Whilst escape from the city for the sake of prayer and meditation is a recurring motif of Western literature, and one that plays an important role in the life of Jesus Christ, one of the great achievements of our civilisation has been that of sanctifying the city.
Senior clergy persistently talk about the primacy of ‘pastoral care,’ implicitly presenting themselves as exemplars. Now they refuse to extend such care to those who want nothing more than to worship God as did their forefathers in the Faith.
I do not like revolutions in any case, but I especially dislike the proposals of the Davos Jacobins.
My ‘microaggression’ was met with what might be deemed a ‘macroaggression.’ Whereas I was seeking no confrontation and sought not to make her or anyone else feel uncomfortable, she confronted me directly, specifically to make me feel uncomfortable—and she succeeded.
Catholics are surrounded by the upside-down chatter of ecclesiastical newspeak, and it is here to stay, that is, until a rediscovery that the Church derives her purpose from the Great Commission—the mandate to make disciples of all nations, and this cannot be substituted.
What Augustine witnessed in his friend—that interior opposition between fidelity to the peace of Christ and addiction to violence—Joseph de Maistre presented at the societal level. Why was it that, prior to the arrival of Christianity, every culture practiced sacrifice, including human sacrifice? The reason, for Maistre, was that every society was seeking in nature what could only come by supernatural intervention.
It seems that both the architects of the Brave New World and the serfs who live in it actually fear the state of nature found in the Rousseauian paradise. In fact, we have a profound aversion to nature. Rather than acting like animals, we feel a kind of queasiness not only when we witness the more animal-side of human life, but even when we witness animals acting like animals.
We are, then, in a rather odd situation. It seems that conspiracies are deemed believable when they arise in fiction. It also seems that conspiracies are thought to have really happened, and are considered an essential component in even a superficial understanding of history. But anyone who suggests that we may be in the grips of a conspiracy now is a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ a pejorative term that denotes a person who does not assent to all he is told by mainstream media outlets.
The picture that has been emerging of today’s papacy is one of a pope, with little or no regard for law and due process, governing a Church that has made disregard for law and tradition part of its ecclesiastical culture.
We are a deeply superstitious people. Unfortunately, there are those who have taken full advantage of this over the past two years to effect massive economic- and power-shifts, none of which have been to the benefit of civil liberties, families, or small businesses.
As the National Trust is essentially a conservative organisation, so too its membership largely comprises people with conservative instincts, that is, people who like long walks in the countryside, historic buildings, and fine art. It is astonishing, therefore, that the National Trust chose to go in a direction that, if continued, would lead to its suicide.
Europeans have a fascinating relationship with dogs, a relationship that does not seem to exist in any other civilisation.
