It is not enough for God to take our part. God must take our place. All the blood of goats and lambs, all the innocent victims from the foundation of the world, all the acts of expiation and reparation … all strengthen the grip of the great lie that we can set things right. The grip of that lie is broken by the greatest of lies, ‘God is guilty!’ … God must die. It is a lie so monstrous that to suggest it invites instant annihilation–except that God accepts the verdict. — Richard Neuhaus’ Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross [continue reading…]
The view from above The DiploMad 2.0: Woke Lies & Wars The bumbling, incoherent nature of our “leaders'” on their march to war leads to even more concern. We see them call for the world to destroy Russia, not just to promote regime change, but to destroy completely Russia’s economy, and its ability to function as a modern state. We have prominent individuals, right and left, calling for direct US/NATO military action against Russia, i.e., war. They seek a potentially nuclear war in Europe. Would that war remain there? [continue reading…]
Usagi Luxury Toilet Paper Gift Set (Pack of 8 Rolls) –$ 90
It isn’t just another pretty face: the toiler [sic] paper in the Usagi Luxury Toilet Paper Gift Set is among the best toilet paper you can find in Japan in terms of quality and softness. For the stunning presentation, it has been awarded with the 2016 Omotenashi Selection Award. Coming in an eight-roll set with wrapping made from handmade traditional washi paper, a distinctive red tube that forms a striking red-on-white combination evocative of Japan’s national flag, and a three-ply for an extra level of durability, this luxury toilet paper certainly stands out and begs to be felt. When you are at home, it’s never too much to indulge in some simple pleasures like this toilet paper provides.
Or, if you live beyond the “simple pleasures” take a ride on these Imperial sheets: [continue reading…]
From Plato’s Republic (emphasis added):
“[The citizens] contemptuously rejected temperance as unmanliness… Insolence they term breeding, and anarchy liberty, and waste magnificence, and impudence courage… The father gets accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son to be on a level with his father, having no shame or fear of his parents… The teacher fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors… The old do not like to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they imitate the young… Nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other… The citizens chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority, and at length…. They cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten… And this is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs dictatorship… The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction;… dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.”
Get an electric scooter they said ,it’ll be good for the environment they said ..and it’ll be fun…. pic.twitter.com/oEiZNwfL8p
— Penfold (@elbow112) April 9, 2022
Via SortaSaint Ann | Barnhardt
THOUGHTS WHILE SHAVING: THAT GLAZED AND OVINE ASPECT CLOAKING THE UNREFLECTIVE GAZE OF THE BIDEN VOTER STILL WIDE AND FEAR CRAZED OVER THE BLACK BIDEN FACE MASK. A MASK THAT MASKS THE CONTINUING CHEW OF THEIR CUD ON THE RAMP TO THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE. [continue reading…]
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long-stem rose
Everybody knows [continue reading…]
Hold . . . Hold … “America” … that’s it! BOMBS AWAY!
And now… even the Saudis diss him. [continue reading…]
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. — By Max Ehrmann © 1927
“Il Silenzio” is a memorial piece commissioned by the Dutch and first played in 1965 on the 20th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. It was written by Nini Rosso and Guglielmo Brezza.
If we betray the people who love us, what’s to stop us from betraying the country that makes us possible?
Did you ever break a promise?
Did you ever break a vow?
Have you traded love for money,
And are you happy now?
Did you kiss him in the garden,
And then abandon him to fate?
Are your first and final sins forgiven,
Or is it far too late?
When it comes to discovering new ways to cheapen the human soul, the “professional intellectuals” of our society have cornered the market. So it was in 2006 when (timed carefully to cash in on the Easter holiday) the “serious” editors of National Geographic chose to release their gleanings from a sheaf of rags and call them “The Gospel of Judas.”
Having risen through the echo chamber of “higher” education and survived the ruthless but quiet vetting process of their “profession,” these editors knew full well that what they were putting out into the world was not a “gospel.” They also knew that calling it a “gospel” would ensure greater attention and greater sales.
Beyond that, the editors, secular cultists all, got a quiet little tingle by having, in their minds, “stuck it” to the Christian church once again. As usual, such secularists love to stick it to Christianity. Addicts of auto-erotic spiritual asphyxiation, their onanistic pleasure in these deeds is only enhanced if they can be performed during the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Only then can maximum profit and pleasure from their perversions be assured.
This dark thrill of denigration has the immediate benefit of pleasingly confirming them in their own Church of Zero, and the secondary benefit of being much, much safer than, say, sticking it to Islam, a faith that enforces its demands for respect with bombs and beheadings, and whose central message to all cowards is “Don’t mess with Muhammad.” The sad fact of our modern era is that if you denigrate Islam, you often have to bag up body parts and hose down the sidewalk, but when you denigrate Christianity the most you need to clean up after yourself is a warm washcloth.
Your gedankenexperiment for today is to ask yourself, regardless of your religious beliefs, if the editors of National Geographic, being given an ancient manuscript that “proved” the Koran was nothing more than the blatherings of some ergot-besotted Bedouin who had munched one too many hallucinogenic plants while hanging out in a cave near Mecca, would have published the same “proof” as loudly and as broadly? Would they have done so, or would they have issued a Press Release citing concerns for the “provenance” of the manuscript and their employees’ safety? Regardless of your religious beliefs, you know the shameful answer as do the cowards and quislings at National Geographic.
But beyond these considerations, the publication of the “Gospel” of Judas has another, deeper, and more lasting benefit to our neophytes of nihilism. It puts one of the final elements of their anti-morality play at center stage. It seeks to sanctify treason.
This is a masterpiece pic.twitter.com/hXSiwKcqjV
— Kevin Dalton (@KevinForBOS) March 31, 2022
Zookeepers Scramble To Vaccinate All Lizards After Hearing Pelosi Got COVID “Reptilian humanoids are ancient creatures from an unnamed space quadrant the government doesn’t want you to know about,” said George Noory, host of the radio program Coast to Coast AM. “COVID might turn out to be a great thing if it wipes them off the face of the flat earth and allows us to see beyond the veil to all the UFOs and ghosts the government is hiding.” According to sources, zookeepers are separating reptilian species from each other and applying tiny little masks to their faces until they can receive a second dose of the vaccine. [continue reading…]
What I said to my “concerned” friends that asked was, “I like to collect permissions to do things.” I lied. Being freaked out that anyone they knew would take gun training and get a concealed weapons permit, they tacitly agreed to believe that lie. It kept everything smooth and “non-political,” which I how a lot of my friends and I like it these days. All part of the little lies we tell because we cannot face reality in the world and in our relationships.
I took pistol training because one day it dawned on me that if I ever actually needed a gun it would be too late to shop. [continue reading…]
Be Thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight
Be Thou my armor and be Thou my might
Thou my soul shelter, and Thy my high tower
Raise Thou me heavenwards, oh power of my power
American life today is troubled by three great questions: What is love? What is truth? And who is Jesus Christ? The secular world has answers to each of those great questions. And they’re false.
Today, for secular culture, love boils down to emotional and sexual compatibility; a special kind of friendship between two sovereign and equal partners. It can be very beautiful. But in the end, so the argument goes, it’s the result of our genetic programming. We fall in love because our biochemistries blend well. We care for our children because our instincts tell us to.
In like manner, truth is a matter of individual experience and preference, differing from individual to individual, and grounded in the self — not some over-arching reality. What really matters are facts, the kind of hard, measurable data we can see and taste. The only real “truths” we can know about life – again, so the argument goes — are things that material facts tell us. Colors like blue and red don’t really exist, for example; they’re simply our perception of certain variations in the material refraction of light. The “meaning” of events is not inherent in the events themselves or grounded in some higher order, but imagined and imposed by us.
And as for Jesus Christ: Well, Jesus was a good and holy man, one in a long line of great ethical teachers. And he’s important in the sense that most Americans still describe themselves as in some way “Christian.” But the “Son of God” and “Savior of the World” — that kind of supernaturalist thinking about a First Century minor Jewish prophet is pre-scientific and amounts to superstition.
The key thing about all these secular answers is this: They’re not only false, but dangerous. They reduce our human spirit to our appetites. They lower the human imagination and the search for meaning to what we can consume. And because the human heart hungers for a meaning that secular culture can’t provide, we anesthetize that hunger with noise and drugs and sex and distractions. But the hunger always comes back.
The most deeply human questions we can ask – and many of you are asking them right now — are things like, why am I here, what does my life mean, why do the people I love grow old and die, and will I ever see them again? The secular world has no satisfying answer to any of these questions. Nor does it even want us to ask such questions because of its self-imposed blindness; it cannot tolerate a higher order than itself — to do so would obligate it to behave in ways it does not want to behave. And so it hates, as Cain did, those who seek to live otherwise.
The Word of God tells us several key things. First, love is more than a feeling or instinct. It’s an act of the will. And it always has a cost in some form of suffering for the sake of others. It involves the free gift of ourselves to another person even at the risk of being hurt. This is why marriage is a covenant and not simply a contract. Contracts always have an escape clause. Love freely refuses an escape clause. Marriage is not a negotiated settlement between two sovereign parties, but two persons irreversibly submitting themselves to each other and becoming one flesh. And what results? New life in children. But in fact, all love, married or celibate, results in new life in one form or another. Just as Christ’s death on the cross watered the earth with his blood to redeem and renew the world, so every act of selfless love bears fruit in new life.
from Archbishop Chaput’s Address at Vocations Jamboree
Via Archbishop Chaput on Vocations @ Maggie’s Farm
Gerard Van der Leun
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