Encarnacion Alzona

From Aleteia:

Encarnacion was the first Filipina to complete her doctoral studies; she was a national scientist, and a pioneering advocate of women’s suffrage. Born in southern Luzon, she completed an undergraduate and master’s degree in history from the University of the Philippines (U.P.), and then went on to pursue further studies as a pensionado scholar in the U.S. There, she completed a second master’s degree at Radcliffe College, and a Ph.D. at Columbia University, both in history. After Columbia, she returned to the Philippines, and became a history professor at U.P. Interestingly, she graduated from Columbia the same year John Paul II was born. There must have been something in their milieu that caused both to write about the dignity of women.

In 1919, Encarnacion wrote an article arguing for a woman’s right to vote. At this time, the Philippines was still a U.S. territory with a young democracy. The first local elections were held three years earlier, but only men were permitted to vote, as part of the U.S. government’s policy to gradually educate Filipinos into a functioning democracy. In her article, Encarnacion pointed out that women also need civic education, “they being what we proudly term the first teachers of men.” She explained that if women are permitted to vote, men’s respect for them would likely increase because “a person enjoying full political rights deserves greater respect and esteem than a disenfranchised one.” These ideas show that like John Paul II, she believed that society and history needed the contribution and participation of both men and women. (Read more.)

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King of Hate?

In spite of the glut of information on the internet, it seems many Americans are more ignorant and more uninformed than ever. The writer of this article in City Watch obviously knows nothing about Louis XVI, to whom he compares Trump as "a fat, foppish, little king." While Louis grew corpulent later in life he was a tall man and never foppish; he dressed simply. And I would not exactly describe Trump as any of those things either. To quote:

Watching Trump speak to the assembled Boy Scouts, the first thought that occurred to me was that he reminded me of a fat, foppish little king. A gone to seed Louis XVI. And then it hit me. That’s the core of his appeal to a lot of his fan base. As an American, I’ve always felt a native aversion to royalty. Or at least I thought it was an American trait. But maybe I’m an outlier. After all, you can’t walk through a supermarket checkout line without four different royals smiling at you from the front pages of the tabloids. It looks as if millions of Americans feel the need to be ruled by someone. And Trump fits the bill for now. (Read more.)

 Has it not occurred to the writer that perhaps millions of Americans do not feel the need to be "ruled" by someone as much as they feel the need for steady employment, affordable and quality healthcare, and safe neighborhoods? Perhaps the citizens who voted for Trump are motivated by the genuine issues of surviving from day-to-day and not by some deep subconscious Freudian need to be "ruled" by a monarch. And the word "hate" is so overused. I have watched many Trump rallies; while the hope, enthusiasm and patriotism are palpable, I have never been aware of any hatred, except on the part of the people who are there protesting Trump. The only hatred I have seen throughout the entire Trump phenomenon has been coming from Democrats and other lefties. 

Personally, I cannot muster feelings of hatred for people whom I have never met. I may find their actions repulsive or reprehensible but that does not automatically translate into hatred for a complete stranger. The people I have trouble not hating are those who have harmed someone I love. That is when hatred becomes an issue for me. But as far as hating anyone in the government or people I might disapprove of, the feelings of hate are just not there. I think when liberals use the word "hate" it is actually a misnomer. Knowing that conservatives or Christians might dislike or disapprove of certain behaviors creates discomfort in persons that are addicted to those behaviors and so they project their own feelings of self-hatred on to those whose disapproval they fear or resent. But hatred is not the motivating force behind those who voted for Trump and until the Left understands that they will never comprehend why so many Americans support The Donald. Share

The Christian Sense and Sensibility of Jane Austen

From The Catholic Herald:

This year marks the bicentenary of Jane Austen’s death, at the age of 41. What sort of Christian was this imaginative and highly intelligent woman? Jane was both the daughter and sister of clergymen. Her father, George Austen – “the handsome Proctor” – was vicar of the 12th-century church at Steventon in Hampshire.

At a time of Deism, near unbelief, notorious laxity, latitudinarianism and absentee parish clergy, George was a devout and faithful country parson who lived among his people and cared for them. Jane and her sisters sewed and provided clothes for the local poor. It’s worth noting that she was granted burial in the north aisle in Winchester Cathedral not on account of her undoubted literary stature – for she published her novels anonymously – but because of her charitable work in the local churches.

While George Eliot flirted with the sensual “enthusiasm” of the Wesleyan revival – we think of Dinah, the exotic young woman preacher in Adam Bede – Austen was altogether quieter. She was not remotely doctrinal or sacramental. She does not have anything in common with Dickens’s sentimentalisation of Christianity. She was not the sort of Protestant who protests against anything. She was Low Church: the common sense and very English version of Christianity summed up by the words “Do as you would be done by.”

As a satirist, Austen is up there with Jonathan Swift and Evelyn Waugh. She mocked the worldly clergy – but then she lampooned everybody in her renowned tone of kindly acerbity. Among her most memorable creations is the odious and obsequious parson William Collins in Pride and Prejudice. But throughout the novels she shows a benign affection for the Church of England, which in her day was the dominant presence in the countryside.

Her first biographers referred to her as “good, quiet Aunt Jane”. She had little understanding of how hard it was to be a Catholic in England in her day, and she died 12 years before the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Austen wrote: “The soul is of no sect, no party: it is our passions and our prejudices, which give rise to our religious distinctions.” (Read more.)

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Peaches Sublime

From Victoria:

Once known as a Persian apple, the peach originated in China but eventually captivated Europe—and the world beyond—with its soft velvet blush, intoxicating fragrance, and mellow character. This classic stone fruit remains a perennial orchard favorite and a glorious symbol of summertime. (Read more.)

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My Education in Home Schooling

From the WSJ:

But the biggest thing people want to talk about is socialization. Everyone is worried that I keep my child in a crate with three air holes punched in it and won't let her have friends until she gets her AARP card. There's a long answer, of course, but I'll sum it up this way: Homo sapiens have walked the Earth for at least 130,000 years and, in this time, they learned to be human from their elders, not from their peers. Mandatory education in the U.S. is less than 150 years old. Learning to be a productive adult human by spending a third of every day with other kids might be a good idea, but it's too soon to tell. I'm still unsure that the people best equipped to teach a 14-year-old boy how to be a man are other 14-year-old boys.

In fact, home-schooled kids are just as socialized as other children. They certainly seem to grow up to be, and feel, fully engaged. One study, by a Canadian home-schooling group, found that 67% of formerly home-schooled adult respondents said they are "very happy," as opposed to the general population's 43%. Another study, published in the Journal of College Admission, found that home-schooled students perform better on their ACTs, have higher college GPAs and are more likely to graduate in four years.

I shared many of the negative preconceptions before we began home schooling, but I can see now that my kid is as socially well adjusted as the dozens of other kids she hangs out with. (Her mother still needs work.) As we approached the end of our first year home schooling, we asked ourselves whether Alice should continue the experiment or return to what many of our friends still call "real school." At this point it no longer seemed to us like a binary decision. It was less a matter of either/or than of how-much-of-each.

I suspect that many Americans will reach the same conclusion as they adapt to new social and economic realities. Online classes have already become part of an extended curriculum for many students. In the iTunes version of public education, relevant learning experiences will originate from the large redbrick building down the street, from a recreation center downtown, from a music studio in Seattle or a lecture hall in London. As our habits evolve, it won't be home schooling as we've known it, but it won't be brick-and-mortar schooling, either. I call it "roam schooling."

Imagine that your high-school junior spends half of every day at the brick-and-mortar school up the street. Two afternoons a week, he logs into an art-history seminar being taught by a grad student in Paris. He takes computer animation classes at the local college, sings in the church choir and dives at the community pool. He studies Web design on YouTube. He and three classmates see a tutor at the public library who preps them for AP Chemistry. He practices Spanish on Skype and takes cooking lessons at a nearby restaurant every Saturday morning.

Is this home schooling or regular school? Who cares? He's learning. More important, his curriculum hits the basics but also works for him. Nobody expects all young people to download the same 20 or 30 songs on iTunes. Why should they be limited to the same dozen or so classes for school? And if you think that public education will never change because it's too big, I'd point out that the music business looked like an invincible Goliath before digital technology raised its slingshot. (Read more.)

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The Priests of Dachau

From The Catholic Herald:

Not to be able to celebrate Mass was a huge deprivation for the imprisoned priests. As one of their number, Fr Bedrich Hoffmann, relates, “What it means for a priest to live without Mass and without Communion can only be understood by another priest.” On admission, they were divested of their cassocks, bibles, missals, holy medals and rosaries, stripped and shaved and given old clothes with a red triangle sewn on them – the sign for “political” detainees.

However, as the result of intense diplomatic pressure from the Vatican, the situation changed at the end of 1940, when a chapel was permitted to be set up in Block 26. The first Mass at Dachau was celebrated on 21 January 1941. The tabernacle had been made secretly in the carpenter’s workshop; the altar and candlesticks had been salvaged from camp materials; and parishioners who had managed to stay in touch with their imprisoned priests, sent vestments, prayer books, Stations of the Cross, holy pictures and two monstrances.

The SS officials who ran the camp naturally placed many restrictions on the liturgical services. Lay prisoners were forbidden to attend – though Communion was secretly distributed to Catholics in other barracks at the risk of severe punishments, and sometimes other prisoners secretly attended Mass or hovered near the chapel window in order hear as much of the liturgy as possible. (Read more.)

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Silhouettes

Jane Austen

From Brenda J. Webb:

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the silhouette was popular with families and individuals who couldn’t afford a more formal and expensive mode of having their likenesses made. Oil paintings required several sittings, and even pastels or watercolor portraits took time. A silhouette was created in one quick sitting which made them affordable. A popular method used to create it was to have a person sit sideways before a screen with a light on a table on the other side of him. In this manner, a clear shadow was projected on the screen, which gave a perfect image if the light and sitter were arranged properly. The shadow was then replicated by hand. Among the upper class and commoners, shade parties became de rigueur, and soon almost everyone had a copy of their unique likeness. Later machines were invented for the same purpose.

Most silhouette artists were itinerants who worked their magic in popular tourist spots, such as Brighton or Bath, or at public fairs where people were apt to buy souvenirs. They either traced profiles by hand and painted them, or skillfully snipped away at paper with sharp scissors. With an experienced artist, this second method would have been fast and accurate. (Read more.)

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Do Children Belong to the State?

Little Charlie Gard is dead. The government usurped the place of the parents. From The Federalist Papers Project:

What’s most disturbing about this case is that the State believes they know better than parents on what’s best for their own child. What’s even more disturbing is those on the left believe the same thing. As discussed at NewsBusters:

In a piece for The Guardian entitled “Despite Charlie Gard’s Tragic Story, We Must Respect The Process Of Our Courts,” UCL health professor, Ian Kennedy, expressed sympathy for the plight of Charlie, but ultimately justified it on the basis that “children do not belong to their parents.”

…As a society, we must choose how to decide such heartbreaking cases. Of course each child is different, but do we accept that there should be principles and rules, whatever the circumstances, that guide us as we try to work out what’s best? These are the steps. The first is to recognise that children do not belong to their parents. Second, when a claim is made that parents have rights over their children, it is important to step back and examine the language used. We need to remind ourselves that parents do not have rights regarding their children, they only have duties, the principal duty being to act in their children’s best interests. This has been part of the fabric of our law and our society for a long time. Third, if we are concerned with the language of rights, it is, of course, children who have rights; any rights that parents have exist only to protect their children’s rights.

In other words, parents have no actual rights to make decisions for their children if the State doesn’t agree with those decisions. Parents are simply guardians of their own children and the State knows better. This is the society we live in today. The left believes parents aren’t the best “deciders” for their children; rather, the “experts” and the all-knowing bureaucrats know exactly what children really need. And this line of thinking isn’t just in Europe. (Read more.)

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Creativity vs Distraction

From Big Think:

Engaging creatively requires hitting the reset button, which means carving space in your day for lying around, meditating, or staring off into nothing. This is impossible when every free moment—at work, in line, at a red light—you’re reaching for your phone. Your brain’s attentional system becomes accustomed to constant stimulation; you grow antsy and irritable when you don’t have that input. You’re addicted to busyness.

And that’s dangerous for quality of life. As Seppälä points out many of the world’s greatest minds made important discoveries while not doing much at all. Nikola Tesla had an insight about rotating magnetic fields on a leisurely walk in Budapest; Albert Einstein liked to chill out and listen to Mozart on breaks from intense thinking sessions. 

Paying homage to boredom—a valuable tool in the age of overload—journalist Michael Harris writes in The End of Absence that we start to value unimportant and fleeting sensations instead of what matters most. He prescribes less in the course of a normal day.

Perhaps we now need to engineer scarcity in our communications, in our interactions, and in the things we consume. Otherwise our lives become like a Morse code transmission that’s lacking breaks—a swarm of noise blanketing the valuable data beneath. 

 (Read more.)

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A Queen Anne Town House is Renewed

From Victoria:

Perhaps it is the mix of the old with the new, the grand with the humble, that is the secret to the beauty of this old house—that, and its palpably peaceful atmosphere. Today, the wide hall, with its pale oak boards and water-blue runner, welcomes.

It takes a woman of vision to buy a neglected circa-1760 Queen Anne London town house and, within a year, transform it into an elegant family home. That its graceful architectural features were intact and its room proportions generous naturally helped, and finding South African interior decorator Grant White to assist her was kismet. “When I walked into this magnificent period property,” says owner Georgie Penn, “I knew I need never move again.” (Read more.)

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No Longer a Leftist

From Truth Uncensored:

Reading this anecdote, I felt that I was confronting the signature essence of my social life among leftists. We rushed to cast everyone in one of three roles: victim, victimizer, or champion of the oppressed. We lived our lives in a constant state of outraged indignation. I did not want to live that way anymore. I wanted to cultivate a disposition of gratitude. I wanted to see others, not as victims or victimizers, but as potential friends, as loved creations of God. I wanted to understand the point of view of people with whom I disagreed without immediately demonizing them as enemy oppressors.

I recently attended a training session for professors on a college campus. The presenter was a new hire in a tenure-track position. He opened his talk by telling us that he had received an invitation to share a festive meal with the president of the university. I found this to be an enviable occurrence and I did not understand why he appeared dramatically aggrieved. The invitation had been addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. X.” Professor X was a bachelor. He felt slighted. Perhaps the person who had addressed his envelope had disrespected him because he is a member of a minority group.

Rolling his eyes, Prof. X went on to say that he was wary of accepting a position on this lowly commuter campus, with its working-class student body. The disconnect between leftists’ announced value of championing the poor and the leftist practice of expressing snobbery for them stung me. Already vulnerable students would be taught by a professor who regarded association with them as a burden, a failure, and a stigma. (Read more.)

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Spend Time With Your Mother!

From Simplemost:

Has it been awhile since you’ve seen your mom? A 2012 study says you should invite her over for dinner soon. The study concluded that loneliness is a significant factor in the decline of quality of life in older adults, including risk of depression, cognitive impairment and health problems like coronary artery disease, and may even lead to an earlier death. Specifically, the study looked at 1,600 adults with an average age of 71. Researchers found that 23 percent of participants who reported being lonely died within six years of the study, while only 14 percent of those who reported having companionship died during the same six year period. The results, which were published in the JAMA Internal Medicine, remained consistent even after controlling for health and socioeconomic status. Another study published in the journal PLoS Medicine in 2010 found that social ties can be as important to extending life as losing weight if you are obese and getting active if you are sedentary. (Read more.)

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Fête Galante au Hameau de la Reine

From a series by Maurice Leloir, 19th century. (Via Vive la Reine.) Share

Land O’Lakes Conference

From Fr. Rutler at Crisis:

Exactly fifty years ago, fads ran wild at the “Land O’Lakes Conference” in Wisconsin organized by Father Theodore Hesburgh of the University of Notre Dame to update the culture of Catholic higher education. Its summary document was published on July 23, in a year when society seemed to be having a nervous breakdown. It was a time of Vietnam protest rallies, an exploding drug culture, the Cold War at fever pitch, and actual combat in the Six Days War. Instead of challenging the cultural neurosis, the Church succumbed to it, as theological and liturgical chaos disappointed what Joseph Ratzinger would call the Pelagian naivetés of the Second Vatican Council. The heads of Catholic colleges and universities who gathered at Land O’Lakes were fraught with a deep-seated inferiority complex, rooted in an unspoken assumption that Catholicism is an impediment to the new material sciences, and eager to attain a peer relationship with academic leaders of the secular schools whose own classical foundations were crumbling and whose presidents and deans were barricading their offices against the onslaught of Vandals in the guise of undergraduates.

Like Horace’s mountains that gave birth to a ridiculous mouse, the 26 conference participants labored for three days and then declared portentously in the first line of their Statement: “The Catholic university today must be a university in the full modern sense of the word.” Then they rallied the rhetorical anesthetics at their disposal to call for “warm personal dialogue” and “a self-developing and self-deepening society of students and faculty in which the consequences of Christian truth are taken seriously in person-to-person relationships.” While these cadences anticipate the cobbling of what in our present time have come to be “safe spaces” for students and faculty fleeing from facts or ideas they find upsetting or offensive, the Statement then trumpeted its real message: “…the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.” (Read more.)

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Jane Austen and Germaine de Staël

From The Conversation:

Two prominent writers died in July 1817. The first was arguably the most famous woman in Europe. The other was a country clergyman’s daughter whose life had revolved around her family and her home county.

Germaine de Staël travelled widely and her work had been translated into several languages. She was the only daughter of wealthy Swiss banker Jacques Necker, who became finance minister to Louis XVI, and was brought up in the stimulating environment of Parisian society. She published major treatises on the influence of passions on individuals and nations, on literature and its relationship to society, not to mention on Germany (1813). She wrote on Marie Antoinette’s trial, on peace, on translation, on suicide.

Her novels Delphine (1802) and Corinne or Italy (1807) were bestsellers throughout Europe. She was also a commentator on, and historian of, the French Revolution in texts which only appeared after her death. Most periodicals felt that anything she penned, fact or fiction, political or philosophical, was worthy of a mention – whether to praise or to condemn it.

Unlike Staël’s father, George Austen encouraged his daughter Jane’s literary pursuits: he bought her notebooks for her early stories, gave her a mahogany writing desk and attempted (unsuccessfully) to get her work into print in 1797. Jane Austen’s first published book, Sense and Sensibility, “a new novel by a lady”, which came out in 1811, bore no author’s name on its title page. The same would go for the other novels published in her lifetime – all sold well and brought a welcome income but, to the outsider, nothing could connect them with the discreet woman who, through her richer brother’s generosity, lived with her mother and sister in a cottage on his estate. (Read more.)

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Dunkirk (2017)

A review from World at War:

Dunkirk is not a war movie: it’s a movie about war and the experience of war, cleverly crafted by weaving three timelines together covering a week, a day and a single hour. That is the essence of its brilliance as the timelines only collide in the final sequence of the film, resulting in an incredibly moving conclusion. I won’t spoil that for those who haven’t seen it.

Watching this as a military historian who has worked on several documentaries about Dunkirk, I could not help cast a critical eye over it. Yes, there were discrepancies in kit, equipment and weapons, but only minor ones. The beaches did not look crowded enough at times, perhaps there wasn’t enough smoke over Dunkirk and perhaps the seas did not look busy enough with ships. There was arguably an over-focus on Little Ships, and the littlest of them, and some of the dialogue was occasionally questionable. But none of this was major, nor distracting, and it was clear my friend Joshua Levine had done his job well, as historical consultant.

Which begs the question: does historical accuracy matter? Of course, but Dunkirk is a film not a documentary. Many veterans of both world wars felt they could portray more of the truth of their experience through fiction and Dunkirk is all part of that genre. It doesn’t tell us the full story of Operation Dynamo, with every detail and nuance, but what it does do is give us a glimpse of so many angles, often with such intensity that even someone with no knowledge of WW2 could fail to walk away without an appreciation of what the experience at Dunkirk was like, or an appreciation of that generation.

The acting throughout this film was understated, and brilliant because of it. Many of the main characters hardly say a word, and don’t need to much of the time. Mark Rylance brings depth to the Little Ships story and Tom Hardy, as the pilot, captured the spirit of the RAF in 1940 in my opinion. The two lads who tell the story of the British Tommy were my favourites, though. Fair play to Harry Styles; he played his character well, and I liked it when he apologised for not having done anything brave except survive: that was enough, came the reply from the blind man, maybe even a WW1 veteran? But for me the previously unknown Fionn Whitehead was the real star of this film. His sequence at the end in particular, where he reads out of the newspaper, was incredibly moving. Again, I won’t post spoilers!

The World War Two generation is fast slipping from us. I have known them all my life, and I’m already half a century now. What that war meant to Britain, to the British people who lived through it, must never be forgotten, and its incredible story needs to inspire a new generation. That inspiration begins here, with Dunkirk. Not only a worthy film, but a great film, a film we have long needed. (Read more.)

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The Disdain of the Left for the American People

From The American Thinker:

From the left's perspective, the Trump presidency is illegitimate not because it lacked a plurality of votes or because of the supposed Russian connection.  It is illegitimate because it gives voice to those who do not deserve representation.  Hillary Clinton let it slip when she mocked the "basket of deplorables," those whom she accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia.  Having at first insisted that "half" of Trump voters fall into these categories, she then retreated from that figure: it was somewhat less than half who are deplorable.

Rarely has a presidential candidate been so candid and so obtuse at the same time, for "deplorable" is exactly what the left thinks of average Americans.  And for that reason, Trump's presidency cannot be allowed to succeed, even if sinking Trump means sinking the country.  The left is willing to savage our economy, trash health care, weaken our national defense, and lose the fight against terrorism just to see that the deplorables are kept in their place.  That is the central motive of the anti-Trump forces.

That sort of disdain for the heartland has a long history stretching back to John Quincy Adams, with his determination not to see Jackson achieve the presidency.  After the Era of Jackson and the Civil War that followed, it continued with the political dominance of the Northeast, the victory of McKinley over William Jennings Bryan, Wilson's expansion of government powers during WWI (including the Sedition Act of 1918), FDR's reversal of Coolidge's small-government policies, Johnson's disastrous anti-poverty programs, and Obama's governance by executive order in defiance of the people's elected representatives.  Ordinary Americans have always had to struggle against the ambitions of a political elite that assumes it has the right to govern in their place. (Read more.)

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A Brief History of the Scottish Tartan

From Vintage News:

The early tartans had only two or three colors extracted from local trees, berries, roots and plants growing in certain local areas. So, certain colors became symbols of and associated with clans. The clan tartans became widespread during the 19th century.  However these “clan tartans” are more of an invented tradition that started probably around the end 18th century. It is known that there weren’t such distinctions during the time of the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

It is supposed that the idea of groups of men being associated with certain tartan originates from the military units in the 18th century. So, before everyone could wear any tartan they preferred and it rather depended on the one’s location, but with time, its design became a symbol of identity with certain clans.

Some of the most popular clan tartans are, for example, Mackenzie’s one which is the uniform of Seaforth Highlanders, an infantry regiment of the British Army from Northern Scotland, established by the Earl of Seaforth in 1778. Today, the Pipes and Drums Band of the Royal Military College of Canada wears the Mackenzie tartan. (Read more.)

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Matilda of Canossa

From Nobility:

Before his death in 1056 Henry III gave back to Gottfried of Lorraine his wife and stepdaughter. When Matilda grew to womanhood she was married to her stepbrother Gottfried of Lower Lorraine, from whom, however, she separated in 1071. He was murdered in 1076; the marriage was childless, but it cannot be proved that it was never consummated, as many historians asserted. From 1071 Matilda entered upon the government and administration of her extensive possessions in Middle and Upper Italy. These domains were of the greatest importance in the political and ecclesiastical disputes of that time, as the road from Germany by way of Upper Italy to Rome passed through them. On 22 April, 1071, Gregory VII became pope, and before long the great battle for the independence of the Church and the reform of ecclesiastical life began. In this contest Matilda was the fearless, courageous, and unswerving ally of Gregory and his successors.

 Immediately on his elevation to the papacy Gregory entered into close relations with Matilda and her mother. The letters to Matilda (Beatrice d. 1076) give distinct expression to the pope’s high esteem and sympathy for the princess. He called her and her mother “his sisters and daughters of St. Peter” (Regest., II, ix), and wished to undertake a Crusade with them to free the Christians in the Holy Land (Reg., I, xi). Matilda and her mother were present at the Roman Lenten synods of 1074 and 1075, at which the pope published the important decrees on the reform of ecclesiastical life. Both mother and daughter reported to the pope favourably on the disposition of the German king, Henry IV, and on 7 December, 1074, Gregory wrote to him, thanking him for the friendly reception of the papal legate, and for his intention to co- operate in the uprooting of simony and concubinage from among the clergy. However, the quarrel between Gregory and Henry IV soon began. In a letter to Beatrice and Matilda (11 Sept., 1075) the pope complained of the inconstancy and changeableness of the king, who apparently had no desire to be at peace with him. In the next year (1076) Matilda’s first husband, Gottfried of Lorraine, was murdered at Antwerp. Gregory wrote to Bishop Hermann of Metz, 25 August, 1076, that he did not yet know in which state Matilda “the faithful handmaid of St. Peter” would, under God’s guidance, remain. (Read more.)

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Chaplains to the Zeitgeist

From Tom Piatak at Crisis:

Recently, La Civilta Cattolica ran an article by that journal’s editor-in-chief, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, and by Marcelo Figueroa, the Argentinian Presbyterian minister chosen by Pope Francis to be the editor of the Argentinean edition of L’Osservatore Romano, which subsequently republished the article. Since articles in La Civilta Cattolica are vetted by the Vatican secretary of state, since L’Osservatore Romano is the Vatican’s own newspaper, and especially since both Spadaro and Figueroa are reputed to be close to Pope Francis, this article has garnered enormous attention in Catholic circles. Also noteworthy is the article’s thesis: a contrast between what it terms “Pope Francis’ geopolitics” and an “ecumenism of hate,” the authors’ term for the alliance between American Evangelical Protestants and Catholics, who have been drawn together “around such themes as abortion, same-sex marriage, religious education in schools and other matters generally considered moral or tied to values.”

The first point to note, of course, is that the “geopolitics” of a particular pope are not matters of faith and morals, and the faithful are free to disagree with them. The authors concede as much when they use their essay to attack, of all things, the Holy Roman Empire, the entity created when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne on Christmas Day in 800 and whose leader was prayed for by name in the Easter Exsultet for centuries. No Catholic need have any more deference to what Spadaro and Figueroa claim, accurately or not, to be Pope Francis’ political vision than Spadaro and Figueroa show to the political vision of the many popes who supported the ideal of Catholic monarchy for centuries, or indeed to the political vision of more recent pontiffs who had a warmer appreciation of political parties opposed to legalized abortion and homosexual marriage than Spadaro and Figueroa do.

Indeed, it is odd that Spadaro and Figueroa single out for criticism, of all the political movements in the world, one centered on agreement on Catholic teaching pertaining to matters of faith and morals. American Evangelicals were not behind the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that “The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation.” (CCC, Section 2273). American Evangelicals did not lobby to have St. John Paul II declare, in Evangelium Vitae, that “direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being…. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church.”

Nor were American Evangelicals the impetus behind Pope Francis’ declaration, in Amoris Laetitia, that “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” Not only does the “ecumenical convergence” between Evangelicals and Catholics center on matters of clear Catholic teaching, but, for many Evangelicals, this “convergence” represents a conversion. When Roe v Wade was decided, many Evangelicals were indifferent to the prospect of legalized abortion or even somewhat supportive. It was the Catholic Church that was the center of opposition to legalized abortion in America in 1973. One would think that this conversion would be a cause for joy in Catholic publications, but for Spadaro and Figueroa it represents instead an “ecumenism of hate.”

There are, of course, legitimate criticisms to be made of both American Evangelicals and American pro-lifers. Many American Evangelicals subscribe to a theological anti-Catholicism, and they actively seek to convert Catholics to Protestantism. These efforts are particularly pronounced in Latin America, where the region’s historic shortage of priests has left many Catholics poorly catechized and easily persuaded by Protestant arguments they have never been taught to counter. And many Republicans have been quite cynical in their professed opposition to Roe v Wade, which remained the law of the land even after professed pro-life Republicans had appointed a majority on the Supreme Court. But, despite this political failure, the American pro-life movement has at least succeeded in keeping abortion alive as a moral issue. No matter how cynically many Republican politicians treat abortion, it is hard to say that the pro-abortion position has become dominant in America when a major political party claims to take the opposite position, its presidents profess to support the opposite position, and at least some of the justices on the Supreme Court continue to dissent from the decision that is the focus of the opposition.  Indeed, no one who pays any attention to American life can fail to notice that a substantial portion of the population does not accept the morality of abortion. The same cannot be said for many other Western countries whose politics Spadaro and Figueroa do not criticize.

Needless to say, these are not the criticisms Spadaro and Figueroa offer of the “ecumenism of hate.” Instead, they offer a potpourri of contemporary leftist tropes. They assert that those whose politics they disagree with are motivated by “hate.” They suggest that opposition to the legalization of abortion and gay marriage represents “the nostalgic dream of a theocratic type of state” and a “direct virtual challenge to the secularity of the state,” the same positions advanced by secularists for decades. They attack American Evangelicals for being “composed mainly of whites from the deep American South,” sounding remarkably like Hillary Clinton bemoaning the “basket of deplorables.” They fret about “Islamophobia,” something that also worries The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel, but something that probably did not bother St. Pius V, who prayed for the victory of the Christian fleet he was instrumental in assembling at Lepanto, the date of which is marked on the Church’s calendar by the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. (Read more.)

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The King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands in England

From Shannon Selin:

The Sandwich Islands was the name given to the Hawaiian Islands by Captain James Cook in 1778. King Kamehameha II, also known as Liholiho, inherited the throne of the Sandwich Islands in 1819, when he was 22 years old. Three years later, Britain’s King George IV sent a schooner called Prince Regent to Kamehameha II as a gift.

Kamehameha, who was looking for ways to modernize his kingdom, wrote a thank you letter in which he expressed his desire to place the Sandwich Islands under the protection of the British crown. He requested George IV’s counsel and advice. When a year passed with no reply, Kamehameha decided to sail to England to consult the British monarch in person. He commissioned a British whaling ship, L’Aigle, under Captain Valentine Starbuck, to make the voyage.

Accompanied by Queen Kamamalu (his half-sister and the favourite of his five wives) and a suite of eight persons, King Kamehameha left the Sandwich Islands on November 27, 1823. After a lengthy stop at Rio de Janeiro, the royal party landed at Portsmouth, England on May 17, 1824. (Read more.)

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The French Girl Myth

From W:

Such is the root of the "French girl myth," which has captured the imaginations of fashion publications, brands, and popular culture writ large ever since the days of Coco Chanel, and maybe even as far back as Marie Antoinette. We find ourselves wanting to do everything "like a French girl," simply because there is a way in which French girls do things. That is to say: there is arguably no unified sense of taste for American girls, which is, of course, ultimately what makes America the place that it is.The grass is always greener, though, and thanks to celebrated French fashion icons like Brigitte Bardot and Françoise Hardy; movies like An American In Paris and Amélie; and books like A Moveable Feast and French Women Don't Get Fat, American women entertain the idea that French woman have the innate ability to possess superior style, smaller waists, clearer skin, more complex neckties, cooler social lives, and richer romance than the rest of us—and all while putting in little to no effort. (Read more.)

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Signs

From Roman Catholic Man:

In February of last year, I wrote an article that was a compilation of historical pieces to a puzzle. The title of the article was, Our Lady of Fatima, 1917-2017 – Why 100 Years Matters. It is the most shared article I have ever written, at over 61,000 shares. I did my best to piece together what I had noticed about significant events preceding and leading up to this centennial year of 2017. But, what about this centennial year?

My good friend, Emmett O’Regan, has spent years seeking to unveil scripture, prophesies, apparitions of the Blessed Mother, etc.. In fact, he wrote a book on all of this entitled, Unveiling the Apocalypse. While Emmett’s amazing book goes into mind-boggling details, I want to highlight some of the events we are about to experience during this centennial year of Fatima, many of which Emmett O’Regan has brought to my attention.

I’ve recently become aware of St. Michael’s Lent, thanks to Emmett O’Regan. St. Francis of Assisi was especially devoted to Saint Michael and would fast from the Feast of the Assumption (August 15) to Saint Michael’s Feast Day on September 29. In fact, St. Francis of Assisi received the stigmata while he was praying and fasting during St. Michael’s Lent. Some Franciscan communities continue to observe the period from August 15 to September 29 as “St. Michael’s Lent”, a time of fasting and prayer. Shortly after the beginning of this year’s St. Michael’s Lent, August 21, 2017, on the Feast of Our Lady of Knock, there will be a Total Solar Eclipse that cuts across the heart of America. (Read more.)

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St. Columba's Scriptorium

From Blog of the Courtier:

St. Columba (521-597 A.D.) is known as one of the “Apostles of Ireland”, and you can read a more thorough biography of him by following this link. He lived the second half of his life on the Scottish island of Iona, where he founded a hugely influential monastic community in which he served as Abbott. He spent a great deal of time during the day writing and praying in his scriptorium, which was really just a little wooden hut that he built on a rocky mound overlooking the Abbey.

Not everything on Iona was contemplative, however. St. Columba and his companions also worked actively to expand their community to become a training center for missionaries to the many pagan tribes that dominated much of the British Isles during this period. In addition, the monks at Iona not only chronicled much of early Irish history, and preserved ancient texts for their library that would otherwise have been lost to us, but they are believed by many historians to have created the famous Book of Kells, with its lavish and strange Celtic decorations. (Read more.)

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How to Grow and Use Lavender

From Veranda: "Wondering what to do with all that lavender you're growing in your yard? From soaps to scones to sprays, we rounded up several lovely ways to put your lavender to good use." (Read more.)

White Chocolate Lavender Ice Cream

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QTBGL Catholics

From Crisis:

For those who may not know, “QTBGL” stands for “Quietly Totally Believing God’s Law” and is sometimes referred to more simply as “TBGL” (just Totally Believing God’s Law). Personally, I think the “Q” is an essential aspect of our community, since it’s important to recognize just how quietly we go about totally believing the fullness of truth of the Catholic faith in our daily lives.

Coming out at this moment is vitally important. Not only do I need to be utterly honest about who I really am, but the Church needs to do a better job ministering to the QTBGL Catholic in the pew, not to mention QTBGL clergy in the Church, like me. We are marginalized, unjustly discriminated against, and regularly face demeaning “orthophobia” (irrational hate for, and fear of, right-thinking Christians) not only from fellow Catholics but even from secular society.

The level of orthophobia is getting worse, in fact. Within the Church, we are called “haters” and “bigots” simply for accepting and affirming what the Church actually teaches us about liturgy, justice, virtue, and, of course, the human person and sexuality (natural law). Outside the Church, orthophobes everywhere are trying to curtail our religious liberty, take away our conscience rights, and subject us to ridicule and hate simply because of who we really are.

Yet many QTBGL Catholics really feel as though we were born this way. Or at least baptized this way. Even in the face of such orthophobic animosity and outright discrimination (some of us have even lost jobs after publicly coming out as QTBGL), we know we are being true to ourselves. We are resigned to a rather lonely life of quietly accepting each and every truth taught to us by the Church, often at great personal cost. (Read more.)

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Archbishop Chaput Defends Pro-Trump Catholics

From Life Site:

On July 13, La Civiltà Cattolica, which the Vatican reviews and approves prior to publication, criticized American "value voters" who have banded with evangelicals to fight abortion and same-sex "marriage". This "strange ecumenism" fosters an "xenophobic and Islamophobic vision that wants walls and purifying deportations," thus making it an "ecumenism of hate," Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa wrote in the article. The "ecumenism" of Pope Francis, for which they advocate, "moves under the urge of inclusion, peace, encounter and bridges," they wrote. Spadaro is a close papal collaborator and often called the pope's "mouthpiece." Figueroa, a Presbyterian pastor, runs Argentina's edition of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. 

Spadaro and Figueroa's dismissal of the attacks on religious liberty in the U.S. "sounds willfully ignorant," Chaput wrote. "It also ignores the fact that America’s culture wars weren’t wanted, and weren’t started, by people faithful to constant Christian belief." The article was "an exercise in dumbing down and inadequately presenting the nature of Catholic/evangelical cooperation on religious freedom and other key issues," Chaput wrote. Chaput reminded "progressives" who are "wary" of religious liberty that religious freedom is what allows faith communities to serve the poor and "those in need."

"The divide between Catholic and other faith communities has often run deep," Chaput continued. "Only real and present danger could draw them together. The cooperation of Catholics and evangelicals was quite rare when I was a young priest. Their current mutual aid, the ecumenism that seems to so worry La Civilta Cattolica, is a function of shared concerns and principles, not ambition for political power."

"It’s an especially odd kind of surprise when believers are attacked by their co-religionists merely for fighting for what their Churches have always held to be true," Chaput wrote. Chaput noted that earlier this month, one of the main funders of the LGBT movement said he wants to "punish" those who oppose the homosexualist agenda.

"It doesn’t take a genius to figure out whom that might include," he wrote. "Today’s conflicts over sexual freedom and identity involve an almost perfect inversion of what we once meant by right and wrong."

"There’s no way to soften or detour around the substance of Romans 1:18-32, or any of the other biblical calls to sexual integrity and virtuous conduct," the archbishop continued. Romans 1:18-32 addresses "the wrath of God." This wrath is "revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness," it says. The passage laments those who "exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever." (Read more.)

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"The Beguiled" Controversy

I do wish Sofia Coppola would stop making historical films, since she omits aspects of history which are too unpleasant for her. It is a shame because she always works with the finest actors on spectacular sets. I want to love her films but instead they make me cringe. According to The Daily Iowan:

When I finally saw The Beguiled, my excitement waned after the first 15 minutes of dewy mansions and frayed petticoats. A dark fairy tale about white Southern women, with no people of color in sight? Something felt distinctly, disturbingly anachronistic about this — and it wasn’t the corsets.

It’s a trite feminist tale, beginning with the arrival of a wounded Yankee soldier (Colin Farrell) at Farnsworth Seminary (run by an imposing Nicole Kidman, populated by a host of diaphanous young actresses), and ending with the assertion of the power of the matriarchy. OK, fine. I stayed, of course, through the passion, and betrayal, and (spoiler alert) emasculating amputation, and (bigger spoiler alert) manslaughter because I wanted to know why Sofia Coppola made the darn movie in the first place. Turns out Coppola’s film is a remake of a 1971 movie by Don Siegel, which in turn was an adaptation of a 1966 novel by Thomas P. Cullinan. What?

Having never read the novel nor watched the original film, I went into the theater quite blind — like many other viewers, no doubt. I had no idea that there were two black women missing from the plot. Coppola trimmed them out like weeds to allow the white ladies to blossom. I hope my innocence and subsequent research will assist you in making the call on Coppola’s artistic choices. Some sources cry “whitewashing.” Others defend Coppola’s delicacy in tiptoeing around potentially stereotypical portrayals of black folks. Coppola, to her credit, articulated her motivations and ideas for the film in a concise essay published on IndieWire, but I’m not persuaded.

Though Coppola makes a convincing case for her gloss of slavery and erasure of black characters, she’s got a history of subtracting people of color (Bling Ring) and avoiding the messy bits of history (Marie Antoinette). Look those movies up, and you’ll see what I mean. There’s something coy, blithe, and unnervingly true to form about the way she pruned the problematic racial material from the typical plight of Southern belles pent up with their passions.

OK, back to the mysterious invisible women of The Beguiled. According to an article in Slate, Coppola combined Edwina, a biracial teenager, with Harriet Farnsworth, sister to Martha, resulting in the Edwina played by Kirsten Dunst; the slave girl Mattie (Hallie, in the Siegel film) was straight-up subtracted.

Coppola, an expert in portraying wealthy, disillusioned white women, stuck with what she knew — for better or worse. She defended herself with careful sentences about her concern with correct portrayals of slaves, her need to develop the drama between the main (white) characters, and her contempt for the stereotypes perpetuated by the original characters she excised. Coppola made one important point in this essay: Evidence does support her hazy vision of upper-class Southern white ladies isolated and altered by the ravages of war. Yes, such a phenomenon had its own intriguing struggles and maybe deserves a cinematic re-enactment. But Coppola breezes past any hint of the complicated facts of the Civil War with three damningly simple words: “The slaves left.” That’s it? Highly suspect. Slavery did not just disappear when the Union soldiers descended upon the plantations. (Read more.)

Here is a feminist review from the LA Review of Books which laments that fact that Coppola's new film about the Civil War omits showing slavery:

TRAILERS FOR The Beguiled promised something new from writer-director Sofia Coppola: edited down to two minutes, her sixth feature appeared taut, sexy, suspenseful, swift. The last half hour or so achieves those adjectives, but The Beguiled does not really try to be a thriller, and it is in at least one fundamental way standard Coppola fare. Like Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, and The Bling Ring before it, The Beguiled is a movie about bored white women in rigorous pursuit of fantasy, often because reality holds little interest for them, but also because they’ve been discouraged from serious engagement with it. Or perhaps they just haven’t been given sufficient incentive: Coppola’s protagonists suffer the boredom of feeling extraneous to their contexts. In The Bling Ring, that context was celebrity-obsessed Los Angeles; in Marie Antoinette, it was Revolutionary France; in The Beguiled, it just happens to be the American Civil War.

And for Coppola, it truly just happens to be: the film refuses the burden of politics, which is to say (in the case of the Civil War, if not in all cases) the burden of history. The Beguiled takes place entirely on the grounds of the Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies in Virginia, where a small handful of unclaimed students, the teacher Miss Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), and headmistress Miss Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman) wait out the war’s end in relative isolation from its primary dramas and protagonists. Cannon fire booms in the distance; the smoke of battle peppers the skyline; and while Confederate soldiers occasionally stop at the school’s gates, only one man has any dialogue of note: Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell), a recently immigrated Irish mercenary soldier for the Union, found injured in the woods by one of the students and carried back to the school to receive Christian hospitality and medical attention. Conflicting seductions ensue.

As a number of critics have noted, every single character in The Beguiled, speaking or not, is white. The child Amy tells the Corporal in one of the opening lines of dialogue that the slaves have left — she does not say whether they’ve escaped, been emancipated, or were allowed to simply walk off the grounds — an event that never returns to consciousness for the film’s remaining 90 minutes. Coppola has said in interviews that she did not want to treat the subject of slavery lightly, presumably by sprinkling some mute black figures on the landscape. That the South’s peculiar institution might, in fact, have been central to the moral and sexual identity formation of white women does not seem to have occurred to her, or it is at least not the story Coppola wants to tell. Instead, the most vivid and unruly presences haunting the film’s periphery are non-sentient: unswept leaves cover the school’s veranda, vines creep along the upper balcony, weeds threaten the garden (now tended by the students themselves), and giant tree branches are strewn about the yard. In lingering atmospheric shots, the viewer is repeatedly reminded of nature’s slow but untamable encroachment. Likewise, and likely shocking for Coppola fans, the film features almost no soundtrack; with the exception of an occasional ambient mood piece, its main nonverbal sounds are the patter of feet and the chirping of birds. (Read more.)

 From W:

On Friday, Coppola released a statement to IndieWire defending her decision to remove the film's only black character—and to erase any trace of slavery in a Civil War-era film—starting off with the facts. "According to historians and several women’s journals from the time, many slaves had departed, and a great number of white women of the South were left in isolation, holding on to a world whose time had rightly come to an end—a world built on slave labor," Coppola wrote, calling her decisions "historically accurate." Plus, she continued: "I felt that to treat slavery as a side-plot would be insulting."

Still, a slave named Hallie was undoubtedly present both in Siegel's 1971 film and its original 1966 novel version by Thomas Cullinan. But seeing as Hallie was also the only character who "doesn't speak proper English" and whose voice is "not even grammatically transcribed," the director decided not to include her in the end. "I did not want to perpetuate an objectionable stereotype where facts and history supported my choice of setting the story of these white women in complete isolation, after the slaves had escaped," she wrote.That decision, Coppola continued, "comes from respect," as well as a desire to avoid becoming one of the "many examples" of white artists appropriating slaves and "'giving them a voice.'" Indeed, Coppola wrote she's hoping the conversation around the issue will help to avoid such situations in the future: "I sincerely hope this discussion brings attention to the industry for the need for more films from the voices of filmmakers of color and to include more points of views and histories," she added. (Read more.)

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Knockers

From Icy Sedgwick:

Also known as the Knacker, Bucca (Cornwall), Bwca (Wales) or Tommyknocker (US), the knockers derive from similar origins as leprechauns and brownies. Legends claim they’re only 2ft tall and live underground. They dress like miners and steal unattended food or tools. Mining was dangerous work. Poisonous gases, pools of water, and collapses provided plenty of hazards on a daily basis. If you saw the second season of Poldark, you’ll know how perilous Cornish tin mines could be. Naturally, miners were constantly alert to the sounds of cave-ins. Creaking earth or timbers would strike fear into their hearts. Such ‘knocking’ was attributed to the knockers. (Read more.)

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The Garden Path

 I love garden paths. Here are pictures of an enchanting garden in Texas. From Southern Living:

Broussard and his team designed the hardscape and installed it in sections, carefully developing the structures and textures that make this garden one of a kind. It's a space for meandering, and all paths lead to the leafy arbor. Broussard explains, "We needed a place for the paths to meet in an organized way. They start and end at the dining area, so it's a perfect jumping-off point to explore the landscape." The canopy is composed of four "Bradford" pear trees trained into an arch and woven together; they cast shade over the teak table below. "Coming up with the arbor was pure genius on Jackson's part, and we enjoy it throughout the seasons," Margie says."During the hot Texas summers, deciduous pears provide the benefit of a cool, shady canopy," Broussard adds. The arbor also provides some of the few seasonal color changes in the garden, as the trees' snowy white spring blooms give way to bright green leaves in summer and fiery red ones in autumn. (Read more.)

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Cardinal Sarah’s Challenge

From The Catholic Herald:

The tenth anniversary of Summorum Pontificum – Pope Benedict XVI’s statute which granted priests the liberty to celebrate the “old Latin Mass”, now known as the Extraordinary Form (EF) – passed on July 7 as one would have expected. Traditional Catholics attracted to the EF were grateful for the more liberating posture of liturgical law and spoke, as they customarily do, about how the wider offering of the EF had a salutary effect on how the Novus Ordo, or Ordinary Form (OF), is celebrated.

The anniversary, though, did include an unexpected note from a most authoritative source. Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, marked the anniversary with an article in La Nef, a French publication. Not available online, it has been reported on in English by the Tablet. Cardinal Sarah wrote in favour of the “mutual enrichment” of the two forms of the Roman Rite, a phrase of Benedict XVI’s arguing that both forms have riches that would enhance the other if incorporated.

Over the past 10 years, this has been interpreted in EF circles in a mostly unilateral way: the OF ought to adapt the practices of the EF. Cardinal Sarah is certainly in favour of this – he has argued in the past for ad orientem celebration of the OF, greater use of Latin, and more periods of silence, including some of the priestly prayers. In La Nef, he goes further, recommending that Holy Communion be received kneeling and on the tongue; that the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar be restored at the beginning of Mass; and that the priests keep united after the consecration those fingers which have touched the sacred species.

All of which is music to the ears of those devoted to the EF. But the key concept Cardinal Sarah advanced may sound a challenge too. Sarah suggested that the expression “reform of the reform” be abandoned precisely because it has a unilateral connotation – the Novus Ordo ought to be enriched by the traditional liturgy only.

“ ‘Reform of the reform’ has become synonymous with dominance of one clan over the other,” the cardinal wrote in French. “This expression may then become inappropriate, so I prefer to speak of liturgical reconciliation. In the Church, the Christian has no opponent!” Reconciliation means movement from both “clans”, as it were. That is likely to encounter opposition from some, perhaps many, traditionalist quarters. (Read more.)

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America's Most Popular Heresy

From ChurchPop:

First off, nowhere in the Christian Scriptures are we told to be nice. We are told be to be humble, merciful, compassionate, bold, courageous, holy, strong, loving, and whole host of other things. But never merely nice. And let’s be honest, nice is a really low bar. MTD is a plea to be inoffensive. It is why all religions can be the same. The goal isn’t holiness, it’s being nice. It is believing in nothing so strongly that one triggers no one. It is theological milquetoast. Our Catholic faith calls for us to be virtuous, strong, courageous, and so willing to love as God loves that we will lay down our lives, embrace sacrifice and suffering, and be heroic. Our Catholic faith produces knights and ladies, not snowflakes and SJWs. (Read more.)

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Summer Lights

From Southern Lady: 

As the sun slips below the horizon, the shadows of dusk try to nudge us inside, but what we really want is to linger a little longer in this blissful summer weather. Here are a few of our favorite ways to extend the evening in brilliant and stylish ways...Simple-yet-chic designs by Southern artisan extraordinaire Natalie Chanin inspired an outdoor tableau to usher in the first days of fall. The happy gathering is bound to last into the evening, so hang pierced-tin lanterns among the branches to light the area when the sun begins to fade. (Read more.)

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On Vacation Bible School

From The Federalist:

These programs are written and produced by Christians with good intentions, but the baseline bait n’ switch philosophy is perverse, like trying to get your child to eat vegetables by embedding them in a Twinkie. Sure, the child will hear some good things about God, but the medium of the message—the razzle-dazzle theme, characterless music, throwaway crafts, forced theatrics, the theological minimalism—is what the child internalizes.

The deeper message conveyed is that what is meant to be an eternal truth is derivative, unserious, inauthentic, forgettable, commercial, frivolous, and cheap. Based on the evidence, millennials figured out how to nibble at the bait and leave the hook bare. To speak generally, the medium of the message becomes its own catechesis, catechizing children in the forms of pop culture. The shallow entertainment value of attention-grabbing imagery and soundtracks keeps the soul bopping around from thought to thought, preventing any sort of serious reflective thinking. Yes, even four-year-olds are capable of reflective thinking!

Meanwhile, the focus on the phantasmic—commercially generated themes, images, and archetypes—undermines what is meant to be a Logos-based faith consisting of organized and systematic thought. Yes, kids can learn about concepts like sin, redemption, and the Incarnation! Finally, the programs’ essential ephemerality encultures children in a throwaway culture, suggesting implicitly that the faith is one of the passing fads to grow out of, rather than an eternal truth to grow into. Yes (goodness!), children yearn for steady, eternal things in their lives! (Read more.)

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Abu Simbel

From Ancient History:

Abu Simbel is a temple complex, originally cut into a solid rock cliff, in southern Egypt and located at the second cataract of the Nile River. The two temples which comprise the site (The Great Temple and The Small Temple) were created during the reign of Ramesses II (c. 1279 - c. 1213 BCE) either between 1264 - 1244 BCE or 1244-1224 BCE. The discrepancy in the dates is due to differing interpretations of the life of Ramesses II by modern day scholars. It is certain, based upon the extensive art work throughout the interior of the Great Temple, that the structures were created, at least in part, to celebrate Ramesses' victory over the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BCE. To some scholars, this indicates a probable date of 1264 BCE for the initial construction as the victory would have been fresh in the memory of the people. However, the decision to build the grand monument at that precise location, on the border with the conquered lands of Nubia, suggests to other scholars the later date of 1244 BCE in that it would have had to have been begun after the Nubian Campaigns Ramesses II undertook with his sons and was built as a symbol of Egypt's power. (Read more.)

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Cristo Velato

From Aleteia:

Although Corradini was in fact commissioned with the job in the first place, he died having only produced a clay model for what would later be a definitive piece sculpted in marble. It was Giuseppe Sammartino, then, who ended up producing the astonishing sculpture of a dead Jesus, covered by a transparent shroud carved out of the very same marble block shared with the rest of the statue. Sammartino’s mastery – the veil covering the figure of Jesus being in fact “transparent” — didn’t only gain him a well-deserved place in the history of Western art, but also turned his artwork into the stuff of legend.

Some stories claim Sammartino covered his sculpture with a linen veil he managed to transform into marble by means of complex chemical-alchemical processes. Those very same legends would also claim that Raimondo di Sangro, the commissioner of the sculpture, was himself an alchemist who taught Sammartino the mysteries of his pseudo-science. Of course, these are but legends. (Read more.)

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“Service Trips” and Voluntourism

From the Almost Doctor's Channel:

Do you want to feel fulfilled? Do you want to “Be the change you wish to see in the world?” How about adding some international healthcare experience to your residency applications? The common theme in those sentences is “you”. But it shouldn’t be about you, it should be about the people you’re there to help.

My least favorite but most common response when asking someone about their micro-trip abroad goes something like this: “I was heartbroken to see how life is there. It really makes me realize just how good we have it. My life will never be the same.” (*Rolls eyes*)

If you truly want this experience — to change your world perspective, etc. — then at least call it like it is and admit you’re going on a self-fulfillment trip. Don’t call it humanitarian work when the only human benefiting from this experience is you.

As Al Jazeera America points out, “As admirably altruistic as it sounds, the problem with voluntourism is its singular focus on the volunteer’s quest for experience, as opposed to the recipient community’s actual needs.”

Ask yourself this: Do you want to go help, or do you want the people to be helped? If you honestly care more about the latter, then understand that the best way to help a community may not involve you personally traveling to it. Unskilled, short-term voluntourists often do very little to actually help a community develop in a sustainable manner. (Read more.)

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Love, Needlework and Alexander Hamilton

From Two Nerdy History Girls:

True love, a war-time memento, and virtuoso needlework: inspiration doesn't get much better for me than that! This elaborately embroidered mat was stitched by a young woman in Albany, NY in 1780, specifically to surround the miniature portrait of her fiancé. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

The mat is worked in silk and metallic (now tarnished) threads, with metallic bobbin lace (also now tarnished) framing the miniature. The lace may have been a costly import - perhaps it had originally trimmed a gown - or it may have been worked by the young woman herself. The harmony of the design, the elegantly shaded colors, and the precision of the stitches all indicate that she possessed considerable skill with her needle as well as a flair for design.

There's also little doubt that this was a labor of love whose sheer exuberance (imagine how brilliant it must have been when the colors were still fresh and the metallic threads glittered!) threatens to overwhelm the tiny miniature, which is less than two inches in height. You can just tell that the young woman was dreaming of her beloved with every stitch she took. Perhaps she even kept the miniature nearby as inspiration.

Who were these two sweethearts? The needleworker was Elizabeth Schuyler, 22, and her fiancé was Lt. Colonel Alexander Hamilton, 23, who was serving in the Continental Army as an aide-de-camp to Commander-in-Chief Gen. George Washington. In 1780, the American Revolution was dragging through its sixth year, with no resolution in sight. The war had brought these two together - they had become engaged during the army's winter encampment earlier in the year - just as it also kept them apart during the summer and fall. Both had hoped for a quick wedding, but Alexander's military duties forced them to postpone their marriage until shortly before Christmas, 1780. (Read more.)

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She-Sheds

From the Times-Picayune:

When life in the palace of Versailles with Louis and their four kids got to be too much, Marie Antoinette slipped away to the Petit Trianon, a quaint (by royal standards) cottage in the garden. Two-hundred-plus years later, women across America have found the young queen was onto something. Today, "she sheds" -- small outbuildings women have created for their own purposes -- are fast becoming the new "it" structures. "The term she shed was barely on the radar two years ago," said Erika Kotite, author of "She Sheds: A Room of Your Own" (Cool Springs Press, January 2017). "Today a Google search surfaces millions of hits. Pinterest is on fire with she-shed content, and last year, a new TV series called "He Shed, She Shed" came out on FYI Network" -- all in response to a pent-up need for some private space. (Read more.)

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