clearly mean this is a “liberal” dictatorship, where no one is “discriminated” or “made to feel excluded” for his personal taste and at least the ruling class can “express” itself as it pleases. Similarly, there is a clear message that in this fake “liberal” world, in reality extremely cruel and devoid of any ethics, homosexuality is considered normal. I see in this a criticism to the Nazism our liberals are trying to build around us: violently illiberal, but open to every perversion in sexual morals, or simple taste.
5) This is a clean movie. A movie completely centred on adolescents of both sexes, but without sex, actually without even sexual innuendos. Mind, this is not a movie for 12 years old, and I would not bring a 12 years old to see it. Say, 15 to 18 must be the main target, but even as an adult there are no limits to its fruition.
Nowadays, when teenagers are confronted with sexual messages in every aspect of the trash “culture” dished to them, to make an expensive movie of this kind is more than laudable. I couldn’t avoid thinking that if the movie had been co-produced by the BBC, some of the “good characters” would have been most certainly perverts: the BBC does it without exception, with “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” being only the last example.
The movie is more than a bit upsetting, because the viewer is plunged in a world of brutal fight for survival for a longish time. Again, I wouldn’t bring there a 12 years old.
Still, I think you wouldn’t waste your time and money, and many of you would agree with me in my interpretation of some of the aspects of this movie. Again, I haven’t read the book – nor do I plan to – so I cannot tell you whether these issues run through it.
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.
“values voters see big government and deficit spending as the result of policies that arise “when the natural family is looked down upon” and thereby foster dependency”.
This very intelligent reflection comes from a speech of Mr Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, about the electoral voters of Us-American Evangelicals.
Evangelical voters, he says, tend to link the economic and the social issues that will – hopefully, for the seconds – dominate the 2012 campaign, and the line above is an example.
As an Italian, I can resonate with the phrase chosen by Mr Perkins, as in those societies where the welfare state is rather weak – in Italy it is very weak if you consider it as “welfare state proper”, that is: entitlement – the family is very strong and conversely, you can afford to have an almost non-existent welfare state and survive as a politician only because the family is so strong.
I do not use the word “natural family” because in Italy the absurdities and perversions of the US have not yet gained a foot in the social and legal framework of the country. Long may it last.
I do agree with the statement, particularly after having lived in Germany and the UK and having seen the result of the mentality prevailing in those countries.
Still, I wonder what resonance it would find among the US Catholic voters, as this would seem to be a more specifically Evangelicals-related phenomenon.
Dio Perdona tante cose per un’opera di Misericordia
“God forgives (so) many things for a work of mercy!”. With these words, the simple but pure peasant girl Lucia addresses her mighty kidnapper, a man so powerful that the Spanish power is a joke to him, and so corrupt as to be willing to have a girl kidnapped and consigned to her raper for a matter of prestige and reputation among his peers. A man, though, not mighty enough to escape the patient, silent work of the Holy Ghost, and whom the sight of such helpless, desperate purity will move to the point of causing the explosion of a looming crisis; a crisis that will see him, after a terrible and liberating night, see the dawn of a new life.
Millions of Italians know these words, who have become – like so many expressions from this wonderful novel – part of the everyday language in Italy. They are particularly fortunate because – like many other expression of the Promessi Sposi, written by a man very fit in Catholic doctrine – they give to the reader beautiful snippets of Catholic wisdom, a wisdom that will, hopefully, came back to them in moments of crisis even after they have – like most of those who know these words – stopped attending Church.
Like millions of other Italians, the one or other phrase from this immortal novel comes back to me from time to time, and makes me think. It seems to me that one of the greatest strenghts of Catholicism is in its attention to the little things, in the quiet knowledge that God doesn’t abandon those who don’t forget him in the little things, and helps them to stay – or to return to – the straight and narrow even when they stray in the bigger ones. The attitude of your typical Italian Catholic of one-two generations ago – before the “everyone’s a saint” era that has, to an extent, polluted Italy as well as the rest of Catholicism – was exactly this idea that when one does his part, and even not such a big one, the Provvidenza – a concept Manzoni comes back to again and again – takes care that the sheep finds his way, in due time, to the fold.
This is in my eyes the reason why the Countries that are more traditionally Catholic are also the ones with, I am sorry to have to say so, the happiest people. Not for us the life-quenching rigidity of old Presbyterians, the tortured morality of old Puritans, the virtue that kills joy. A stream of quiet optimism runs through the veins of Catholics, the idea that salvation doesn’t come without doing anything to deserve it, but that deserving it is well within the reach of sinners like you and I.
God forgives so many things for a work of mercy.
This is the reason why I do not stop boring you with my insistence on the Rosary, as I am fully persuaded that – besides Mass attendance – no other weapon in the Catholic armoury is so powerful in its effects, or so easy in its use.
As, though, God forgives so many things for a work of mercy, I have thought to flank my link to the Rosary with a smaller, less demanding link to a short prayer also linked to by Father Z, the Daily Offering to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This short prayer will take you, literally, twenty-two seconds, but exactly because of its non-demanding nature can become a habit everytime you visit this site.
In case you understand or enjoy Italian – how silly of me: the two are one and the same….. 😉 – below is the scene I was talking about, the beautiful and extremely accurate – with the text used as script; basically, it is the excerpt of an audiobook with images – 1967, Sandro Bolchi rendition of I Promessi Sposi , featuring a beautiful and very moving Paola Pitagora as Lucia and the – as usual – stellar Salvo Randone as the Innominato.
The scene begins at 7:10.
Whilst this is more specifically American, the issues at hand are relevant for everyone of us.
If you are American , please consider following the link leading you to a letter template for your member of Congress. In the comment box you will find suggestions now collected about wording and sites to collect electronic petitions if you don’t want to write. I doubt that writing to Sebelius will lead to any result but hey, it’s your adrenaline…..
As you will remember, the Proddie church had tried to start a massive donor/tv viewer mobilisation, thinking that people as far as Europe and Asia would have massively forked out to allow an impressive, but rather strange-looking building in the Orange County to remain in the hand of the congregation. Let us see how it worked: hmmm, I like to see the building in the opening title of the “hour of impotence”, therefore I will now send a couple of hundreds, or thousand, of dollars to Orange County to continue to see the building every week for a couple of seconds in the outside, and from the inside during the transmission. Yep, makes sense…. 😉
This absolute failure to raise an amount of money remotely sufficient to persuade the judges to hold the sale proceedings (which they duly refused to do) is also a clear warning of the trap of Protestant “you can get whatever you wish”- thinking, something at times resembling Donizetti’s Dulcamara selling his love potion more than sound Christianity. And it is highly indicative – and if you ask me, not without a message from the Holy Ghost Himself – that the prophets of “possibility thinking” be confronted with the impossibility of doing what they so vividly desire, and that the “Hour of Power” have transformed itself in long months of impotence.
Let this be a cautionary tale, and let us remember that we can’t take the Cross away from Christianity, nor can we transform it into a sort of Pollyanna amusement park.
Hitler looking with satisfaction at a Spanish hospital.
I have written a couple of times about the similarities between Nazism and the modern secular societies.
In the Europe of the thirties, one could have legally aborted only in one country: Nazi Germany. At the same time, euthanasia was practised only in one country: Nazi Germany again. And who was the only country making experiments on humans and so obviously and massively concerned about eugenics? Yep…
Curiously, if we except the Bolsheviks Germany was the only traditionally Christian country in Europe not implicitly accepting Christian values as the basis of society.
It seems that old Adolf has some admirers in Spain, where there are people able and willing to decide that a life is not worthy of being lived anymore and can therefore without any moral scruples – nay, with the feeling of being, actually, good – be terminated. The Nazis called this Lebensunwertes Leben, literally “life not worthy of life”. Basically, there’s one chap (or two, or three) who sit there like minor gods and decide when the moment has come to take the tube away. “Sorry ma’m, we are on a budget”.
I do not know how they say Lebensunwertes Leben in Spanish (something sounding like “Zapatero”, I presume), but it seems to me that both the mentality and the effects are exactly the same.
Thinks Protestantism a work of Providence: Bishop Tod Brown.
“When I first heard of their financial difficulties, I was distressed. Crystal Cathedral Ministries has been a valued religious resource for many, many years in Orange County and, through the Hour of Power, around the globe. Like our own Mission San Juan Capistrano, its historic and cultural links are important to Orange County. Under this plan, we hope that that ministry can continue. Dr. Schuller built up this ministry from the humble roof of a drive-in snack stand, and that constant faith in God’s providence, I believe, will sustain their community through these current trials. The Crystal Cathedral underscores the vitality of faith in our modern society and with our offer we will enable this beacon of faith to continue to influence others as an important place of worship,”
Please let us examine these words:
1. a laud of a Protestant ministry
2. the stressing that this Protestant ministry once had a worldwide audience.
3. the stressing on the fact that this creates “historical and cultural links” which are “important to Orange County”.
4. The hope that a Protestant ministry can continue.
5. A strong laud of the humble beginning etc. of a Protestant minister.
6. The stressing that this Protestant’s ministry is driven by Providence.
7. The stressing of the place as an important place of worship.
You would say that here some high-profile Protestant minister is breaking a lance for the Protestant organisation created by Mister Schuller, and seeing the glowing terms with which his Protestant ministry is portrayed and constantly exalted you would think that this chap is a staunch Protestant. He is, therefore, understandably “distressed” at hearing of their financial difficulties and tries to do what he can to allow them to continue their work. I think that you would be perfectly right, as it is undeniable that this chap does have strong Protestant feelings.
The problem here is, though, that the words above do not come from a Protestant minister, but from the bishop of Orange County, Tod Brown.
I knew that these art of liberal bishops could be rather “ecu-maniacal”, but this reaches a new level: this chap thinks that Protestants are helped by Providence! This chap could meet Martin Luther and praise him for quarters of an hour on end!
I have difficulties in thinking of any one period in the history of the Church, where a bishop not only openly praising heretics, but even considering their existence a work of Providence and claiming to help them to continue their work would not have put this bishop in extremely serious trouble. I mean here, obviously, any period in the history of the Church before Vatican II.
The heresy is among us. It is openly proclaimed under the sun, with no shame at all, from Catholic bishops. From this perspective, the bid now ongoing to buy the Crystal cathedral shows another interesting angle: not at attempt to save money, but an attempt to dilute Catholicism by buying a building that is closely identified with protestant worship, and helping a protestant ministry at the same time.
For the record, this bishop is another “enlightened” choice of the late Pope, Blessed John Paul II, the not so great.
One may only speculate as to how on earth such a hardly fought battle (a battle that will leave several flip-flop politicians dead on the ground in the years to come) for “human rights” doesn’t cause a run to the town and city halls, with the wannabe “brides” (do they throw a coin? Or ….ugh!) happily destroying their mascara under the emotional tsunami of their virginal tears of luuv, on the day they are made Queen and Queen of the household.
One can only make some suppositions, like:
1) for most of these perverts, the relationship with their “partner” is mainly about doing the disgustingly unspeakable, not any kind of bond or mutual obligation. The “partner” is, then, there to minimise the possibility of AIDS, not because of a life plan;
2) homos are the first ones not to believe in the tale of the human right. I can’t imagine many liberated black slaves deciding that there is no great need for liberty after all, or that they will wait before they exercise the human right to become a free man; similarly, I can’t imagine many people opining that the right to free expression, or free association, or free vote are something worth fighting for in theory, but that in practice few will want to exercise;
3) whilst it can be fashionable in a place like New York City to play “trendy fag” showing one’s limp wrist with a ring around one finger (please don’t tell me if they really do: it’s disgusting; and please don’t tell me if they really don’t: wasn’t it supposed to be about “luuuv?”), it is easily conceivable that the matter might be different in smaller places, where people tend to think that marriage is between a man and a woman. Ask the local gentry, and they will say it’s elementary.
This is, I assume, the main reason why perverts gather in the biggest cities: anonymity means both license, and the possibility of creating self-approving communities halfway protected by the ridicule.
What will be most interesting to follow, though, will be the rate of divorce of these so-called “couples”; then these clowns can never create any real expression of “love”, just the mockery of it.
One thinks that, perhaps, they understand it themselves.
Fra Filippo Lippi, "Madonna delle Rocce", particular
Daily Offering to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
The Francis Papers
Why This Blog
Pope Pius XII in Prayer
Five Million Pageviews
Non Praevalebunt
“What Catholics Once were…”
"What Catholics once were, we are. If we are wrong, then Catholics through the ages have been wrong.
We are what you once were. We believe what you once believed.
We worship as you once worshipped. If we are wrong now, you were wrong then. If you were right then, we are right now".
Pope XII: “Suicide Of Altering the Faith In Her Liturgy…..”
"I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. … I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.
"A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?'"
Eugenio Pacelli, future Pius XII.
Roche, "Pie XII Devant L'Historie", p. 52-53
G.K. Chesterton: Malice & Spite
"If a critic tells a particular lie, that particular lie can be pointed out. If he misses a specific point, that point can be explained. If he is really wrong in this or that, it will be on this or that that the insulted person will eagerly pounce. But “malice and spite” are vague words which will never be used except when there is really nothing to pounce on. If a man says that I am a dwarf, I can invite him to measure me. If he says I am a cannibal, I can invite him to dinner. If he says I am a coward, I can hit him. If he says I am a miser, I can give him half-a-sovereign. But if he says I am fat and lazy (which is true), the best I can answer is that he speaks out of malice and spite. Whenever we see that phrase, we may be almost certain that somebody has told the truth about somebody else."
The Illustrated London News, 13 November 1909.
G.K. Chesterton: Dogma & Authority
The modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with “they say” or “don’t you know that?” or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.
G.K. Chesterton: Progress & Fashion
The world is what the saints and the prophets saw it was; it is not merely getting better or merely getting worse; there is one thing that the world does; it wobbles. Left to itself, it does not get anywhere; though if helped by real reformers of the right religion and philosophy, it may get better in many respects, and sometimes for considerable periods. But in itself it is not a progress; it is not even a process; it is the fashion of this world that passeth away. Life in itself is not a ladder; it is a see-saw.
G.K. Chesterton: Tradition
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
Ronald Reagan & The Unborn Children
"NOW THEREFORE, I, RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim and declare the unalienable Personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death, and I do proclaim, ordain, and declare that I will take care that the Constitution and laws of the United States are faithfully executed for the protection of America's unborn children. Upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. I also proclaim Sunday, January 17, 1988, as a national Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon the citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in their homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life they enjoy and to reaffirm their commitment to the dignity of every human being and sanctity of every human life".
Ronald Reagan
Presidential Proclamation of "National Sanctity of Human Life Day", January 14, 1988
George W. Bush & Those Waiting To Be Born
“All human life is a gift from our creator that is sacred, unique and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world”. [...]
“The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent. [...]
“The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women. On this day and throughout the year, we aspire to build a society in which every child is welcome in life and protected in law. We also encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause. History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.”
George W. Bush
Presidential proclamation of "National Sanctity of Human Life Day", January 18, 2009
Protect the Seal of Confession!
Tabula Delenda est
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