The Pope in France

Pope Leo at Notre Dame with the statue of Our Lady of Charles X

 From Vatican News:

Light inundated Notre-Dame as Pope Leo XIV celebrated vespers in Paris' beloved Cathedral. It felt like a fitting celebration for the restored and renewed basilica, a place of worship and iconic symbol of the “Ville Lumière“, badly damaged by fire on 15 April 2019.

On that day, dramatic images and videos of the cathedral engulfed in flames, and of people praying in the streets as the fire consumed the building, spread around the world through social media and news outlets.

Today, the French Church has come together again. This time to rejoice, as the Pope visited the Cathedral and celebrated Vespers, almost two years after its reopening in December 2024, following a long and meticulous restoration process.

As the sun shone through the stained-glass windows, colorful patterns moved slowly across the walls. Meanwhile, an organ played and the choir sang while the bishops, priests, consecrated men and women, seminarians, and other members of the French Church solemnly prayed together with the Successor of Peter.

Before the Vespers, Pope Leo venerated a relic of the crown of thorns, which was placed on Christ’s head during his Passion. A symbol of his suffering and sacrifice before his Resurrection.

“We are gathered for Evening Prayer in this place which, more than any other, has invited the people of Paris for centuries to lift their eyes towards heaven,” Pope Leo said in his homily. (Read more.)

Mass at the Place de la Concorde, where thousands were guillotined (Via Daily Mail)

I wish instead of Robespierre the article had mentioned Madame Elisabeth. From Rome Reports:

The Place de la Concorde in Paris is a site marked by some of the darkest moments in French history.

During the Revolution, the guillotine stood here, and more than a thousand people were executed. Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre were among them.

Two centuries later, Pope Leo XIV celebrates the Eucharist here before nearly 600,000 people. A turnout that marks a new chapter in the Church in France.

The pope is using this celebration to call for a secular society.

LEO XIV

Seeing you gathered here, brothers and sisters, heirs to a long and beautiful history of holiness in France, I say to you: in turn, drink deeply from this spring that is the pierced Heart of Jesus. Yes, you thirst for God, for life, for truth, for unity, for peace, for communion, for happiness. You long to rediscover a radiant horizon, to build a renewed nation rooted in a faith that nourishes its very foundations.

But the pope does not stop with France’s religious identity. He goes straight to the individual and a much more universal question: what does a Catholic drink from when he or she thirsts for life?

LEO XIV

Brothers and sisters, we must acknowledge that here on earth, nothing can fully satisfy us. Just when we think our search is finally over and our efforts have been rewarded, that inner emptiness often resurfaces, even more profound than before.

Are we content with material possessions, immediate gratification, and the countless little idols that promise the world but leave our hearts empty?

And while, in 2008, Benedict XVI came to France asking how faith could survive in a secularized society, today, Pope Leo XIV is not talking about survival.

He is talking about renewing the country from its roots: building a renewed nation through a faith that can once again nourish society.

This is not about rebuilding a blood-soaked square, but renewing a society that, according to the pope, thirsts for truth, peace and happiness. (Read more.)

Pope Leo in Lourdes

From EWTN:

Leo met Sept. 27 with staff and sick guests of the Accueil Notre-Dame (Notre Dame Home), a residential accommodation classified as a healthcare facility, which hosts sick, disabled, and frail pilgrims to Lourdes.

The Catholic shrine is one of the most visited in the world, drawing more than 3 million people every year, many in search of miraculous physical healing.

The 136-acre property includes the Grotto of Massabielle, where a young St. Bernadette Soubirous saw 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary starting on Feb. 11, 1858. Today, pilgrims to the sanctuary bathe themselves in the freshwater spring Mary revealed to Bernadette.

Visitors have reported 7,000 healings since the apparitions; after lengthy investigations, the Church has declared that 72 of the recoveries were miraculous, meaning unexplainable by science. (Read more.)

 

 From CWR:

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is among the most popular Catholic shrines in the world, built on the site of Mary’s apparitions to St. Bernadette in 1858. It is particularly visited by the sick, who come to bathe in or drink its healing spring water.

In his homily, Pope Leo noted that a “call to conversion, both tender and urgent,” was a central part of the message the Virgin Mary entrusted to Bernadette, and that “it is today, not tomorrow, that we must repent.”

He said Jesus is quite direct about the call to repentance: “As St. Luke tells us, ‘Unless you repent, you will all perish.’ But he also extends our horizon beyond this earthly life to the horizon of eternal life.”

“Did not the Virgin Mary say to St. Bernadette, ‘I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the next’?” Leo said.

The pope noted that we can often forget this in an age and society focused on progress and material wellbeing.

Eternal life is already won for us by Jesus’ sacrifice, he continued, but “the obstacle to grace and eternal life — the only obstacle to this love — is sin.” (Read more.)

 From OSV:

Holding a large candle in his right hand and a rosary in his left, Pope Leo processed slowly behind an illuminated statue of the Virgin Mary through the crowd of pilgrims holding candles, as the five decades of the glorious mysteries of rosary were prayed in multiple languages.

As the “Ave Maria” Lourdes hymn was sung between mysteries, all of the pilgrims in the square in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary lifted their candles high in the air, creating a sea of lights.

“The light that guides us and draws us onward is the light of hope, which never abandons us even as we journey through this life — a life often marked by trials, yet already filled with the joy of knowing ourselves to be children of God, loved and saved by Jesus,” the pope said.

“Those who are sick are privileged witnesses to this transfiguration of our lives through faith and love of God and neighbor.” (Read more.)

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Putting Social Justice Ideology Ahead of Child Safety

 From AMAC:

Teachers' unions should want the best interests of children. So why is the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) suing to keep drivers who can't read English behind the wheel of school buses?

Leftist groups are fighting to keep dangerous alien commercial drivers on the road. The AFT, one of the nation's largest teachers' unions, just joined a lawsuit aimed at blocking the Trump administration's efforts to remove them.

The Transportation Department's (DOT) rules require that "non-citizens will not be eligible for a non-domiciled CDL unless they meet a much stricter set of rules, including an employment-based visa and undergoing a mandatory federal immigration status check using the SAVE system."

The Trump administration is cracking down on non-compliant training centers that provide instruction for commercial driver's licenses (CDL). In February, the DOT discovered more than 500 sham CDL training schools including one that specialized in teaching school bus drivers.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, "If you can't be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus."

Teachers' unions nevertheless want to put these drivers behind the wheel of school buses carrying American children. (Read more.)

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The Gaze That Tells Us Who We Are

 From Dominique Seraphin:

“God does not love us because we are valuable. We are valuable because God loves us.”

I have read those words many times. Each time, they seem to reach a little deeper.

It is easy to admire Fulton Sheen for what he accomplished. He was a brilliant scholar, a gifted preacher, a bishop, an author, and a pioneer who used radio and television to bring the Gospel into people’s homes. He knew how to speak about eternal things in a way that made people stop and listen.

But the part of his life that moves me most happened away from the cameras.

At his priestly ordination, Sheen promised to spend a Holy Hour each day before the Blessed Sacrament. He kept that promise for the rest of his life. Before he spoke publicly about Christ, he went to be with Christ. Before he asked others to listen, he listened. He brought his work, his questions, his gifts, and his need before Jesus in the Eucharist.

I wonder how many of his most powerful words began in that silence.

There is something beautiful about a man whose voice reached millions choosing, day after day, to be quiet before the Lord. The world knew Sheen for what he could say and do. In the chapel, he could simply be a beloved son in the presence of his Father.

Maybe that is why his words about our value carry such weight.

We hear “Jesus loves you” so often that we can forget how astonishing it is. We may readily believe that God loves humanity, the Church, our families, and the people we pray for. Yet when His love becomes personal—when we have to say, Jesus loves me, knowing everything about me—we sometimes hesitate.

We know the parts of ourselves we would rather hide. We remember the harsh words we said yesterday, the resentment we keep revisiting, the prayer we promised to make time for and didn’t. We know how quickly we compare ourselves with someone who seems more patient, more generous, more joyful, or more holy. (Read more.)

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Royal Orders

Which orders were worn by Louis XVI? A fascinating blog Once I Was a Clever Boy explores the question. To quote:

In the portraits the King can clearly be seen wearing the sky blue moiree riband of the Order and the breast star with its motif of the Dove. The riband was the first to be prescribed in the statutes of an order, and is the origin of the term 'cordon bleu' as asign of honour. The Order specifically commemorated King Henri's accession to the thrones of Poland on Whitsunday 1573, and to that of France on Whitsunday 1574, and hence the use of the Dove as a symbol. It also served to recall the account of the Holy Dove bringing the Sainte-Ampoulle at the baptism of Clovis in 496, and the source of the Holy Oil used at the Sacre of the King at Rheims. The design of the breast star and badge of the Order was to be copied and adapted by many other orders in Spain, Sicily, Sweden and Great Britain with the badge of the Military Division of the Order of the Bath, with lions and unicorns replacing the fleur-de-lys.

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New White House ‘Restricted-view’ Press Section

 The Daily B.S:

The White House restored access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Thursday, complying with a federal judge’s order by creating a new press section inside the White House with full access to the building and no discernible view of the president.

The three outlets were issued restored hard passes and assigned seats in the newly designated Brady Briefing Room Restricted-View Annex, located directly behind the briefing-room wall.

“The court ordered access to the White House, and they have access to the White House,” a senior administration official said. “They’re in it right now.”

The annex contains three folding chairs, a water cooler and a narrow opening in the wall through which credentialed reporters can hear approximately 70 percent of each briefing.

Officials said the opening was already there. CNN asked whether it could be enlarged. The request was denied.

Under the new arrangement, reporters wishing to ask a question may write it on an index card and slide it through the opening.

Questions deemed appropriate will be read aloud by a White House staffer. Follow-ups require a second index card.

Politico asked whether reporters would be permitted to enter the actual briefing room. “The judge ordered us to restore their White House access,” an official said. “Nobody said anything about a good seat.”

MS NOW objected that reporters could not see the podium from the annex. The White House responded Thursday afternoon by installing a mirror. (Read more.)

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When the Mind Is Not Free

 From Sensus Fidelium:

These questions are not foreign to me. I knew someone who took an SSRI, developed suicidal thoughts that frightened him, and flushed the pills down the toilet. Years ago, while driving for Uber, I met a veteran who told me that he took a pill, blacked out, and awoke in handcuffs. He later learned that he had wrecked his car and fought with police, but he remembered none of it. Those stories cannot establish what caused the reactions; I do not know the complete medical histories, diagnoses, dosages, or other substances involved. They are anecdotes, not clinical trials. Yet they explain why I cannot dismiss reports of sudden, frightening behavioral change as imaginary simply because they are unusual.

To explore these issues, I recently interviewed Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, a board-certified psychiatrist and former medical officer in the FDA’s Division of Psychiatry who now works extensively with psychiatric-drug adverse effects and withdrawal. His perspective deserves a hearing, but it also needs to be placed within proper limits. He did not examine Lindsay Clancy, he was not her treating physician, and an interview cannot decide a criminal case. His value here is that he helps identify medical possibilities that toxicology numbers and outward appearances do not necessarily settle.

The prosecution in the Clancy case emphasized apparently organized behavior: she arranged for her husband to leave the house, acted while he was away, and took steps that can be described as planned. For many observers, planning seems to end the insanity question. A person capable of organizing means, they reason, must also understand the end toward which those means are directed.

Dr. Witt-Doerring challenged that assumption. A person experiencing psychosis may still speak coherently, perform household tasks, conceal disturbing thoughts, and appear outwardly composed. As he put it during our interview, a person can look “really put together” while being driven by “bizarre, delusional thoughts in the background.” The crucial distinction is between the ability to reason instrumentally and the ability to judge reality correctly. Someone may connect steps A, B, and C with terrible efficiency while beginning from a premise that is entirely false. (Read more.)

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French Country Decor Ideas

  

From Léonce:

Over the past few months, I’ve saved countless home décor images on Pinterest (and if you enjoy French and Parisian inspiration, feel free to follow me there for more). Not that I’m currently renovating my apartment here in Amsterdam (although, truth be told, that would be one of my dreams) but I recently realized that many of the images I had saved seemed to gravitate toward the same aesthetic: French country style, sometimes also called French cottage style.

And without quite realizing it at first, this is also the direction my own Amsterdam home has slowly been evolving toward over the past few months. An aesthetic that feels rustic yet chic. Simple and unpretentious. Filled with natural materials: wood, linen, glass, ceramics, copper, and brass. A touch of vintage, but never kitsch. The kind of interior that creates a warm and welcoming atmosphere and that, to me, often evokes the charm of grandmother’s houses, countryside homes where everything feels convivial and where one immediately feels at ease.

Amsterdam, and the Netherlands more broadly, have influenced this shift more than I expected. Kitchens here often feel more rustic than Parisian ones, and because winters can be long and sometimes harsh, homes and apartments tend to have a naturally cozy and comforting quality that I’ve come to appreciate more and more.

This article is therefore a blend of different European influences which I hope will inspire you and perhaps give you a few ideas for bringing the charm of a French country home into your own space, wherever you may live. My inspirations draw from several places: the interior of Claude Monet’s house in Giverny, the Parisian atelier of Astier de Villatte in the 5th arrondissement near Place Maubert, the architecture and interiors typical of Amsterdam houses, as well as the timeless charm of traditional British cottages. (Read more.)

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Will the GOP Hold the House and Senate?

 From Tierney's Real News:

What will happen in the midterms? Here’s my best thinking right now.

Republicans currently hold both the House and Senate by narrow margins.

Left-leaning pollsters project Democrats will flip the House in 2026 by 9–15 seats while Republicans cling to the Senate by a single vote.

A few weeks ago, right-leaning pollsters expected Democrats to take the House by one seat and Republicans to expand their Senate edge to 2–3 seats.

In the past week, however, many of those same voices on the right have flipped: they now predict the GOP will hold both chambers—again by narrow margins.

All bets are off.

Here’s a sample of what some conservatives are saying on X right now:

• David Marcus: GOP hold in both houses.

• Ted Cruz: If we show up and unify, the GOP can grow our majorities in both the House and Senate. It’s all about turnout.

• Bill Mitchell: Democrats are going to lose in November in the most humiliating fashion possible.

• RNC Chair Joe Gruters: I expect Republicans to hold both chambers—220 House seats and 53 Senate seats.

• Seth Levy: 53-47 GOP in the Senate and 218-217 Republican in the House. Republicans hold both.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson: Republicans will hold and grow the House majority.

• Unseen1: With all the propaganda and fake polls, there’s no way of predicting. 50/50 chance the GOP keeps the House; I think they hold the Senate.

(Read more.)

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Jesus by Another Name

 From The Logres Institute:

Unlike many other authors, we have explicit writings from Lewis explaining what he was trying to portray. In the remainder of this article, I presume that Rice is writing from a position of ignorance. To cure his lack of knowledge, I invite him to acquire a copy of Lewis’s Letters to Children before he writes about Narnia in the future. Lewis was transparent in his explanations, and his actual letters to the children who wrote to him explain why Christians are justly upset by this casting decision. You mess with Jesus, and you mess with the literal foundations of the Christian faith. Aslan is Jesus, in another world.

To truly understand Lewis, one must read Lewis; and more of his writings than just Narnia. Any claims on what he thought as he wrote the Narnia tales need to be backed by primary source material to be valid, not by opinion that fits one’s own personal narrative. Lewis’s replies to his youngest readers provide helpful insight.

In a letter written by Lewis from Magdalen College Oxford, 22nd. January 1952, Lewis writes to a child named Carol about how to pronounce Aslan and who He is:

Dear Carol,

It is a pleasure to answer your question. I found the name in the notes to Lane’s Arabian Nights: it is the Turkish for Lion. I pronounce it Ass-lan myself. And of course I meant the Lion of Judah. I am so glad you liked The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I hope you will like the sequel (Prince Caspian) which came out in November.

Yours sincerely,

C.S. Lewis

(Read more.)

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