Who Is The Elite? Who Is Transforming Your Children?

Why did Italy put this man on one of the national stamps? This happened in 1987. The world was very asleep then. Now, more Catholics are waking-up to the tyranny which is and has been forming the minds, the souls of your children.

I do hope, as I noted on this blog a few weeks ago, that Antonio Gramsci converted on his deathbed. I use to keep two lists on my dorm door at college. One was the list of home-schooled greats-like Dorothy Sayers. The other was a list of deathbed conversions. These lists were reminders to me and to my hall-mates that an alternative lifestyle was better than conformity to the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Many posts on this blog are about the cleansing of the imagination. Many posts on this blog are about the necessity of moving out of the world in one's mind and spirit, even though one has to work in the world.

As laity, we are in the world, but not of the world.

The culture has moved beyond saving in the areas of morals. It is highly unlikely, unless there is a huge catastrophe, that people will change.

Let me go back to Gramsci again.

He wanted education to be taken out of the hands of the "elite". Now, what we see as the elite are the atheists and agnostics who have taken over the universities, colleges, high schools and elementary schools. In Gramsci's time, the elite were Catholic intellectuals, not Marxists. They were men, mostly, who were educated in the classical tradition and who were conservative.

His kulturkampf succeeded in removing the traditional elite and supplanting that group with those we see now in charge of all levels of education-ie. Core Curriculum.

Gramsci's vision is now American's vision, replacing the philosophies of Western Civilization, such as natural law philosophy, the Rule of Law, Catholicism, and so on.

Gramsci and his followers wrote that the elite would form the child. Of course, this is the duty of parents, not schools, who should be working with parents and not against parents in the formation of the child.

I have studied and shared on this blog the various Catholic educational methods of formation-see the links below. That the Marxists have succeeded in taking over what parents declined to do is obvious now.

However, Catholics are still not responding to this situation of the brain-washing of children by the State. The fact that all those dioceses have accepted the Core Curriculum, again noted on this blog earlier, demonstrates both the level of deceit and the level of complicity with the State in undermining both the authority of the parent over the formation of the child and the creation of a morally bankrupt generation, again.

Commentaries on Gramsci use the term "transformer" with regard to schools.

I hope readers are getting really scared. Your children are being transformed into persons who will not share your beliefs on natural law, the Rule of Law,

By the way, these ideas of Gramsci were disseminated around the world-not just in Europe. Marxists active in both North and South America, Central America, and, of course, parts of Asia and Africa have founded the new elite. To see who members of this new elite actually are, just look at the MPs in Great Britain, Ireland, the Hague.

Tyranny does not take over in a day. Two idols have been worshiped by some Catholics to bring us to this crisis in the culture. The first, the biggest idol, is money.

The second is conformity-the false American ideal of Americanism.

And back to my entertainment theme this month-look here for the source this phrase.

Certainly, nearly all major writers, artists and film-makers of post-Second World War Italy were to a greater or lesser extent influenced by his mighty presence in the recent past. 

And for those who tell me Marxism is a dead and spent ideology in Europe (rofl), check this out for one indication of new life. 

to be continued...

Parents Giving in to Peer Pressure: Forming the Mind of A Girl Against Vanity

Recommend Girl Books Age 6-8

This post is specifically on girls and the formation of the virtues to destroy the predominant fault.

Starting with vanity, one knows that the opposing virtue is humility. Charity is also a virtue which can overcome vanity.

But, the parent is the main formator of the child. This excuse that the peers form the child is ridiculous, as it is the parents who give in to the peer pressure not the child.

I see very young girls daily in clothes which can only be described as slutty or prostitute clothes. Even in churches, many mothers allow their young girls, ages six to ten, for example, to dress with midriffs showing, underwear showing, and wearing nothing but tights-no skirts.

Now, the child did not go out and buy these clothes, the mothers did. The mothers are creating a monster girl, a princess who thinks she can have anything she wants and who is being taught to be a slave to fashion.

Vanity is being encouraged.  To be vain, all a girl needs is to be taught that the exterior is more important than the interior life. Vanity is encouraged by giving the girl the right to think about her clothes, her hair, her nails, her shoes, etc. as more important than developing the virtues given to her at baptism.

Also, too many mothers are not honest with their girls about their outward appearance. A child does not have to think she is the most beautiful person in the world. In fact, saying that over and over creates a false view of the self and also creates false expectations.

The entire Walt Disney princess preoccupation, as I have noted before on this blog, is dangerous.

Not all girls are princesses, and the models for holiness are not those who hung on to worldly power, including the power of sexual attraction, money and status, but those saints who gave those up for higher goods.Young girls do not need to be spending allowances on clothes, make-up and jewelry. This type of laxity is dangerous to the formation of virtue.

An excellent book can help a girl move away from princess preoccupation which destroys the real beauty of the virtues.

St. Etheldreda, the patroness of this blog, and many in her family, gave up being princesses and even queens in order to pursue holiness. This is a movement completely in antithesis to the Disney brainwashing. A girl may be a princess of a day on her birthday, but the rest of the year, mom should be teaching her to be a servant.

One of the best stories for a girl is the life of Blessed Humbeline, the sister of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Now, the book I am recommending is a children's book, but parents can benefit from it as well. It is charming. And I have written about Humbeline on this blog under the label saints and martyrs. And, here and here...

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ie/2013/02/saints-of-february-continuedhumbeline.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ie/2013/08/more-on-my-favourite-saints-family.html

I wish the publishers had used a different cover, as this depiction is not necessarily a true picture of what is inside the book. The one I had read, published in the 1950s, had child-friendly illustrations.

Humbeline was vain and gave it all up. She is only one example. But, her brothers challenged her to become holy. And, she did.

Obviously, a mother may have the same predominant fault as her girls or girls. When the Bible states that a woman is saved by child-bearing, one of the meanings of that pregnant (pun intended) phrase is that one sees one's one sins and flaws when one is raising children and one can respond in grace and gratitude for changing and converting in the second conversion, when one is working with the character building of one's children.

To be continued...

Homeschooling Part 20 The Rational Child and Virtues 2

Too many parents have been taught that there is a head-heart dichotomy. Not enough parents understand that the darkening of the intellect is a result of sin.

The intellect and the heart bring one to God, and for the child, both grow together. The idea that a child is not growing intellectually while even in the womb has long been proven false by both science and psychology. Now, the formation of the child and the teaching of the virtues must involve both the heart and the head.

This idea that religion is merely picked up by example has never been  a Catholic idea, but a Protestant one. When the Protestant Revolt threw out tradition and over a thousand years of approaching Faith through Reason, Christianity was doomed to weakness.

The virtues inform both the heart and the intellect and some virtues specifically perfect the intellect.

I shall take the virtues one by one and help the parents who are following this series see that as parents part of their role is not merely loving the child but passing down the Faith both in theory and in practice.

What the Protestant Revolt did and what Satan is doing daily is separating Faith from Reason, heart from intellect.

What has been created in the minds of many contemporary parents is a skewed idea of the normal child.

A normal child develops his character by cooperating with grace in the same manner as an adult does. But, the child is actually more sensitive to his surroundings and to the movements of grace because he has not sinned as much, not because he does not have concupiscence, but because the habits of sinned have not become ingrained.

The habits of virtues, therefore, can be taught more readily to a child than to an adult, who must first be purified of sin, imperfections, the tendencies toward sin and a corrupted imagination.

One can see why early formation in the virtues is key to becoming a saint.  And, this formation does not happen automatically, but under certain conditions.

Order is a sign of a normal child, a child who has been allowed to develop the virtues at an early age. Disorder is a sign of a child who has been denied the opportunity for growth in the virtues. I am not referring to physical or mental illnesses in this or any posts.

The signs of the normalized child were outlined first by Dr. Montessori and some may be surprised by the list.  Now, I must add a distinction here for the sake of clarity. Baptism changes us. It takes away Original Sin, but there is more. I remind parents that we are all born in sin, with a fallen nature, and literally slaves to sin. Here is a list from the CCC as a reminder of the consequences of baptism. I repeat them here to emphasize that in teaching children, there will be a difference in children who are baptized and those who are not.  The entire person is given the Indwelling of the Holy Trinity in mind, soul, body. This makes a difference in formation.

By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.⁶⁶ In those who have been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the Kingdom of God, neither Adam's sin, nor personal sin, nor the consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God.

The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification: 

- enabling them to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues; 

- giving them the power to live and act under the prompting of the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Holy Spirit; 

- allowing them to grow in goodness through the moral virtues. 

Thus the whole organism of the Christian's supernatural life has its roots in Baptism
 Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, the person baptized is configured to Christ. Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation.⁸³  Sections 1263- 1272, with some omissions.

I have highlighted the sections pertinent to this post. Remember that personality and character grow together, and that it would be a violence to the child to interrupt the flow of graces given to become the adult he is to become, through Christ and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Notice how the giving of the infused theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, and of the cardinal, also called, the moral virtues or intellectual virtues. The source of these virtues is sanctifying grace. I shall go more into detail in the next posts.  Here is a brief note from my perfection guru, Garrigou-Lagrange on this subject.

In conformity with tradition and with a decision of Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne,(5) the Catechism of the Council of Trent (Part II, On baptism and its effects), answers: "The grace (sanctifying), which baptism confers, is accompanied by the glorious cortege of all the virtues, which, by a special gift of God, penetrate the soul simultaneously with it." This gift is an admirable effect of the Savior's passion which is applied to us by the sacrament of regeneration.
Moreover, in this bestowal of the infused moral virtues, there is a lofty fitness that has been well set forth by St. Thomas.(6) The means, he observes, must be proportioned to the end. By the infused theological virtues we are raised and directed toward the supernatural last end. Hence it is highly fitting that we should be raised and directed by the infused moral virtues in regard to supernatural means capable of leading us to our supernatural end.

In each of these categories, I have placed virtues for the parent to be aware for the sake of helping the child, who is the main creator of himself. With grace, love, the proper environment  character is formed and that involves the mind, the heart, the soul.  I shall continue this in the next several posts. There are subcategories of virtues aligned with the main ones listed above, and all of these can be encouraged in the young child. The cardinal virtues are called such as they are "hinges" like on a door, cardo, in Latin, in Summa de bono,  by Philip the Chancellor, found on this site. 

A child without baptism can develop natural or human virtues, which are good and salutary, but he cannot develop these or have these elevated without grace. Without grace, the life of the virtues becomes anemic, almost impossible to follow, and finally, dies under sin. Now, the signs of the normalized child, character traits which have been enhanced by grace, are these discovered by Montessori:

1) Love of work

(2) Concentration

(3) Self-discipline

(4) Sociability. 

As one who is Montessori trained and one who has worked in several schools, including my own, I can say that I have witnessed this normalization over and over and over. Grace helps the child in these key areas of character development. To be continued....

By the way, parents, if you have not read this book, do so. I taught it along with another of the author and cannot recommend it to highly.