A place for friends to meet... with reflections on politics, history, art, music, books, morals, manners, and matters of faith.
A blog by Elena Maria Vidal.
"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."
"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."
"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."
~Edmund Burke, October 1790
A Note on Reviews
Unless otherwise noted, any books I review on this blog I have either purchased or borrowed from the library, and I do not receive any compensation (monetary or in-kind) for the reviews.
Paris, called by some people the sphere of the world, was a popular
tourist destination in the Regency Era. Part of the reason for its
popularity had to do with the wide range of sights and activities
available there. People could visit the Louvre, drink coffee at one of
the many cafes in the Palais-Royal, or stroll through the Tuileries
Gardens. They could also attend a horse race, listen to an opera, enjoy a
carnival, attend the theatre, or spend time shopping. Because Regency
travelers were so prevalent, one nineteenth century writer published
thirteen tips to help the continental travelers avoid problems and enjoy
their time in Paris. Here they are (almost) verbatim:
It is an unconverted rule, that inns most frequented are those whose
charges are most reasonable. We may add, that the traveller, whose
deportment is civil and obliging, will always be better served than the
rude and overbearing. To know the best inns is to listen to the voice of
common frame, but by no means to depend upon the eulogies of the
postilions; however, it may so happen, that in many inns people may be
better entertained, and at a lower rate, in one season than another. (Read more.)
One has to wonder at this point if the scribe has somehow found a
wormhole where he is viewing the 21st century. Leaving his very
pertinent observations on human nature, we come to the cleric’s Triads
that relate to the natural world. These for me have great lyrical
beauty.
‘Three slender things that best support the world: the slender stream
of milk from the cow's dug into the pail, the slender blade of green
corn upon the ground, the slender thread over the hand of a skilled
woman.’
‘Three live ones that put away dead things: a deer shedding its horn, a wood shedding its leaves, cattle shedding their coat.’
‘Three cold things that seethe: a well, the sea, new ale.’
‘Three sounds of increase: the lowing of a cow in milk, the din of a smithy, the swish of a plough.’
‘Three dead things that give evidence on live things: a pair of scales, a bushel, a measuring-rod.’
‘Three renovators of the world: the womb of woman, a cow's udder, a smith's moulding-block.’
Beautiful, of course, but this unknown writer didn’t simply excel at
pastoral imagery. He also has a number of observations of human nature
that are on the nail and often hilarious.
‘Three rude ones of the world: a youngster mocking an old man, a healthy person mocking an invalid, a wise man mocking a fool.’
‘Three ungentlemanly things: interrupting stories, a mischievous game, jesting so as to raise a blush.’
‘Three deaths that are better than life: the death of a salmon, the death of a fat pig, the death of a robber.’
‘Three silences that are better than speech: silence during instruction, silence during music, silence during preaching.’
‘Three speeches that are better than silence: inciting a king to battle, spreading knowledge, praise after reward.’
‘Three things that constitute a buffoon: blowing out his cheek, blowing out his satchel, blowing out his belly.’
‘Three wealths in barren places: a well in a mountain, fire out of a stone, wealth in the possession of a hard man.’
‘Three oaths that do not require fulfilment: the oath of a woman in
birth-pangs, the oath of a dead man, the oath of a landless man.’
‘Three worst smiles: the smile of a wave, the smile of a lewd woman, the grin of a dog ready to leap.’
Part
of the conservative radio divide reflects how Mr. Cruz was the darling
of the far right wing of the Republican Party before Mr. Trump’s
unexpected political rise. A frequent guest on talk radio, the Texas
senator earned celebrity status for his effort to shut down the
government, and was showered in effusive praise when he was the first to
jump into the race. Mr. Limbaugh called his presidential announcement speech “dazzling” and “masterful.”
But
Mr. Trump’s candidacy forced a realignment. Mr. Savage routinely has
Mr. Trump on his show and decries Mr. Cruz as “an insider.” He sees Mr.
Trump as galvanizing disaffected voters who have both powered his strong
ratings for decades and have been ignored by previous Republican
nominees.
“He’s
speaking to the demographic of the electorate that has been ignored and
castigated,” Mr. Savage said in an interview. “That’s what I see.”
Sean Hannity
has not publicly staked out a side, and has said that both Mr. Trump
and Mr. Cruz are conservative choices. He tries to have both on his show
as often as he can.
“Who
am I to come in and tell them to vote for this person?” Mr. Hannity
asked in an interview, referring to his audience. “I don’t think I serve
them well that way.”
But
he warned that any effort to deny Mr. Trump the nomination if he comes
close to the 1,237 majority of delegates would be the downfall of the
Republican Party.
“If
they try to steal this nomination or disenfranchise the voters, it
would be the end of the Republican Party. I guarantee you, it’s over,”
he said.
“If
it’s Trump” who is denied the nomination, “Trump supporters are
walking. If it’s Cruz, Cruz supporters are walking. And they’re not
coming back. And I’ll walk with them,” Mr. Hannity said.
Laura
Ingraham, who also said she would not be endorsing a candidate, shared a
similar point of view in an interview, calling the stop-Trump effort “a
little juvenile.”
“There
are a lot of purists out there who, if they don’t get everything
checked off on their little bucket list,” then they say “take your pail
and go home,” she said. “Come to the real world.” (Read more.)
Point Counter
Point is a series of conversations and a series of attempted or achieved
seductions. It is a clash of intellectual “types”, like one of those witty
conversation pieces (disguised as short novels) which Thomas Love Peacock
produced a century before Huxley. (In an acute essay written in 2003, Clive
James suggested that Huxley in effect created “orations” from each of his
leading characters rather than conversations, padding out the novel’s length
when he had a four-novel contract to fulfil.) Mark Rampion’s honest and healthy
sensuality is set against Philip Quarles’ intellectualism, which is set against
Everard Webley’s muscular brutalism, which is set against Maurice Spandrell’s
dualism, which is set against Denis Burlap’s self-interested version of
Christianity etc. etc.
I would be an
ungrateful swine if I did not admit that much of this is very entertaining and
all of it is written in that clear and readable prose that was one of Huxley’s
greatest skills. One must acknowledge, however, that with all the
chitter-chatter, the sum effect is like intellectual soap-opera or highbrow
gossip.
Because you may
not have read Point Counter Point, I
will not reveal how it is all wrapped up in the last 100 pages, where “plot”
intervenes. There are a couple of major domestic problems for Philip Quarles,
one of which forces him and his wife Elinor to reassess their values. The way
the plots involving the Fascistic Everard Webley and the dualistic Maurice
Spandrell resolve themselves involve great violence. On the other hand, our
last glimpse of the complacent faux-Christian Denis Burlap is purely farcical.
And cynical. Having just signed a very lucrative contract, and having got rid
of one mistress who was becoming a nuisance, Burlap is glimpsed on the last
page frolicking naked in the bath with his new mistress. Huxley’s punch-line is
“Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven”,
which is the same sort of snappy zinger as the “Hot dog!” that concludes Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.
Before we can
say anything else about Point Counter
Point, there is one obvious thing that has to be said. It is, beyond all dispute,
a roman a clef. Most of the leading
characters are very clearly based on people Huxley knew or had read about.(Read more.)
This
unusual painting depicts five differing studies of the head of his
infant subject, Lady Frances Isabella Keir Gordon. Lady Frances was the
five year old daughter of Frances Ingram-Shepheard and her husband, Lord
William Gordon, who had once made scandalous headlines thanks to his
youthful elopement with one of George III's old flames. Now
years later and steeped in respectability, Lord William commissioned
the portrait in summer 1786. Over the months that followed, Reynolds
worked tirelessly on the painting, eventually completing it in March
1787. The canvas was displayed at the Royal Academy and Reynolds took as
his inspiration for the style a drawing of cherubs' heads by Carlo
Maratta. (Read more.)
It took until the 19th century for the British authorities to
drop the practice of sentencing animals to death for their ‘crimes’ and instead
think of them as property. This led to a shift in responsibility from the animal
onto the owner. It
was now the owner’s job to decide if his livestock were a risk to other
people,
and take steps to prevent harm. Thus the female cat that bit someone
interfering
with her kittens was no longer held ‘at fault’ and the action was
acknowledged as typical of a nursing cat. Furthermore, when a farmer let
a
vicious ram run amuck, it was no longer the ram that paid the price with
his
life, but the farmer who was required to pay compensation. (Read more.)
The third installment of Nancy Bilyeau's beloved Historical Mystery
trilogy, the Joanna Stafford Mysteries, The Tapestry, is now available
in paperback, and to celebrate HFVBT is running a Book Blast with a
chance for you to win a copy for your personal library!
The Tapestry (Joanna Stafford #3) by Nancy Bilyeau
Paperback Publication Date: March 22, 2016
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster
Paperback; 416 Pages
Series: Joanna Stafford
Genre: Historical Mystery
"Fans of the Tudor era, you're in for a treat" --InStyle magazine
Henry VIII's Palace of Whitehall is the last place on earth Joanna
Stafford wants to be. But a summons from the king cannot be refused.
After her priory was destroyed, Joanna, a young Dominican novice, vowed
to live a quiet life, weaving tapestries and shunning dangerous
conspiracies. That all changes when the king takes an interest in her
tapestry talent.
With a ruthless monarch tiring of his fourth wife and amoral noblemen
driven by hidden agendas, Joanna becomes entangled in court politics.
Her close friend, Catherine Howard, is rumored to be the king's
mistress, and Joanna is determined to protect her from becoming the
king's next wife--and victim. All the while, Joanna tries to understand
her feelings for the two men in her life: the constable who tried to
save her and the friar she can't forget.
Ina world of royal banquets, jousts, sea voyages and Tower Hill
executions, Joanna must finally choose her future: nun or wife, spy or
subject, rebel or courtier.
The Tapestry is the final book in a trilogy that began in 2012 with The Crown, an Oprah magazine pick. Don't miss the adventures of one of the most unforgettable heroines in historical fiction.
“In Joanna Stafford, Bilyeau has given us a memorable character who is prepared to risk her life to save what she most values.” (Deborah Harkness)
“Nancy Bilyeau's passion for history infuses her books and transports us
back to the dangerous world of Tudor England. Vivid characters and
gripping plots are at the heart of this wonderful trilogy, and this
third book will not fail to thrill readers. Warmly recommended!” (Alison Weir, author of The Marriage Game: A Novel of Queen Elizabeth I)
"A rip-roaring Tudor adventure from Nancy Bilyeau! Novice nun turned
tapestry weaver Joanna Stafford returns to the court of Henry VIII.
She's that great rarity of historical fiction: a fiercely independent
woman who is still firmly of her time. A mystery as richly woven as any
of Joanna's tapestries." (Kate Quinn, author of Lady of the Eternal City)
"The Tapestry takes its history seriously, but that doesn't stop
it from being a supremely deft, clever and pacy entertainment. This is
Nancy Bilyeau's most thrilling - and enlightening - novel in the Joanna
Stafford series yet." (Andrew Pyper, International Thriller Writers Award winner of The Demonologist and The Damned)
"A master of atmosphere, Nancy Bilyeau imbues her novel with the sense
of dread and oppression lurking behind the royal glamour; in her
descriptions and characterizations . . . Bilyeau breathes life into
history." (Laura Andersen, author of The Boleyn King)
"In The Tapestry, Nancy Bilyeau brilliantly captures both the
white-hot religious passions and the brutal politics of Tudor England.
It is a rare book that does both so well." (Sam Thomas, author of The Midwife’s Tale)
“In spite of murderous plots, volatile kings, and a divided heart,
Joanna Stafford manages to stay true to her noble character. Fans of Ken
Follett will devour Nancy Bilyeau’s novel of political treachery and
courageous love, set amid the endlessly fascinating Tudor landscape.” (Erika Robuck, author of Hemingway’s Girl)
“These aren't your mother's nuns! Nancy Bilyeau has done it again,
giving us a compelling and wonderfully realized portrait of Tudor life
in all its complexity and wonder. A nun, a tapestry, a page-turning tale
of suspense: this is historical mystery at its finest.” (Bruce Holsinger, author of A Burnable Book and The Invention of Fire)
About the Author
Nancy
Bilyeau has worked on the staffs of InStyle, Rolling Stone,
Entertainment Weekly, and Ladies Home Journal. She is currently the
executive editor of DuJour magazine. Her screenplays have placed in
several prominent industry competitions. Two scripts reached the
semi-finalist round of the Nicholl Fellowships of the Academy of Motion
Pictures Arts and Sciences. Her screenplay “Zenobia” placed with the
American Zoetrope competition, and “Loving Marys” reached the finalist
stage of Scriptapalooza. A native of the Midwest, she earned a
bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. THE CROWN, her first
novel, was published in 2012; the sequel, THE CHALICE, followed in 2013,
and THE TAPESTRY in 2015.
Nancy lives in New York City with her husband and two children. Stay in touch with her on Twitter at @tudorscribe. For more information or to sign up for Nancy’s Newsletter please visit her official website.
My Review
Tea at Trianon has the honor of being part of the Book Blast of the paperback edition of Nancy Bilyeau's The Tapestry. In The Tapestry, the third novel in the
Joanna Stafford trilogy, we travel again through Tudor England with the
devout former novice who, in spite of her desire for a quiet,
contemplative life, always finds herself amid the storms of the
controversies of the day. Expelled from her beloved Dominican monastery
with the other nuns by Henry VIII's closure of the religious houses,
Joanna has learned to embrace her new life as a tapestry maker, although
she continues to be haunted by her past. Invited to Henry's court, she
is charged by the king not only to weave new tapestries but to enhance
the collection he already has. Upon arriving at court, she becomes aware
that not only is she being stalked but that someone is trying to kill
her. Meanwhile, Joanna also wrestles with her conflicted feelings for
the two men who
love her: Edmund Sommerville, a former Dominican friar to whom Joanna
was
once betrothed, and Geoffrey Scovill, the dashing constable.
With profound psychological insight, the author describes the layers of
confusion experienced by a young person who has unwillingly left the
cloister and been launched once again into the cares of the world. In
spite of her training in a life of prayer and study, Joanna, who was
only a novice when she had to leave the order, must still struggle with
her impulsive and headstrong behavior. Not only must she deal with her
own painful memories and heartbreak, but she must see her homeland torn
apart by the whims of the bloody tyrant Henry has become and his
ruthless henchman, Thomas Cromwell. Joanna fears for her friend and
cousin Catherine Howard, who has caught the king's attention, knowing
that the teenager is a lamb among wolves.
In her novel of suspense as well as of authentic historical drama, Ms.
Bilyeau is not afraid to face the controversies of a faraway time,
controversies which eventually would produce the modern world.
Interview with Nancy Bilyeau
1.) Nancy, writing such a vivid recreation of Tudor England obviously
required a great deal of research. Could you tell us a little more about
the highs and lows of your forays into the past? NB: I’m a research fiend, so there weren’t any “lows,” exactly. I
love to read about the 16th century. Sometimes when the novel writing
is going badly, when I’m unsatisfied with what I have on the screen, I
give myself a “treat” and delve into the research instead.
I have to say that in the beginning, there was some nervousness. I’ve
been interested in Tudor England since I was a teenager, and I’ve built
a home library of many biographies and political studies. But when I
decided to set the first book inside a priory of the Dominican Order, I
had my work cut out for me. That priory, which was in Dartford, in Kent,
was demolished. Nearly ever monastery was. They didn’t leave diaries or
memoirs. There was very little chronicling of what went on inside the
monasteries besides the rules they followed. It was like studying a lost
world.
The high point was my research trip to England in June of
2011. I was so excited about simply being able to travel there—I have a
fulltime job, two children at home and my mother suffers from
Alzheimer’s—that I slept perhaps an hour on the night flight from New
York City to London. But I did not nap when I checked into the hotel at
noon. I threw myself into my research immediately. At sundown, I was
sitting at a little table overlooking the Tower of London. I’d been in
the last group of the day to tour inside. I had my dinner, eating fish
and chips, thinking about what happened inside those centuries’ old
walls. I know it may sound bizarre to find such happiness at the Tower,
but I did!
2.) As someone who spent time in a monastery as a young woman, I have
always been impressed with your portrayal of the novice Joanna Stafford,
and her struggles when having her monastic life taken away from her. I
find your characterization of her to be ingenious and inspired. How did
you create such an authentic character?
NB: Thank you so much! I had a few ideas of actions she would take,
like leaving her priory without permission to stand by her cousin’s side
when she is to be executed at Smithfield. I thought about what kind of
person would be truly committed and devout yet would take drastic, bold
action. And then I built a personality from that, adding layers and
details. I did research the lives of those young women who were from the
noble families of England but were not in the center of power—like the
Staffords. That helped me too when it came to her values and her
education and her expectations.
3.)Your books give a refreshing view of Reformation England by showing
the suffering of faithful Catholics, especially monks and nuns. What
originally inspired you to write from the point of view of a devout
young woman?
NB: My driving goal was originality. I felt that real-life queens and
princesses, and fictional ladies-in-waiting, had been written about
enough. I wanted to write a protagonist who is female and I wanted to
tell the story from the perspective of someone not heard from in Tudor
fiction: a nun. The tumultuous medieval period of England is I think
better understood through the Brother Cadfael books of Ellis Peters than
the traditional king and queen stories. And the Tudor period for the
monastics was more than tumultuous—it was cataclysmic! I wanted to set a
story in that time of intense conflict.
4.) I like how you show how Henry VIII could be an extremely charming
man and that he was in fact a brilliant and gifted man. Why do you think
he indulged in such tyrannical behavior?
NB: Yes, I think that historical novelists sometimes go wrong with
Henry—they ignore his charm and intellect and all of his passionate
interests. There is a reduction that takes place. In these other books
he is a tyrant who kills people and marries six women. And Henry was
tyrannical, and he did have wives and ministers executed. He was
extremely ruthless and manipulative. But isn’t that what fascinates us
now, the dichotomy of a strikingly handsome man of royal birth and a
fine mind and sometimes affable nature, who did frightening things that
destroyed people, demolished a whole way of life? As to the why, I think
it’s hard for us to grasp today, because the Tudors seem like such
glittering monarchs, that it was an insecure dynasty. Henry VII, Henry
VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I all faced serious rebellions and challenges
to their rule. Elizabeth I defeated a serious invasion attempt. I think
Henry VIII was fearful of holding onto his throne, and many of the
things he did were to strengthen his grip. Also I suspect that despite
his handsomeness and athletic build, he had some insecurities as a man.
That would explain a lot. 5.) Thomas Cromwell, whom many regard as Henry's evil genius
in the pillaging of the monasteries, has experienced some good press
lately via Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. Why do you think Henry gave
Cromwell such a free hand in despoiling Catholic religious houses and
shrines, etc. in England?
NB: There were two reasons. Money and vindictiveness. Henry VIII was
emptying his treasury. He spent a great deal of the money that his
frugal father, Henry VII, left him on trying to wage war on France and
on luxurious living. Cromwell opened up an enormous new source of cash:
the land and buildings and valuables owned by the Catholic abbeys,
priories and shrines. It was a land grab. Henry VIII would not have to
beg Parliament for money or be forced to listen to his nobles if he had
his own source of money. And by handing out properties to the “new men,”
he bound them closer to him alone. The vindictiveness comes from the king’s anger over the Pope not
granting him the annulment he wanted. He had to wait for years, being
frustrated and sometimes outmaneuvered by the opposition: his first
wife, Catherine of Aragon, her nephew, the Emperor Charles V, and those
loyal to them. By the time Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn and had
himself declared head of the Church of England, he was seething. He
seemed like he had won a victory, but by pulling away from the great
Catholic powers he isolated himself. And then he had to defeat a very
serious rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace, that broke out in the North
of England, among people who feared and hated Cromwell’s religious
reforms. Henry VIII blamed the monastic orders for stirring up dissent
and also he distrusted them because he thought their loyalty was to
their orders and to Rome, rather than to him. He took out his vengeance.
His cruelty to some, such as the Observant Franciscans, the Carthusian
Martyrs and the abbot of Glastonbury, is stomach turning. You don’t see
any of this in Wolf Hall.
6.) Joanna is a devout but spirited heroine and anything but dull. Thank
you for challenging the stereotypes that exist about pious people,
namely that they are dull, bigoted and cannot think for themselves.
Joanna is bursting with life, love and determination and actually
reminds me of some nuns that I have known. Where do you think people get
such dreary stereotypes of devout people?
NB: I think that some people who don’t know anything about nuns and
monks believe they are strange, joyless creatures. They don’t see any
happiness in devotion to a spiritual life. I met a sister at a real
Dominican Order in the United States who was friendly and upbeat and
told jokes. A nice “normal” person. She read my second and third books
for accuracy. And in my books I tried to show the spirited intellectual
life of the time, particularly in The Crown. Having a meal with
Bishop Stephen Gardiner would be many things, I’m sure, but it would not
be dull! I received two emails from friars after The Crown was
published that said they felt I had captured what it was like to live in
a religious community.
7.) For those who are inspired by your novels to explore Tudor England
through their own research, what non-fiction books would you recommend?
NB: There are so many wonderful books! Here is a sampling:
The Stripping of the Altars and Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition, by Eamon Duffy
Henry VIII, by Jasper Ridley
Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Writings of His Spanish Ambassador, by Lauren Mackay Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England, by Thomas Penn Henry VIII: The King and His Court and The Lady in the Tower, by Alison Weir Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, by David Starkey The Creation of Anne Boleyn, by Susan Bordo
Two paperbacks of The Tapestry by Nancy Bilyeau are up for grabs! To enter, please use the GLEAM form HERE.
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and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion
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Here is an interview of Nancy Bilyeau by Christine Niles.
No
sooner has Jane Eyre discovered that her dear master is a married man
than she gives him up. “I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by
man.” She will not be Mr. Rochester’s mistress; she nearly becomes a
missionary. But the works of the Lord are great: The wife dies. Jane
nurses Mr. Rochester back to health. More important, she saves his soul.
All his life, he had been an “irreligious dog,” but Jane’s example has
swelled his heart “with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth.”
And so the novel ends with an acknowledgment that the couple’s happiness
falls short of the bliss they will know in heaven. The last sentence of
“Jane Eyre” isn’t “Reader, I married him” (I always forget this) but
“Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus.”
What
fault could the sternest Victorian moralists have found with any of
that? But to the novel’s first critics, Jane was too independent and
assertive, “the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined
spirit.” Her longing for Rochester was “coarse” (that is, sexual), and
as the reviewer for The Christian Remembrancer averred, the book “burns
with moral Jacobinism.” Jane is always “murmuring against the comforts
of the rich and against the privations of the poor,” and so — since God
decides who is born a weaver and who a viscount — the novel was thought
to be criticizing “God’s appointment,” a kind of blasphemy. Never mind
that Queen Victoria stayed up late reading it to Prince Albert. “Jane
Eyre” was an “immoral,” even a “dangerous” book, and whoever was behind
the authorial pseudonym “Currer Bell” was in possession of a sordid
mind. (Read more.)
In “The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the
Morning of the Resurrection” by Eugène Burnand, John clasps his hand in
prayer while Peter holds his hand over his heart. The viewer feels the
rush as their hair and cloaks fly back with the wind. They are
sprinting towards discovery of the moment that forever altered heaven
and earth. As you look at it, engage for a moment in what the Catholic
blogger Bill Donaghy calls “the visual equivalent of Lectio Divina.” As
Donaghy notes, “This Resurrection scene does not put us before still
figures near a stagnant stone, or figures standing with stony faces in a
contrived, plastic posture, pointing to an empty tomb. This scene is
dynamic; we are in motion.”
During his time, Burnand was fascinated by the possibilities of the
emerging art of photography. Ironically, he would later be dismissed in
the twentieth century as too “bourgeois” and anti-modernist when in fact
he was merging his love of tradition with his interest in new
technological ways of capturing the human person. His painting feels
cinematic long before cinema existed as a major art form.
Through the movement and immediacy of the scene, the preceding
minutes with Mary Magdalene are palpable. In a sense, she is in the
painting too. “You can almost hear her voice in the background, can you
not, a few minutes earlier, as she burst into their house…” writes the
Episcopal Bishop Dorsey McConnell in an Easter sermon meditating on the
painting. (Read more.)
In light of the Brussels attack, it's important to emphasize that
the ISIS terrorists who carried it out didn't get to the city from Syria
or Iraq, but were in fact born and highly-educated there. The bomb
maker who constructed suicide belts detonated in the Paris attacks last
November, held a degree in mechanical engineering and was born in the
Brussels, not in a far away and foreign terror hot spot of the Middle
East. He's likely the same person who made the suicide belts for the Brussels attack.
A
senior Iraqi intelligence official who was not authorized to speak
publicly said people from the cell that carried out the Paris attacks
are scattered across Germany, Britain, Italy, Denmark and Sweden.
Recently, a new group crossed in from Turkey, the official said.
The
latest new name to surface this week, Najim Laachraoui, turned out to
be a Brussels resident with a degree in mechanical engineering — the
bombmaker who made the suicide vests used in the Paris attacks,
according to French and Belgian officials. Attackers used an explosive
known as Triacetone Triperoxide, or TATP, made from common household
chemicals.
Fifteen kilos of TATP were found in an apartment
linked to the Brussels attackers, along with other explosive material,
although Laachraoui has not been publicly linked to the latest attack.
According to intelligence estimates, more than 5000
Europeans have left for Iraq and Syria as ISIS continues its march.
Closer to home, the State Department came under fire last year after it
was revealed the passports of Americans who have joined ISIS in Iraq
and Syria were not revoked. Today, nothing has changed.
The FBI
confirmed last fall it is investigating more than 1000 ISIS leads
inside the U.S. and at a hearing in January, directors of a number of
U.S. intelligence agencies expressed concern ISIS will attack inside the
country within the year. (Read more.)
A gift from the artist to the orphaned daughter of the Queen. From Vive la Reine:
The Comte de Cossé presented me, Madame, with the portrait of my Mother
which you had asked him to bring me. You have afforded me the double
pleasure of seeing in one of your most beautiful works an Image very
dear to my heart, thus of being beholden to you for having used your
talents as a proof of your sentiments. Be assured that I feel this more
deeply than I can express. And count on my feelings for you. –a letter from Marie Thérèse Charlotte to Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. (Read more.)
Many sinful attitudes, fears, resentments, aversions, and anxieties come from distorted thinking.
These patterns emerge from our flesh but are also open doors for
demons, who can exploit and further twist our experience of reality. The
world, too, is able to exploit cognitive distortions for both profit
and influence.
The renewal of our minds, traditionally referred to in
spiritual manuals as “the purification of the intellect” is a key aim of
spiritual direction, deliverance ministry, and of overall spiritual
growth. Hence, we should learn to recognize and name the more
common forms of distorted thinking, also called cognitive distortions.
In learning about them we can begin to master them and to experience
greater freedom and authority over our thought life. And, since most
feelings come from thoughts, our emotional life will also be improved.
This includes having greater authority over and freedom from anxieties,
resentments, anger, paranoia, and depression. (Read more.)
Here is an interesting essay which deals with the nature of monarchy in Russia, which had a sacerdotal aspect, as did the French monarchy. The Salic law was reaffirmed by Tsar Paul after the death of his mother, Empress Catherine II. From Ryan Hunter:
Brenda Meehan-Waters’ superb
essay “Catherine the Great and the Problem of
Female Rule” reveals remarkable evidence that, prior
to Emperor Paul changing the Russian imperial succession
laws in 1797, three of Russia’s four empresses
regnant communed of the Body and Blood exactly as reigning
emperors did. Meehan-Waters confirms Robert
Massie’s unsourced and uncited claim in his
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman(2011)
that Catherine II would have received communion in the
clerical manner in the altar of the Kremlin’s
Uspenskiy Sobor, as well as gone into the altar area to be
anointed immediately before receiving the
sacrament. What neither Meehan-Waters or Massie
observe is whether or not empresses regnant were anointed
simply on the forehead, as later empresses consort were
due to their sex, or, more likely, as reigning sovereigns,
they were likely anointed as male monarchs were, on the
eight holy spots consecrated with the holy myrrh during
chrismation.
Meehan-Waters writes that, beginning with Anna Ivanovna in
1730, all Russian empresses regnant took communion in the
priestly manner, performing a fundamentally male
sacerdotal role — or, rather, showing that the
Orthodox Church did not understand the sacerdotal role
performed by the monarch at his or her coronation as an
intrinsically or necessarily male one. This is
extraordinary. Considering that Catherine I’s
coronation as consort in 1724 marked the first time in
history the Russian Orthodox Church had officially blessed
and sanctified any coronation of a woman — we have
no evidence that Orthodox Muscovite tsaritsas were ever
crowned along with their husbands or in separate
ceremonies — it is all the more remarkable that,
only six years later, the Church was not only blessing a
second woman as Empress regnant of Russia, but was
allowing her to take communion as if she were part of the
clergy, and to receive the holy anointing in the altar
itself.
The political and theological implications for this are
huge. By taking the Body of Christ in their own hands and
putting it into their own mouth, and then drinking
directly from the chalice containing the Blood, the three
Russian empresses regnant who did this — Anna,
Elizabeth, and Catherine II — did something that no
male emperors before them had done, and no empress
consorts after them would ever do. By communing as if they
were priests or bishops, these empresses regnant assumed
unto themselves a fundamentally male role that, strictly
speaking, was utterly without solid Christian theological
justification. For all intents and purposes, at Anna,
Elizabeth, and Catherine II’s coronations, the
Church treated these sovereign women as if they were mixed
persons, part God-ordained and God-consecrated lay woman,
and, astonishingly, somehow, as part priest.
This practice of empresses regnant
communing as if they were male clergymen is without
firm Christian theological foundation, yet
Meehan-Waters provides no evidence that any layman or
member of the clergy present in the Uspenskiy Sobor
objected to, or attempted to correct or stop Empress
Anna or her two female successors from doing this.
Instead, we have only silence, and thus, we can assume,
either quiet approval or at least benign tolerance of
this one woman, the female sovereign, communing as if
she were a priest. The metropolitans who communed these
women did not, strictly speaking, have to do so, but
they did, and left no objection to history.
(Read more.)
The papers, due to be auctioned in London on Thursday,
include a tally of results from early voting in the papal election of
August 1903 showing that another cardinal, Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro,
was by far the most popular candidate.
But Cardinal Rampolla, who had been the Vatican Secretary of State
under the previous Pope, Leo XIII, was blocked by the Austro-Hungarian
Emperor Franz Joseph through powers known as the Jus exclusivae, which
allowed a select group of Roman Catholic monarchs to veto any would-be
pope of whom they disapproved.
The
procedure, used only a handful of times in history, allowed a king or
queen of Spain or France or the Holy Roman or Austro-Hungarian emperor,
to nominate one of the cardinals in advance to exercise their veto with
instructions to step in if someone to whom they objected was about to be
elected. (Read more.)
Readers will take away different things from Read’s newest novel,
depending on their familiarity with the source material. Newcomers to
Puccini’s Tosca will find themselves following a dramatic tale of
love, war, honor, and women’s fickleness while learning about the
political circumstances of late eighteenth-century Italy, a land where
monarchies and Catholicism are threatened by the rising tide of
republican thought emanating from revolutionary France. Those with prior
knowledge of the opera will also recognize how shrewdly its heartless
villain, Baron Scarpia, has been refashioned into a tragic hero.
Vitellio Scarpia is a flawed protagonist, a hotheaded Sicilian
adventurer “possessed by the spirit of vendetta.” Following some
youthful recklessness, he loses his fortune but later ascends to become a
loyal, trusted officer in the pontifical army. Scarpia’s background is
richly imagined, and Floria Tosca, a young woman with a glorious singing
voice, is mostly a minor character whose story interweaves with his.
There are numerous nonfiction digressions from Scarpia’s story, some of
which are fairly dry, but they illuminate the context of his turbulent
times. (Read more.)
Tosca was the first
Puccini opera with which I fell in love; as a junior in college I would
listen to it everyday after classes. The score explores a vast array of
human emotions although the story line is deceptively simple. It is
about how two young lovers, Mario and Tosca, are destroyed by the lust
and cunning of the ultramontane Baron Scarpia. The underlying theme of
the opera can be summed up by the old sacristan, who mutters, while the
artist Mario is singing about his love for Tosca in church, "Do not mix
the sacred with the profane."
All the characters seem to mix the
sacred with the profane in varying degrees. Act I unfolds entirely in a
church where jealousy, passion, anger, vengeance and lust all come into
play, culminating in the magnificent Te Deum
scene. Then, while the praise of God is sung, the evil Scarpia
fantasizes about Tosca, exclaiming, "Tosca, you make me forget God!" His
profane musings border on blasphemy; he is an example of how lust and
cruelty so often go hand-in-hand.
Scarpia is a villain among
villains, for there is no villain worse than an ostentatiously pious
one. In Act II he tortures Mario in order to get Tosca to sleep with
him; Tosca, driven to the edge of reason by Mario's cries, agrees. But
when Scarpia tries to embrace her, she stabs him, crying: "This is
Tosca's kiss!" Yet she does not flee all at once, but pauses to place
candles around the body with a crucifix, as if at a wake. The funereal
aspect combined with the frantic, broken mind of the heroine makes it
one of the most powerful scenes in any opera. (Read more.)
An international team contributed to the research, which compared the
DNA sequences of 35 modern people living on islands off the coast of
New Guinea with DNA drawn from two early human species: Denisovans,
whose remains were found in Siberia, and Neandertals, first discovered
in Germany.
“Substantial amounts of Neandertal and Denisovan DNA can now be
robustly identified in the genomes of present-day Melanesians, allowing
new insights into human evolutionary history,” they wrote. “As
genome-scale data from worldwide populations continues to accumulate, a
nearly complete catalog of surviving archaic lineages may soon be within
reach.”
D. Andrew Merriwether, a molecular anthropologist at Binghamton
University, collected the modern-day blood samples used in the study
about 15 years ago in Melanesia. This is the first time full genomes
from those samples have been sequenced. (Read more.)
The American College of Pediatricians has released an in-depth report
stating that the move to indoctrinate children with the idea that they
can pick their gender amounts to child abuse. They are urging
legislators and educators to reject all policies that would condition
children to accept chemical and surgical distortions allowing people to
impersonate the opposite sex.
Some of the points made in their report include the following:
Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait. “XY” and “XX” chromosomes are genetic markers, not a disorder.
No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological
sex. Gender is a psychological concept, not an objective biological
one.
A person thinking he or she is something they are not, at best, is a sign of confusion.
Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous.
When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or
an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective
psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it
should be treated as such.
People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere
in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or
biological women.
Duchesse de Bourgogne, Dauphine of France and the mother of Louis XV, as well as the great grandmother of Louis XVI. She was also a great granddaughter of Charles I of England. Louis XIV and his wife Madame de Maintenon both adored her and were devastated by her death. Via Vive la Reine. More HERE.
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She continues, “While we, the underclass, have to work two and three
jobs, rack up a debt our children and grandchildren are going to have to
pay for generations. And to scare you into submission, they predict
Trump cannot win the general election.” She asks if that is the case,
then “Why does he keep winning the primaries and drawing crowds like
we’ve never seen in American primary history?
She cites statistics which
indicate that in addition to appealing to the base, Trump is winning
with independents and Democrats as well, asking, “Does that not bode
well for the general election, especially against an establishment
politician most people consider untrustworthy and dishonest?
“So now they say he’s divisive,” says Pirro, who then points out that
all of the chaos-dispensing groups predate Trump, including Black
Lives Matter and Moveon.org, as well as the melees in Ferguson and
Baltimore. She calls it astonishing that the Republicans are plotting
against their own frontrunner. But she knows why.
She notes that under the current political configuration,
no matter who wins, the entrenched power structure doesn’t lose. Their
jobs, offices and lifestyles remain intact as they “continue on their
treadmill of DC money and power. The party elders are petrified of
Trump. The man is beholden to no one. He wins and it’s game over for the
elites. With Hillary, the game goes on.”
Judge Pirro warns, “Heads up Washington, we’re not listening to you
anymore because we’re fed up. You haven’t fixed a damn thing and we
can’t take it anymore; the lies, the corruption, the debt, the taxes,
the invasion, the freebies, the
lack of accountability, sanctuary cities, religions forced to violate
their own faith by providing birth control at the altar of Obamacare.” (Read more.)
More on why the establishment is opposed to Trump, HERE.
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On Sunday afternoon you could always find my mom sitting at the
kitchen table, catching up with her “correspondence.” Equipped with her
address book, and surrounded by cards, she wrote messages of love, hope,
and consolation to those who needed it. Recipients ranged from family
members to acquaintances and everything in-between. She even wrote to
the author of a compelling article she read in a magazine, expressing
her appreciation for her sharing her story and empathizing with her
pain.
As a child I just couldn’t grasp the purpose of such a seemingly
boring and old-school practice. But as I grew older, I began to
understand. By sending a card, a small and simple gesture, my mom was
sending a powerful message of affirmation and love to each person. She
was acknowledging that the milestone they were grieving or celebrating
was worth the joy or sorrow that they were feeling. She was saying, I am
here and I stand with you. You are not alone. Right now, as I write
this card, I am thinking and praying for you.
When my mom died, I was approached by a friend of my oldest brother.
He told me how moved his wife was by a recent card that she had received
from my mom. He said that of all the things given to her after the
untimely passing of her father, the thing that was most comforting and
most touching, was a card with a note that was sent to her by my mother.
“They just don’t make women like your mom anymore,” he lamented. “So
classy.”
They don’t make women like my mom anymore, and I want to be one.
In this age of the internet, we have forgotten the the power and
impact that comes with a handwritten message. It’s just so much easier
to shoot out an email or post a two second response to Facebook.
Although not without value, these messages are not equal. Even the most
beautiful email will not contain the same warmth and personal touch as a
written note. (Read more.)
What is known in America as Queen Anne’s War is known in Europe as the
War of Spanish Succession. The last Hapsburg King of Spain had died and
King Louis XIV of France put forward a grandson of his to be the first
of a new line of Bourbon monarchs for the throne of Spain. This caused a
great deal of opposition. The Hapsburg Emperor Leopold I wanted to
maintain his own dynasty on the Spanish throne or at least to retain
certain Spanish possessions, particularly in northern Italy, for the
Austrian Hapsburgs and other powers such as the British under Queen Anne
were concerned that this Bourbon proposal would effectively make Spain
and the whole Spanish empire a subsidiary of the Kingdom of France. The
British, Dutch and a few others feared this would make France far too
powerful and thus a threat to their own security and interests. So it
was that the powers of Europe formed up into two warring camps, the most
prominent players being France and Spain on one side and Austria and
Britain on the other. (Read more.)
Most of the time in this tangled life, we must weigh one good thing
against another, because we cannot pursue both with the same devotion.
Sometimes we must give up one of them altogether. I cannot spend all my
time teaching college students the grammar they were never taught in
school, because that would leave no time for the splendid literature of
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I must be content with a modest
effort in the former, while pursuing the latter directly.
But sometimes life offers you a chance to pursue many important ends
simultaneously by a single means. Such opportunities are precious.
Consider these problems facing the Church:
• We need to triple our vocations to the priesthood.
• We need ten times as many vocations to
the religious life. Many orders of religious women have “modernized”
themselves into oblivion. The sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
taught me and my siblings in our grade school in Pennsylvania. My class
ranged in numbers from 45 to 51. That parish school no longer exists;
the parish could not afford to pay full salaries to the lay teachers who
replaced the sisters.
• Vocations come disproportionately from
Catholic schools. We need to be building schools, and preserving from
decline those that have survived.
• If the heart of the parish is the Mass
and the sacraments, its young arms and legs are to be found in the
parish school. There, families encounter one another as families,
building up memories that span the generations. We need those memories
more than ever, as in most places community life is a shadow of what it
was, and the next door neighbor may as well have dropped from another
planet.
• Little of what merits the name of
“education” goes on in our schools. Some subjects have been discarded:
grammar, for instance, as a coherent and systematic whole. Our approach
to education springs from a truncated view of man. It is dully
utilitarian in its aims, which it nevertheless fails to meet. It fixes a
low ceiling over the mind and heart and soul. It begins by denying God,
by whom and for whom we are made, and proceeds to deny the objective
existence of beauty and goodness, until at last all that’s left are the
shreds of learning, political expediency, and the fads of the day.
• Our schools are Petri dishes of vice:
impiety, lust, spiritual sloth, ambition, and avarice. It is not clear
to me what more desperately needs the Catholic school less: the Church,
or the nation.
Ronin Gallery invites you to Demimonde: The Floating World and
Toulouse-Lautrec. This exhibition explores the parallel cultures of fin-de-siècle Paris and the Edo’s floating world, juxtaposing
Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithographs with the Japanese woodblock prints that
inspired him. Demimonde will also introduce Japonisme through works by
Cassat, Degas, Manet, Tissot, and Whister. (Read more.)
During the hard times, I made a promise to God that if He would help
me I would spend the rest of my life spreading hope and opposing sexual
exploitation and upholding human dignity. I did receive help and many
people were placed in my path at perfect moments to boost me up and push
me along.
Now I have three messages for the world.
The first is that sexual exploitation hurts. It
hurts children who are sexually abused and I know from experience that
it continues to hurt them for the duration of their lives until they can
access healing. It hurts people who are addicted to pornography. It
alters their brains just like a drug. There are many who are addicted
who don’t want to be and are desperate for a way out. It hurts those who
are trafficked, sold, bought and used. Their dignity and humanity are
stripped from them.
It hurts the people who love the people it affects. I witnessed
immense suffering in my parents and siblings because of my experience
and I’ve watched it ripple out to our neighbors and friends. Sexual
exploitation is an epidemic in our society. Disregard for dignity,
respect and morality is corroding our society and some people are making
a gigantic profit because of it.
The second is that nothing will change if we don’t talk about it.
You cannot fix a problem you don’t understand. Because it is a problem
that is bigger than a few individuals there has to be widespread
understanding across society. I was very sick because of sexual
exploitation. Healing did not come until I looked it squarely in the
face, acknowledged it and how it affected me, and understood it. Because
then I could see things I needed to change. It is the same with society
as a whole. (Read more.)
Industrialization, urbanization, and poverty often put great strains
on immigrant families. Educational levels in general among largely poor
Catholics were low and to some extent it made sense to entrust the
critical task of religious education to the Church. But the effect was
the marginalization of parents as the primary religious educators of
their children.
And this would have lasting effects when the system of priests and religious collapsed in
the 1970s. Religious sisters and priests, once a numerous and effective
army of teachers, diminished and largely disappeared almost overnight.
Despite this, parents were still kept on the periphery. But, frankly,
how could catechesis have been redirected back to the home at that time?
For at least three generations, Catholics had been led to relegate
religious formation to the parish rather than the home. Attitudes change
slowly and there was also little catechetical experience to rely on
within the family. In reaction to this, many well-meaning but at-first-untrained laity stepped into the gap to prop up the parish-based system. Despite the revolution of the late 1960s and the exodus of religious, parish-based religious instruction continued as usual.
Add to this problem the fact that “professional class” of
religious leaders and teachers in the 1960s and later came to be
infested by dissenters. Poorly trained adults were at first little equipped to resist those dissenters and were easily led astray.
So the first problem is that it is never good when parents and other
adults are told to consign the religious education of their children to
others. It tends to remove faith from the home and allows a class of
dissenters too much access and influence. As we shall see, this left
many chronological adults with a faith that was little more than
elementary. (Read more.)
One thing is for sure this 2016 presidential race, the “silent
majority” is no longer silent, and everybody knows it. But who are
these people? Before President Richard Nixon called them the “silent
majority,” he called them the “forgotten Americans.”
The forgotten Americans love their families and want a
better life for their kids. The forgotten Americans work hard—they
weren’t born on 3rd base and thought they hit a triple. They worship their God and they go to church. They pay their taxes and obey the law.
The forgotten Americans believe in American
exceptionalism. When America’s security is threatened, they are always
the first to volunteer to defend her. They understand and appreciate
the sacrifices their forefathers made to give them a land of opportunity
and freedom. And they respect and appreciate those in the military and
in law enforcement who put on the uniform everyday to protect those
freedoms and keep us safe.
Yes, the forgotten Americans love their country, but
today believe their government and its leaders have let them down. They
see Judeo-Christian values under attack. They are concerned about the
erosion of the freedoms they cherish. They worry about America’s
economy and each has a family member or knows someone who has looked so
long for a job that our government doesn’t even consider them unemployed
anymore. (Read more.)
When we first dreamed of living on Patina Farm, we imagined that we
would spend our free time tending to the gardens and the animals. We
envisioned eating our chickens’ fresh eggs in the morning and cooking
with the vegetables and fruits we would grow. To make these dreams come
true, we first needed to design and build the gardens and animal
structures.
During the time we
were designing Patina Farm, we took our children on a trip to visit
colleges back East. To break up the many campus tours, we decided to
visit George Washington’s Mount Vernon. What a wonderful unexpected
bounty of inspiration! George Washington was the epitome of the
gentleman farmer. His gardens were the perfect combination of beautiful
form and function. Each garden had a formal structure combined with a
relaxed, unpretentious air. We were impressed by Washington’s ability to
create a self-sustaining farm with such charm.
We made note of the different elements from Mount Vernon that we
wanted to emulate at Patina Farm, from small details like the rows of
espaliered fruit trees on simple wood trellises to larger design ideas
like the symmetrical axial compositions of the gardens. I noticed the
way irises and tulips shared space with the lettuce and cabbages in the
vegetable garden. The natural twigs used for the sweet pea supports were
both practical and attractive. Even the most rustic structures, like
Dung Repository, with its gray wooden board walls, log columns and
shingle roof, inspired our color palette as well as helping us decide to
create our own compost area. (Read more.)
Inevitably, the song has resonated most with those who have
experienced loss – loss that includes ‘losing’ one’s own country – but
who still believe in a bright new day. So 'Danny Boy' means
a great deal to members of the Irish diaspora forced into exile,
particularly in the States. Black Americans, too, have recognized the
loss-hope dynamic in the tune. It’s cathartic, like the blues.
What
particularly intrigued me when I started making this film was the
number of versions recorded by country artists. It didn’t feel like
coincidence. I knew they weren’t covering 'Danny Boy' just because it
was a standard. They had to be tapping into the heartbreak center of the
song.
In the film, I use Johnny Cash’s 1965 recording of 'Danny
Boy' as the prism to investigate the appeal of the song to country
artists. His daughter, Rosanne Cash, speaks of why it’s such a natural
fit for poor white southerners and their tough, intense lives. While
Larry Kirwan of the Irish-American band, Black 47, explains how 19th
Century Irish immigrants brought their fiddles and music to the
Appalachians. This subsequently influenced bluegrass – then country.
With an ancient Irish tune, the 'Londonderry Air,' at the song’s musical
heart, it was all beginning to make sense.
Songs like 'Danny
Boy' that last 100 years are rare. They appear simple, but are
beautifully complicated. You need a bunch of keys to unlock the
mysteries of 'Danny Boy,' but I believe one of its most essential
elements is its emotional dialectic – loss and hope, joy and pain,
sunshine and shadow – and these lie at the very center of all our
lives. (Read more.)
Curly Haugland of the Republican National Committeeman for North Dakota said in a letter
sent out on March 11 delegates may "vote according to their personal
choice in all matters to come before the Republican National Convention,
including the vote to nominate the Republican Candidate for President"
and disregard voters. Haugland dismisses primaries as "nearly worthless
'beauty contests'" and believes delegates "have been bound only once in
the history of the Republican Party."
According to the letter sent by Haugland, "In 1976, the Ford
campaign, afraid of losing "pledged" delegates to Reagan forces and
having the strength of delegate numbers needed, forced the adoption of
the "Justice Resolution" which amended the convention rules to bind the
delegates to cast their convention votes according to the results of
binding primaries. This historic event was the first convention in the
history of the Republican Party where the delegates were denied the
freedom to vote as they wished in the nomination vote for President.
And, 1976 was also the last time delegates have been bound by convention
rules to cast their votes according to the results of binding primary
elections, since the 1980 convention rescinded the Justice Resolution
entirely restoring the prohibition of binding."
In other words, every delegate is a superdelegate. It is a tactic that has been used by the Democrat Party for years. As Nate Silver
explains, "Superdelegates were created in part to give Democratic Party
elites the opportunity to put their finger on the scale and prevent
nominations like those of George McGovern in 1972 or Jimmy Carter in
1976, which displeased party insiders."
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic National Committee chair, admitted in February the system is rigged, but for the sake of diversity.(Read more)
Yet Redmond took the terrible gamble of recommending tens of
thousands of young Irishmen fight in World War I, where 30,000 or more
Irish lost their lives in order to prove his thesis of the Home Rule
paradox that fighting for Britain was the best way to achieve freedom
from it. In the days following Easter 1916, he utterly misread the
impact of the Rising, praising the British: “It has been dealt with
with firmness, which was not only right, but it was the duty of the
Government to so deal with it.”
Even Edward Carson had warned the British government to be careful who they punished. In contrast to Redmond, most of Irish America
quickly saw the Home Rule Bill as the latest illusionary comet sent by
British leadership. Most of the Irish in America traced their roots back
to the Famine, so it's hardly surprising that theirs was a rebel
tradition much more in tune with the men and women of 1916 than with
John Redmond's paradoxical call to fight for the British in order to
free the Irish.
The historical inflexion point for the Irish
Americans was not Home Rule but the American Revolution, which began in
1775 when farmers and peasants took up arms against a far superior
army and somehow defeated them. As is often noted, most Americans
started off the war as Loyalists but ended as Republicans or Patriots.
Ironically it was an Englishman, Thomas Paine, and his hugely
influential “Common Sense” with its rallying cry to fight that convinced
many of them. Empires and monarchies were never to be trusted,
Paine hammered home, and the Great War proved him right. A pity Redmond
never took note.
For Irish America, once news of the Easter Rising broke, the great mission was first to get President Woodrow Wilson to speak out, but while the patrician president agreed with them heartily in public, he mercilessly mocked them in private as Professor Robert Schmuhl’s excellent new book on the Easter Rising – “Ireland’s Exiled Children” – makes clear. Short
of gaining Wilson’s support, the Irish American leaders wanted to turn
back the global tidal wave of condemnation surrounding The Rising. (Read more.)
A number of elements made Rackham’s visual interpretation a turning
point in the history of both the Carroll classic and the art of
illustration. First and foremost was his distinctive aesthetic at the
intersection of the sentimental and the grotesque — sensitive and dark
at the same time, like a Neil Gaiman story or a Patti Smith song. But
public reception was polarizing — while many instantly recognized that a
singular creative genius was before them, others felt that Sir John
Tenniel’s original illustrations for Alice
had become so central to the beloved story that any other
interpretation was a sacrilege. Still, Rackham’s drawings came to
captivate the popular imagination and paved the way for a century of artistic takes on Carroll’s tale. (Read more.)
Last week, Catholics on Facebook were triumphantly hailing the "Appeal" against Trump as if it were Holy Writ. I saw it and was not impressed. Personally, I have been shocked at the malice and hatred towards Donald Trump on the part of Catholics. You would think they would be happy that we finally have a winning candidate who has declared himself to be pro-life. I had to block several people whose ill-humor spilled over on to my wall, with lies, insults and half-truths. I was happy to see the following statement in The Christian Review:
On March 7, 2016, prominent Catholics Robert P. George and George Weigel published in the National Review “An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics”
to “reject [Donald Trump’s] candidacy for the Republican presidential
nomination.” As a fellow Catholic to whom this appeal was addressed, I
respond in this open letter, apologizing for both the purpose and
language of this published piece.
While Professor George and Mr. Weigel opened their letter with a
noncontroversial (if incomplete) statement of Catholic priorities, and a
more questionable embrace of the Republican Party, they immediately
shifted, not to a candidate-by-candidate, reasoned analysis, but to a
direct and hostile attack on one candidate, Donald J. Trump. With no
factual support for their assertion that Trump’s appeal rests upon
racism and ethnic prejudice, George and Weigel fashioned a personal,
conclusory, name-calling hit piece on this candidate whose voter base constitutes a culture distinct from the more polished, elite world in which the authors live...Many Catholics, myself included, were dismayed that these respected
Catholic intellectuals drew upon the sort of language they disapprove of
in the candidate Trump. This alone warrants an apology. I wish to
assure candidate Trump and his voters that Catholics generally are
called upon by Gospel and church law to respect people whose differences
we might not understand and to treat all persons with dignity, even
people with whom we most strongly disagree or don’t understand.
The Catholic laity is held to a higher standard than mere avoidance
of hypocrisy. Our church law, and letters and directives from our popes,
exhort us to engage our work in a manner that serves as ‘witness to
Christ throughout the world.” (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity,
1965). This fundamental mission entails concern and care for the dignity
of every person, not merely the promotion of the church as institution
and enforcement of Catholic principles via legislation and political
mandate.
The dignity of every individual includes good reputation. Catholics
are admonished to avoid name-calling, gossip and other harm to a
person’s reputation in the community. Canon 220 of the 1983 Code of
Canon Law provides: “No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which
a person possesses or to injure the right of any person to protect his
or her own privacy.” (Read more.)
Marie-Antoinette "en gaulle" by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun
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"In every Eden, there dwells a serpent . . . ."
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St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us!
"...Bud forth as the rose planted by the brooks of waters. Give ye a sweet odor as frankincense. Send forth flowers, as the lily...and bring forth leaves in grace, and praise with canticles, and bless the Lord in his works." —Ecclesiasticus 39:17-19
The fact that a link is provided here in no way constitutes an endorsement of everything on the other end of the link.
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