Saturday, September 30, 2017

On Refusal By Cambridge Librarian To Accept Dr. Suess Books Donated by Melania Trump as Racist

If people thought political correctness had a limit does this enlighten even a bit? And it seemed to me that, correct me if I'm wrong, these were the same folk that decried censorship as fascist. Hmmm. (Actually I have always thought Dr. Seuss would if read by impressionable children make them all into little David Dukes. This just confirms it.)

Just a Little Couple Concessions...

I think we will be okay if we only make Christian bakers transgress their consciences to bake cakes for Alt Life style couplings, or we concede only a few southern statues to the new iconoclasts, give teachers the authority of gender assignment for our boys and girls, or we brand the totalitarian traditionalist, black or white, with the scarlet R, or accept the guilt offered us for the history of Caucasian cruelty,or refrain from preaching anything from the pulpit that doesn't fit the paradigm of nice---simply deleting from our Bibles white washed sepulchers and pit of vipers language, perhaps even getting rid of the stuffy appellation 'holy'; if we keep out of current catechesis anything about purity of heart as being a little too puritanical, prudish, and not in keeping with Heffnerian Christianity, if we just keep watching the disgruntled millionaires play their Sunday afternoon games, if we just placidly sit in our idling cars as roads are blocked; and don't dare see any of this as any kind of orchestrated anarchy, but only a genuine, heartfelt sudden concern for the brutality of the American Blue Shirts that have arisen out of a community-organized hate-free zones. Now that we have given such concessions I think things will be okay. We will be enjoying the pax Americana. Now back to my book, the Autobiography of Neville Chamberlin. It's really good.

Friday, September 29, 2017

The Coincidence of Cultural Marxism

I've noticed that many of my conservative comrades have concluded that the protesters have a legitimate gripe against this country. They will give the caveat that they agree that they did it in the wrong place and time. But I am puzzled. How did we suddenly wake to the fact that the country was so bigoted, so racist, so phobic? I didn't sense any of this under our previous president. And it seemed that the fact that we did have the previous president that we had might itself be exhibit A for the defense that we as a country might not be so Jim Crow (at least in spirit) as we are being charged. It has become from the media and so many venues a continuous charge.
Hmmm. If memory serves I don't remember any of the New England "Patriots" saying anything at the podium when they were holding up the Vince Lombardi after last year's Super Bowl that race relations were in desperate need of attention. It seemed then that black and white were real teammates. And I don't seem to recall any riotous demonstrations by Tea Party bigots over the campaign of Barack O'Bama. But now suddenly, one group has become oppressors and the other the oppressed. Suddenly there are NFL protests, the taking down of southern monuments, the defacing of Christopher Columbus statues, the riotous protesters against Trump rallies. And yes, I want to claim myself to be a conspiracy theorist. The hatred and vitriol is too orchestrated, too choreographed. Is there a chance that it might just be a Sorosian narrative? Might it just be that Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals has at last been realized and its cultural marxism crept out of the closet?

Thursday, September 28, 2017

"Catholics Follow the Gospel not the Constitution..."

The two aren't mutually exclusive. Somehow I don't remember a chapter in the Bible on illegal immigration and the importation of Islam. Funny something the Bible does talk about: sexuality and its right use doesn't seemed to be mentioned from the pulpit these days.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Judge Roy Moore

Congratulations to Judge Roy Moore on his winning the Republican senatorial primary. He is the judge that resisted the removal of the ten commandments in his courtroom. I am reminded of the written message that an American Olympiad gave the Scottish Eric Liddell just before his race in the film "Chariots of Fire": "He who honors God, God will honor." Yes.

My Freed-Up Time

Thinking of the great classic literature I will be reading in all the freed-up time I will be enjoying now that I will no longer be watching or listening to the NFL...or is the acronym now the BLM?

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Taking the Knee


Let the record stand that I wish to take the knee against the NFL players, owners , coaches. I had uncles serve in the Second World War and one, my Uncle Henry, didn't return from his service in the Pacific theater. I am tired of these devotees of the Frankfurt School (whether they know it or not) taking Christian symbols and endowing them with meaning antithetical to what they originally meant: the rainbow, and now kneeling or taking the knee. Taking the knee or genuflecting is what one does before the tabernachle where the Lord Almighty, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus in his body, blood, soul and divinity makes his home. This the only king we should be genuflecting for. Yet now another Christian symbol is to be twisted by those that seek to undermine and twist and rename so much of our traditions, our history. And I am disappointed in some of our religious shepherds who seem more concerned about the political questions of immigration (illegal) and climate change than about the mutilation and gender-confusing and indoctrination of grammar school children, the limb by limb removal of children from what was once, in a bygone time, to be the safest sanctuary in the world...the woman's womb. I am astonished we have fallen for so many lies from the Left who is no friend of tradition, no friend of the church of Jesus Christ. Such are on board with Marx's class division extending it to race and gender. I am astonished that we recite rebotically the rants of men like Saul Alinskey, Herbert Marcuse, Antonio Gramci while we seem to have forgotten the credo of Paul of Tarsus, Ignatius of Antioch, Augustine of Hippo. What I hope is that there still retains in some of our "heroes" of sport a willingness to stand for the flag that so many men have given their blood for. Until that time I for one have ceased to be a fan of the NFL and could now care less if another trophy comes to Boston.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

At Sancta Maria Stella Maris this Morning

This morning at Sancta Maria Stella Maris we had Daniel Liporto speak to our men's group on Holiness and Manhood using material from the book, "Be a Man" (Fr. Larry Richards, Ignatius Press). It was so strengthening to the spirit to be reminded of our primary objective. Not career, not a house on the lake, not the latest Lexus off the showroom floor. It is not to live for the pursuit of pleasure, not the temporal thrills, the luster of what the world sells as love. It is something of far greater magnitude. It is what only heaven can endow but what we have to cooperate with: holiness. And as Leon Bloy once wrote, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint."

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Sitting in the Carmelite Chapel Today

It came to me today sitting in the carmelite chapel today for the feast of the Korean martyrs with an Indian (Asian) priest celebrating the liturgy in a Delhi accent how catholic the Catholic church really is.

Writing

Writing. How is it that marks on a piece of paper (or a screen in this case) have any meaning? We of course seldom if at all question these things we call letters that form words, and these words that form paragraphs, and these paragraphs that form pages, and these pages that make books. Isn't it amazing that alpha and beta mean something and our hands write what our brain conceives and that just might have meaning for another pair of eyes? I think it is often the case that we don't believe in God because we seldom think to think on these things we take for granted when they should astonish us and keep us in the firm conviction of a great Conceiver of the wondrous.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

She is Carrying an Illegal Child

On Catholic radio the phrase.... "she is carrying an illegal child". What happens in China, said the priest being interviewed, was that such a woman would be brought to one of the many clinics throughout the country to undergo Cesarean section to have the child removed and disposed of. The priest went on to say that he witnessed this before he was a man of faith and as someone who didn't see anything wrong in abortion. But being in China and witnessing the women brought to the room where the disposal would take place, their motherly wailing, the cold sterility with which the little life would be removed, he came to see the great evil; and in seeing the great evil realized that such an evil must of necessity imply the existence of a great good. After more reflection he understood that to know such a great good could only mean that there was a creator of good, and that creator was the God of Christianity. And then he became a Christian, and then he became a priest.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

The Journal's Return

Thanks to the good tourist from Worcester who brought my forgotten journal to my door this morning from its involuntary abandonment last night at Fort Sewell while I watched the harbor as it summer slept.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Kim Jong-un and Climate Change

Am I right in wondering where the contingent of concerned climate change people heading over to North Korea is? After all it would seem to me that detonating thermo Nuclear devices might effect CO2 levels. Wouldn't one think there might be a mass movement of the climate concerned to persuade Kim Jong-un about his environmental indescretions? It seems to me, who am no scientist and yes, admittedly woefully ignorant of the progress or regress of climate towards either eventual boiling or freezing, that the North Korean dictator may indeed be more influential in effecting a carbon footprint than even a West Virginia coal burning plant.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Hint of Beginning Blush

Good to get back out into the Wenham Woods. Already a hint of beginning blush in the tupelo and swamp maple. Golden rod sprays its handfulls of yellow upon the ubiquitous thick summer green alongside the bike trail. Jo pyeweed and spicebush make me stop and observe the bees pawing at the pollen. I get the sense they too know that their time is limited. They realize summer only lasts forever in another world they only dimly perceive as through a glass darkly.