'Sacré Coeur'

 

From OSV: 

 A French blockbuster is coming to theatres in the U.S. just in time for the consecration of the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and premieres for U.S. audiences in June.

Released in France on Oct. 1, 2025, the docudrama “Sacré Coeur,” subtitled “His Reign Will Have No End” focuses on the apparitions of Jesus Christ to a French Visitation religious sister, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, showing his heart to her between 1673 and 1675, in Paray-le-Monial, in the French region of Burgundy.

“Sacré Coeur” will be shown in theaters June 9-11 and June 14 via KREA Film-Makers, Saje Distribution and Fathom Entertainment. Tickets and theater information is at sacredheartfilm.us. (Read more.)

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A White Teenager Died in the Streets Crying 'I Can't Breathe'

 From Man of Steele:

Yesterday I published my own piece on Henry Nowak, arguing that white guilt has created a racial double standard in Western justice. Daily Mail then asked me to write about the case for a UK audience, and I took the opportunity. The tragedy here for me is that if race had never been woven into policing practices as a form of social justice, we almost certainly would not be in this position. Instead, years of “anti-racism” training and race‑action plans have raised a deeper question: why would anyone want a society in which race shapes how individuals are treated, especially when it is the state doing the treating? The police officers should have listened to Henry, treated him as the individual he was, and used those critical moments to try to save him, not to handcuff him.

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Ancient DNA of the Incas

 From Nature:

This paper tracks long-distance migration on the Pacific coast that began no later than the thirteenth century AD. Genome-wide data for 21 sampled individuals from the lower and middle Chincha Valley of southern Peru show shared ancestry with groups 700 km to the north. A large-scale polity known as the Chincha Kingdom controlled the Chincha Valley from the thirteenth century until the fifteenth century, when it fell to the Inca Empire. The earliest migrants have unadmixed ancestry, whereas in subsequent generations, intermarriage resulted in admixtures from neighboring coastal areas. Relatives buried together in a family ossuary practiced consanguineous endogamy. We build a generation-scale Bayesian model informed by an aDNA-based family tree and individual calibration curves for estimated proportions of marine diet, addressing long-standing difficulties with temporal precision on the Pacific coast due to the marine reservoir effect and uncertainty inherent in estimating marine consumption based on δ¹⁵N. These data demonstrate population continuity from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, coinciding with persistent traditions of cranial modification and postmortem red pigment application. We reveal close-knit and far-reaching coastal interaction networks that shaped the sociopolitical landscape encountered by Inca emissaries before they integrated these communities into their empire. (Read more.)

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The Great Feast: The Hapsburgs And Corpus Christi

 

From The War for Christendom:

 In 1264, Pope Urban IV issued the Papal Bull Transiturus de Hoc Mundo, promulgating to the Latin Rite the Solemn Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, to be celebrated on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Around this same time, Rudolf the eighth Count of Hapsburg aided and protected a priest bringing the Viaticum to a dying farmer, giving the priest his horse and guiding him across a raging torrent, walking bareheaded. The priest then prophesied that the humble Count and his descendents would receive the Imperium of the Holy Roman Empire.

This veneration of the Holy Eucharist was continued by all the descendants of the Noble House, and the Feast of Corpus Christi in the Hapsburg realms became second only to the Solemn Feasts of Easter and Christmas. The Family indeed owed all to Rudolf’s great devotion to the Holy Eucharist, and the special Eucharist blessing bestowed on him, thus it was most fitting that the Feast of Christ’s Body should become the greatest feast of the Empire. So long as the Family remained devoted to the Cross and the Eucharist, God would bless and protect them (and He still does, even though they have been cast from the throne).

First in the great procession in the Imperial City of Vienna came three priests in splendid vestments like heralds to the city. Then came the Court officials in full Court dress, and the Court Clergy vested in gold and white vestments, followed by dignitaries of every rank. Before the gilded canopy marched the Archdukes of the House, carrying candles, and the acolytes carrying forward the Cross, the golden banners swaying in the wind, the swinging thuribles sending into the air clouds of incense, and the ever ringing bells. The great canopy itself was carried by four noble chamberlains in Imperial livery, upheld over the Hofburg Parish Priest who held up in benediction the golden Monstrance with radiating rays like the sun, in which resided the truly present Most Sacred Body of the Son of God, while the Emperor of Christendom walked behind bareheaded and flanked by the Imperial Guard, humbly worshiping his Divine King. (Read more.)

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Canada’s Mass-graves Scam

 From Daniel McCarthy at the New York Post:

A hoax costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and incites arson attacks against dozens of churches. This time, however, it’s not the latest headline out of Minnesota — look a little further north. In 2021, at a time when media throughout the western world were still in a state of high agitation after the killing of George Floyd, Canadian outlets picked up on a story too sensational not to be true:

Hundreds of indigenous First Nations children had been buried in unmarked graves at residential schools run by the Catholic Church in British Columbia. The Kamloops Indian Band sent around a press release that “confirmed” it. The statement claimed the remains of 215 children had been found with the help of an expert using ground-penetrating radar.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify,” said the band’s chief, Rosanne Casimir.

“Some were as young as three years old,” she continued, asserting that “the final resting place of these children” was in the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Only it wasn’t — no human remains have been found at Kamloops.

And the media that fanned the flames of the story is finally admitting it.

Even now Canada’s biggest daily paper, The Globe and Mail, phrases its retraction in cagey terms.

“There has been no public confirmation of the discovery of any human remains,” the paper conceded on Saturday.

Yet that funny phrasing leaves one wondering, is there private confirmation of human remains — another “knowing,” perhaps?

The Globe and Mail editorial, titled “There is no reconciliation without truth,” is a masterpiece of embarrassed equivocation, lamenting conditions at Canada’s residential schools of First Nations children and even insisting that the absence of bodies “does not mean children did not die there” before finally, eight paragraphs into the story, taking a smidgen of responsibility.

“The media, including the The Globe and Mail, did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge” the story.

“The initial headlines and stories in the media simply stated as fact that the remains of 215 children had been found. Many of those early stories, including in this newspaper, made references to ‘mass graves’,” a phrase that went beyond even Chief Casimir’s claims.

Yet right after the admission of its failures, the paper’s editorialists wistfully speculate, “Perhaps it will be proven, some day, that there are hundreds of unmarked graves at Kamloops” — as if the error here was just in being a little too hasty to declare what will sooner or later turn out to be true. (Read more.)

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Living by the Rule

 From The Conversation:

Curating Living by the Rule: Contemporary Meets Medieval, we were aware that the idea of “living by the rule” might sound off-putting to some visitors – too close to simply doing what you’re told. It also sits uneasily with the individualism of our age, in which meaning is often framed in terms of personal fulfilment or even “optimisation”. Rules, by contrast, point to our dependence on others and the obligations that come with it.

It is important, though, not to confuse Benedict’s “Rule” with modern laws or regulations. The term comes from the Greek kanon, via the Latin regula, meaning a pattern, model or yardstick: something to guide judgment rather than dictate behaviour. Unlike modern faith in impersonal rules, Benedict’s approach is strikingly flexible. Nothing is so fixed that it cannot be adapted, or even set aside, in light of different people and circumstances.

Translating these ideas into an exhibition was far from straightforward. (Read more.)

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5 Obsession-Driven Noir Films Adapted from Novels

From Laura (1944)

 From CrimeReads:

When I first heard Sting’s lyrics to “Every Breath You Take,” the song’s chilling, threatening tone made me genuinely uneasy. Was someone watching me? Should I be looking over my shoulder? It seemed he had written a definitive stalker’s anthem. And yet, as unsettling as it was, the song was the sole number one hit for The Police and won a Grammy award for Song of the Year in 1984.

Are we obsessed with obsession? Possibly. Obsessive characters abound in creative works, and as I thought about it, several of my favorite films immediately came to mind. Characters with unrelenting fixations drive the disturbing plots of the following classic noir or noir-ish films, all craftily adapted from popular novels.

I recall reading Daphne du Maurier’s suspenseful masterpiece, Rebecca, in high school. I became immediately intrigued by the tangled tale of “the first Mrs. de Winter,” the beautiful and captivating Rebecca. Presumed to have died in a tragic boating accident near Manderley, her husband’s family’s estate on the southern shore of England, she reaches out from her watery grave to extend a forceful hold on the lives of those who loved or hated her. Her former temperamental husband Maxim, the naively insecure “second Mrs. de Winter,” and Manderley’s sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, are all trapped, unable to escape from Rebecca’s manipulative grasp, as if she were stalking and haunting them from the afterlife.

And Mrs. Danvers, a name that has become synonymous with wickedness in film lore, is especially vulnerable. “Danny” professes that she would do anything for her former mistress, and her unrelenting obsession ultimately leads to devastation and her own demise. Hitchcock’s Gothic film noir adaptation, riveting and true to du Maurier’s novel, won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Cinemaphotography (Black and White). (Read more.)

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Is The Democratic Party Too Obsessive About Abortion?

 From Creative Destruction Media:

Over a century ago, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, openly stating then that the goals were to “reduce the birth rates of black and brown babies as well as defectives.” Those goals were erased from the organization’s history long ago, but that was the original intent. For decades, abortion was under the jurisdiction of state laws, until it wasn’t.

In the early 1970’s, a case (Roe v Wade) came before the Supreme Court regarding the right of a woman to have an abortion. The court found that a woman had a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14^th amendment, up until fetus viability. The ruling overturned state laws governing abortion and nationalized the issue. The ruling supercharged Planned Parenthood and other resources as abortion services greatly expanded across the country.

In 2022, the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs v Jackson opinion, concluding that the US Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. The ruling found that state governments had the authority to regulate any aspect of abortion not preempted by federal law, as “direct control of medical practice in the states is beyond the power of the federal government.” In effect, the Supreme Court found it had no jurisdiction on the matter of abortion. (Read more.)

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Icons and Faith

 From Sister Armelle:

Icons speak to faith.

How?

They represent the truths of faith in a visual manner using a theological langage of signs and symbols.

They are theology in lines and colors.

It is not for “entertainment” or emotional support.

Icons are “dogmatic” before being esthetic (even though the esthetic part is important because truth is beautiful).

They show the dogmas of the faith visually and contemplatively. It is why an iconographer should be a theologian more than an artist. It is why also an icon is built on tradition more than creativity.

Iconography uses the langage of symbols to convey and mediates the truths of faith.

It is a symbolic art and not a realistic art, because it represents spiritual realities beyond the natural world.

Like Jesus when he was explaining the mystery of the Kingdom of God through parables and allegories.

Because the “Sacred”, the “Holy”, the “Spiritual’ is beyond our natural grasp, we need symbols to bridge the gap, to reveal and at the same times conceal them.

To reveal and conceal. To make present, represent, but also to separate, to distinguish, to set apart from what is natural and visible. To keep the transcendant aspect when revealing the immanent gift.

Iconography is primarily a spiritual art, a contemplative art that demands and foster a deep spiritual life. (Read more.)

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