Outcasts in the House of God

For better is one day in thy courts above thousands. I have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners. Psalm 83: 11 (The Vulgate)

 When we go to Church it has to be for God alone. It is nice when one makes friends but sometimes it does not work out that way. From The Christian Post:

Each of these examples are true examples from church members who have shared with me their stories. I may not have perfect recall from our conversations, but the essence of the story is true. The names are pseudonymous.

• Divorcees. Mary was in an abusive marriage. She was beaten physically on more than one occasion. “I stayed with the marriage for our son,” she told me. Ultimately, her husband left her after he had numerous affairs. “When people heard I got a divorce, they began to treat me like a leper. My husband still had family in the church, so you can guess how a lot of church members felt about me. I couldn’t take it, so my son and I left the church.”
• Special needs persons. They could be adults or children. For certain, a number of churches embrace special needs individuals. But too many churches simply don’t know how to respond. “We visited seven different churches before we could find a place for our son,” William told me. “In one of the churches, we were told straightforwardly that they could not care for our son. The burden was too great for them.”
• Widows. No widow told me she felt like an outcast. But widows (or, in a few cases, widowers) did see social patterns change. “For most of the members in the church, our names were like one. We were ‘Barb and Charles.’ When Charles died, I stopped getting a lot of invitations. I was the fifth wheel. It may not have been intentional, but it was painful.”

(Read more.)

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The House of Austria Today

From Charles Coulombe at The Catholic Herald:

The growth of the common cultus of Emperor Karl since his beatification in 2004 has also played its part. There are – not too surprisingly – 26 shrines to him in Austria. But there are eight in the Czech Republic, 16 in Hungary, three in Slovakia and two in Croatia. The Blessed said repeatedly during his last year of life that he was suffering so that his peoples might come back together. It is quite possible that shared devotion to him might well be contributing to that. 

And what of the House of Habsburg itself in all of this? Otto’s elder son, Karl, ably assisted by younger, Hungary-based brother Georg, is certainly keeping the flag flying through the Paneuropa Union, the Knightly Order of St George, and a host of cultural, political and religious activities throughout the former empire chronicled on his informative eponymous website. Their sisters are also plugging away at similar tasks. Cousin Michael, of the Hungarian branch of the family, is head of the group working for the beatification of Cardinal Mindszenty, while his son, Eduard, is Hungary’s envoy to the Holy See. It is now a large clan, scattered across the globe, but by and large an extremely hard-working one. 

The website of the Austrian branch of Paneuropa declares: “The soul of this continent is Christianity. Whoever takes it out of political action, makes Europe a soulless body.” The Europe they would like to see is one that even the hardest of Brexiteers might well like. But if such a vision is ever to come about, reunion of the Danubian countries would create an entity capable of challenging the secularist elements in Brussels and accomplishing it. As in the past nine centuries, the ties binding this region are not national, but religious, cultural and dynastic. It is fitting that the modern bearers of the name are working steadily in these fields. Anyone hoping for the best for Europe can only wish them success. (Read more.)

 From Warwick Knowledge Centre:

In the context of our research, the 'Habsburg Effect' refers to our empirical finding that, in the year 2006, people in Eastern Europe who lived in locations that belonged to the Habsburg Empire before it disappeared in 1918, gave very different answers in a survey on trust and corruption than respondents just across the long-gone Habsburg border, in formerly Ottoman and Russian areas. The key to our empirical identification is that we looked at people that lived very close to each other, just to "inside" and "outside" the Habsburg border and within the same state today. We did not compare people in, say, Slovakia (which was entirely under Habsburg rule) to people in, say, Belarus (which was entirely under Russian rule). If we found differences at this level, we would not have know whether they had come from the fact that Slovakia and Belarus are very different from each other generally, independent of their historic experience. 

Instead, we looked at people in Poland, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro and Ukraine. All these five countries historically had some areas that were under Habsburg rule and other areas that were under Prussian, Russian and/or Ottoman rule. People inside each of these five countries have shared the same institutions between 1918 and 2006, so if we found differences inside these countries between citizens to the left and right of the Habsburg border, they were likely to go back to pre-1918 differences. If so, we can associate them with differences between Habsburg rule and Prussian, Russian and/or Ottoman rule. (Read more.)

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The First Three-Time Derby Winner

From OZY:

Most jockeys dug into their mounts with a whip and a crouched, bullying stance, but the teen Murphy rode crouched and urged his charge forward with calming words. As others galloped ahead, he conserved his horse’s stamina, only to press forward at the end of races to snatch victory over his competitors’ worn steeds.

The unconventional tactics led to victory. He would win the Kentucky Derby for the first time in 1884, and the Kentucky Oaks and the Clark Handicap that same year — a trifecta he’s still the sole jockey to accomplish. According to his own analysis, Murphy won 628 of his 1,412 starts, an absurd 44 percent victory rate (another calculation, conducted later, had him at 530 of 1,538, a 34 percent rate that still dwarfs the greatest all-time official tallies in horse-racing record books). He became known as “The Colored Archer,” a reference to the English racing great Fred Archer, although, ironically, it was Archer who was taking after Murphy. “Archer picked a lot of his mannerisms in the saddle and spread them throughout England,” says Brien Bouyea, communications director for the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. (Read more.)

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Flowering of Coptic Culture in Egypt

Christ and St. Menas

From National Geographic:

In addition to its important place in Scripture, Egypt was a fertile garden in the early flowering of Christianity. From the first century A.D., as the faith took root and began to grow, Egypt became an important religious center, as theologians and scholars flocked there. Egyptian Christianity developed its own distinctive flavor, shaped by the words, culture, and history of ancient Egypt. This branch of Christianity would become the Coptic Orthodox Church, and its followers would be known as Coptic Christians, or, more simply, as Copts.

The name Copt has had a long journey. It comes from the European pronunciation of the Arabic word qibt, which derives from the Greek name for Egypt, Aigyptos. This in turn is derived from Hwt-ka-ptah, a temple in Memphis dedicated to Ptah. The Coptic language also arose from a blend of cultures, of Egyptian words written in Greek script. Several dialects evolved over the centuries, and many important Christian texts have been discovered written in Coptic. 

Before Christianity became established, the existing religion of Egypt had roots reaching back millennia. After the golden age of Ramses II and his successors ended, Egypt underwent invasions by Libyans, Nubians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. Even so, Egypt’s old religion proved remarkably durable, partially due to its ability to absorb other influences. (See also: Rival to Egypt, the Nubian kingdom of Kush exuded power and gold.) 

With few exceptions, invaders either adopted, or adapted, the venerable faith. The Nubians declared their loyalty to the Egyptian god Amun. In their admiration for Egyptian gods, the Ptolemaic dynasty (established by Alexander the Great’s general Ptolemy in 305 B.C.) created hybrid Greco-Egyptian gods such as Serapis. (Read more.)

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When You Can't Afford a Summer Vacation

From The New York Times:

Summer vacations can be expensive. A two-week trip to Yellowstone, Disney World or to a fancy resort can easily approach five figures for a family. Indeed, a survey by the Travel Industry Association of America released this month found that prices for airline tickets, fuel and lodging have risen a combined 7.1 percent since December. The association also said its affordability index, which measures perceptions of travel costs, fell 18.3 percent in the second quarter, showing there is a greater concern among consumers that travel has become expensive. 

Still, parents often have a hard time saying no to a grand summer vacation, even if they can't afford it. The children are young only once, parents figure, they really want to see Mickey Mouse, and credit cards make just about anything obtainable. So why shouldn't you? 

Well, don't. There are ways to afford a summer vacation when you can't afford a summer vacation, steering clear of both credit card debt and grandma. Travel experts say there are many strategies a family can use to have a memorable, but affordable vacation, and financial planners say there are ways to reduce a vacation's financial impact. (Read more.)

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The Mueller Report and Hillary Clinton

From The Federalist:

The heads of America’s top intelligence agencies used a dossier linked to Clinton’s funding, a tech firm outsourced by the Democratic National Committee, and hearsay from Alexander Downer as the basis to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants and initiate sprawling probes. 

The “evidence” leading up to the Robert Mueller probe was so specious that the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence reports compiled by James Clapper and others had warranty disclaimers. President Trump was investigated based on intelligence linked to statements like “(DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within” and “judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”

U.S. Attorney General William Barr hired prosecutor John Durham to investigate the origins of the Mueller probe. A key issue for Durham to resolve is why the inciting information never originated within the U.S. government. Why has the funding from Democrats, along with other blatant conflicts of interest, been ignored by Comey, Clapper, and John Brennan? 

Although an estimated 70 percent of intelligence budgets go to private contractors, these private companies work with classified material and their workers hold security clearances. Fusion GPS, the firm Clinton and Democrats hired to compile the Steele dossier, did not provide the FBI classified intelligence. In fact, the Steele dossier is still unverified and anyone can read the document within the BuzzFeed article that publicized the allegations in early 2017. Crowdstrike, the third-party tech firm the DNChired to analyze its servers (instead of the U.S. government) didn’t provide the FBI, CIA, or NSA any classified intelligence, since the DNC is a private entity that never allowed U.S. intel agencies near its servers. (Read more.)

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Coco Chanel, the Savonarola of Fashion

An interesting take on Chanel. From The Catholic Herald:

Democratic as this elevation of simplicity may sound, it made possible a new form of elitism in dress. Anyone can recognise the fineness of costly silks. Only initiates can appreciate rough fabrics finely employed. Chanel disdained the woman “who is so happy with her green scarf printed in all the signs of the zodiac” which “will only astonish those who don’t know”. Her ideal was an elegant simplicity recognisable only by the cognoscenti.

Anyone who has observed the way our tech overlords dress (Mark Zuckerberg is the most famous example, Jack Dorsey the most telling) understands the strange form of sartorial elitism propagated by Chanel. Post-conciliar liturgical aesthetics conform to the same logic. What Morand called “poverty for billionaires … extravagantly expensive simplicity, seeking out what did not attract attention” is hardly humbler than lace and taffeta.

Malraux once said: “Chanel, De Gaulle and Picasso are the greatest figures of our times.” In contrast to De Gaulle, Chanel collaborated with the Nazis. She not only took a German baron as her lover, she also arranged through him to become an agent of German security. It is hard not to see Chanel’s hatred of prettiness and delicacy, her belief that with modernity something definitely new had come into being, as preparing her for these vile mistakes. For all its faults, the decadent and prettified society of the Belle Époque, despised by Chanel, was too delicate to accept something as barbarous as Nazism.

As Lagerfeld’s death reminds us, Chanel has reigned for 100 years. Black quilted purses still hang from shoulders in Singapore, Dubai and LA. Fashionable women still wear boxy tweed suits. Those who cannot afford these things strive for a cheaper version of ostentatious simplicity. (Read more.)

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Is Socialism Compatible with Catholicism?

From The Catholic Herald:

While this socialism-lite approach may help ignite the Democratic base, most proponents remain ignorant of any actual principles — with the exception of an increasingly vocal band of very online Catholics who have embraced the new socialism, and who claim to do so on the basis of Catholic principles. 

Thus in a piece I wrote yesterday shining a light on the tragic dimensions of life on a Native American reservation, with a planned economy, and collective rather than private ownership, the Catholic socialists called foul. 

I suggested that if private ownership is a natural law — as thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope Leo XIII affirm — then it would follow that breaking such a law could very easily lead to the cultural malaise one sees on reservations. Such a suggestion was considered “profoundly ignorant” by one critic. Another young Catholic defending socialism asked how I could praise the common life of religious friars ministering on the reservation yet disparage the collective ownership that the reservation practiced? Still yet another bellowed that I must be a Hayakian libertarian, or that I must heartlessly oppose the state regulation of vice, or care for the poor. None of these claims were made, nor do I believe such things. (Read more.)

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The Return of Exorcists

From The Catholic Herald:

Modernising theologians who thought that exorcism would disappear forever also believed that the Church no longer needed to oppose the world. In Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council declared: “Those values which are most highly prized today … insofar as they stem from endowments conferred by God on man … are exceedingly good. Yet they are often wrenched from their rightful function by the taint in man’s heart, and hence stand in need of purification.” Progressives acted as though the Council had simply said: “Those values most highly prized today are exceedingly good.” They dreamed of an open Church that embraced the world. 

This required rejecting the apocalyptic view of Pope Leo XIII, which pitted the Devil against the Church in a grand battle. Leo wrote the St Michael Prayer (which has had a recent revival, encouraged by Pope Francis, in response to the abuse crisis). Leo also added an “Exorcism Against Satan and the Apostate Angels” to the Rituale Romanum. This exorcistic formula placed a novel stress on the freedom of the Church. “May you not dare further, most clever serpent, to … persecute the Church of God,” it said. “Accursed dragon and every diabolical legion, we adjure you by the living God … stop harming the Church and casting her freedom into snares.” 

For those who sought to reconcile Christianity with liberal society, Leo’s confrontational language seemed altogether out of place. But Leo’s view turned out to be the one more aligned with today’s reality. The Church is at odds with an increasingly pagan culture. It is also wracked by internal divisions, which many Catholics see as the work of the Devil – the divider. The historian Francis Young has observed that there are “just two ingredients essential for a flourishing of exorcism: division within the Church and fear of an external spiritual enemy.” Neither is likely to go away soon. (Read more.)

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