Do you know what it means to sacrifice, and are you ready to sacrifice your comfort zones for the sake of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church?
Saturday, 12 October 2013
Dedication to The Immaculate Heart of Mary
According to the Portuguese shrine’s website, the statue of Our Lady of Fatima will leave for Rome on the morning of Oct. 12 and return on the afternoon of Oct. 13. The statue normally resides in the shrine’s Little Chapel of Apparitions.
The cardinal said that “all ecclesial entities of Marian spirituality” are invited to take part in the celebration. Hundreds of movements and institutions that emphasize Marian devotion are expected to attend, the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima says.
The two-day observance includes an Oct. 12 pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Peter and moments of prayer and meditation. On Oct. 13, Pope Francis will celebrate Mass in St. Peter’s Square.
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-to-consecrate-the-world-to-marys-immaculate-heart/#ixzz2hXX9e1Jj
European television is full of this coverage, but I have not been home watching television.
Our Lady of Fatima is greatly loved in most Catholic countries.
If you have a chance, watch the dedication. I am not sure I shall able to see it. I am also having trouble with the Internet and the television is not working all the time as well. This is Malta.
Saint for October 12th
Felix de Nicola was born in 1540 at Montegranaro in the Central Italian region know as the Marches of Ancona, around 1540, the second of Jerome de Nicola and his wife Theodora's four children. His father was a builder by trade, but found it hard to eke out a living. At a young age Felix was sent to work on a neighbouring farm, so as to earn some extra income for the family. In the countryside, with only sheep for company, he developed a love for silence, solitude, prayer and meditation. But when his parents died, and his brother Silenzio took over the family business, Felix was called back home to help with the building work. He was, however, a clumsy young man, totally incapable of learning any of the building skills, his brother tried to teach him. Even as a mere hod carrier, his innate clumsiness got the better of him and he was regularly scolded and badly beaten by his bad-tempered older brother. He bore this cruel treatment with great patience.
Wanting to consecrate himself to the service of God, he entered the Capuchin novitiate at Jesi at the age of eighteen. He was given the name Seraphin. "I have nothing but a crucifix and a rosary. With these I hope to benefit the Brothers and become a saint." His humility, penance and self-sacrifice impressed his brothers. Punctual in performing his own duties, he still found time to be of service to others. He used to say, "I'm fit for nothing but ready for anything."
He often spent nights in prayer. In the evening he would visit the Blessed Sacrament and remain there for hours absorbed in contemplation. Then he would take a short rest, after which he would get up again to attend the midnight Office.
During a famine he ate only a quarter of his usual food in order to have more to give to the poor. As doorkeeper, charged with providing for the poor, he once went beyond obedience. One day, there were some poor people waiting for food, and, since he had nothing left to give them, he went into the garden and pulled up the vegetables which were growing there and distributed them. When the guardian criticized him for doing this, Seraphin assured him that the community would not suffer in any way and indeed, they did not go hungry, the shortage being made up in other ways.
God blessed the kindness of his servant: it was said that sick people were restored to health when he made the Sign of the Cross over them. But Seraphin, for the most part, was a quiet man, withdrawn from the public eye. When working in the friary he meditated on the passion of Our Lord, and his great wish was to be sent abroad as a missionary, though this was not granted. He used to compose simple prayers of his own, such as the following: - One of my readers states this is, of course, from the Stabat Mater. I shall look up the dates...
Holy Mother, pierce me through.
In my heart each wound renew
Of my Saviour crucified.
Seraphin died on 12 October 1604 at the age of sixty-four. Pope Clement XIII canonized him in 1767.
taken from.....
Love This............
Octopus Stew (in Maltese: Stuffat tal-Qarnit)
Ingredients
1 kilo (or 2 lb and 3.27 oz)) octopus
6 medium sized onions (chopped)
6 tomatoes (peeled and chopped)
6 large potatoes (cut in thick slices)
8 cloves of garlic (crushed)
8 olives (stoned and chopped)
1 tablespoon capers
A few leaves of marjoram and mint
A pinch of tyme
Olive oil
¼ bottle red wine
Method
Clean the octopus very well by turning head inside out and removing the insides. Cut away the beak and eyes. The rest is all edible. To tenderize the flesh, put the octopus in a plastic bag and beat it with a meat hammer against the kitchen table.
Cut the octopus into pieces some 5 cm in length. Rinse in salted water and allow to drain.
Place the octopus in a pot over a very low fire and stew for about an hour. If you see that it is getting too dry, add a little hot water or white wine.
Fry the onions in olive oil. When they soften, add the tomatoes and garlic. As soon as the tomatoes start to soften, mix in all herbs, olives and capers.
The octopus pieces should now be ready to be added to the pan. Increase the temperature to boiling and add the potatoes also. Pour the red wine, lower the heat and stew slowly until the liquid reduces considerably.
We hope that you found these two octopus recipes interesting and that you will try them out when you feel like cooking octopus.
L-Ikla t-tajba! ... Maltese for "Enjoy your meal" :)
Blogging While Entertaining
Writing is a private labor intensive work. One cannot be entertaining much when thinking, reflecting, writing.
However, in the lay life, we have ebbs and flows of activity and passive work, such as thinking, praying, and reflecting.
I love to entertain, in spurts. What is hard, of course, is doing this daily. I had a great friend whose husband was a top CEO. Her life was dedicated to entertaining. She had the grace and selflessness to meet the needs of her husband's many dinners and cocktail parties without being noticed. A quiet, efficient, and lovely hostess.
The key to being a good entertainer is to make all the people as comfortable and to allow them space to enjoy the dinner or day trip or coffee and talk, which means that one cannot be a narcissist, but "one who serves".
As an introvert, I find time to be by myself in Mass and late night Lectio Divina. When staying with friends, contemplation is almost impossible, but God wants times for us to reach out to others and share the jewels He gives us quietly in private. However, like a jealous Lover, He calls one to Himself.
A balance must be maintained and time for God remains the priority. I got a chance to go to Adoration today, which is hard to find in Malta, by the way. How nice to sit in the small chapel, with two or three other women and adore Christ in the Eucharist.
Keep your priorities as simple and as clear as possible.
Friday, 11 October 2013
Persecution Watch
A snippet and more here...
A Catholic doctor who refused to sanction a sex-selective abortion is fighting for his career after a complaint was made against him.
Dr Mark Hobart could be struck off Australia’s medical register for declining to arrange an abortion of a healthy girl because her parents wanted a boy instead.
He was asked for an abortion by an Indian couple who wanted to a boy but the mother was 19 weeks pregnant with a girl.
But he would not accede to their demands because the pregnancy was at an “advanced stage” and because he saw no medical necessity for it.
He also refused to refer the woman and her husband to a second doctor who would arrange the procedure.
The couple found another doctor and went ahead with the abortion a few days later.
81 Degrees Fahrenheit: 79% Humidity-Feels Like Iowa in August
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By the Triton Fountain in Valletta... I actually let my friend take a photo....some people want to move this fountain as it reminds them of the end of colonial Malta. Sigh....the politically correct seem to want to rewrite history.
Some people want a parking lot here. Can one imagine Romans moving fountains?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110504/local/pl-raises-questions-on-tritons-fountain-removal.363600#.Ulgmr9LVBD8
Answering A Reader's Question
As I noted in the very beginning of the perfection series so long ago now, Garrigou-Lagrange believes, as do many mystics and theologians, that the higher levels of prayer and perfection are for all not for the priviledged few.
Now, as there are over 500 posts in that series, one must go back and systematically follow the outline of the road to perfection, including the many quotations of the saints which were given. The Doctors of the Church series also deals with perfection.
All people are called by God to be saints. All people are given grace to become holy. Sainthood is the condition of reaching the stage of Unity before death. There is no canonized saint who did not reach union with God before death.
The problems of approaching holiness on earth involve various aspects which I have delineated but which may be hard for some of you to find in the long series.
Here are the obstacles:
One, people are not generous, states St. John of the Cross, in responding to grace. Generosity of heart and mind mean that becoming one with God requires a decision and time, including making a relationship with God the priority in one's life.
Generous souls become saints.
Two, people do not believe that grace is given to all. It is, but not in the same manner. There is only one Blessed Virgin Mary, one St. John the Baptist, one St. Gemma Galgani, one St. Pio.
However, in this uniqueness, a person is called to be the saint God created him to be. Whether one is a child, a teen, a young adult, a middle-aged or old person does not matter as the stages are exactly the same.
Three, purgatory should not be seen as the norm, but the punishment for missed chances of grace and merit.
One should not aim for purgatory. This is not the goal, but heaven. And, canonized saints spent their time on earth being purified, skipping purgatory. If a Catholic does not understand that the process of holiness is the main reason for one's life, that is, the purification of sin and the tendencies of sin in order to truly love God instead of self.
Four, only the pure see God, which is connected to Three above, but only the pure can build up the Church as well. In other words, until one is purified, one merely works out of one's ego instead of out of love of God. Too many problems in the Church have to do with people building their own little kingdoms instead of the Church which belongs to Christ.
The saints who set aside ego built institutions, such as religious orders, schools and so on within the Church which have lasted to this day: SS. Benedict, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Bosco, Dominic are a few examples.
The saints who set aside egos in order to write excellent treatises and masterpieces of doctrine and prayer, such as SS. Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius of Loyola, Alphonsus Ligouri and many more, built up the Church by entering into the Illuminative State and finally, the Unitive State.
Those who think they are building up the Church without purification first deceive themselves. And, this is one reason why the Church is so weak at this time, as the disciplines of prayer and penance have been set aside in favor of limited and impure action.
To know God's Will clearly and carry it out instead of imposing one's own will onto situations in the Church, one must pursue perfection through the stages of prayer.
Five, it is clear that most people do not enter into this journey because of their own free will. They allow themselves to be bound up by their predominant faults, which get in the way of holiness.
Much of this is a repetition of what I have emphasized before in the perfection series.
One more point and then I shall write more tomorrow. One cannot skip steps. God can give anyone grace and the stages may last a short period of time, as in the cases of young saints. Timing is God's agenda. Cooperating with grace is ours....
To be continued....
Answers and repeated answers on Quietism
A reader asked me some questions on the levels of prayer. I can answer one of them quickly, as I wrote on the dangers of Quietism before...Check out these posts.
12 May 2012
Continuing with the heresy of Quietism, I am looking at these points from the Letter, Coelestis Pastor, quoted earlier today. 20. To assert that in prayer it is necessary to help oneself by discourse and by reflections, when God ...
12 May 2012
Some good advice from The Imitation of Christ against Quietism-- "The fervent and diligent man is ready for all things. It is harder labor to withstand our vices and passions than to toil at bodily labors. He that shuns not small ...
13 May 2012
Here are the last few points condemned by the Church on Quietism. I hope this little review has been helpful to some who either have fallen into errors, or for those who, like me, have come up against these in the past few ...
13 May 2012
I am again looking at Quietism. Here are some more points from the Pope's Letter I have been looking at the past two days. 31. No meditative person exercises true interior virtues; these should not be recognized by the senses ...
12 May 2012
I have been concerned about a tendency in a certain generation, or generations of Catholics regarding the heresy of Quietism. Now, this heresy results in two effects, which basically separates those who seek the Kingdom of ...
12 May 2012
Continuing my examination and application of Quietism in today's Church, I am continuing with the list of errors so clearly condemned by Holy Mother Church. Here are two more for consideration. 13. After our free will has ...
Mucking around Valletta and Sliema
Those of you who have followed my blog know that I lived in Malta for several months in 2011. This is my second visit in 2013. My favorite city is Valletta, where I am today, but with limited access to the Net. Last night, the Net went down in my flat in Sliema, which is why there are no posts today. Later on, I shall write on a few themes relating to the Church and Malta.
Pray for Malta. As many Catholic countries, it is going through a stage of rapidly losing its Catholic identity and becoming completely secular.
Why this has happened is owing to the idolization of money-same thing which has killed the simple, lovely Catholic faith of the Irish.
Money as a god is demanding, taking up time and energy from prayer and penance.
So many people act as though there is no afterlife or personal judgement.
Pray for Malta. As many Catholic countries, it is going through a stage of rapidly losing its Catholic identity and becoming completely secular.
Why this has happened is owing to the idolization of money-same thing which has killed the simple, lovely Catholic faith of the Irish.
Money as a god is demanding, taking up time and energy from prayer and penance.
So many people act as though there is no afterlife or personal judgement.
Thursday, 10 October 2013
A Finger in The Dike
 |
| http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GrandHarbourValletta1801.jpg |
For hundreds of years, Malta stood against the enemies of Christ's Church. The Great Siege of Malta occurred in 1565, when the Catholics overcame the Muslims.
It was a miracle that the battle was won. This graph shows the sides.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Malta_(1565)
| The Knights Hospitaller | The Ottomans |
|---|---|
| 500 Knights Hospitaller | 6,000 Spahis (cavalry) |
| 400 Spanish soldiers | 500 Spahis from Karamania |
| 800 Italian soldiers | 6,000 Janissaries |
| 500 soldiers from the galleys (Spanish Empire) | 400 adventurers from Mytheline |
| 200 Greek and Sicilian soldiers | 2,500 Spahis from Rouania |
| 100 soldiers of the garrison of Fort St. Elmo | 3,500 adventurers from Rouania |
| 100 servants of the knights | 4,000 "religious servants" |
| 500 galley slaves | 6,000 other volunteers |
| 3,000 soldiers drawn from the Maltese population | Various corsairs from Tripoli and Algiers |
| Total: 6,100 | Total: 28,500 from the East, 48,000 in all |
Priest Locked Out of Church
Priest: Obama Admin. Denied Mass to Catholics
How about trying this one on for size? Here is the press release headline from Congressman Tim Huelskamp’s office this afternoon:
Obama Administration Denies Mass to Catholics
Apparently, a priest was denied access to a military chapel this weekend. Father Ray Leonard serves at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia but because of the government shutdown, he wasn’t allowed to go to celebrate Mass this past weekend.
He is contracted by the Defense Department to meet the spiritual needs of Catholics, but not now. The chapel doors were locked and the sign said, “Shutdown: No Catholic service till further notice.”
Father Leonard said the following:
“This is our church, Catholics have an expectation and obligation to attend Mass and we were told, ‘No you can’t go to church this week…“ My parishioners were upset. They were angry and dismayed. They couldn’t believe that in America they’d be denied access to Mass by the government.”
Rep. Tim Huelskamp had this reaction:
“Time and time again this Administration demonstrates it is waging a war against the very religious freedoms upon which America was founded. This is exactly why we worked to pass legislation (House Concurrent Resolution 58) this past weekend – to protect the religious liberties of all those who bravely serve in our Armed Forces.”
The Binding Force of Tradition
It is good to know that modern popes made mistakes talking to the media in the not so distant past. Fr. Ripperger in his book on tradition mentions one huge blooper from Paul VI.
Thankfully, there have been no mistakes from the Chair of Peter.
I am enjoying this book and highly suggest it.
Thankfully, there have been no mistakes from the Chair of Peter.
I am enjoying this book and highly suggest it.
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
Lampedusa is very close....very
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10363186/EU-calls-for-Mediterranean-sea-patrols-after-Lampedusa-tragedy.html
Lampedusa is just short of 104 air miles from Malta. The people were from Somalia and Syria, including mothers and children. The EU met and discussed this problem of desperate immigration.
May God have mercy on their souls.
Lampedusa is just short of 104 air miles from Malta. The people were from Somalia and Syria, including mothers and children. The EU met and discussed this problem of desperate immigration.
May God have mercy on their souls.
A Nice Surprise-The Flemish Tapestries at St. John's Co-Cathedral
Amazingly, although I have been to Malta twice before and the Cathedral of St. John so many times I have lost count, for the first time today, I saw the Flemish Tapestries. Here is one example, The Resurrection of Our Lord. Here is a mini-history of the tapestries, plus the page where you can see more of these exquisite works. http://stjohnscocathedral.com/the-collections/gallery-of-tapestries.html
The set of Flemish Tapestries at St John’s Co-Cathedral was the gift made to the church by the Aragonese Grand Master Ramon Perellos y Roccaful upon his election in 1697. The tapestries are the largest complete set in the world and consist of twenty-nine pieces ordered from the Brussels atelier of Judocus de Vos.
The tapestries are woven entirely from the finest wool and silk yarns and measure 6 meters in height. The overwhelming dimensions and the exuberant character of the designs based on cartoons prepared by the renowned artist Peter Paul Rubens render this set one of the most spectacular interpretations of baroque art. By 1701 the set had reached Malta and brought the embellishment of the church to a climax. The full length portrait of Grand Master Perellos hanging majestically over the doorway had a lasting impression as the visitor exited the church.
The entire set of tapestries consists of fourteen large scenes depicting the life of Christ and allegories and fourteen panels representing the Virgin Mary, Christ the Saviour and the Apostles. This grand set of tapestries portrays the principal and fundamental Divine truths of the Catholic faith and was intended to convey a message, that is, the supremacy of the Catholic Church and the fame and grandeur of the Grand Master and the Order. The tapestries were originally suspended from the main cornice along the nave of the church during important occasions such as the feast of St John the Baptist.
The other wonderful works of art I saw today were the Choral Books, and here is a short text of those. http://stjohnscocathedral.com/the-collections/choral-books.html
The Graduals of L'Isle Adam
The largest and most important set consists of 10 choral books and is the gift of Grand Master L'Isle Adam. These illuminated choral books called ‘graduals’ consist of chants for the mass of the Roman Church and accompany the communion service.
Each choral book features hand painted illuminations of exceptional beauty, with gold leaf as a background adding to their brilliance. These splendid miniatures (as they are called due to their minute detail) have been painted by different hands, reflecting the current artistic trend of each painter.
The Verdalle Antiphonaries
Another set of choral books, bearing the arms of Grand Master Verdalle, is included in this collection. Referred to as antiphonaries, they contain the sung parts of the divine office (the musical sections used during daily services, at the various canonical hours of the day that do not feature in graduals).
The Verdalle antiphonaries number seven in total and contain the Proper and Common of saints. All are in parchment and accommodate 150 illuminated initials each.
Antonie de Paule’s Antiphonaries
The collection of Grand Master Antonie de Paule consist of two manuscripts in parchment. They are antiphonaries for the Temporal cycle of the church year.
A 4th re-post-think, pray, reflect, act
Friday, 20 January 2012
The Ultimate Failure of Transformational Marxists
Some of you have wondered when I was going to write my anti-Gramsci articles here. Well, here is the first of many. I wrote on this before many years ago and now it is time to dig in and get dirty on this blog. Here is where some of my information is from, but not all, as some is my own construct over the years. Also, there is another link below for summaries.There are many sites on Gramsci if one wants a bibliography, I can send one on request. But, the letters are key. Just remember that the key to understanding all of this is that the ideology is based on materialism, that there is no spiritual world. The old Marxism is not exactly the same as Gramsci's ideas, except in the denial of the spiritual and the emphasis on pragmatism, but that denial of a spiritual hierarchy is key.
Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, "Communism is based on a materialistic and humanistic view of life and history. According to Communist theory, matter, not mind or spirit, speaks the last word in the universe. Such a philosophy is avowedly secularistic and atheistic. Under it, God is merely a figment of the imagination, religion is a product of fear and ignorance, and the church is an invention of the rulers to control the masses. Moreover, Communism, like humanism, thrives on the grand illusion that man, unaided by any divine power, can save himself and usher in a new society--"
Gramsci wrote that "the mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence … but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organiser, "permanent persuader" and not just a simple orator…" See above. Here is where the Chomskyites and Alinskyites come in. with grass roots political and social activism. But, there is more...The intellectuals were not merely to be in academia, or politics, but everywhere, changing the philosophical roots of the culture from within. Again, the emphasis is on pragmatism and what works in the relationships between people and groups of people,such as labor unions. However, what actually binds people together to want to do things together is a less than satisfactory explanation, being basically the historical context of "subjectivism", lacking any hierarchical ideology and denying any universals. In other words, humans create their own reality which changes constantly in history and context. This is a variation of the heresy of immanentism, which states that there is no God outside of man, and leads to the complete denial of God. Of course, if all meaning and history are created by humans, there is no God or plan outside the temporary. Historicism is a combination of immanentism and false progressivism or evolutionism, all condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his encyclical against Modernism (Star-Trektheories). Simplified here and here.
Gramsci also wrote of what he called his idea of infiltrating the media, the Church, journalism, schools, universities, the judiciary and so on. In the posting below on Levin a day ago, one can see how this has happened in government and political theory. Georg Lukacs, Gramsci's follower, was the one who came up with the idea of sex education as undermining Christianity in the culture. One can see that in Ireland today, with the push to end Catholicism in schools. This has already happened in England. These ideas have been part of the elite of education in America, in Great Britain and now, in Ireland since the 1950s. By placing anti-Christian curricula in the schools such as anti-abstinence and pro-homosexuality, the Christian, and specifically, the Catholic religion would be destroyed in the culture. Now, this is mainstream. In addition, Latin and Greek were to be removed from the curricula, so that the continuity of Catholic and Western culture would be destroyed. All this has happened. It happened a long time ago when my brothers were in high school, and now they are in their early fifties. They did not get Classical Education. Some of these references arehere.
I had Classical Education, including Latin, and world history, as well as Church history, logic, ethics, civics, Plato, Aristole, etc. I was in the last generation to get the pre-Gramsci education, which was based on the Jesuits and on the Catholic-based Western Civilization. The destruction is now all but complete. All this was done in the name of "democracy" and the destruction of elitism. Anyone who decries elitism is a Gramscian at heart. In the early 2000s, I had a little business as a curriculum consultant, helping schools either move back to Classical Education or created new schools in this mode. Many people did this at the college level, like the founders of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, or Wyoming Catholic, or Thomas More College. It works. Young people learn how to think and how to preserve the beauty of Western Civilization. They discern the Marxist fallacy of class warfare in the present milieu and the nihilism of Post-Modernism.
A drop in the ocean, I am afraid, are these efforts, as the powers that be are outlawing independence in education and outlawing home schooling. Look at developments this week in Sweden. The term "social engineering" has come to mean many things, but in academia and in politics, it means the appropriation of Gramsci and Lukacs' ideals of infiltration and destruction, of the emphasis on the pragmatic and not the person. In the construction of a new society based on relationships, this destruction of frameworks of relationship seems counter-productive. But, for Gramsci, humans are capable of inter-relating without religion or even metaphysics of any kind. I always wonder when reading this why people would bother to work for such a society.
Why? Because these men hate the Church and Western Civ, they set out to destroy both, knowing what Belloc so succinctly wrote that "The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith." Thanks to Gramsci and others, like Kant, we barely have the Faith and we barely have Europe....Gramscians deny that he intended to destroy culture, but I cannot see that his explanations and plans mean anything but that as a consequence of human activity to set up a society without Faith or the culture based on that Faith. Herein lies a paradox in Gramsci.
When I met my first true follower of Gramsci he said to me. "One cannot be a scholar and a Catholic." The implication was that only those who had thrown off the tyranny of the teaching of the Church, of Aquinas, Bonaventure, Augustine, even Maritain or Gilson, could one think. Not so, as Gramsci himself needed the past to resconstruct or rather desconstruct Western society. He relied on the writings of some of the "great books", the same he seemed to decry. The Gramscian error lies in the fact that the Marxist has just accepted another ideology in place of the teachings of the Catholic Church, and one more illogical and self-serving than that of the Church. Gramsci's emphasis on intellectuals and activists leading society away from the Church and Western Civilization just replaces one ideal system for his own. The error lies in the denial of the basic premises of natural law philosophy and the desire of the human will for freedom from social engineering. Over and over, he writes about historicism, mentioned above, the idea that humans get their identity from societal relationships and not from nature. In this sense, Gramsci is the arch-relativist, the grave error of the American educational systems today. He is a relativist also in so far as he does not believe in the absolute materialism of the Marxist, but a created, practical materialism. This pragmatism may be where one sees Gramsci being influenced by Machiavelli, the ultimate pragmatist. However, even with relativism or utilitarianism, a backlash comes eventually and the backlash is barbarism. The only idea that has historically changed the barbarian is Christianity.
The reason why barbarism is the ultimate failure of Gramsci's desire for atheistic communism is that the lowest common denominator of a human mode of being emerges from the death of the West. Communism and historicism fall to the armies of complete selfish, narcissistic individuals who only think of themselves and not the common good. Ergo, the Russian mafia. There is no longer a common good. There is no state to adore. This is complete Post-modernist deconstructionism and nihilism. In the post-society, the only remaining ideals are the death-wish and the desire for power. Interestingly enough, Gramsci was against worship of the state and believed that the proletariat could rule without such an organization. He thought that a regulated society could rule itself-this is the false ideal of utopianism, see post below on Levin's book. Order does not spring out of mere pragmatism. In fact, I would state that relativism and atheistic anarchy comes out of utilitarianism. Here is the difference between Michelle and POTUS. She is a true Alinksy activist and he is a narcissist. However, they both fall into the Gramsci camp of relativism.
Sadly, all of the idealism of the Gramscian falls to the neo-barbarians desires for personal, physical satisfaction and the death-wish. What Gramsci and his followers fail to take into consideration is raw evil, or Evil, if one can be so primitive as to believe, as I do , that Evil is a Person, who is pure spirit. The idealism of the Marxist or neo-Marxist cannot stand up against the greed and hatred of the world, the flesh and the devil. It doesn't matter in the long run, as the Marxist, as well as Evil, desires the destruction of the West and the Catholic Church. Marxism undoes itself by unleashing deeper powers, such as one understands in the dabbling of the occult. There is always something under the atheism and narcissism. But, those who deny the spiritual world. those who are complete materialists, overlook this important concept. In that spiritual world is found naked power. In the praxis of history and human activity, as described by Gramsci, there is no accounting for this evil. However, evil exists. It states, "Non serviam" I will not serve. Jeremiah 2:20--"Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve. For on every high hill, and under every green tree thou didst prostitute thyself."
That is what the neo-barbarians understand. Naked power does not need an ideology in order to succeed. Power just wants power. However, the good news is that such power undoes itself. It self-destructs over and over again. That is the nature of evil-it cannot create, it can only destroy. But, destroy, it does.
Not a re-post-some things are just clearer and more obvious now
Michael Walzer in the Winter 1996 issue of the Marxist journal Dissent. see here for more
"Gramscian 'war of position,' " Walzer approvingly cited, among other developments:
"The visible impact of feminism."
"The effects of affirmative action."
"The emergence of gay rights politics, and ... the attention paid to it in the media."
"The acceptance of cultural pluralism."
"The transformation of family life," including "rising divorce rates, changing sexual mores, new household arrangements --
and, again, the portrayal of all this in the media."
"The progress of secularization; the fading of religion in general and Christianity in particular from the public sphere -- classrooms, textbooks, legal codes, holidays, and so on."
"The virtual abolition of capital punishment."
"The legalization of abortion."
"The first successes in the effort to regulate and limit the private ownership of guns."
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