For Whale Oil: Why women become nuns
Revenge of the Forsaken Gods
. Fr Barron mentioned this book in one of his YouTube videos and as a result, Dr Sax sent him another one of this books (which I have as well), Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. My title, Revenge of the Forsaken Gods comes from Boys Adrift, which Fr Barron talks about in the above YouTube on this post.
A new kid on the block
The Girl Who Played With Fire
"Pomperipossa in Monismania" (also called Pomperipossa in the World Of Money) is a satirical story written by the Swedish children's book author Astrid Lindgren in response to the 102% marginal tax rate she incurred in 1976. It was published starting on 3 March 1976 in the Stockholm evening tabloid Expressen and created a major debate about the Swedish tax system.Countries that try such high marginal income tax rates now would be doomed to fail faster, so it has become necessary to increase taxes through a variety of channels so the effect is much harder to detect. Income tax, FBT, GST, ETS, provional taxes, fuel excise, import duties, compliance costs, rates, forced superannuation deductions, tolls, and so it goes.
The marginal tax rate above 100% which was dubbed the 'Pomperipossa effect' was due to tax legislation which required self employed individuals to pay both regular income tax and employer's fees.
The story, a satirical allegory about a writer of children's books in a distant country, led to a stormy tax debate and is often attributed as a decisive factor in the defeat of the Swedish Social Democratic Party - for the first time in 40 years in the elections later the same year.
Poly bigots
Parents, not states, had duty to educate children, Vatican reminds UN
The Vatican’s delegation to the UN has decried a “disconcerting trend” to “downplay the role of parents in the upbringing of their children, as if to suggest somehow that it is not the role of parents, but that of the State.”
At a UN meeting on population and development, the Vatican delegation called attention to the 250,000 Catholic schools around the world that “assist parents who have the right and duty to choose schools inclusive of homeschooling, and they must possess the freedom to do so, which in turn, must be respected and facilitated by the State.”
Trial of Anders Behring Breivik, day eight, yesterday
Massive Moscow protest
You wont see this on the News, this is not a protest the Western media have much interest in covering but it is never the less a protest.
Remembering
“In the Company of Heroes” is a painting based on more than just Matt Hall’s masterful creativity—this moment actually happened.
In Dec. 2004, Valor Studios funded a charitable trip to bring six of the Band of Brothers veterans to Germany to meet and greet the troops of the 1st Armored Division, just back from Iraq. Buck Compton, Babe Heffron, Bill Guarnere, Don Malarkey, Earl McClung, and Shifty Powers participated.
After two days in Germany, on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, our tour traveled to Bastogne to revisit the veterans’ old foxholes with today’s soldiers. But, on the way to Bastogne, our host, now-SGM Billy Maloney, arranged a special moment for the veterans . . . a visit to Luxembourg American Cemetery where their fallen comrades are buried.
“In the Company of Heroes” depicts this moment. Wading through countless crosses and stars of David, Bill, Babe, Don, and Earl found the spot first, the headstones of their buddies.
There, in silence, Babe remembered his best friend John Julian. Don Malarkey would break down at the cross of his friend, Skip Muck. And Bill and Earl remembered the faces of Alex Penkala and others. The veterans would later agree: this was the most poignant moment since they left the continent of war in 1945.
When they returned home, over the years, the men asked us to commemorate this moment in a painting. None pressed harder than Wild Bill and Babe (call it South Philly persistence).
So, here it is, the moment that only the veterans witnessed—but what they want all of us to see—when they stood again, in the company of heroes.
Whale Oil attacks the Catholic Church again, this time over nuns
The Catholic Church is cracking down on uppity nuns who dare to voice an opinion.He then quotes a Daily Beast article, the whole angle of which is
... the nuns’ main infractions weren’t sins of the flesh or succumbing to vices. Instead, the offending nuns were simply speaking their minds.
... abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and the ordination of women. Their silence is interpreted as endorsement, so by not speaking out against such “evils,” the report says the sisters are effectively showing their approval.Whale Oil finishes off his post by saying that women are sometimes better than men, because "they don’t bugger little boys in the confessional".
New 'Study' Retreads Old Gay Narrative
A new study that claims opposition to homosexuality means a person probably is a closet homosexual is nothing more than a rehash of propaganda used in the 1970s, according to a former liberal who now warns of the “gay” agenda.So how did they perform this test? By flashing words on a computer monitor and timing how fast the recipients of the test clicked.
“This is so old-hat, they were saying this in the 1970s when I was a liberal progressive. This was standard indoctrination talking points about homosexuality even back then,” said Linda Harvey, founder of Mission America. “This has been around for 40 years and they are now bringing it back around.”
The study was conducted using college students whose sexual orientation was determined by self-identification and how they performed a split-second task. They were shown words and pictures on a computer screen and asked to put them in “gay” or “straight” categories. Prior to the trials, the participants were shown either the word “me” or “others” for 35 milliseconds.Sounds like voodoo science to me. I would have liked to have seen 'Extra Terrestrial' as an option to have been flashed on the screen as well, just to prove how many people are really space aliens and not from Earth as they claim.
After this they were shown pictures of straight and “gay” couples and the words “gay,” “straight,” homosexual” and “heterosexual” while a computer tracked their response times.
According to the authors, people who had a faster reaction with words “me” and “gay” were deemed to be homosexuals regardless of their stated orientation.
The authors concluded people who declared themselves to be heterosexual, while the reaction time indicated they were homosexual, often reacted with hostility to “gay others.” The study claimed hostility to the “gay” lifestyle by these individuals reveals that homophobia is possibly a result of a suppressed homosexual orientation.
Anders Behring Breivik trial: day six
I would like to offer a large apology to those who were injured or even killed in the bombing of an Oslo government building, as they were just passing by and had no political connections.
Teaching
Not only was my students’ writing appalling, but I soon encountered their resentment at being told about it. “Who are you to tell me I can’t write?” was the attitude — once expressed in those very words. More than one student insisted that her other teachers had always rewarded her with high marks for her “creativity.” Most believed themselves more than competent. After sitting with one young woman explaining the cause of her failing grade, I was befuddled when her only response was a sullen: “This doesn’t exactly make me feel good.” When I responded that my job was not to make her feel good, she stood haughtily, picked up her paper with an air of injury, and left my office without another word. In her mind, I later realized, I had been unforgivably cruel.Read the whole thing...
I was up against it: the attitude of entitlement rampant amongst university students and nurtured by the utopian ideology that permeates modern pedagogy, in which the imposition of rules and identification of errors are thought to limit student creativity and the fostering of a hollow self-esteem takes precedence over the building of skills on which genuine self-respect might be established. In the Humanities subjects in particular — and in English especially, the discipline I know best — such a philosophy has led to a perilous watering down of course content, with self-validation seen as more important than the mastery of specific knowledge.
With this philosophy has come a steady grade inflation. The majority of students in English courses today can expect a B grade or higher merely for warming a seat and handing in assignments on time. The result, as I soon discovered, was a generation of students so accustomed to being praised for their work that when I told them it was inadequate, they simply could not or would not believe me. They seemed very nearly unteachable: lacking not only the essential skills but also the personal gumption to respond adequately to criticism.
You complete me
What if a husband and wife were not just two people, two desiring units of indifferent gender, living for an indefinite time in the same house, but the perfection of male and female as if "marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman"? Perfection thus understood is not another form of individualism. When man and woman are made one flesh, they belong to each other. I am my wife's husband, and she is my wife – not just a little on the surface, or according to a legal contract, but to the very depths of our being. Likewise, I do not play at being father as a "role." I am a father. My wife does not play at being a mother. She is a mother.--Benjamin Wiker - The Meaning of Marriage
If marriage is to have meaning, we shall have to embrace again this revolutionary truth.
Breivik Quote of the Day [UPDATE]
"When I took the weapon in my hand, it was like 100 voices in my head saying 'don't do it, don't do it."From day five of the trial.
Michael Voris on Practising Catholics in NZ
Anders Behring Breivik trial, day five
The ability to see through things
Breivik 'Trained' By Playing Video War Game
Anders Behring Breivik has described how he "trained" for the attacks he carried out in Norway last summer using the computer game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.I have heard it said before that the military in different countries uses computer game for training as a simulation, and this story kind of confirms it for me. I know those who will say that video games are harmless, and I'm sure some of them are, but I'm sure that some of them can also condition the players a certain way. If you do something again and again it becomes second nature.
The 33-year-old said he practised his shot using a "holographic aiming device" on the war simulation game, which he said is used by armies around the world for training. "You develop target acquisition," he said. He used a similar device during the shooting attacks that left 69 dead at a political youth camp on the island of Utøya on 22 July. Describing the game, he said: "It consists of many hundreds of different tasks and some of these tasks can be compared with an attack, for real. That's why it's used by many armies throughout the world. It's very good for acquiring experience related to sights systems."
He added: "If you are familiar with a holographic sight, it's built up in such a way that you could have given it to your grandmother and she would have been a super marksman. It's designed to be used by anyone. In reality it requires very little training to use it in an optimal way. But of course it does help if you've practised using a simulator."
No Right Turn launches bigot attack at Judith Collins
The Government has no plans to introduce same-sex marriage in the current Parliamentary term. As you are aware, there is considerable diversity of opinion on same-sex marriage.
Anders Behring Breivik trial Day Four [UPDATE]
Never before has there been a generation of men so unsuitable
for my Kindle. I had linked to the book as part of a blog post about a YouTube clip on Masculinity. The book piqued my interest and after reading the sample, I thought what the heck and bought it. Yet never before has there been a generation of men so unsuited to the establishing of an authentic Christian patriarchy. The Western male in particular, the erstwhile head of Christian culture, is found to have pawned his patriarchy for pleasure. He is thoroughly inculcated in the values of extended adolescence, and even where he rejects certain extremes of "playboyism", he has nonetheless, as a whole, acquiesced to the assaults of an hedonistic, immodest, and pornographic society; to the dominating search for pleasure and entertainment; to the beckon of a consumeristic society and the sophisticated toys it proffers; to contracepting his seed; and to the shirking of his duty to lead, protect, and provide for the family.
Yes, it is precisely because there has never been a time so desperately in need of men able to answer the call to Christian patriarchy, nor a time when there has been such an unsuitable selection of these men, that Christians may justifiable expect an unparalleled outpouring of God's miraculous grace and favor on Christian manhood, and on the family he is called to lead.
Catholic Lord of the Rings
Anders Behring Breivik trial, day three [UPDATE]
Michael Voris in Auckland
Medal of Honor and Sainthood
On 2 November 1950, Father Kapaun made the decision that led to his death.
The Korean war chaplain was in the middle of a firefight, with the American forces overrun by Chinese soldiers outside a crossroads town called Unsan in North Korea.
Lighting forest fires to frustrate US reconnaissance planes, the Chinese surrounded the Americans and pressed in, attacking with small arms, grenades and even bayonets.
Meanwhile, Chaplain Emil Kapaun, a Catholic priest from a farming village in Kansas, gathered the wounded in a dug-out shelter made of logs and straw.
When American officers ordered the able-bodied to retreat, Father Kapaun, a 35-year-old captain, refused to leave the wounded.
As the Chinese soldiers began lobbing grenades into the dug-out, Kapaun negotiated a surrender.
"Father Kapaun had several chances to get out," Warrant Officer John Funston later told a Catholic priest who collected accounts of Fr Kapaun's actions in Korea, "but he wouldn't take them."
His capture and forced march northward with hundreds of other American prisoners was merely the beginning of Father Kapaun's trial, an ordeal that ended in his death from starvation, cold and lack of basic medical care at a prison camp in North Korea six months later.
For his heroism, a group of Kansas politicians are pushing to have him awarded the Medal of Honor, America's highest military decoration.
Reports of Kapaun's selfless bravery have got him short-listed for another rare high honour: the Catholic church has named Kapaun Servant of God, the first step toward sainthood, and the Vatican has opened a formal inquiry into whether he merits canonisation.
Masculinity Allows Femininity to Blossom
Norwegian killer epitomises evil
Buggery is never Ok and Heroic Priests
Amidst all the tales of chivalry from the Titanic disaster there is one that’s not often told.
Fr. Thomas Byles
It is that of Fr. Thomas Byles, the Catholic priest who gave up two spots on a lifeboat in favour of offering spiritual aid to the other victims as they all went down with the “unsinkable” vessel.
A 42-year-old English convert, Fr. Byles was on his way to New York to offer the wedding Mass for his brother William. Reports suggest that he was reciting his breviary on the upper deck when the Titanic struck the iceberg in the twilight hours of Sunday, April 14th, 1912.
According to witnesses, as the ship went down the priest helped women and children get into the lifeboats, then heard confessions, gave absolution, and led passengers in reciting the Rosary.
Agnes McCoy, one of the survivors, says that as the great ship sank, Fr. Byles “stood on the deck with Catholics, Protestants and Jews kneeling around him.”
“Father Byles was saying the rosary and praying for the repose of the souls of those about to perish,” she told the New York Telegram on April 22, 1912, according to the website devoted to his memory, FatherByles.com.
Another one whose ancestors were NOT at Agincourt
Botox and Manliness
Dr Cattin said businessmen were the main group among Botox patients.
"[They] are unhappy with lines that make them look irritable and it alters the way people respond to you. When you're in a management position it's important that your face backs up what you are saying because we tend to read faces rather than question what people are saying.
"The way people respond to us, especially in a position of authority, is very much influenced by what we look like. I wouldn't say it's vanity at all. I would say it's a practical issue reflecting work needs."
Another special privilege of being a man is that he does not have to be ruled by fashion or be preoccupied about clothes or style. Compared to women, most men own a limited wardrobe and only a few combinations of apparel. Jackets, slacks, shirts and ties do not radically go out of vogue. Other than basic grooming, cleanliness, haircuts, and shaves, manly men do not spend inordinate time preening themselves or modifying their wardrobe to be in proper fashion.
In general, men who are not foppish do not think of themselves as beautiful, lovely, or glamorous and thus are saved from the snare of vanity. They do not gaze at their reflections and ask, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" ...
The Intimidation of Bigotry
Andrew Sullivan's Non-Threatening Jesus
Car crushing and the Scape-goating Mechanism
...by this mechanism we choose someone to blame, someone to isolate, someone to ostracise, at the limit, someone to kill. We discharge our anxiety, our tension, our fear onto that person or that group. In that process ... we come to a kind of peace. Which is precisely why this kind of activity is sanctioned so often by the state, and by religion.... made an internal connection for me as to why car-crushing is so disturbing. The car becomes the scape-goat for all our problems. When it's crushed, we feel something has become sacrificed and we come to a sort of peace whereby we feel all is right in the world again. The baying for the "blood" of the car made that desire for vengeance on it clearer, even though the car itself has done nothing wrong. This crushing and the fact that people wanted the crushing is the potential beginning of worse scape-goating victims to come. We start with cars, who knows what is next? Maybe garden centres that refuse to stay closed when the law decrees they should? No, it'll will be something that belongs to a marginal group that the vast majority of the population feels will never touch them. I hesitate to predict what that something might be.
Pity that Rick Santorum didn't make it
Bruce Springsteen and the Catholic world view of contrary positions
An authentic Catholic worldview is one that does not blink, but has both eyes wide open to the fullness of the real world, in all its horror, beauty and mystery. It is a worldview that insists on the following. Mary is both Virgin and Mother, that Jesus is both God and man—without being more of one than the other. Faith and reason are not opposed, but live in harmony. We human beings are both sinners and saved, all at the same time. And death is life. The Catholic worldview holds two contrary positions together because to take one away would be to deny the fullness of the truth. We Catholics have a name for the position that denies the truth of one reality for the sake of the other—we call it heresy.
Bruce Springsteen, a lapsed Catholic with an undeniable Catholic worldview, released a new record earlier this month titled “Wrecking Ball.” Last week he was the keynote speaker at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. At the tail end of his speech, his Catholic imagination took over as he addressed the audience of about two thousand up-and-coming musicians. Here’s what he said:
So rumble, young musicians, rumble. Open your ears and open your hearts. Don't take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have unclad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you awake and alert. Believe you are the baddest ass in town—and you suck! It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideals alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn't drive you crazy, it will make you strong. And stay hard, stay hungry and stay alive. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it's all we have—and then remember it's only rock 'n' roll.
Parental leave just grows the State
Perfect love is incredible
... If Christ is right, and the greatest love is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, then it seems that the essence of all love is this willingness to sacrifice the self for the sake of another: to put the “me” under the heel of your boot and to crush it into a pulp. Even if we aren’t actually being martyred for the sake of our friends, all love has this common factor at its root: self-sacrifice. And if the purpose of our life is to attain to perfect love, then it isn’t good enough to be “nice” or “good” or a “decent chap.” This is pansy stuff. Perfect love means that our entire life, everything that we do, every breath we take, every thought we think, every move we make, is an act of love directed at another: whether our neighbour or God. Perfect love means to be a burning flame of love, to so completely empty ourselves of all self-seeking that the only thing that is left is love – or, in other words, God. This, in fact, is how all the famous mystics talk about the purpose of our life: to literally become a god, by emptying ourselves, and letting God (who is Love) enter in and take the place of the self: to become perfect conduits of God’s love. This is perfection.
Atheists and the Cross (update)
... At one point, in the context of making fun of the events of Good Friday, one of the Powerpoint images was Jesus on the cross — a shot of Jim Caviezel in the extremity of The Passion of the Christ. Dawkins paused and looked up at it, as did the whole crowd. Time stood still. For one terrible moment, it was like Dawkins’ pants had fallen down. A wave of fake-sounding, nervous guffaws spread throughout the hall. Clearly, the image of the Suffering Servant was kept up on the giant white screen for too long. A bit too much for a bit too long. Dawkins segued to a derisive crack about the sadism of the bloodthirsty Christian deity.
But it was too late. Something had happened in that room. I have no empirical evidence for this observation but there it is. Something happened. Some tiny backfire infiltrated the proceedings.
The sight of the crying, bereft and abandoned Jesus was enough to break the hard heart of a rough Roman soldier on the Day when the real crucifixion went down. God willing, we’ll read of similar breakings, and mendings, in our day.
Wear your cross
Britain's most senior Catholic cleric has called on Christians to wear a cross every day as "a symbol of their beliefs" and to combat the marginalisation of religion in modern society.
“So often the teachings of Jesus Christ are divided and ignored; so often those who try to live a Christian life are made fun of and ridiculed and marginalized,” the cardinal says in his homily.
“Perhaps the more regular use of that sign of the cross might become an indication of our desire to live close to that same Christ who suffered and died for us, and whose symbol we are proud to bear.”
“Whether on a simple chain or pinned to a lapel, the cross identifies us as disciples of Christ,” he adds.
He will say: "I know that many of you do wear such a cross of Christ, not in any ostentatious way, not in a way that might harm you at your work or recreation, but a simple indication that you value the role of Jesus Christ in the history of the world, that you are trying to live by Christ's standards in your own daily life."The only warning I have to give with regards to wearing a cross is make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Wear it because you are identifying yourself as a Christian so that others may be reminded of Jesus - don't wear it for political reasons. Sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between the two; the test for me is who or what do I think of when I put it on.
His comments come as two women, who say they were discriminated against when their employers barred them from wearing the cross, are fighting to get their cases heard at the European court of human rights.
Easter Sale - Kidney, only $3,000 (hardly used)
We don't need no education
"Sometimes you get stoned, sometimes you can't be bothered and sometimes you are hung over from the night before"That from a 14 year old!
Real gardeners and Good Friday shopping
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| Camelia Paradise Joan flowering in my garden today |
Holy Thursday
HOLY THURSDAY is the most complex and profound of all religious observances, saving only the Easter Vigil. It celebrates both the institution by Christ himself of the Eucharist and of the institution of the sacerdotal priesthood (as distinct from the 'priesthood of all believers') for in this, His last supper with the disciples, a celebration of Passover, He is the self-offered Passover Victim, and every ordained priest to this day presents this same sacrifice, by Christ's authority and command, in exactly the same way. The Last Supper was also Christ's farewell to His assembled disciples, some of whom would betray, desert or deny Him before the sun rose again.
Men and bikinis and the moral order
Men are more likely to think of women as objects if they have looked at sexy pictures of females beforehand, psychologists said yesterday.
Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated.
Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other people's emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures.
I think it's the Boomers that are surprised that teenagers aren't sex-crazed animals
Fr Barron on the Hunger Games and Human Sacrifice
Why is it, that this dynamic of human sacrifice is so prominent in our culture ... from ancient times to today ... Rene Girard uncovered this dynamic ... discovered what he called the scape-goating mechanism ... tensions arise within human communities ... how do we solve the problem ... by this mechanism we choose someone to blame, someone to isolate, someone to ostracise, at the limit, someone to kill. We discharge our anxiety, our tension, our fear onto that person or that group. In that process ... we come to a kind of peace. Which is precisely why this kind of activity is sanctioned so often by the state, and by religion.
And now a new vision of life emerges ... which is based upon love and forgiveness and compassion and connection, and especially identification with the victim.
They don't play the game. Now it's deeply disconcerting to the powers that be...
Human sacrifice emerged right at the heart of those civilisations [Aztec and Roman].
See, I think we comfort ourselves, or flatter ourselves and we say of that could never happen ... I like the fact that the Hunger Games is set in a futuristic society where human sacrifice has re-emerged
I would argue that what keeps human sacrifice at bay is none other than Christianity.
Religious liberty being squeezed in the US
The new kind of orthodoxy that pervades our mass media involves a range of attitudes toward religion—from indifference to distrust to disdain, much of them rooted in the politics of sexuality. This is dangerous because pulling down a moral framework is always easier than building one up.Indeed.
