Nonnberg Abbey

St. Rupert made Nonnberg for St. Erentrude.  Tomorrow is her feast.

Cool...Maria von Trapp was in the novitiate here.

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=5820

and, they are just getting around to this?

http://www.ansa.it/english/news/2014/06/25/crucifix-mandatory-says-padua-mayor_ffca316d-fd33-4902-945e-0ff4b9032eec.html

Tomorrow Is Big SC Day On Mandate

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPREME_COURT_FINAL_DECISIONS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-28-03-32-55

Happy Feast of Peter and Paul

News from SPUC

3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street London, SE11 4AB, United Kingdom Telephone: (020) 7091 7091 Email: information@spuc.org.uk http://www.spuc.org.uk
Join the Rally for Life, Belfast, Sat 5 July
JOHN SMEATON, SPUC DIRECTOR Sunday, 29 June 2014 Join the Rally for Life, Belfast, Sat 5 July Liam Gibson of SPUC Northern Ireland writes: "In a little under a week people from all over Ireland will converge on Belfast for the 8th annual Rally for Life. The rally will set-off from Custom House Square at 2pm, 5th July. As always it promises to be an enjoyable event for all the family. Last July the rally brought the centre of Dublin to a standstill as an estimated 60,000 people turned out to protest against the Irish governments plans to legalise abortion. Despite this unprecedented level of public opposition the Irish abortion law, the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act (sic), came into effect on 1st January this year. Experience shows that when abortion is legalised it quickly becomes acceptable to the general public. But there is never an acceptable level of abortion, either it is stopped or the killing spreads. Already there is mounting pressure on both sides of the Border to permit the abortion of children with disabilities. The victory of the abortion lobby in Ireland was a defeat for the pro-life movement globally. The politicians and abortion advocates are now watching how we react. They're looking for signs that we will simply give-up and go away so they can get on with legalising abortion on demand. If the people who came on to the streets last year don't want to see a further expansion of abortion in Ireland they cannot afford to stay at home Saturday 5th July." Here are videos of the 2012 and 2013 rallies: Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk

Thought for The Day

Lumen Gentium Chapter 5.  

May all those who are weighed down with poverty, infirmity and sickness, as well as those who must bear various hardships or who suffer persecution for justice sake-may they all know they are united with the suffering Christ in a special way for the salvation of the world. The Lord called them blessed in His Gospel and they are those whom "the God of all graces, who has called us unto His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will Himself, after we have suffered a little while, perfect, strengthen and establish".(226)

Death of A Civilization

It must be hard for a person who has grown up with either strong feelings or ideologies in a family to find out, as a thinking, intellectual adult, that many things which were held sacred are absolutely, positively wrong.

When I taught history, the history of ideas, or humanities, I taught de Tocqueville. His insights have proved to be correct about the failures of democracy.

But, I am surrounded by people who refuse to look seriously at the failures of democracy, instead covering up lies and serious problems with slogans, usually using words like “true liberalism”, “patriotism” or “equality” when what is meant is always the lowest common denominator.

I was raised as an elitist, as all Catholics of a certain age were. We were taught to be leaders, to be intellectuals, to study the liberal arts, the classics, to learn how to think and not merely how to feel or have knee-jerk reactions.

In my own family, half were GOP and half Democrats. The Luxemburg half were the GOPs and the Czech half the Dems. No surprises there…For years, parents cancelled out the votes of each partner.

But, over all the political differences, until the generation before mine, stood the loyalty to the Church, to Catholicism. As I noted in a post earlier on Saturday, I was raised to be a Catholic first and an American second.

When did this view, so good, so true, change among American Catholics? One can blame the Kennedys, or go back further to the heresy of Americanism.

The photos of leading clergymen with the president and other leading Dems discouraged many Catholics in America. But, have they considered the root of the evil of compromise?

One reason I prefer Europe is that Europeans are sick of democracy. Now, this sickness could lead either to life, or to death, as do all illnesses. Europeans no longer believe in one man, one vote. But, they have committed themselves to be against monarchies, as real possible governments.

What is left is the fatal decision between anarchy and tyranny.

In America, the vast majority of Americans still believe in a government by the people for the people.

Without being “under God”, this ideal is merely romantic junkfood.

I cannot believe the fact that the American Catholic Church is so anti-intellectual, like the Protestants, who, from the beginning of the Revolt, were anti-intellectual (is there anything more anti-rational than sola fide, sola Scritpura).

What the nuns inculcated in us as leadership skills and the idea that as Catholics, who had been given beauty, Truth and talents, and that everyone was not equal, either in gifts or in roles.

The Catholic sense of superiority of culture and civilization is gone, gone, gone in America. Catholics seem to only want to conform, not challenge (see my post yesterday).

We have lost the cutting edge. Maybe, just maybe, there can be a revival of rationality, of the sense that the Catholic Church must be a leader in the public square, in the market place.

But, I know, deep down inside, the corner has been turned, and we shall be persecuted by the barbarians and by the emotional, by the leftists who only want power over the sheeple, and by the tyrants.

We shall be persecuted because Catholicism is superior, it is the only way to civilization.

And those who do not want God or the Truth hate us, as they hated Christ Himself

Without God as the acknowledge Ruler of America, there is no America, but a shadow, a false dream. Without the recognition that Truth is only found in the Catholic Church in its glorious fullness, America will limp into tyranny, seeking security over honesty, and comfort over rationality.

May Our Lady have mercy on this nation and intercede for this sad place.

Prose Poem Part One

A poet I knew long ago became a tee-shirt millionaire.

Some of us broke our hearts at the loss of talent and hidden art.

This old news haunts me, as if I had found a brown letter in the attic, lamenting lost love.

I wonder where he is now, wondering whether his head is still full of sublime verse.

Or, his other gifts of mathematics, new formulas, never seen before except in the Mind of God.

His people send silk-screened shirts across the world from a nation in the Southern Hemisphere; people whose ancestors drew drew dogs and symbols on sandstone and ironstone.

Now, these descendents talk of mussels and wine sauce, or salmon and dill for lunch.

Busy talk-talk, but no poetry comes out of the factory, and the wife sits with her ladies, now all wearing the animal prints, from the up-market part of the company, in red and yellows, which some think look good with Capris and stilettos.

She delights in theses lunches and dances through her dreams in her new line of muumuus, which look like ‘60s leftovers. Her old Phantom-Watts rusts in the garage, while she skips across the land in a Spider. “Our years shall be considered as the spider.” But, mom and dad have forgotten that.

Mom, too, forgets her only daughter and pretends she does not have a thirty-something child. And, dad is too busy selling tee-shirts to notice that his baby does not have a cell phone. She threw hers in the ocean.

The old tribe sighs at the loss of this star, the blood watching the end of an era. No grandchildren, not lasting heritage, no poetry.

All is dried-up like the red river bed; all perishes of success and all is blown away in a tropical wind of the material.

The young woman walks the hot trails in boots and shorts, with few resources, except for pen and notebook, moleskin, her one passion. She sits in the shade and writes poetry which will be seen by no living person.

She thinks of the veil of the spider’s web as her own interior life, a delicate thing, reminiscent of the words of a psalm—where did she hear that or read that one about man’s transitoriness, lives like grass, like a dream, like things that bloom and wither, dry up and blow away?

In the hot shade, she begins to write, and the black words flow like water in the desert, cleansing her soul, her mind, her heart. The heritage springs back to life, like a small rivulet pouring out of the hills, practically unnoticed.

The heritage is for her salvation, her eternal life, and she chooses the hard way not sought by her parents, who will never understand her. The tribe sighs again, whispering across sandy red hills, “We have found the wordsmith, but she is alone, and she is the last.”