The Extinction of Souls

In 1916, Leon Bloy wrote that something new was happening in Europe and that was the effort of various "isms" to bring about the "extinction of souls".

It has happened. We are now witnessing a world where souls have been made truly invisible by the double miasma of materialism and hedonism.

The soul of Europe, bludgeoned by those who are even more materialistic than the Europeans, lies gasping for air on the edge of chaos.

Bloy is one of the authors who one either adores or hates. He, himself, is more interesting than his works, but one cannot understand him without his works.

Living in dire poverty, Bloy has the clarity of mind only those living on the outside of society can have, of seeing the material world for what it is...the place of suffering given to us by God for our own purification.

He is a prophet for our times...

Can we feed our souls so that these do not dry up and die? I think so...Can we save the soul of Europe? I think not.

Fear, Freedom, and Change in Europe

http://www.france24.com/en/20150118-germany-anti-islam-pegida-march-dresden-cancelled-islamic-state-group-threat/

http://www.france24.com/en/20150118-poll-nearly-half-french-oppose-mohammed-cartoons-charlie-hebdo-free-speech/

We need rational discussion on these things.

A Civilized Country Takes Care of Its Children

http://www.france24.com/en/20150118-pope-celebrates-huge-mass-philippines-urges-world-protect-children/

1.2 million children live on the streets in the Philippines.

A TLM Treat

This morning, I heard the Piccolo Lasso Choir, a children's choir, sing the Missa Brevis by Leo Delibes at Harrington Church, the official Latin Mass parish in Dublin.

Here is another recording done, obviously, by a different choir, of the Gloria.

Harrington Church has been recently renovated for the good. Here is one photo from the website.

http://www.stkevinsdublin.ie/




Information about the choir may be found on Facebook PiccoloLasso

                          and also at  www.dublinchoralfoundation.ie

Oh, Greece!

https://xaameriki.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/marxist-criminals-and-usefulfor-anti-greek-forces-radicals-run-amok-while-police-do-nothing/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/29/syriza-leading-polls-future-begun-alexis-tsipras-greece

Will they join with Putin in an effort to squash the EU?

From a twenty-something reader....je suis Christian

I've been divided in myself on this question ever since the first
hours of "je suis Charlie".

On the one hand, as a writer and as a child (albeit sometimes a
reluctant child) of the West, I have been Charlie. I do not cringe at
ridiculing the sacred, even most things my own faith holds sacred,
though not, I hope, in a gratuitous fashion. I do not accept the
argument that we must hold our pens simply because they risk giving
offence. That would simply be cowardice. There is a kernel of
uncomfortable truth in the most absurd ridicule, and that truth is
often worth the greatest sacrifice.

On the other hand, as a Christian, I find some of the attacks of
Charlie Hebdo disturbing and unnecessary. For instance, I do not think
there is truth in the idea that Mohammad was a paedophile sufficient
enough to portray him as such in an offensive and provocative way.
Charlie Hebdo is waging a war. I do not object to the war being
fought. But I object sometimes to the battle lines being drawn, and to
the method of fighting.

There are rules in journalism as there are rules in war; and in an age
of clashing ideologies on what should and should not be written or
drawn, there may be direct parallels between the rules of war and the
rules of journalism. In the fighting of a war, the Church tells us, we
must apply a sense of proportionality. Grave insults and provocative
behaviour may be appropriate to journalism just as killing is
appropriate to war, despite the fact that all these things are
objectively wrong. But there is a line (somewhere) that must be drawn.
Most of us consider the use of nuclear weapons against a civilian
population to be wrong, not because it kills (per se) but because it
kills the innocent, en masse. Similarly, an offensive in words which
offends not only militant or fundamentalist Islam, but Islam in
general - including Muslims who are on our side of this ideological
war - and indeed, pious Christians, must be deemed disproportionate.

Old News/New News

I first came across these stones about seven years ago. These represent something antithetical to the dignity of the person, humanity, the one, true religion.

Remember, small is beautiful. And, the smaller we can become in Christ, the holier we are.

This is not the mind-set of the proud and those who constantly seek power. There are many people who hate humanity, and these are the ones who want to push ssm, abortion, contraception, euthanasia.

When you read articles which say that humans are the same as other animals, or that the earth has too many humans, you are looking at a mind-set of hatred. The West is committing suicide, It is obvious in Ireland, France, Malta. Perhaps that is what God wanted me to see in my travels.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/09/09/georgias-own-doomsday-stonehenge-monument/#.VLtzkkesVLZ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

At first, I brushed this off as typical hubris of those atheists who want to destroy Western Civ.

Then, I began to compare the list of goals on the stones with those of other organizations.

Hello.

These goals are not merely those of a small group of cranks. But, one does not have to be a conspiracy enthusiast to understand that there are those who choose evil, who choose not to believe in the Trinity, the Church, Revelation, salvation, the afterlife.

Now, the mind-set of these types of people, like a miasma of diseased fog is beginning to cover the West. Three "isms" form this mindset-utilitarianism, hedonism, atheism.

There may be a fourth "ism"-satanism.

My point is this: stop looking at events in the world as separate and start looking at the big picture and not the details.

Details matter, but do not, as we say in the Midwest, "ignore the forest for the trees".

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/european-police-arrest-2-dozen-in-anti-terrorism-sweeps-1421433793-slideshow/

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Cache-of-jihad-drug-popular-among-ISIS-fighters-seized-in-West-Bank-388048?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

From my good friend, Tigga Wild

Repost-it has happened

Saturday, 18 August 2012

Have we all become the Lumpenproletariat? The Politics of Identity

Posted by Supertradmum

In a book written in 1845 entitled, The German Ideology, Marx and Engels used a term first used by Hegel

 to describe a sub-group of people in the culture, who have no interest in society or politics. This term is lumpenproletariat.

These people, described as rag-tags, a non-class of those who have no stake in a country's levels of materia

 wealth. In a rude way, these were classed as of no interest to the communist agenda, as they would not care

 enough to change history or the class structure, as they were outside of it.

Hegel saw in The Philosophy of Right, that only those who owned property, had relationships in a society such as family and marriage, were involved in contracts whether political or economic and who has moral values would be interested in maintaining a society and establishing as well as continuing communities.

He was spot on. The lumpenproletariat would be those who did not own land, were even transients, and were considered, later by Trotsky, as useful in so far as they were disillusioned, depressed and ready for a revolt.

Marx did not think they would revolt, as it would not effect their sub-class. Marx knew that revolution was only

 possible for those who would actually engaged in political or revolutionary activities and those  who liked

 and followed a "politics of identity".

We have lost this politics of identity in the Catholic Church. Unless we rediscover how to think as a Catholic,

 one cannot identify politics with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Marx understood that the lumpenproletariat were not helpful to anyone. At one time, he grouped them with

 anarchists, who only want to destroy without an ideology of government.

One of the biggest losses for identity politics is the loss of a basis in natural law philosophy.

We no longer speak the same language as the post-post moderns, who do not believe in natural law.

The lumpenproletariat have in their definition, no relationships, no moral code, no church-going habits.

These would be the Fagans and Bill Sykes of the world. These could be called the "missing people".

I am beginning to see that many post-Christian peoples fall into this category. One of the marks of the lumpenproletariat would be no desire for anything but self. In the South, the term for lumpenproletariat 

would be white trash. In England, it would be yob or yobbo.

The point is that relativism and individualism create a large under-class of lumpenproletariats.

I think we are there at this stage in the Post-Christian, post-Western world.

I think that Marx is correct in putting the lumpenproletariats in the same category as anarchists.

My next post on this will include Gramsci's idea of the subalternity and hegemony, again.  To be continued...

The Little Things

Sometimes, it is the loss of little things which cause the heart to hurt the most.

Like my rosary case, made by a woman in one of my old parishes, or a badge someone gave me for a joke, or a scarf left behind. Or a holy card with a relic which has been in the family for a hundred years...

We prepare ourselves for illness, old age, and death, but God helps us face death by allowing the loss of the small.

The small reminds us of a personal encounter which, although short, was meaningful and even numinous. The small reminds us how vulnerable life is.

Sometimes the small is important, like a bronze medal of St. Benedict, the great Benedictine medal, I bought in Canada in 2001 and have lost. I have not seen the like again and most likely, as it was solid bronze, would not be able to afford one now.

Or the small Infant of Prague statue I had since I was very young and went missing in a move, or the little photo of my dead sister which is missing and perhaps in a box somewhere in Illinois.

Small is beautiful. Small teaches me to be even more simple and more humble. I think of St. Therese's room or St. Bernard's cell, with only the bare necessities.

But, losing things or misplacing them reminds me mostly of my own fragile life, a life like that of a leaf, green then gold, then red and brown, dying slowly over a period of time, but dying for sure.

Death may be the greatest mystery, after Love. We cannot avoid it, and we cannot pretend that we are prepared to meet whatever context in which God chooses to allow Death to come.

The smallest moments of our lives will be the last closing moments in which we again may remember the lost medal, or the lost rosary case, and think of those whom we have loved and lost.

God prepares us for that moment in many ways and loss is merely one...

Very cool article

http://www.france24.com/en/20150117-memorial-marks-70-years-swedish-schindler-disappeared/

Je heterosexuallly marié

OK, I am rebelling against the media glut about ssm. Today, on this blog, I want all the readers who are married, or widowed, or engaged, to write in and tell the world through this blog how wonderful and good heterosexual marriage is and why.

Write in the combox and let us drown out the sentences of sin. I am sick of this coverage, aren't you?

 Je heterosexually marié

Sigh.....want to go here someday

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayenne