Could this be the biggest find since the Dead Sea Scrolls?
From Samer

The Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Despite being the work of one man, Salman Khan, this 1600+ video library is the most-used educational video resource as measured by YouTube video views per day and unique users.

Jim C:

Any of you folks with children who are students from elementary school to college/university levels should check this out. Talk about one way to bring equality of opportunity to everyone regardless of income, country of origin, etc. I wish I was young again so I could start all of this over one more time, only do it right, this time. Truly a righteous endeavor!

Sometimes violence is the answer
How to handle a bully. A last resort — non-aggression means not starting the fight but it doesn’t mean you can’t finish it. Hooray for Casey Heynes. From Ad Orientem.

From RR

• End marijuana prohibition.
• What is social justice?
• UN “authorization” is the emperor’s new fig leaf.
• The libertarian case for intellectual property.
• War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.

From LRC

• Neither the wars nor the leaders were great.
• Libya: wouldn’t a bullet or payoff be cheaper? One other point: as Gerald Celente says, if the chief export of Libya were broccoli, none of this would be happening: the media hate campaign, the lying excuses for killing, the occupation and takeover of the oil.
• Why endless war trumps the silver bullet every time.
• The screwing of the unhip in San Francisco.

Six socially conscious acts that only look like they help
Now how are rich white kids going to polish their transcripts/résumés? Somebody should ‘raise awareness’ of that and make up a coloured ribbon or rubber bracelet that hasn’t been used already. Regarding No. 3, for the sake of good old conservation, good stewardship of creation, I avoid using plastic bags. No. 2 reminds me of this from Jeffrey Tucker. And:

Today, over 90 percent of America’s ethanol is produced from corn, an industry propped up by government mandates and a federal subsidy of around $5.6 billion a year.

From Cracked.

From Samer

• Syriac chant. The late Abuna Saliba Sawma (some of the comments suggest he later became a bishop) who was blessed with that spectacular voice.
• Raimondo: You lie, Mr President.

On the job
A writer for another local news site photographed me videoing a story this week.

My story and video.


Another:

Fitness tips that don’t work
From Cracked

Why not socialism
From Zero Gov

From LRC

• Living free in an unfree world.
• Economic rebirth?
• Whites and blacks flee California. Whites leave MA, NY, NJ, PA. Thomas Sowell on what it all means.
• That Libya coalition. The once-North Atlantic Treaty Organization is revealed as a tawdry cover story, a shell, for Britain and France neo-colonialist freedom of action in Libya. David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have their own reasons for mounting this anti-Gaddafi campaign. They view the Mediterranean as their lake and want it ringed by friendly and pliable governments.
• If the Republicans really wanted to get out of the UN, they could have done so when they controlled the Congress and the presidency for over four years under Bush. But of course they did nothing.
• Smile, you’re on ‘Killer Camera’.

Media

• The NYT paywall goes up. “And another mastodon goes into the tar pit,” says Gary North.
• Yep, MySpace’s dying. Never understood the appeal when making nice sites with simple HTML’s not that hard. For people too lazy to make their own crappy GeoCities sites? Friendster’s still around but only in the Orient; I don’t even get hobot e-mails from it any more.

Unlikely TV shows that saved people’s lives
From Cracked

Gates: Libya war not a vital US interest
From here
Obama’s speech last night was like Bush I for Gulf War I in ’91 and Bush II for Gulf War II in ’03. Same try at appealing to charity: the poor Libyans. Khadafy doesn’t have a nuke aimed at my house: I don’t care.

LRC’s Butler Shaffer:

The emperor made a pathetic effort to rationalize his unilateral attack on Libya by saying “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter.” His words were reminiscent of Condoleezza Rice’s earlier unfounded fear image of a “mushroom cloud.” If this guy is really troubled by the sight of slaughter, he might want to take a look at such publications as Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and Rolling Stone and view the images of American soldiers butchering and decapitating Afghan civilians.

Drawing: Khadaffy Duck. From here. Had that idea 30 years ago and was sure someone had drawn it by now.

Old-school barber in Brooklyn
I had a place like this to go to but the barber/owner, from Italy, died more than 15 years ago. RIP Luca D’Alessandro.

The dismantling of Britain’s armed forces continues

Britain is still an island country dependent on imports for food. Reducing the armed forces, especially the navy, to the point where they cannot effectively defend the country is not a good idea.

From here.

Fr L on wearing the hat

One Sunday after Mass a great big Italian guy, maybe in his mid-sixties, comes up and gives me a bear hug. Then after the clinch he looks at me and I see there are tears welling up in his eyes. “Faddah, ya wore da hat.” He’s choking back some real emotion here.

I say, “The hat?”

“Ya wore da hat!”

“You mean my biretta?”

“Yeah. Ya wore da hat. I ain’t seen the hat since the priests used to wear them when I was a boy and it brought back all the bewdiful memories. Tanks for wearing the hat.” And off he goes.

I don’t even know his name. I call him Luigi.

So I wear the biretta for Luigi. I wear the biretta for all those faithful Catholics who had their beautiful traditions ripped away from them by well-meaning, but ignorant “reformers”. I wear the biretta in memory of all the wreckovated churches, in protest for all the hideous modern art that has been imposed on us. I wear it as a tribute to all the beautiful old churches and in protest at all the grotesque new ones. Luigi stands for all that, so I wear “da hat” for Luigi.

I wouldn’t say they were well-meaning but otherwise yeah.

The Italians that age I happen to know aren’t like that about the church but anyway.

I wear the lay equivalent daily.

Photo: Fr George Acker, SSC, Fr J. Guy Winfrey’s mentor.

Devon Prep

Devon Preparatory School is a private Catholic college-preparatory school in Devon, Pennsylvania, founded in 1956 by the Piarist fathers. It is an all-boys school, divided into a middle school (grades 6–8) and an upper school (grades 9–12), both located on the same campus of 20 acres (81,000 m2). The school operates independently with the blessings of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The mansion, the centerpiece of the estate, was built in 1913 by Philadelphia publisher Dr. Charles M. Lea. The task of transforming the mansion into a school began in March 1956. It was renamed Calasanctius Hall after St. Joseph Calasanctius, founder of the Piarist Order.

The house where time stood still
If I were to live in a ranch house this is what it would be like

From RR

• Pentagon’s millions no match for homemade bombs.
• Taking aim at the Pentagon budget.
• Garage sales shall provide.
• Barack Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace Prize winners combined. He’s bombed his sixth country. Funny how the swipples aren’t saying they’re sorry for voting for him. But it’s not like any of them are going to Afghanistan or Libya. They voted for him to look cool. Mission accomplished, I guess.
• The War Powers Act circumvented the Constitution’s clear language and since its adoption, presidents have been emboldened to go to war without getting a specific declaration from Congress. Now Barack Obama has taken this trend to the next logical step: he didn’t even bother to consult Congress, apparently believing that when a bunch of foreign dignitaries say it’s OK, he can send Americans off to die and kill.
• Innovation requires economic freedom.
• Career colleges – also known as for-profit, proprietary or private sector colleges – provide an important avenue to post-secondary education and upward mobility for at-risk nontraditional student populations. The career college sector is also the country’s best hope, through its efficiency and innovation, to substantially expanding Americans’ access to the higher education that enables individuals to pursue the fastest growing and emerging occupations.
• Race and libertarianism.
• Revolutionary calls for freedom: where are they in America?
• Why we really, really don’t want planning of the food market.
• Should governments subsidize health insurance?

Sunday

• The Ukrainian Catholic Church’s new, young metropolitan. As you can see, Rome’s always told the Greek Catholics to be externally like the Orthodox and some of the new-breed clergy are doing that. I imagine he’ll switch to the Russian white klobuk for a metropolitan. Ramble: there’s a legend about the white klobuk connected to the Pope, something to do with a legend about St Peter and the patriarch of Moscow the third Rome somehow inheriting it. Then Peter the Great when he abolished the patriarchate gave all metropolitans the white one. (Also the patriarch wears a unique older version of the klobuk.) But the tradition of the Pope wearing white is only about 400 years old, based on St Pius V’s white Dominican habit.
• From the Byzantine Rite: We bow to thy cross, O Lord, and we glorify thy holy resurrection.
• Damian Thompson:
  • Teaching the TLM in mainstream seminaries?
  • The mighty biretta. The church version of the fedora revival. BTW a black fedora is part of the mid-century street uniform of an Archdiocese of New York priest (cassock and biretta on church grounds; black suit and fedora elsewhere; both with white Roman collar).
• Fr H:
  • Collect for Lent III.
  • Councils, parts one, two, three and four. Long story short: I believe in religious liberty and ecumenism rightly understood (not indifferentism) and have no problem with the vernacular. So why oppose Vatican II? Ratz, now Pope Benedict, nailed it decades ago: sure, it was valid; it couldn’t teach heresy. But it wasn’t useful. Understatement. No, it was an epic fail as the kids say. As Jeff Culbreath has said, Catholics are best off ignoring it. Because it didn’t define any doctrine, you can!
  • The cultus of the Blessed Sacrament, parts one, two and three.
  • Holy busyness. Part of the un-self-conscious traditionalism of Orthodoxy at its best. The priests do their thing, the congregation theirs and nobody says boo. Keep your nose clean enough and everybody’s happy.
  • Fr L and Fr Z remind that Archbishop Lefebvre died 20 years ago Friday. If not for him there’d probably be no Pope Benedict’s revival. So merci beaucoup.
• Fr L:
  
  • C.S. Lewis suggests that the reasons angels seem to us to be ethereal and ‘unreal’ is not because they are unreal, but because we are. The angels are not less real than we are, but more real.
  • Do beautiful churches help vocations?
• Burning incense is psychoactive. Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. An international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.

Cars



’59 Buick assembly



Chevy Impala from the same year.

antiwar.com’s week that was

Another reason Libya’s none of our business: rebel leader admits al-Qaeda ties
Roberto Lionello:

Let me recapitulate for those who missed an episode: Reagan told us jihadists are good; Bush told us jihadists are terrorists; now Obama is allied with jihadists in the fight to oust Gadaffi.

Eurasia is at war with Eastasia. Check.

RIP Mayor C. Scott Shields
Killed in a skydiving accident

Shields was a passionate defender of gun rights.

“Government produces nothing, yet consumes more and more of our tax dollars,” he wrote in December 2006. “Free-market enterprise is the only course to follow. If you don’t believe me then keep voting for politicians who talk the talk without walking the walk. Empower them to take and spend more of your money, and sit back and watch what happens.”

From LRC

• The phony arguments for presidential war powers.
• Obama is Bush and Clinton at the same time.
• Political correctness on Wikipedia. Charity gone wrong: lying about history.
• Wilson and FDR knew that their policies of unconditional surrender would ensure that their wars would go on as long as possible, which was one of their goals. They loved being wartime leaders, Great Men pushing the little boxes around on the map, sending so many to their graves. They knew that war strengthened them and their governments. And they wanted their special interests to profit from the destruction, and the remaking of a new US-dominated world. It is also no coincidence that Obama and his satraps confiscated all of Gadaffi’s money; forbade him to travel internationally; and now, told him he will be tried for war crimes. Of course, he is a war criminal, like Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, Wilson, FDR, et al. But if one actually wanted him gone, a safe, plush retirement would be the most likely way to bring it about. Obama’s policy is designed to lengthen the war, cause maximum chaos, punish the Arabs who refuse to bow the knee, and enable the empire to extend its control over oil and everything else.
• What should the government tell the mother of an American soldier who loses his life in Libya? Answer: That he died for the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaida, two organizations that have been identified as being part of “the rebels” opposing Gadhafi who are apparently our new “allies.”
• Why are thoughtful people so perplexed over Obama’s unilateral decision to go to war against Libya without seeking congressional approval, while opting for UN authorization? Has the possibility not entered anyone’s mind that Obama – put into office by the corporate-establishment – might be in the process of generating a world base for the political structuring of his masters’ interests, as a replacement for the national system of coercive authority? History demonstrates how the American business system sought a broadened federal power when the economic life of this country evolved from state and regional markets to national ones (see my In Restraint of Trade book). Are we to imagine that, in this age of multi-nationalism, these same interests would not be desirous of empowering an international state to standardize and universally enforce their interests? Does anyone really believe that this move was something that Obama and Michelle dreamed up one night in the Lincoln bedroom? Does anyone not suspect that the total lack of impeachment talk from members of Congress might be due to “our representatives” who, like Obama and the RCA Victor dog, are busy listening to their “masters’ voice”?

My daily ‘newspaper’
RR’s Today’s Edition

From Cracked

• 10 animals you won’t believe are closely related, or not.
• Five reasons we aren’t good at democracy.

A foolish and unconstitutional war

The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Winter’s postscript


Our Lady of Grace looked like Our Lady of Snows this morning.

Totalitarian anti-fascists

Dressed in their preferred street garb of black clothes, boots, balaclavas, and anti-Nazi patches are young people, almost all white, driven by an ideology as powerful and magnetic as communism. French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has warned, “I think that the lofty idea of ‘the war on racism’ is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what communism was for the 20th century: a source of violence.”

Obnoxious moral grandstanding: when swipples try to be badasses. Under the guise of the noble cause of defending/restoring minorities’ individual liberty, wannabe thugs want to take away your rights.

The “Greatest Generation” fought and won World War II, while the Boomers marched in Civil Rights protests [unconstitutional but I appreciate the noble cause]. What’s left for the present generation to do?

Many antifa identify themselves as anarchists and communists. Both earlier movements secularized Christianity’s message that a chosen few will guide the world away from evil and toward the good.

But a real anarchist would live and let live, not trying to violate Jared Taylor’s rights, as long as no minorities are actually harmed.

The legacy of religious fundamentalism has been bent, twisted and hammered into a new shape by the NewAge OneWorld Brotherhood of Man.

Yup. A lot of this swippleness is the Pilgrims’ English Calvinism curdled.

From Taki.

The Online Tornado FAQ

Allegri’s Miserere

Fr Barnes visits America
Specifically Texas

• From the ordinariate-news blog.
• From his own blog.

I’ve been to the South several times and to the real South once, in North Carolina once I got far enough out of Raleigh. Someday I should see Texas.

From Cracked

• Five useful organisations you think are evil thanks to movies.
• Six groups that don’t work as movie bad guys any more.

The greatest book in English
The KJV turns 400

US approaching insolvency; fix to be ‘painful’

From RR

• Living within our means. Recently Congressman Paul wrote an article telling Congress it needs to reject the warfare/welfare state. Appropriating money leads to bigger deficits, and this has to end. Our dollar today is crashing. The Federal Reserve, socialist policies and our militaristic notions are the driving forces behind the U.S.’ problems. Generally, wars lead to destruction, inflation and the devaluing of currency.
• The barbarism of buffoons. The ‘coalition’ attack on Libya.
• Authority: God vs man. Well-written but there is a society greater than the individual, the church; King Henry’s problem was he broke with it to push his whims. Libertarianism: the church does best when the state doesn’t push it because otherwise the state not the church is calling the shots.
• The real meaning of ‘defence’. The horror of Muammar Gaddafi’s approach to keeping power in Libya boggles the mind and shocks the moral conscience. But how different is his approach from the way most all governments behave in the face of citizen revolt?
• Genuine military defence, anyone?
• Muslim radicals strike at US foreign policy.
• Feds push banks to spy on legal marijuana dealers.
• Another reason not to support Palin. Not that she’d be elected nor are the Protestant right the threat the equally noxious left think.

Time-warp towns...

... are those out-of-time discoveries: downtowns populated with of former Woolworth’s-turned-antiques-booth malls, neon signs for Rheingold or Schaefer, gingerbread detailing, town squares, monuments, cobblestones, and/or apple pie! The buildings where the local history was made are still standing, and if you squint it seems like you’ve gone back in time.

A reason I like upstate Pennsylvania.

From here.

Kucinich on Libya: impeachable

LP chairman on Libya
They hate us because we bomb them

WASHINGTON – Giving little thought to the lessons of history, President Obama has begun attacking Libya with the full support of virtually every member of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans. Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle issued the following statement today:

“President Obama’s decision to order military attacks on Libya is only surprising to those who actually think he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. He has now ordered bombing strikes in six different countries, adding Libya to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

“While the justifications vary in each case, the disturbing common thread is that these are all predominantly Muslim countries. And the goodwill expressed by Arab people about Obama in opinion polls early in his administration has completely vanished: in the most recent Zogby survey, 85% expressed an unfavorable opinion toward the United States, eclipsing the 83% negative opinion in the final year of the Bush administration.

“Libyan President Muammar Gadaffi is no friend of liberty, but the military involvement of the United States in the rebellion against him threatens to undermine the credibility of the resistance to his rule and turn him into a hero. As news of both actual and rumored killings of innocent civilians by American bombs spreads throughout the Arab world, the hatred which spawned the 9/11 murderers will continue to grow. Finally, what if Gadaffi still manages to defeat the rebels? Faced with the choice of losing face or upping the ante with an escalation of military involvement, this could turn into yet another disastrous campaign. And as Steve Chapman put it in an article in Reason magazine, ‘Most of the people endorsing an attack know less about Libya than they do about playing the oboe.’ When will we ever learn?

“Libertarians advocate the foreign policy eloquently described by Thomas Jefferson at his inauguration: ‘Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.’ Just as the Founding Fathers expressed admiration for the ‘Swiss Model’ of armed neutrality that has managed to keep Switzerland out of the vicious wars of Europe for hundreds of years, we should embrace the idea that the purpose of an American military is the defense of American soil, period. As Senator Barack Obama said in criticizing the Bush administration, ‘The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.’

“The Constitution of the United States requires an explicit Declaration of War in order for this country to engage in hostilities with foreign nations. Obama, after dithering for two weeks, has joined the list of presidents who chose to launch wars on their personal say-so in direct contravention of the Constitution.

“I don’t know how many times we have to endure administrations, both Republican and Democratic, who shoot first and ask questions later. Probably for as long as we continue to elect Republicans and Democrats to office.”

The Libertarian Party platform includes the following:

3.1 National Defense
We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression. The United States should both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world. We oppose any form of compulsory national service.

The UN war machine
From LRC

Mad magazine at the time on Mad men

Obama’s attacks on Libya are unconstitutional
From antiwar.com

Penn’s Landing


The tug Jupiter, part of the Philadelphia Maritime Museum.




Tourist boat.



Philadelphia’s official tall ship, the 110-year-old barquentine Gazela Primeiro from Portugal.












The US Coast Guard training barque Eagle, the official US tall ship, which turns 75 this year. (For those who are interested: a barque has three or more masts with square sails on all but the last mast, the mizzenmast; a barquentine has them only on the foremast.) It was the WWII German Navy training ship Horst Wessel, given to the US as reparation in 1946. A sister ship, the Gorch Fock, went to the USSR and was renamed the Товарищ (‘toh-vah-reesh’, Comrade), then went back to Germany and its old name as a museum ship after the Russians ran out of money to maintain it. I think there was a third ship in this class.


Pilot house. The ship has an auxiliary engine (diesel?), hence the smokestack.



This boom used to lower the ship’s small boats as this Coast Guard officer candidate explains (OCs were the crew this time; sometimes Coast Guard Academy cadets are the crew).


As anti-war as I am, I’m not anti-military and like this discipline and attention to detail. If I’d been fit for service, the Navy might have been a good way to go. One of several reasons I like reading this blog’s resident retired officer in the comboxes. The Coast Guard has a good reputation and a good part of its mission as lifeguards/boat-safety inspectors/seagoing cops (as a libertarian I say: can’t local civilians do the same?) and, when needed, it can be transferred to the Navy Department, now part of DoD, to do anti-submarine warfare alongside destroyers (as it was in WWII, even manning some Navy ships). But its original mission was to collect revenue for the feds (the Revenue Cutter Service) and it enforced Prohibition (busting rumrunners’ boats); these days it enforces drug prohibition. For most of its history it was part of the Treasury Department before being moved to the then-new Department of Transportation in the ’60s. Now it’s part of the dreaded Department of Homeland Security. Isn’t homeland security what DoD’s supposed to do? Although I’ve been told some USCG forces were sent to Iraq (an abuse), the smaller of America’s two navies has largely stayed with its fine mission of literally guarding the coast.


Across the Delaware in Camden, the battleship New Jersey.

The littlest invasions
From @TAC

Is the telephone going away?
Use bugmenot to get in. From T1:9.

From Ad Orientem

• Obama understates deficits by $2.3 trillion.
• European Court of Human Rights rules for free exercise of religion: crucifixes in Italian schools.

The Social Network
Just saw and liked it

• How much is true?
• Does Zuckerberg have AS? The fact-or-fiction articles confirmed what I thought: the character, a computer-geek stereotype, might but Zuckerberg doesn’t.

Audio: leading the Tea Party to peace

Jack Hunter, talk-radio host and Charleston newspaper columnist, discusses his co-authored book with Rand Paul, “The Tea Party Goes to Washington”; how the Tea Party movement is breaking free from the stranglehold of talk-radio propaganda and is receptive to a non-interventionist foreign policy; getting serious about Constitutional government and budget deficits – and in the process butting heads with GOP operatives who use the same rhetoric but don’t mean what they say; why the neocons will have a weaker hold on Republicans in the 2012 election than they did in 2008; and Rep. Peter King’s refusal to look beyond the surface of war-on-terrorism causes.

From antiwar.com.

So Obama attacked Libya, and on the eighth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war
‘Acting in the interest of the United States.’ Sure. Glad I stayed home in November 2008.


The LRC blog:

• Let’s see, there’s the Obama-continuing-from-Bush war in Iraq; the Obama-expansion-of-Bush war in Afghanistan; Obama’s own contribution to the military-industrial complex by drone bombing civilians “terrorists” in Pakistan and Yemen; and now Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama attacks yet another country that hasn’t attacked us – in the name, of course, of “helping” another country’s civilians. (It’s interesting how the U.S. never calls for a “no-fly zone” when the Israeli government’s jets bomb Palestinian civilians – perhaps because they are U.S.-bought jets that the Israeli government uses to bomb Palestinian civilians.)
• A principled liberal (unfortunately, there are so few now that one of theirs is in office) calls for the impeachment of the current “liberal” murderer in the White House. Where’s the outrage from the rest of the left who were courageously marching in anti-war demonstrations when the former murderer in the White House (Bush) was residing there and ordering the murder of innocent foreign civilians?
• When the US invades a foreign country, and kills perhaps a million Arab civilians (after killing more than 500,000 with its sanctions before the invasion), that is collateral damage, and only a terrorist would bring it up. It is especially not to be compared to an Arab dictator killing thousands.
• According to media reports, today the US fired some 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Libya, a country that has neither attacked nor threatened the US. That is fifty million dollars. Fifty million of our dollars.
  
  Not only has the president not asked Congress for a declaration of war, as federal law, in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution demands, he has not even lowered himself to ask for the mere Congressional “authorization” that his criminal predecessor sought before his attack on Iraq, which also did not attack nor threaten the US. One does not need to suffer from an excess of anti-interventionist zeal to recognize that this is a blatantly criminal act that, if we are anything more than a banana republic, should be punished according to the methods outlined in the Constitution to deal with rogue and criminal presidents. If we have any rule of law left in this country, this should be over.

Second Sunday of Lent
Fr Pasley celebrates the Vigil Mass. It was also St Joseph’s Day as you can see from the candelabrum and the only flowers in the church. Ora pro nobis.

In illo tempore: Assumpsit Iesus Petrum, et Iacobem, et Ioannem fratrem eius, et duxit illos in montem excelsum seorsum: et transfiguratus est ante eos.

Interesting variation on the Leonine Prayers: Mass ended just before 6 so the three Hail Marys became the Angelus with the rest as usual. That’s fine.

From Joshua

• Did you catch that? The president of the United States is going to the UN to seek permission to attack a sovereign and independent country. Where is the Tea Party when you need it? Aren’t they the ones that carry the miniature-sized versions of the U.S. Constitution in their pockets? Attention Tea Partiers: Check out the section of the Constitution that requires the president to secure a formal declaration of war from Congress before he can wage war against a foreign regime. Let’s hear from you. This is no time for silence.
• God bless the Fukushima Fifty. I understand the Russians had similar suicide-mission heroes at Chernobyl.
• Save money: bring the soldiers home. Discharge all but those needed to defend us against the Mexicans and Canadians, and let the rest find gainful employment in the productive sector, if they even can after years of sucking from the government tit.
• All heil Canadian ‘health’ care.
• Viva Italia. Yes, hooray for the culture but while Italian unification was itself morally neutral, at the time it was the leftist anticlerical element vs the Papal States. You can argue that Italy like the late Yugoslavia is a made-up nation of similar but distinct and sometimes hostile countries even with related but different languages.
• Prohibition was anti-Catholic.

Rod Dreher’s latest convert testimonial
Worth a fisk. I usually don’t read these things but Dr Tighe sent it to me. Lost track of Rod Dreher after he went corporate and stopped blogging.

It had been my assumption that my theological convictions would protect the core of my faith through any trial, but the knowledge I struggled with wore down my ability to believe in the ecclesial truth claims of the Roman church.

I don’t see how Rome’s defined doctrine on the scope of the Pope has anything to do with a priestly underage gay sex scandal in which bishops and priests didn’t live up to other doctrine (sounds more like a jibe from the left than a conservative lament); not as scandalous as claiming you can rewrite doctrine to suit you like many Protestants think.

It seemed to me a rock of stability in a turbulent sea of relativism and modernism overtaking Western Christianity. And while the Roman church threw out so much of its artistic and liturgical heritage in the violence of the Second Vatican Council, the Orthodox still held on to theirs.

Sorta and yes. There’s the widespread sellout on contraception so Pope 1, everybody else nil. But yes on the liturgy. Orthodoxy at its best is an un-self-conscious traditionalism. As I like to say, underneath the mystical rhetoric it’s like parish life around 1962, not a cult.

Here’s the problem: there is very little orthodoxy in the U.S. Catholic Church, and at the parish level, almost no recognition that there is a such thing as “right belief.”

Yup and Dreher nails it in this ’graph. It’s mainline moralistic therapeutic deism with some window-dressing orthodox positions like on abortion thanks to Big Papa and some leftover ethnic devotions. (Greek Catholic is like high Novus Ordo.)

For a Catholic wearied by the culture wars raging inside American Catholicism, it is blessed relief to find that in Orthodoxy, there is no “war footing.”

I hear him; see above on un-self-conscious traditionalism. But I also want a moral theology that makes sense. Worth more than bragging about fasting.

A little like Arturo I’d rather the ethnically oriented older parishes that see themselves as little more than the tribe at prayer than convert jerkodoxy.

The Catholic church needs to be more orthodox, and the Orthodox church needs to be more catholic.

Nice.

At work: getting to hear kids play big-band jazz and reporting/videoing it

This 1930s building originally housed the printing press. The paper used to have its offices in a small high-rise in the middle of town.


The newsroom: I’m about to get my red copy-editor’s pen and mark either the ‘the’ or the apostrophe.

The Ridley High School Jazz Band. Too bad I had to edit my video to only about two minutes. They reminded me of hearing Woody Herman himself about 30 years ago.

Another indictment of the schools
From LRC

10 things Gavin McInnes learned about the South
I can say I’ve spent one night in the South, once I got far enough away from yankeefied Raleigh. And I liked it. From Taki.

Six expressions advertisers love that don’t mean anything
From Cracked

English/Welsh ordinariate: the local libs roll out the unwelcome mat
Passive-aggression: they want to give them London’s ugliest church. Know what? Fine. As long as the old religion’s done inside. From Damian Thompson.

English/Welsh ordinariate: three ex-PEVs now monsignori
Including the English ordinary, Mgr Newton. Ad multos annos!

Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicates Vassula Ryden
The apostolic ministry in action. Disciplining someone like that is a last resort. The Catholic Church east or west isn’t a cult; it doesn’t micromanage the laity (unlike some well-meant trad groups). A heretic/excommunicate 1) is in a position to know better, 2) has a big following and 3) has been warned. So your Aunt Clara the Bad Catholic with wrong opinions won’t be sentenced by the Pope or her nominal bishop. This born Greek Orthodox apparently has made up her own Christianish New Agey faith and has got attention from some well-meaning charismatic Roman Catholics (nice miracle-minded folk, low-church but not theologically liberal, thirsty for the supernatural). A largish following, which is the difference here between a garden-variety Bad Greek Orthodox who reads her horoscope for example and a threat to the flock.

BTW C’ople’s not the Orthodox Pope: it probably fell to him because she’s an ethnic Greek who doesn’t live in Greece (which is not really under C’ople but independent under the Archbishop of Athens).

Money quote off the ’Net: Be careful when it comes to mysticism: it can convey both a lot of mist and a lot of schism.

Dmitri Andrejev, iconographer
An article I wrote and video I made today about my friends at Good Shepherd, Rosemont, for work

St Patrick’s Day

Deus, qui ad prædicandum gentibus gloriam tuam beatum Patricium confessorem atque pontificem mittere dignatus es: ejus meritis et intercessione concede, ut, quæ nobis ænda praecipis, te miserante adimplere possimus. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum.

R. Amen.

I’m not Irish but, despite Thomas Day’s and others’ honesty about their shortcomings, like the rest of the English-speaking Catholic world I appreciate their carrying the church in our lands when few else would or could, so now Irish and Catholic are still just about synonymous in them. Thanks!

Drink a round to Ireland, boys; I’m home again.
Drink a round to Jesus Christ who died for Irish men.

– Hugh Prestwood



A reason I put off posting today, besides work, is what more can I say?

From the vault:

• The saint and American St Patrick’s Day. Celebrating the immigrants’ acceptance and success. Arguably it peaked mid-last-century when the subculture was still very Catholic.
• Ireland.
• ‘Celtic’ crap.

And yes, I’m wearing subtle shades of green, very dark or greyish.

Discussion on ‘agent regret’ in war
Bring the soldiers home and stick to the libertarian principle of non-aggression (war as a last resort for defence)

Ingenious misuses of military hardware
From Cracked

Sailer’s affordable-family-formation theory tested
Essentially the well-meaning so-cons with kids live where houses are affordable and vote Republican

From RR

• “Nosy neighbor” foreign policy makes enemies.
• LRC: The “defense” industry, the great untouchable. Of course the cartoon’s wrong in that these forces only control churchmen, not the church (which is why tyrants from Henry VIII to Stalin hated it).
• Government solutions are anti-intellectual.

NPR’s Middle Americaphobia
Put simply they’re snobs. From Taki.

Six real-world Jedi mind tricks salesmen are using on you
From Cracked

Computer doctoring: a way to kill Whitesmoke
From blog regular Jim C.; thanks. My work computer guy just backed up my files, nuked my drive and put my files back but this might help any computer whizzes out there. Malware’s not just on porn or old file-sharing sites: beware sites offering ‘free’ accessories for your website.

The trouble with school vouchers

Voucher school accountability, as the Editorial Board defines it, would result from these private schools being compelled to administer the same standardized tests that the government requires of its schools (“Fix the flaw first,” March 8).

Given that testing drives curriculum, that means that the voucher schools should closely resemble the public schools in what they teach daily.

If parents wanted their children to be in state-homogenized schools, wouldn’t they just settle for the nearest public school and its $13,229 per-child subsidy instead of clamoring for a $6,442 voucher enabling them to transfer to a private school even while realizing they might have to fork over extra money from their own pockets to fully cover tuition and fees?

The point of school choice is for parents to have actual choices other than the conventional government-issue model.

Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to remove the cap on voucher schools would strengthen accountability by making both public and private schools more attentive to the needs and wishes of parents, as opposed to bureaucrats.

– Robert Holland, letter to the editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

From RR.

Libertarianism and religion
Laurence Vance, a believer, on Murray Rothbard, a non-believer. From LRC.

The English-Welsh ordinariate gets under way
Fr Edwin Barnes:

Bishop Crispian addressing the new members of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, groups from Ryde and Portsmouth with their shepherd, Jonathan Redvers-Harris, from Reading with David Elliott, and from Bournemouth & Christchurch with Raymond Smith. It really did feel as though some of the wounds of the Reformation were being bound up.

Indeed a partial undoing of the great evil that went by that name, which the English were literally forced into.

These people are being instructed this Lent, I imagine to be received into the church at Easter.

AUDI, benigne Conditor,
nostras preces cum fletibus,
sacrata in abstinentia
fusas quadragenaria.

Music.