Coincidence?

On March 22, 1970, Palm Sunday, the Novus Ordo Missae was first permitted to be used in these United States.  (It did not become mandatory until the First Sunday of Advent, 1971.)

On March 22, 2020, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the public celebration of the Novus Ordo Missae is effectively almost entirely suppressed in these U.S.A., and in much of the rest of the world, as we labor under what one priest has aptly described as God’s Interdict.

It appears that the only public Masses now being offered are the traditional Latin Masses offered by the Society of St. Pius X (at least where they are not prevented by the civil authorities).  Although the Society has less than 700 priests worldwide, it has actually increased the number of Masses in order to have fewer people attend each one.

Notice also that the Fourth Sunday of Lent is Laetare Sunday, the midpoint of Lent, when special signs of joy are permitted in the liturgy to encourage the faithful in their Lenten penance.

So, on Palm Sunday, when the Church commemorates Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem in order to undergo His Passion, she entered into the eclipse of the traditional Mass and the rise of the New Mass, in which she would become all but unrecognizable.  Exactly 50 years later, the public celebration of the new Mass is all but completely shut down, leaving only the public celebration of the traditional Mass.

Coincidence?

According to St. Padre Pio, with Divine Providence there is no coincidence.

Remembering a Warrior for Life 47 Years after Roe v. Wade

I posted this originally on April 26, 2011, after the death of Phoebe Ann Laub, known to countless fans as Phoebe Snow.  As we stop to remember the grim day when abortion became legal in the United States, and the millions who have died in the wake of Roe v. Wade, it seems fitting to remember a woman whose whole life was a reproach to the culture of death. 

I don't know what Phoebe Snow's political affiliation was, or whether she voted for Obama, or what her views were about abortion on demand.  I can't recall ever hearing that she marched or picketed or made speeches or was otherwise active on the political scene.  

But I do know that she sacrificed everything for her little girl.

Phoebe's classic "Poetry Man" reached the top 5 on the pop charts in 1975.  But when Valerie Rose was born that same year with severe brain damage, Phoebe chose to care for her at home rather than put her in an institution.  Through lawsuits, financial distress, and even desertion by her husband, Phoebe kept Valerie with her -- until Valerie's death in 2007.  Under her mother's care, the baby whom nobody expected to survive more than a few years lived to be 31.  "Occasionally I put an album out, but I didn't like to tour, and they didn't get a lot of label support," Phoebe once remarked in an interview. "But you know what? It didn't really matter because I got to stay home more with Valerie, and that time was precious."

Phoebe Snow's name may not have come up much at pro-life rallies, but she was still a giant in the war for life.  She lived it.  For 31 years, she kept her daughter safe from the vultures of "compassion."  With every fiber of her being, Phoebe Snow beat back the assault of the culture of death.  After so many decades of sacrificial love, it is perhaps not surprising that this devoted mother should not long survive the daughter for whom she poured herself out.

I don't know what Phoebe Snow thought about Roe v. Wade.  But I think I can guess.  R.I.P.

30 November 9ths Ago: The Wall Gets Torn Down

Saturday, November 9th, was the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Those who were not born yet, or were not old enough to be paying attention in 1989, cannot fully appreciate how all-pervasive a part of everyday life the Cold War was, or how sudden and out of the blue were the events that brought it to an end.  

When I was a kid, we were all aware of communism and the Iron Curtain. The old civil defense sirens still wailed us under our desks into the ‘70s. The death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, his string of short-lived successors, and the Soviet government’s ridiculous stories about why they disappeared from public view for months, were the subjects of schoolyard conversation.  

When I was in college, I learned German from professors from war-torn Europe who still had relatives trapped in the Soviet sector of a still-divided Germany. One day, I asked one of them if she thought Germany would ever be re-united. No, she said. She did not think the Berlin Wall would ever come down. Just a few weeks later, crowds of ordinary Germans with hand-tools punched holes in the wall and reduced it to a pile of souvenirs.  Less than a year later, the East German communist government having voted itself out of existence, Germany was reunited. The communist monolith had loomed like a dark shadow on the eastern horizon, vast, threatening, seemingly invincible; until, as William F. Buckley put it, one day, God cleared His throat, and it all blew away on a cold wind.  

“I have seen the wicked highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Libanus. And I passed by, and lo, he was not: and I sought him and his place was not found.” (Psalm 36:35-36)

By the Way...

...I just reminded myself.  Earth Day is really Lenin's birthday.  Here is the old bastard in a mugshot from 1895, looking every inch the punk kid brother of Satan.  And here is some first-rate commentary about his spiritual progeny, Ira Einhorn, the murderer who masterminded Earth Day.

Celebrate, if you must, this slithering hell-bait, the fuse that lit the explosion of destruction that was the 20th century.  As for me, I think I'll take the old internal combustion engine for a totally unnecessary trip across town in search of some white cheddar popcorn, the making of which produces greenhouse gas emissions.

Shining All the Lights for Earth Day: The Centennial Bulb

Today seems like a good day to bring back a classic post about a famous incandescent bulb in Livermore, California.  Obviously, a few elements of this post are now out of date: the socialist regime of Barack Obama, and its would-be successor, to have been run by Hillary Clinton, have now been sent packing.  Also, the Newcandescent bulb company discussed below has now apparently gone over to the LED market.  I am compelled to admit that, since this was written, the quality of LED bulbs has improved significantly; but it must be said that a big part of the improvement is the extent to which LED bulbs can now imitate the light of incandescent bulbs.  One thing that is not out of date is the Centennial Light itself which, as this re-post goes up, is still burning after 116 years.  

The Centennial Light, Livermore, California, the world's longest-burning light bulb.  This picture provides a good view of the mechanism of this lamp, as well as its beauty and careful hand-craftsmanship.  (Source.)

This light bulb hangs from the ceiling at Fire Station 6 on East Avenue in Livermore, California, where it serves as a night light over the fire trucks.  Hand-blown with a carbon filament, it was manufactured at the Shelby Electric Company in Shelby, Ohio and first installed at Livermore's fire department horse cart house on L Street in 1901.  It has been moved twice since then; since its most recent move, in 1976, it has been hooked up to its own independent power source, and has burned continuously without being turned off or going out.

Consider this.  The year this light bulb was installed was the same year that Queen Victoria died.  It was the year President William McKinley was assassinated, and Teddy Roosevelt took his place in the White House.  In 1901, Leo XIII was Pope in Rome; Winston Churchill was just beginning his extraordinary career in the House of Commons; the Panama Canal was still under construction; Douglas MacArthur was still a cadet at West Point; radio and motion pictures were still new inventions; the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk was still two years away, and it would be another seven years before Henry Ford's Model T would begin to roll off the assembly line.  Since 1901, two world wars have ravaged the planet; most of the world's monarchies have toppled; the Soviet Union rose and fell; the Cold War raged; man took flight, first across continents and oceans, then to the moon and back; telephones, televisions, and above all computers have brought the entire world right into our homes.  Through it all, this bulb has continued to shine.   True, the Centennial Light is down to only a fraction of its original brightness; yet even its manufacturers, who prided themselves on making the best lamps in the world, could hardly have imagined how long this light's working life would continue.

Nor is the Centennial Light the only bulb possessed of extraordinary longevity.  Others have been documented as having functioned for many decades, including one that has shone since 1908.  Who knows how many other bulbs have worked for decades that nobody has documented?  Truly, the incandescent light bulb is among the most useful devices ever come up with in the history of human innovation.  

So it makes perfect sense that the current socialist administration, whose ultimate goal is the moral and material enslavement of Americans, should make war upon the incandescent bulb and try to cram vastly inferior fluorescent bulbs down our throats.  

Let's face the facts about fluorescent bulbs -- and particularly the spaghetti bulbs meant to be installed in place of incandescent ones.  Like virtually all other things liberals are always trying to force-feed us, fluorescent bulbs stink.  They take forever to reach their full brightness, and their full brightness isn't much to write home about.  They're costly. They're full of mercury, which makes them dangerous.  They're worthless in an Easy-Bake Oven.  And you can't just throw them out when they burn out, like you can incandescent bulbs.  

Fortunately, there is still a company in this country that manufactures incandescent bulbs.  America's entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and well at Newcandescent, which legally manufactures incandescent bulbs.  And they say their bulbs will last 7 years.  

I don't usually plug products on this blog, but I'm glad there's somebody still manufacturing incandescent bulbs in this country.  Still, there is one thing that really sticks in my craw about it.  Even if you are a fan of fluorescent bulbs, if you are a patriotic American and lover of liberty, you must acknowledge that greater principles are at stake than the preferability of incandescent over fluorescent.  The fact that Newcandescent had to (a) redesign incandescent bulbs to comply with new federal requirements, and (b) apply to the Department of Energy for permission to manufacture the newly designed bulbs ought to fill you with rage.     

Did you ever think we'd reach a point in this country when American citizens would have to apply for permission from the federal government to manufacture incandescent bulbs on American soil?  Was this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?  Is there some provision of the Constitution, written, perhaps, in invisible ink, that gives the feds this authority?  Was this what generations of patriots shed their blood in distant lands to protect?

It's a shame to have to admit it, but the America upon which the Centennial Light first shone 111 years ago was a much freer one than the one we live in today.  Our first order of business in this country is to straighten ourselves up as individuals, governing our passions, recovering our Christian morals and living according to right reason.   Without this, nothing else will work.  Our second order of business is to throw out the socialist bums that have seized power in this country at every level of government.  Our third order of business is to reduce the federal government to its original constitutionally mandated functions, and every other level of government to reasonable proportions in accordance with state constitutions, common sense, and the principle of subsidiarity.  And in the meantime, we should support entrepreneurial efforts like Newcandescent that prevent the useful things that improve our lives from being cast into oblivion by socialist elites.

Shining All the Lights for Earth Day: Killing the Planet with Christmas

Since I wrote this nine years ago, I am compelled to confess that the quality of LED Christmas lights -- and indeed, LED lights in general -- has improved.  Nevertheless, my points below still stand.

*     *     *

Remember in Ninotchka, when Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas are at the top of the Eiffel Tower looking out over the city lights of Paris? He asks her if it isn't a beautiful view; after agreeing that it is, she delivers the other shoe, with a perfectly straight face: But it's a wa-a-a-aste of electricity.

Now, the line in question is very funny. It's funny both because of the deadpan delivery, and because the misplaced focus of attention on electrical consumption in the face of so much beauty is absurd. Nowadays, though, you have to wonder how many people would still find this funny. Unfortunately, too many people that are being looked up to as authorities have no sense of the absurd; and, even more unfortunately, too many people who should know better are taking them seriously.

And so it is that the Australian press -- also with a perfectly straight face -- vouchsafes us a story under the following headline: Scientists Warn Christmas Lights Harm the Planet.

"CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation] researchers said householders should know that each bulb turned on in the name of Christmas will increase emissions of greenhouse gases," the story solemnly intones. Since Australia's electricity comes from coal, the evil of using Christmas lights to celebrate the birth of the Redeemer means an increase in "greenhouse gas emissions." Bottom line: Christianity is killing the planet.

But since the planet-destroying plebes are not willing to give up their primitive religious holidays and superstitions -- and the equally primitive desire for illumination during long winter nights -- the CSIRO has come up with helpful hints on how they can minimize their impact on our fragile ecosystem, until such time as they can be made to adopt the enlightened sterility of their betters. Timers, "energy-efficient bulbs," solar-powered lights, or "sourcing your electricity from verified green power suppliers" are all proffered as ways to avoid choking the globe on unnecessary Christmas emissions.

Well. Most people have no problem with timers, since they like to save on their electric bills, especially during tough economic times that are brought on in no small part by the meddling of the global warming people. In fact, WalMart, that citadel of white-trash consumerism and exploitation, sells timers, and even outdoor timers with light sensors, so you can have your lights come on at dusk and set them to stay on for just 2-6 hours. As for solar powered lights, there is frequently not enough sunlight to charge batteries in winter, so the net effect of solar-powered lights is likely to be little or no lights at all, which is what the global warming scaremongers are really after anyway.

And energy-efficient Christmas bulbs are the pits. Back when they used normal Christmas lights on the Idaho State Christmas Tree, you could see the Tree on the Statehouse steps all the way up Capitol Boulevard. Then the state started doling out Christmas cheer by the teaspoon, and switched to energy-efficient bulbs. The tree looks pretty in pictures, but the pictures don't convey the sad reality that you have to practically be standing underneath the tree to see it.

We live in a world that is long on violence, oppression, tyranny, hatred, and coldness, and short on kindness, gentleness, freedom, charity and warmth. It is made more so by the global warming Scrooges of the world, the new Puritans who can never rest easy as long as a spark of joy or innocent pleasure remains unextinguished anywhere on earth. If these sourpusses will not turn away from their perverted disgust with Christmas, then let them at least stop trying to drag the rest of us down into their private hell.

Confirmation: March 20, 1984

Future Bishop Juan Arzube in his youth.

33 years ago today, I received the Sacrament of Confirmation at the hands of +Juan Arzube, then an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, at the parish of St. Catherine of Siena in Reseda, California.  Bishop Arzube died Christmas Day of 2007 at the age of 89.  

It is good to remember, and pray for, the priests at whose hands you received your first Sacraments.  I received all mine (to date -- still haven't received the Sacrament of Matrimony) in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  I was baptized by Rev. (later Msgr.) Austin J. Greene in November of 1970 at St. Joseph the Worker parish, then in Canoga Park, now Winnetka, California.  I made my first confession to Fr. Sergius Propst, O.P. in 1978 at the aforementioned St. Catherine of Siena, and received my First Holy Communion the same year and at the same parish from Fr. Richard McCarthy.  Fr. Propst is still living and still in ministry.  I am unable to find out how Msgr. Greene turned out, though I see that the convention hall of the parish he founded is named in his honor.  Fr. McCarthy, a native of Ireland, left the priesthood not long after my first Communion.  Bishop Arzube was unfortunately dogged in his later years by sex abuse allegations, which he denied, but which formed part of a monster settlement by the Archdiocese.  

Signs

God gives us signs; our shepherds give us signs.  In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI gave us a sign when, surrounded by earthquake damage in the church of Santa Maria di Collemaggio in L'Aquila, Italy, he laid his pallium on the tomb of Pope St. Celestine V, who abdicated in 1294.  Four years later -- and four years ago today -- on February 11, 2013, he announced his abdication.

For the benefit of those who believe (and those who disbelieve) in signs from heaven, on that day, God commanded, or at least permitted, lightning to strike St. Peter's Basilica.  (Yes, God pays attention to details, down to the subatomic level, and even the most trivial things cannot happen without His permission; otherwise, He wouldn't be God.)  To underscore His point, His providence arranged for Filippo Monteforte of Agence France-Presse to capture the moment on film, thusly:

It is superstitious to believe that our lives and the course of history are governed by the motions of stars and planets, or that we can predict the future based on tea leaves or goat entrails; but it is not superstitious to take heed of signs in nature.  Our capacity and inclination to read these occurrences as signs is God-given.  The God Who created us gave us our taste for symbolism, and He satisfies it without the need for us to make up for any lack of ingenuity on His part.  Chapter 27 of Matthew's Gospel records that when Jesus was crucified, darkness covered the earth for three hours; and upon His death, the earth quaked, the rocks were split, and the veil of the temple was torn in two.  These were signs that indicated that this execution on Calvary was quite out of the ordinary.  Even the changes of season are freighted with spiritual significance, and not because we give them that significance ourselves in order to satisfy some primitive instinct for religion.  They are significant because God, Who is a God of Order and Harmony, interwove nature and salvation history.  There is no reason to believe that God has ceased giving us signs, merely because, in our modern, rationalist age, we choose to chalk them up as mere coincidences.

So what was the nature of the sign given here?  Was it a sign that God was angry with Pope Benedict for having stepped down from an office that is normally held until death?  Or was it a sign that this abdication marked the beginning of a punishment to be visited upon the whole Church for her unfaithfulness?

Four years on, the answer seems clearer.  The shepherd who tried to rule his flock and undo the damage of the last half-century with fatherly gentleness is gone, and a wrecking ball has been appointed to fill his place.  Our present Pope is admired by the world.  He publicly celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant revolt, and heaps contumely on those who try to live as faithful Catholics.  On his watch, the punishments that should be visited on the priests and bishops who openly proclaim errors land instead on faithful clerics and tradition-loving religious orders.  We find ourselves in the midst of a showdown between several cardinals and the Successor of Peter, over the appearance that the latter has publicly countenanced grave errors concerning marriage.  The Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta is feeling the mailed fist of this highly authoritarian Pope.  Meanwhile, the "progressive" elites in the Church, down to the lowest levels, are having their Big Mo, and are more blatant and arrogant than ever.  Sunday Mass is increasingly a narcissistic display featuring the preaching of Marxist interpretations of the Gospel; keeping the obligation becomes more and more burdensome and tedious.  A feeling of unease and confusion seems to pervade the Church, even among those who, on an intellectual level, are not confused about what the Church teaches.

The reading of the lightning strike on St. Peter's as a sign of trials to come seems amply justified by events.  Now we await signs that these trials may soon end.  Perhaps we are seeing it in the political arena, where voters in Europe and America are giving the Order of the Boot to left-wing ideologues of the sort that have infested both Church and State for decades.  This is not the same as a conversion to the True Faith; but it does show that people are at last ready to discard the slick, shiny notions of godless "progress" and "change" that have captivated so many in the West since the "Enlightenment," and that have wrought so much death and destruction.

The devil has his hour; but, as Bishop Sheen used to remind us, he gets only an hour.  God, on the other hand, has His day.

V for Victory

The French poet, Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), never dreamed of the role he would play in a great drama that would take place exactly 100 years after his birth.  Seventy-two years ago today, the French Underground tensely awaited the great signal that the Allied invasion of Normandy -- the greatest amphibious operation in history -- was immanent.  This signal was the first stanza of Verlaine's poem, Chanson d'automne, broadcast over the radio.  

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l'automne

Blessent mon coeur

D'une langueur

Monotone.

Tout suffocant

Et blême, quand

Sonne l'heure,

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens

Et je pleure

Et je m'en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m'emporte

Deçà, delà,

Pareil à la

Feuille morte.

The long sobs

Of the violins

Of autumn

Wound my heart

With a languor

Monotonous.

All suffocating

And pale when

The hour strikes

I remember

The old days

And weep

And I go away

In the ill wind

that carries me off

This side and beyond

Like the

Dead leaf.

"Believe me, Lang, the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive...the fate of Germany depends on the outcome...for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day."

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to his aide, Capt. Hellmuth Lang, April 22, 1944

From Part One, Chapter 13 of The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan (available, by the way, on Kindle):

Now Eisenhower stood watching as the planes trundled down the runways and lifted slowly into the air.  One by one they followed each other into the darkness.  Above the field, they circled as they assembled into formation.  Eisenhower, his hands deep in his pockets, gazed up into the night sky.  As the huge formation of planes roared one last time over the field and headed toward France, NBC's Red Mueller looked at the Supreme Commander.  Eisenhower's eyes were filled with tears.

Minutes later, in the Channel, the men of the invasion fleet heard the roar of the planes.  It grew louder by the second, and then wave after wave passed overhead.  The formation took a long time to pass.  Then the thunder of their engines began to fade.  On the bridge of the U.S.S. Herndon, Lieutenant Bartow Farr, the watch officers and NEA's war correspondent, Tom Wolf, gazed up into the darkness.  Nobody could say a word.  And then as the last formation flew over, an amber light blinked down through the clouds on the fleet below.  Slowly it flashed out in Morse code three dots and a dash: V for Victory.

Ninety-seven November 11ths Ago: Armistice Day

We in the States now honor all our veterans, living and dead, on November 11th.  The original reason for this holiday, observed throughout the Western world, was the Armistice with Germany in 1918.  On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the feast of St. Martin of Tours, the Roman soldier who renounced war, the First World War ended. 

The Armistice was signed about five a.m. on November 11th, and the news was rushed to the hostile armies.  Yet the fighting raged on, pointlessly, and men continued to die, right up to the last minute before the cease-fire took effect: a sobering testimony to the effects of original sin.  2,738 men perished on the last day of the war.

Except for a few centenarians who would have been children at the time, this fratricidal slaughter has passed out of living memory, and there are now no more living veterans.  The last American veteran of that war, Frank Buckles, died in 2011 at the age of 110.  The last veteran of the defeated Central Powers, Franz Künstler, died in 2008 at the age of 107.  The last veteran on either side, Florence Green of the United Kingdom, died in 2012, also at the age of 110.

*          *          *  

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

The Immaculate Conception

Yesterday was the 73d anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; today, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, is the 73d anniversary of our declaration of war on Japan.  Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception is the patroness of these United States.  Have you ever thought about whether there is any significance in the fact that we entered the Second World War on our patronal feast?

This year it seems good to link to a couple of apologetics posts on the subject of the Immaculate Conception:

Mary, Conceived without Sin, You DID Know: why a certain popular song about Mary must never be sung in a Catholic Church

Potuit, Decuit, ergo Fecit: Why the Immaculate Conception Must Be True: a response to a self-professed apostate

The Chastisement

Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.  

Psalm 145:2-3

A reminder that today is the one-year anniversary of Benedict XVI's abdication inspired some reflections on the wild ride we have had since that day, both in the Church and in secular society. 

For those with eyes to see, it should be clear that we are under chastisement.   Events are accelerating.  Everything we had taken for granted up to now, from bedrock institutions to moral principles, is disintegrating.  The capital of Christian civilization, built up over two thousand years, is nearly all frittered away.  The enemies of everything we held dear now have the upper hand, and they are busily engaged in destroying.  The unthinkable daily morphs into the commonplace.  One is more and more conscious of being an outsider, even among family and friends, as one is unable to join them in embracing socialism and homosexual unions and abortion and hatred of the Catholic Church, and a host of imaginary "rights", the pursuit of which is costing us our authentic rights.

A chastisement is meant to make us straighten up and start flying right.  But at the moment, too many people like what's going on.  There are a few who recognize the evil for what it is and deliberately choose it; many more, probably most, are deluded by the pursuit of their own comfort coupled with blindness to supernatural realities.  They think this is victory for the good guys.  They think things are finally going the way they should.  They look at wholesale destruction and see creation.  They look at murder and see mercy.  They look at oppression and see liberation.  They look at lies and see the truth -- whatever truth they find most convenient.  

To too many people -- even many Catholics, including priests and bishops and religious -- what is happening does not look like divine punishment.  Since too many of us do not see this as punishment, not enough of us are straightening up.  That is why I fear we are in for something far worse than what we have seen up to now.

Who knows what form it will take?  Very likely, something that will hit us precisely where we are most complacent.  We have grown decadent in our wealth: even the poor in America have color televisions, cars, air conditioning and more than enough to eat.  And, for most of America's existence, she has enjoyed freedom from foreign invasion.  A dozen years after 9/11, we have sunk back into apathy.  Now that the United States is an oligarchy run by persons friendly to her enemies, perhaps it is only a question of time before our economy plunges into the abyss and the scourge of war lashes us in our own streets.

So, do we just give up and crawl back into our caves?  The time will come when that won't be an option.  But there is in any case no neutral ground: we have set before us life and death, and we must stretch out our hand to one of them.  We must choose life.

Should we pursue political remedies?  Of course.  I have advocated previously in this space for Mark Levin's proposed constitutional amendment convention, which the Founding Fathers had the foresight to provide for for times just like these.  But that is not going to be enough.  The chastisement will not be taken away until the reasons for it have ended.  Those reasons are in our own hearts, and our hearts need to be changed.  We need sorrow for our sins and purpose of amendment.  We need to do good and avoid evil.  We must be holy as God is holy.  For that, we need sanctifying grace.  I fear many people -- many Catholics -- are living without sanctifying grace.  I fear -- and it is horrible to consider -- that many are dying without sanctifying grace. 

God is under no obligation to give us what we need to be holy if we don't ask for it, so we must pray, especially the Rosary.  The Rosary was given to us precisely for our times.  We must pray the Rosary not only for ourselves but for others.  It is the best thing we can do.  The time is coming, and may already be here, when it will be the only thing we can do.

Remember Pearl Harbor

One of the best museum exhibits I have ever seen was held at the Reagan Library during the early to mid '90s.  Entitled "World War II: In Their Own Words," the exhibit took you from the last days of peace at Pearl Harbor through to the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and featured artifacts from every noteworthy event of the war.  In accordance with the theme, the exhibit also featured written documents, letters, diaries, and memoirs from every person of note on both sides, and from soldiers who recorded the events in journals as they happened. The Pearl Harbor section of the exhibit featured Franklin Roosevelt's pince-nez, and the typescript of his Day of Infamy speech with his penciled corrections.  One of the most poignant and gripping items in the whole exhibit was a Navy pharmacist's mate's white tunic, covered in blood stains from helping with the wounded after the attack.  It was quite a small tunic; the man wearing it had to have been very young.

Now, almost three quarters of a century after that fateful day, the United States is again in peril, only this time, from within.  Very few Pearl Harbor veterans have lived to see the 72nd anniversary of the date that would live in infamy.  I wonder how many of them are happy about the path taken by the country they suffered for so long ago.

The Second of July: A New Birth of Freedom

Independence Day is actually July 2nd.  July 2, 1776 is the day the Continental Congress voted for independence from Great Britain -- a new birth of freedom.  July 4th is the day the text of the Declaration of Independence was approved and promulgated by the Congress.  The Declaration of Independence contains one of the most famous and oft-quoted passages ever composed in the English language:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Fast forward 87 years to another July 2nd: the day on which a great battle is being fought about 110 miles west of the spot where America declared her independence.  We look back on that battle from the vantage point of 150 years in the future and see, in the culmination of Robert E. Lee's second -- and last -- attempt to invade the North, the turning point of the Civil War.  Yesterday (which, by the way, was also the Feast of the Precious Blood of Jesus) was the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg.  150 years ago today, the 20th Maine, under Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, famously defended Little Round Top, repulsing and scattering John Bell Hood's 15th Alabama Regiment with a fixed-bayonet charge that may have saved the battle, and therefore the whole War, for the Union.  Tomorrow is the 150th anniversary of Pickett's Charge, the futile Confederate infantry assault that marked the South's "high water mark," its farthest penetration into the Union line at Gettysburg and the closest it came to winning the war.  

Around 50,000 Americans, North and South, perished at Gettysburg.  A few months later, on November 19, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg would inspire ten of the most celebrated sentences ever uttered in the English-speaking world:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

As our nation lies again under mortal peril, this time from her own government, we must remember and contemplate our history, and the sacrifices made by so many for generations they knew they would never live to see; we must renew our high resolution that the dead who have given the last full measure of devotion to the cause of this nation shall not have died in vain.

June 6, 1944: The Longest Day

"Believe me, Lang, the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive...the fate of Germany depends on the outcome...for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day."

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to his aide, Capt. Hellmuth Lang, April 22, 1944

From Part One, Chapter 13 of The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan (available, by the way, on Kindle):

Now Eisenhower stood watching as the planes trundled down the runways and lifted slowly into the air.  One by one they followed each other into the darkness.  Above the field, they circled as they assembled into formation.  Eisenhower, his hands deep in his pockets, gazed up into the night sky.  As the huge formation of planes roared one last time over the field and headed toward France, NBC's Red Mueller looked at the Supreme Commander.  Eisenhower's eyes were filled with tears.

Minutes later, in the Channel, the men of the invasion fleet heard the roar of the planes.  It grew louder by the second, and then wave after wave passed overhead.  The formation took a long time to pass.  Then the thunder of their engines began to fade.  On the bridge of the U.S.S. Herndon, Lieutenant Bartow Farr, the watch officers and NEA's war correspondent, Tom Wolf, gazed up into the darkness.  Nobody could say a word.  And then as the last formation flew over, an amber light blinked down through the clouds on the fleet below.  Slowly it flashed out in Morse code three dots and a dash: V for Victory.

Now you know where the title of this blog comes from.

Some classic D-Day posts:

FDR's D-Day address to the nation

Ike's D-Day Address to the Allied Expeditionary Force

President Reagan commemorates the 40th anniversary of D-Day

The Great Signal: Verlaine's D-Day Poem

And from Life magazine: color photos, before and after D-Day

The Unseen Holocaust

Since the Roe v. Wade decision 40 years ago, there have been approximately 55,772,015 abortions in the United States.  This is to say nothing of the untold number of babies killed by abortifacient contraceptives and "morning after" chemical abortions like RU-486 and "Plan B."  That translates to roughly 1.5 million abortions per year; over 3,300 per day; 137 per hour, every hour.

Consider:

Total number of people killed in World War II: estimates range from 50 million to 70 million.

Total number of people killed in World War I: 37 million.

Total number of people killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia: 1.5 million.

Total number of people killed by Stalin: estimates range as high as 60 million.

Total number of people killed in Mao's Cultural Revolution in China: estimates range as high as 20 million.

Total number of soldiers killed in the American Civil War, both Union and Confederate: 625,000.

Number of people who have died of AIDS (as of 2009): 30 million.

Think of it.  Since Roe v. Wade, we have had, in our abortion mills, the equivalent of one Second World War.  One and a half First World Wars.  37 Cambodian genocides.  Almost one Stalin regime.  2.7 Cultural Revolutions.  89 Civil Wars.  1.85 AIDS epidemics.  The only distinguishing feature is that the victims are nameless, utterly defenseless, and have never seen the light of day.

As long as we continue unrepentant in this course, we have no right to expect blessings on this country, and every reason to expect nothing but disaster.

Dies Irae: 9/11

Dies irae!  Dies illa

Solvet saeclum in favilla.

Teste David cum Sybilla.

The day of wrath, that day

Will dissolve the world in ashes

As foretold by David and the sibyl!

The shadow of a bugler playing "Taps" at Ground Zero.

I don't suppose anybody who is old enough to remember 9/11 will ever forget where they were and what they were doing on that awful day.  Unimaginable things, about which we had no idea, were going on while we went about our ordinary lives.

Then, as today, on the 11th anniversary, I was a deputy public defender, though in a different shop.  Then, as today, I had a day of court ahead of me.  Then, as today, I rolled out of bed at the last possible minute I could get away with.  I was in the Pacific time zone then, so by the time my feet hit the floor, the planes had all crashed, the fires were raging, and the nation was reeling.

While I slept, just one hour away from the alarm going off, the drama began to unfold on United Flight 93, whose passengers were already aware that passenger airliners were being used as missiles.  In New York, firefighters, police, port authority officers and other first responders were rushing into the tottering Twin Towers to try to save trapped civilians.  Many who had no hope of rescue, and perhaps were driven out of their minds by the intense heat, were leaping to their deaths.  I turned over in bed.

Just before my alarm went off, the doomed, heroic passengers of Flight 93 were fighting to take back the aircraft.  In New York, the South Tower of the World Trade Center was collapsing in a cloud of dust and debris that swept through the streets like a tidal wave.  Just after the alarm went off, while I entertained the temptation to hit the snooze button, Flight 93 was crashing near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, prevented by the passengers from taking out the Capitol or the White House as planned.  About the time I was fixing my hair, the North Tower collapsed.  

None of this drama penetrated my daily routine.  I got into my car and left for work, turning on a radio station that specialized in '80s music.  While I headed down the main drag through town toward the office, listening to the crappy tunes that were the soundtrack of my high school career, dazed people covered in soot and ash and dust were picking their way away from the wreckage in Washington and New York, while fires raged and rescuers searched for survivors.  I was oblivious to these cataclysmic events until, just as I was pulling into the parking lot, the announcer on the radio said something to the effect that they would do their best to continue with their eight-song-'80s marathon, but they were just as shaken up as they were sure the rest of us were at what just happened.  Not being a morning person, I thought this odd, but didn't think to turn on a news station.  I went into the office through a back door and found a bunch of people huddled around my secretary's desk, listening to the radio.

"What happened?" I said.

"The World Trade Center is gone," she replied.

"What?"

"The World Trade Center is gone."

Immediately in my mind arose the memory of the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, and I do not now recall whether I spoke aloud the first thought that came into my head: "So they finished the job."  There was all sorts of speculation that day around the courthouse about who had been responsible for the attacks -- the Oklahoma City bombing and its domestic pedigree were still fresh in the mind, even after six years -- but that first thought turned out to be right.

Of course, most of us had court, and court must go on, national calamity or no, so there was no question of huddling around radios or televisions to follow the news all day.  But in between hearings and other business, the attacks were pretty much the only subject of conversation.  It was said that 50,000 people worked in the Twin Towers; were all 50,000 dead?  So few people were rescued alive from the wreckage.  And of course there were rumors of still more hijacked planes in the air, aimed for any number of targets of national importance.  When would it be over?

September 11, 2001 was my last day wrapped in my cocoon of workaday obliviousness.  That was the day I knew the enemy was on my turf, ready to strike me just for going about my everyday business.  The homeland had escaped two world wars with barely a scratch; but now, people with no compunction about murdering innocent civilians by the thousand were over here, taking flying lessons.  I myself had just been in Tampa, Florida two weeks earlier, where these maggots apparently had some ties.  The time for feeling secure and complacent was over -- for all of us.

Or so it seemed then.  The attacks galvanized us, but the galvanization didn't take; we soon got back to our stupid squabbles and divisions.  Pretty soon, we were lulled again, unduly comforted by the fact that no major terrorist attacks have stricken us since that awful, lovely September morning 11 years ago.  So deep are we in the stupor of complacency that we don't even miss the freedom we have surrendered for the sake of "safety," or think twice about the indignities to which we submit at airports, where rubber-gloved gorillas paw through our luggage and uniformed lechers leer at us through the naked scanners.  We have emasculated our military and all but opened our borders.  We didn't even raise an eyebrow three years ago, when a jihadist disguised as an Army major opened fire at Fort Hood, in a place he knew the soldiers would be disarmed, shouting "Allahu akbar!"  Except for the men and women in uniform who volunteer to place themselves in harm's way to protect us, we just go on doing exactly as we please, when we please, how we please, because we please, right or wrong.

More people died in 9/11 than in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor sixty years earlier.  Yet 9/11 was just a shot across our bow.  We didn't pay attention.  We just cruise cluelessly toward -- what?   Something too awful to contemplate.

A Birthday in Heaven

Tonight, as I happen to be watching A Man for All Seasons, I have been reminded that, although St. Thomas More's feast is June 22d on the new calendar, the anniversary of his martyrdom is today, July 6th.

St. Thomas, who gave his life to vindicate the rights of St. Peter, died on the Utas of St. Peter -- the eighth day after the feast of Peter.  His headless body was buried in a mass grave in the church of St. Peter ad Vincula -- St. Peter in Chains.

Planning, Working, and Praying

A tip from the peerless Father Erik has led to about an hour's reading on a subject not inappropriate for Memorial Day: one of America's most colorful and successful generals, George S. Patton.  In view of Patton's work, beliefs, sayings, and general outlook on life, it was perhaps a mercy that he did not long survive the troops who had given their lives under his command, or live to see the fruits of their hard-won victories squandered.  It is not hard to guess what his take would have been on the West's increasing post-war confusion, or the muddle of the Vietnam War, in which his own son, George Patton IV, served as a general, and which our politicians willed to lose. It is tempting to meditate on what would happen if, by some miracle of modern medicine, the elder Patton had lived long enough to find himself under the overlordship of the present occupant of the White House.

One notable incident of Patton's career in the European Theater has become distorted in our sissified, politically correct times, and needs to be set straight.  The 1970 movie Patton contains a scene in which the general is shown bullying a chaplain into praying for good weather for killing Germans, against the chaplain's conscience.  The chaplain in question -- Msgr. James H. O'Neill, Chief Chaplain of the Third Army -- told a rather different story in an account he wrote in 1950, which was published 21 years later in Review of the News, when Msgr. O'Neill was a retired brigadier general.  He describes General Patton as a devout and practicing Episcopalian, possessing "all the traits of military leadership, fortified by genuine trust in God, intense love of country, and high faith In the American soldier"; he describes himself, the allegedly bullied chaplain, as not at all reluctant to carry out his commander's wishes in the matter of the prayer.

The story begins, interestingly enough, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1944.  Disturbed by the unrelenting, torrential rain that hampered his war effort, Patton called up the Chief Chaplain and asked him if there was a prayer for good weather.  Not finding an appropriate prayer, the chaplain undertook to compose his own:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.

Chaplain O'Neill typed the final draft of this prayer on a 5"x3" filing card, along with a Christmas message to the troops from Patton, and presented it to the general, who affixed his signature to the Christmas message and ordered the printing of a quarter of a million copies for distribution to every man in the Third Army.

Then Patton asked O'Neill a question that would probably get a commanding officer in today's Army court-martialed: how much praying was being done in the Third Army?  When told that not much prayer was going on, Patton said:

Chaplain, I am a strong believer in prayer. There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning, or thinking. Then you must have well-trained troops to carry it out: that's working. But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part, or margin in everything. That's where prayer comes in. Up to now, in the Third Army, God has been very good to us. We have never retreated; we have suffered no defeats, no famine, no epidemics. This is because a lot of people back home are praying for us. We were lucky in Africa, in Sicily, and in Italy. Simply because people prayed. But we have to pray for ourselves, too. A good soldier is not made merely by making him think and work. There is something in every soldier that goes deeper than thinking or working--it's his "guts." It is something that he has built in there: it is a world of truth and power that is higher than himself. Great living is not all output of thought and work. A man has to have intake as well. I don't know what you it, but I call it Religion, Prayer, or God.

Whereupon the general ordered the chaplain to draft a training letter to all the chaplains on the importance of prayer.  "We've got to get not only the chaplains but every man in the Third Army to pray. We must ask God to stop these rains. These rains are that margin that hold defeat or victory."

So Chaplain O'Neill got to work on Training Letter No. 5.  Both it and the prayer cards were distributed to the troops in the Third Army between December 12-14.  On December 16th, the Germans, favored by the poor weather, launched their final offensive of the war through the Ardennes: the Battle of the Bulge.  On the 19th, Patton and his Third Army rushed to Bastogne to meet it; and on the 20th came perfect weather for wave after wave of Allied air attacks on the Germans.  The prayer for good weather was answered, and the Germans were defeated.

What if George S. Patton had lived to observe the state of this country in 2012?  No doubt his prescription would include, among other things, planning, working and -- above all -- praying.  Especially praying: and to hell with any executive orders, acts of Congress, federal regulations, Supreme Court decisions or any other government directives to the contrary.  

Happy Lenin's Birthday!

That's what you're really saying any time you celebrate Earth Day.  Yes, April 22nd is the birthday of Vladimir Ilych Lenin, Soviet thug dictator, mass murderer and tool of Satan.    That Earth Day falls on his birthday is no coincidence.  Any time you refrain from using a plastic bag or a styrofoam cup, or throw out all your incandescent light bulbs in honor of Earth Day, what you are really celebrating is the leading exponent of the most murderous ideology in human history.

I'd like to be a multibillionaire, so I could open up a new oil refinery every April 22nd.  But since I'm not a multibillionaire, I'll just have to settle for turning on all my incandescent lights tonight.