 Le grand docteur sophiste, 1886 illustration, Gargantua, Albert Robida, expressing mockery of a casuist education. I said I would no longer comment on F. Now I’m going to because developments are accumulating. The man has no leadership abilities. He runs the Church as if it were a big experiment. This a leader cannot do. Either he is allowing radical intellectuals to reign over him, or he is with them. His words are Jesuit casuistry, too clever for anyone to know which it is. A comment has been made that he and his cronies will not leave the Church because they live off its revenue, and they don’t want to abandon that, which would mean getting a real job. His first task is to preserve the deposit of faith. His second task is to keep order. These tasks he has utterly failed to accomplish. Signs have popped up everywhere: Germany, Canada, USA, France, Italy, China. I have written about each country or placed on my website the analysis done by other faithful Catholics. I have quoted popes before him, and what they have said against modernism. The destruction of the Latin Mass and Latin Mass lay and religious communities symbolizes all that he is doing, but he and his advisors underestimate the numbers of Catholics who are now properly schooled in history. The political lefties are eating each other alive. Some pray for his conversion. Hope is a virtue. We pray for all manner of men. However, hoping for his conversion is an illusory dream. It is too late for him and the old men of the 1960s. Here is another painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema I just had to post, it is so incredible, as are the story behind it and his biography. Because Alma-Tadema was painting this picture during the winter, he arranged to have roses sent weekly from the French Riviera for four months to ensure the accuracy of each petal. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Alma-Tadema#Personality  The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) Roman emperor from AD218 to 222
The painting is in the collection of Juan Antonio Pérez Simón of Mexico. Helio must have said, "It's a warm day. Let's have a picnic." Raymond Arroyo says that the IRS, to grow by 87,000 agents under the current creepy crawler, with a stockpile of 5 million rounds and 5,000 weapons, is the new Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard was a unit of the Roman army serving as personal bodyguards and intelligence agents for the Roman emperors.  Proclaiming Claudius Emperor by Lawrence Alma-Tedama 1836-1912 (1867) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Proclaiming_claudius_emperor.png The first artist was featured in my post titled, Greek. Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, an individualistic artist of the Baroque period (1600-1750), and the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal and of the Spanish Golden Age. His 1650 painting of Innocent X showed ruthlessness in his expression, according to some in the Vatican, and they feared Innocent would not like it. He was so pleased with the work that it hung in his official visitor’s waiting room.  I looked for contemporary artists who admired Velázquez and found Francis Bacon, the second artist. “Francis Bacon (October 28, 1909 – April 28, 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures. Rejecting various classifications of his work, Bacon said he strove to render ‘the brutality of fact.’ He built up a reputation as one of the giants of contemporary art with his unique style.” Wikipedia Then, I located this YouTube video on Bacon. Is writing a dual performance? The next video displays a genius at work and symmetry in art. A thing is the same on one side as on the other side, a mirror image of itself, on both sides of a center line. My first venture into ancient Greek, a little somber to a Western ear, “Agni Parthene” is an Eastern Orthodox hymn. While much of the grammar and vocabulary of English is inherited from German, over 60 percent of English words have Greek or Latin roots. In the sciences and technology, the figure rises to over 90 percent. Latin and Greek were favored in Catholic schools up until the 1960s when radicals decided that everything old was outmoded, including the linguistic pride of our civilization. Majestic Captions are in the Latin alphabet. The breathtaking painting of Father and Son in purple is by Diego Velázquez, 1641-1644, oil on canvas, 69 in by 49 in, held by Museo del Prado, Madrid. The icon of Our Lord holding onto His mother's hand is the choice subject of many artists.
The hymn is perfect for a tenor. I sing along in two registers, the higher one a bit of a strain. Registers include modal (soprano, mezzosoprano, alto, contralto, countertenor, tenor, baritone, and bass), vocal fry (male, very low), falsetto (male, very high), and the whistle (female, extremely high). I have revised my ideal Catholic K-12 school. Study English, French, German, Latin, and Greek. Add them to history, reading, writing, mathematics, science, art, music, and the Catholic catechism. Tall order. Please. Albrecht Dürer
I scanned the Wikipedia entry. It speculates about his personal life, which is an intrusion into inviolability and the bane of our time. 7 17 1794
They had been conveniently stripped of their Carmelite veils before trial and decapitation.  Martyrs of Compiègne (photo: National Catholic Register Files / Public Domain)
Poulenc 1899-1963 was a French pianist and composer. Yesterday, I saw young women protesting on a crossing over I-80, and splashed across one sign
was the F-word in red, quite a contrast to a well-ordered monarchy. Agmine militibus. Marching with soldiers.
(In classical Latin, "v" is pronounced "w", and what looks like a "v" is the "u" vowel.) To: the underground Church From: Robert Dunn, layman, USA Dear brethren, Please persevere. We face an uncertain but universal future. I support you and may God bless you. Sincerely, RD  Notables: Li Yingshi (ca. 1600) and Xu Guangqi (1562-1633)
Here’s the squared total of my apologetics. Got anything better to offer than Monday Night Football; perfect health; a PhD; a pet; a prestigious position; a beer-filled tummy; a flat tummy; a winning lottery ticket; a sand castle; a summer picnic; a flawless, proportional face or body worthy of the Golden Ratio … eternal life.  Video from a man in his early 20s, Generation Z. I am seeing an ever-growing number of videos like this one from generations after me. Joan is in there twice. Congratulations to Gen Z for recognizing what my pathetic, boomers generation does not. Am I biased in their favor? Completely. It is no coincidence that already I have posted some of the paintings and clips in my blog. Deus vult - God wills it.
Note: an actual exorcism of a person is attempted inside a Catholic church, but not in front of an audience as depicted, and is led by a team that is led by a priest reciting The Catholic Roman Rite of Exorcism word-for-word. See several YouTube interviews of Fathers Vincent Lampert or Gary Thomas explaining the Rite of Major Exorcism.  Charles Baudelaire 1821-1867, French poet, essayist, and art critic. “Many of Baudelaire's philosophical proclamations were considered scandalous and intentionally provocative in his time. He wrote on a wide range of subjects and drew criticism and outrage from many quarters. Along with Poe, Baudelaire named the arch-reactionary Joseph de Maistre as his maître à penser and adopted increasingly aristocratic views.” Painting by Émile Isidore Deroy, 1820-1846, in the collection of the Palace of Versailles. This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. “In his journals, he wrote, ‘There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy. […] There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior, and the poet. To know, to kill, and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practice what they call professions.’” He translated some of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, and at boarding school in England, Poe learned French. Their master of thinking, and now mine: de Maistre. I am 13% French. The ancestor is Katherine Elizabeth Desrosier, her ancestors probably coming from the Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France, coextensive with the historic region of Savoy. As you might have guessed, the name means Elizabeth of the rose bushes. The first “s” is silent. Now I know the sources of my misdirection and prickly nature, and they embolden me. Henceforth, my battle cry shall be, “Take no prisoners!” “In the 17th century, when Descartes was engaged in a tit-for-tat on the topic of ‘radical doubt’, many philosophers believed that we learn about certain truths through senses, such as touch and sight. “Descartes thought that this was wrong: the senses were deceiving. (A person, after all, could be hallucinating or dreaming.) Descartes’ critics responded by asking: ‘If the senses can be so deceiving, then what’s stopping us from doubting everything, including our own existence?’ “Descartes’ response: Cogito, ergo sum — ‘I think, therefore I am.’ The fact that you can doubt your own existence, the philosopher said, is proof that you exist. “Mental phenomena, Descartes declared, are not part of the senses. They are not of the physical world at all. Rather, the mind and body are distinct, separate. Consciousness and the mind are not made of physical matter. “This latter argument, called Cartesian dualism, was widely adopted by thinkers across the West and led to a flourishing of scientific thought, particularly in medicine. “Writing for the journal Mens Sana Monograph, psychology professor Mathew Gendle notes, ‘The formal separation of the ‘‘mind’’ from the ‘‘body’’ allowed for religion to concern itself with the non-corporeal ‘‘mind’’, while dominion over the ‘‘body’’ was ceded to medical science.’ “This advance contributed to great strides in medicine, but it also created problems. “For one thing, it encouraged a view that physical and mental problems are entirely separate, without the ability to influence one another. It also promoted a sense that mental experiences are less legitimate than physical ones, contributing to a culture that often stigmatizes mental health concerns. As it turns out, when an entire society separates mind from body, we risk treating mental health problems as less real, even though they can affect us just as much as any broken bone.” Excellent summary from interestingfacts.com. Descartes is heralded as the first modern philosopher. However, he is more famous for inventing analytic geometry, which linked geometry and algebra. I studied analytic geometry and pre-Calculus in senior year of high school, and that is when the fork in the road was reached: math or English? (af + bg)′ = af′ + bg′ ∫ (af + bg) dx = a ∫ fdx + b ∫ gdx OR Jane Austen’s Vanity Fair. I can say this: one of the improvements in math education is that children are introduced to concepts of algebra, geometry, and functions in 7th and 8th grades, which is earlier than I was. Aristotle introduced “Eudaemonism”, which he described as the greater state of positive existence by combining wisdom, contemplation, and virtue. I recommend Aristotle’s Ethics, which is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. I would rank philosopher Aquinas (Catholic priest, 1225 - 1274) first, philosopher Aristotle (Greek polymath, 384 BC - 322 BC) second, and philosopher Descartes (Catholic layman, 1596 - 1650) third. On the left is Descartes.
Portrait by Frans Hal (1582-1666), hanging in the Louvre Museum. This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. On the right is Aquinas. Easy to understand if you are Catholic. By playing it a couple of times, you will hear the English. Joan was instructed in the faith by her mother, and it was her mother who introduced her to the communion of saints. Through Saints Catherine, Margaret, and Michael (Archangel) God spoke to Joan. My Latin Missal has the Litanies of the Name of Jesus, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Joseph, and the Mass for every day. Many other prayers fill 1,852 pages. During her trial, Joan asked for the Blessed Sacrament and was denied Him.  A history lesson from Father Curtis, my parish priest: “This Thursday is the feast of Corpus Christi. It is a beautiful Mass composed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the wake of the heresy of Berengarius, who lived in the eleventh century. It is remarkable that the Holy Eucharist went a thousand years without a serious heresy threatening it directly, and no less so that the error of Berengarius, nearly alone among heresies, found almost no traction among the men of the age.”
artwork courtesy of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish Northampton, MA Curtis said, “The faithful reacted vigorously in defense of the Blessed Sacrament, which they loved; this era saw the advent not only of the feast of Corpus Christi, but also the major elevations at Mass at the consecration, Eucharistic processions, and other pious acts of devotion toward Our Lord present in the Most Holy Eucharist.” Wikipedia excerpt: Berengar of Tours, in Latin Berengarius Tuornensis, was an 11th-century French theologian and archdeacon of Angers, a scholar whose leadership of the cathedral school at Chartres set an example of intellectual inquiry through the revived tools of dialectic that was soon followed at the cathedral schools of Laon and Paris. He came into conflict with Church authorities over the doctrine of transubstantiation, instead arguing for a more spiritual presence. He confessed his error twice, in 1059 and 1079, and died in union with the Church..  Franz Xaver Wolfgang 1791-1844 and Karl Thomas 1784-1858
Mozart had six children, four boys and two girls, but only Franz and Karl survived past infancy. His wife was Constanze Weber. (If I had lived at that time, it is likely I would have died at age 12 as a result of blood poisoning - sepsis - from poison oak on the big toe of my left foot. On the hills behind the house in SF, we played.) The episcopacy and the Vatican are corrupted. Expandi manus meas tota die ad populum incredulum qui graditur in via non bona cogitationes suas. I have spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people who walk in a way that is not good after their own thoughts. Baroque
Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) was the most renowned Spanish composer of the Renaissance. Anthony van Dyck (1559-1611) painted the last image in the video, “Lamentation of Christ” (Baroque style). He studied under Hendrick van Balen and Peter Paul Rubens, who referred to van Dyck as his best pupil. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was a Flemish Baroque artist. He said, “My passion comes from the heavens, not from earthly musings.” Note 1: Expand the van Dyck paining. If you struggle with faith, look at it dead center: mother, son, and angels in weeping wonder over the left hand. The angels could not have known what would happen. There are many classifications of art, music, and writing. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a novel, is deemed mannerpunk!  baroque cloister of Andechs, Germany
gothic church restored in 1751 in Rococo style photo credit: atosan - 2011 Today is Pentecost. “It was during this time of vicious persecution of Catholics that Our Lady appeared to the Catholic faithful cowering in the dense forests. When the wave of persecutions began, Catholicism was firmly entrenched in the hearts of its faithful in Vietnam. As early as 1698, Catholics suffered for the Faith. During the back-and-forth years of the 1700’s and 1800’s, more than one hundred thousand Catholic Vietnamese were martyred. Even today, with a Communist government in charge, bishops and priests are harassed, and the status of the Church is not strong.” Complete story dated January 24, 2013, at https://catholicism.org/our-lady-of-la-vang-the-catholic-side-of-vietnam.html History repeats, and all of it is present to God the Father.  Our Lady of Lavang photo courtesy of Catholicism.org
Copyright © 2004-2020 Saint Benedict Center, Richmond, New Hampshire. Some rights reserved. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike License. One of the best things about St. Stephen the First Martyr is that boys will tell me very freely that they are considering priesthood and/or religious life. That is a sign of a healthy Catholic culture. A healthy Catholic parish is not something I have seen since 1970, and I have belonged to eleven: St. Anne, St. Cecilia, St. Anastasia, St. Ignatius, St. Apollinaris, St. Lucy, Holy Family, Our Lady of the Pillar, All Souls, St. Joseph, and St. Joseph Marello. Why? The modern Mass and everything associated with it wiped out Catholic culture. Any Catholic in my age category knows what I have said is the truth. The modern Mass needs to die. There are many good Catholics who attend the modern Mass. Update: I met one today, 6-4-22, at confession. She still has her prayer book from second grade! I go to confession occasionally at St. Teresa of Avila in Auburn because it is 10 minutes away. Several years ago, when I was buying at the cemetery, I was talking to a nun at the main desk. You would never have known she was a nun. I told the Sister of Mercy about my cousin and that she entered in 1961. She said, “O yes, when there were lots of vocations.” She stopped herself. She must have sized me up. I was not going to tolerate her explanation of the drop in vocations. How could she acknowledge that others had a vocation but were sent packing? How could she acknowledge that others with a vocation never followed it to the end because they would not consent to mediocrity and cowardice in religious life? How could she acknowledge the nuns who abandoned the schools, and for what, or the priest who couldn’t get his ass out of bed to bring my brother the Sacrament of the Sick? The arrogant woman is not God and cannot save the world. She is typical of my bankrupt generation, entrenched in lies. I hope wishy-washy Catholicism dies the way the Anglican church did. On the other hand, here is Father Borgia casting out a demon...  St. Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Impenitent By Francisco de Goya 1746 - 1828 oil on canvas c. 1788 “Francis Borgia, 4th Duke of Gandía S.J. (1510–1572), venerated as Saint Francis Borgia, was a great-grandson of Pope Alexander VI, a Grandee of Spain, a Spanish Jesuit, and third Superior General of the Society of Jesus. “In 1546 his wife Eleanor died, and Francis then decided to enter the newly formed Society of Jesus, after making adequate provisions for his children. He put his affairs in order, renounced his titles in favor of his eldest son Carlos de Borja-Aragon y de Castro-Melo, and became a Jesuit priest. “He helped in the establishment of what is now the Gregorian University in Rome. “Upon Francis’ return from a journey to Peru, Pope Julius III made known his intention to make him a cardinal. To prevent this, Borgia decided, in agreement with St. Ignatius, to leave the city secretly and go to the Basque Country, where it was thought he would be safe from the papal desires. “He felt incompletion to spend time in seclusion and prayer, but his administrative talents also made him a natural for other tasks. In time his friends persuaded him to accept the leadership role that nature and circumstances had destined him for: in 1554, he became the Jesuit commissary-general in Spain where he founded a dozen colleges. “After only two years, St. Francis was crowned for missions in the East and West Indies. In 1565, he was elected the third ‘Father General’....” Source: Wikipedia The current Father General is a disgrace. He does not believe in Hell!  Christ taking leave of His Mother by Piotr Stachiewicz (1858-1938), oil on oak wood, done 1900, 22.8 inches by 14 inches, in the National Museum of Warsaw, source photographer cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl Catholic art I can interpret. Notice their positions relative to each other. I know how He feels about Mom. There is no greater woman. Every loving son would take his mother to heaven first. Every dying soldier says, "Tell, mom, I love her." |
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