Monthly Archives: May 2023

Men are sometimes hanged for telling the truth…

Happy feast of St. Joan of Arc, the only person of either sex to be the supreme commander of the military forces of a nation at the age of seventeen. How lovely that her feast falls on Pentecost Tuesday this year.

Today, this quote seems especially fitting:

“Men are sometimes hanged for telling the truth.”

Indeed.

St. Joan, pray for us.

Consign the Stars and Stripes to history so that honored dead be not associated with the Washington DC sodogarch conquerors.

Every year the sense of betrayal and waste grows stronger and more intense. What did they fight and die for? Certainly not this – in fact, for the inverse of this sodo death cult.

I truly hope that the Stars and Stripes is soon replaced as ClownWorld raises its own standard, just so that these men’s memories are not desecrated by association with the Washington DC cabal. Consign the Stars and Stripes to history, because the nation it represented no longer exists.

I had never seen this before. Quite moving…

HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY

(This has been a very popular piece since it was originally written for Memorial Day over a decade ago, and explains to a culture so stripped of any sense of reverence, respect or even decorum why it is that liturgy should be masculine, solemn, reverent, and especially BEAUTIFUL, in the only terms that can still, just barely, be understood: the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. I have received many emails over the years mostly from men, but also a few women, who reported having a change of heart about the “fancy vestments” or “hyper-formal and distant” rubrics of the Traditional Mass after reading this piece. It is so sad that today’s infiltrated and fallen culture considers masculinity and beauty to be in opposition to each other. Nothing could be farther from the truth.)

HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD.

Those are the words engraved on the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. Here is a video of the Changing of the Guard.

I think we can all agree that the Tomb of the Unknowns, the 24/7 guarding of the Tomb, and the intense precision of the ceremonial rubrics therein is one of the most excellent things in American culture. The old saying goes, “You may judge a nation by how it treats its fallen warriors.” In an otherwise degraded and despair-inducing society, the Tomb of the Unknowns is a beacon of cultural light and hope.

The Tomb of the Unknowns is also extremely instructive, and believe it or not, it instructs us about . . . the Mass. The reason the Tomb of the Unknowns instructs us today about the Mass is because the Tomb of the Unknowns rubrics are highly informed by the rubrics of the Mass, which were themselves informed by military rubrics, which were informed by even older liturgical rubrics. Military ceremonials and the Ceremonials of the Church are intertwined. Only since the Asteroid hit in the 1960s has the masculinity and, if I may use the term, militant aesthetic been utterly purged, in an attempt by the infiltrators to destroy the Church Militant from within by concealing its very nature from itself – MILITANCY. And so I am reminded of a quote I once heard:

It is important for Christians to know their own history, because if you know your own history, no one else can tell you who you are.

And that is precisely what has happened, and continues to happen. The enemies and infiltrators desperately want all knowledge of WHO and WHAT the Church truly is suppressed and forgotten so that they can lyingly “tell you who you are”. And if you have no knowledge of your own history, you will have no way to discern what is truth and what is lies, and you can thus be conned into believing that you are what you are not, and deceived into believing that you are not what you in actuality are.

For those of you who have never seen a pre-1969 Tridentine Mass and are used to the clownish, degraded, irreverent Novus Ordo Masses of the last 50 years, or of Superfun Rockband church, I hope the sense of reverent awe and solemnity you feel when watching the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns helps you understand what exactly it is that has been robbed from you.

After watching the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns above, I want you to imagine the guards walking about casually, maybe wearing a partial uniform jacket, but with jeans and sandals. Imagine the guards walking out and introducing themselves, “Hi, my name is Lieutenant Jones, but you can call me Lieutenant Jake, or just Jake.” Then the guard might say something like, “Isn’t it a beautiful day today? It sure was rainy yesterday. I had to wear a rain jacket. I’m so glad you all could make it to my shift today. I’m going to be guarding the tomb for the next few hours, and I know that it can sure get BOOOORING! That’s why I have asked a local band to come in and play some awesome new music for you guys, because I want this to be A FUN EXPERIENCE for all of us! And, of course, GO RAVENS!”

If this happened, you would be shocked and disgusted, right? Do you understand that what I have just described is a watered-down comparison of what has happened to the Holy and August Sacrifice of the Mass? The Mass went from being even more reverent than the rubrics of the Tomb Guard to what I just described above – and many times even worse than what I described above. And this happened for many people within a span of several WEEKS in late 1969 into early 1970.

Let’s walk through some of the many parallels.

The soldiers are in full dress uniform, meticulously turned-out and maintained. They are not in combat gear that soldiers would use to walk a patrol in Afghanistan. The Tomb guards are doing something DIFFERENT, and thus their uniforms reflect that.

Really, what the ceremonies surrounding the Tomb are is the highest form of ART. It is living ART, not consisting of a mere two-dimensional representation, not consisting of inanimate objects, but ART consisting of human beings in action. The uniforms, the gait, the precise rubrics, words, gestures and movements – these all combine into a perpetual work of art that not only moves and inspires the people who witness it, but also accomplishes the goal of making tangible a RESPECT for and a REMEMBRANCE of all of the fallen unknown soldiers. The Tomb Guards walk their patrol whether anyone is there to see them do it or not. It isn’t a show. It is a service. It is a rite.

It isn't all about him. For real men, it never is.

It isn’t all about him. For real men, it never is.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is exactly what I just described, except that the Mass is the most perfect artistic action in the universe because the Mass is the artistic creation of God Himself. The Mass is SUPERNATURAL ART. The Holy Spirit taught the Church the Mass. The Mass is art that is so perfect that it actually causes something SUPERNATURAL to happen – it causes Heaven and Earth to touch, it causes time to be bent such that the moment of “now” touches and intersects with the moment of Calvary 1984 years ago, and it causes bread and wine to be transubstantiated into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, made PHYSICALLY SUBSTANTIALLY PRESENT. Man calls down God, and God, in His infinite love, responds and fully submits in complete love, making Himself present on the Altar both at the moment of His death, and in His resurrection, so that He may go into us not only spiritually but also physically as Food.

-In the Tridentine Mass, the priest observes “custody of the eyes”, never looking around and NEVER looking out at the people. Like the guards, priests are supposed to keep their eyes on exactly what they are doing without distraction. The Guards at the Tomb wear mirrored sunglasses to block out all eye contact. Priests are supposed to keep their eyes DOWN or CLOSED, with a couple of exceptions such as just before the consecration when they are to look up to Heaven. This is like the Guards’ rubric of looking from side-to-side very deliberately when inspecting the rifle and the relieving officer. Did you catch that?

Priests are also supposed to walk with a very deliberate gait – slow, measured and reverent in exactly the same way the Tomb Guards walk in a slow, deliberate, reverent gait.

Priests are only supposed to say very specific words – no improvisation, no modifications. The Guards are the same way. They have a very strict announcement that they make at the changing, and they have very strict words that they say when telling people to be quiet and observe reverent silence (there is a YouTube video of that happening, look it up.) There is no chatting or extemporaneous speech. In the Church, the command is “Say the black, do the red,” in reference to the layout of the Roman Missal with the words of prayer in black and the instructions for the intensely precise rubrics, down to every gesture, in red.

-I would analogize the exaggerated heel-clicking movement that the Guards do to the genuflecting of the Priest (and servers, and laity, ahem) to the rubric of ALWAYS genuflecting to the right knee EACH AND EVERY TIME the axis of the Tabernacle and/or Altar Cross is crossed. In many Catholic Churches, the Tabernacle, which is the center of the Church – heck, it is the center of the universe – has been moved off to the side, or even hidden in a sacristy. Where a Tabernacle is present, Our Lord, physically present inside, is largely ignored. I have never seen a Novus Ordo priest consistently observe the loving rubric of genuflecting to the Tabernacle every time the plane is crossed. (I have learned since originally writing this that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal for the Novus Ordo Mass specifically states that there are to be no genuflections to the Blessed Sacrament or Cross except by the priest at the consecrations. Sit in stillness with this for a moment. Do you see why I say that the Novus Ordo was conceived in malice by the infiltrators, and thus cannot be “fixed”?)

In fact, most Novus Ordo priests wander around the sanctuary with their backs turned to the Tabernacle while they put on their “performance.” This would be analogous to the Tomb of the Unknowns itself at Arlington being moved “out of the way” and instead a stage being erected upon which the Guards would perform. It makes you sick to think of that happening at Arlington – but that is largely what has happened to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

-There is even an analogue in the Changing of the Guard ceremony to the Consecration of the Host in the Mass. Did you hear it when you watched the video above? It comes at the 2:36 mark. A rifle is fired, its report thus commemorating the moment of death of the Unknowns. In the Mass, the moment of consecration and transubstantiation are the report of Christ’s words spoken by the priest:

HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM.
(This is My Body.)

If you are fortunate, you can still find a church with a bell tower which rings the bell at the consecration of the Host and again at the consecration of the Chalice. This enabled everyone within earshot – oftentimes miles away – of pausing and saying a prayer as Our Lord came down upon the Altar, uniting themselves to the Mass.

Finally, the words engraved on the Tomb of the Unknowns:

HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD

This is analogous to the words of the Mass:

ECCE AGNUS DEI, ECCE QUI TOLLIT PECCATA MUNDI.
(Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world.)

In the Mass, Christ is obviously alive, physically substantially present in the Eucharist, veiled under the mere appearance of bread and wine. Every Mass is a supernatural event – a miracle. At the Tomb, the Unknowns remain dead – only their memory, veiled in anonymity, is honored. There is absolutely NOTHING supernatural about the Tomb of the Unknowns. Let me say that again: There is absolutely NOTHING supernatural about the Tomb of the Unknowns. It is most excellent, to be sure, but it is not a supernatural thing.

The point is this: if we all know and understand and FEEL the power of the excellent, excellent ceremonial rubrics of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, if we understand the power of “living art”, and we understand how important the concepts of reverence, solemnity, precision, dignity and beauty in movement and action are in the context of the Tomb, why, oh why, do we continue to tolerate the lack of reverence, the lack of solemnity, the absence of liturgical precision and dignity and the resulting UGLINESS that has been unleashed on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is not just a mere memorial of Calvary, but is Calvary Itself, made supernaturally present, and Our Resurrected Lord physically substantially present?

The Tomb of the Unknowns merits the excellent, beautiful, solemn, reverent, disciplined ceremony of the Guards.

Our Lord, Crucified, Risen and physically substantially present to us in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar deserves INFINITELY MORE excellence, beauty, solemnity, reverence, discipline and dignity in His Mass.

Seek it out. Demand it. Make it your priority.

Happy Memorial Day

Musical Interlude: Goodbye (She Quietly Says)

There is no great big ending,
No sunset in the sky.
There is no string ensemble,
And she doesn’t even cry.
And just as I begin to say
That we should make another try,
She reaches out across the table looks at me and quietly says good-bye.
There is no big explosion,
No tempest in the tea.
The world does not stop turning round,
There’s no big tragedy.
Sitting in a coffee shop
With cheesecake and some apple pie,
She reaches out across the table looks at me and quietly says good-bye.
Good-bye
Said so easily.

Good-bye
Said so quietly.
Good-bye good-bye good-bye.

Happy Pentecost! Got Zeal?

The Third Glorious Mystery of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Co-Redemptrix, is the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. The fruit of this mystery is ZEAL – LOVE OF GOD. 🔥

An excellent collection of quotes on the utter necessity of zeal for the salvation of souls.  Remember these quotes when you hear anyone say that proselytism is “solemn nonsense”, or that they have no desire to convert a person or persons to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.


St. James the Apostle: “He must know that he who causeth a sinner to be converted from the error of his way will save his own soul from death and shall cover a multitude of sins” (St. James 5, 19-20).


St. John Chrysostom, (ARSH 347-407), the illustrious Bishop of Constantinople, and Doctor of the Church, tells us: “Zeal for the salvation of souls is of so great a merit before God, that to give up all our goods to the poor, or to spend our whole life in the exercises of all sorts of austerities cannot equal the merit of it. There is no service more agreeable to God than this one. To employ one’s life in this blessed labor is more pleasing to the Divine Majesty than to suffer martyrdom. Would you not feel happy if you could spend large sums of money in corporal works of mercy? But know that he who labors for the salvation of souls does far more; nay, the zeal of souls is of far greater merit before God . . . than the working of miracles.”


Pope St. Gregory the Great (ARSH 590-604): “No sacrifice is more acceptable to God than zeal for souls.”


St. Vincent de Paul (ARSH 1576-1660): That St. Vincent was devoured by zeal for the house of God, his entire life testifies, because that life was employed in combating evil and extending the reign of good; and in this consists true zeal. Listen to some of his instructions to his community: “Let us give ourselves to God, gentlemen, to go to carry His holy Gospel over the entire earth and into whatever part He may lead us; there, let us maintain our part, and continue our duties until such time as His good pleasure will withdraw us. Let no difficulties move us, the glory of the eternal Father and the efficacy of the Word and of the passion of His Son are at stake. The salvation of men and our own are so great that they merit to be obtained at any price.”


St. Rose of Lima, (ARSH 1586-1617). We read that her confessor offered himself to go to the missions, but he feared because of the dangers it would entail. After consulting the saint, he heard these words: “Go Father, and do not fear. Leave all to labor for the conversion of the infidel, and know that the greatest service that man can offer to God is to convert souls, for this is a work proper of the Apostolate. What greater happiness could there be than to baptize, be it only a little Indian child who would enter Heaven through the gates of Baptism?”


St. John de Brebeuf (ARSH 1593-1649), one of the eight North American Martyrs, was heard to say, after pouring the saving waters of Baptism on a dying Indian child, “For this one single occasion I would travel all the way from France; I would cross the great ocean to win one little soul for Our Lord!”


St. Margaret Mary (ARSH 1647-1690): “My divine Savior has given to understand that those who work for the salvation of souls will have a gift of touching the most hardened hearts, and will labor with marvelous success, if they themselves are penetrated with a tender devotion to His Divine Heart.”


St. Anthony Mary Claret (ARSH 1808-1870): “Another thing that spurs me on to preach ceaselessly is the thought of the multitude of souls which fall into the depths of hell, who die in mortal sin, condemned forever and ever… if you were to see a blind man about to fall into a pit or over a precipice, would you not warn him? Behold, I do the same…” “How often I pray with St. Catherine of Siena: O my God, grant me a place by the gates of Hell, that I may stop those who enter there, saying: “Where are you going, unhappy one? Back, go back! Make a good confession. Save your soul. Don’t come here to be lost for all eternity!” St. Anthony resolved never to waste a moment of time, and during his 35 years as a priest, he wrote 144 books and preached some 25,000 sermons. On one trip, besides traveling, he preached 205 sermons in 48 days and 12 in one day.


The motivating force that dominated St. John Bosco’s (ARSH 1815-1888) life is found in a phrase that is typically his: “Give me souls, you take the rest.” “There is nothing more holy in this world than to work for the good of souls, for whose salvation Jesus Christ poured out the last drops of His Blood.” In his writings and conferences, he consistently pointed out that: “Man is successful in this world if he saves his soul and is very knowledgeable if he knows the science of salvation; but he is a total failure if he loses his soul and knows nothing if he is ignorant of those things that can assure him of eternal salvation.” From his book The Life of St. Dominic Savio, St. John Bosco had this to say of St. Dominic Savio (the teenage saint who died in his 15th year): “The thought of saving souls for God was never out of his mind.” St. Dominic Savio, (1842-1856), in a serious conversation with one of his companions, gave several reasons for his apostolic zeal in “saving souls”: 1. My companion’s soul has been redeemed by Jesus Christ. 2. We are all brothers and so we must love each other’s souls. 3. God urges us to help each other. 4. If I manage to save one soul, I also ensure the salvation of my own.


St. Thérèse of Lisieux (ARSH 1873-1897): “We have only short moments of this life to work for God’s glory. The devil knows this and that is why he tries to make us waste time in useless things. O, let us not waste our time! Let us save souls! Souls are falling into hell innumerable as the flakes of snow on a winter day. Jesus weeps! Instead of consoling Him we are brooding over our own sorrows . . . There is only one thing to do during the brief day, or rather, night of this life: Love Jesus with all the strength of your heart and save souls for Him, so that He may be loved!”


St. Padre Pio (ARSH 1887-1968): “Time spent in honor of God and for the salvation of souls is never badly spent.


St. Maximilian Kolbe (ARSH 1894-1941): “We have no right to rest as long as a single soul is Satan’s slave.”


Pope Pius XII (ARSH 1939-1958): “No one is permitted to be idle and lazy while so many evils and dangers impend, and while those who are on the other side are working so hard to destroy the very basis of Catholic religion.

Antipope Bergoglio sick with a fever. Pray that he repent and revert to Catholicism.

https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-francis-has-a-fever-vatican-spokesman-confirms

Even a wretched monster like Antipope Bergoglio can repent and be saved in the infinitude of Christ’s mercy… IF Bergoglio avails himself of it. One good confession and a public statement is all it would take. So simple. Our Lord provides an EASY path to His mercy in even the most horrific situations. The only obstacle is ourselves. The only thing keeping Jorge Bergoglio from the State of Grace is Jorge Bergoglio.

The same goes for anyone.

Pray not that Antipope Bergoglio die, but that he repent and revert to Catholicism.

Thank you, don Fili! Happy Feast!

Thank you for everything, don Fili. You are my “Pippo Bono”. Please continue to pray for me, and for all of my benefactors and supporters.

St. Philip Neri, Third Apostle of Rome, ARSH 1515 – 1595

In this life there is no purgatory; it is either hell or paradise; for to him who serves God truly, every trouble and infirmity turns into consolations, and through all kinds of trouble he has a paradise within himself even in this world: and he who does not serve God truly, and gives himself up to sensuality, has one hell in this world, and another in the next.
-St. Philip Neri

Musical … respite? At least something achingly beautiful. “But my words, like silent raindrops fell…”

If you know… you know. And yes, I know that Simon and Garfunkel are Jooooooooz. Thanks. Clocked that. Gotcha. Able to transcend. Cheers.


Hello darkness, my old friend

I’ve come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone

‘Neath the halo of a street lamp

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light

That split the night

And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share

No one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

Fools” said I, “You do not know

Silence like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my arms that I might reach you

But my words like silent raindrops fell

And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming

And the sign said, “The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls”

And whispered in the sounds of silence.