Repaired: Does Israel survive? Do Jews want to be hated? Jews Contra Christians; Jews Contra Jews

Friends,

Somehow this article was replaced by another. I've now restored it:

Israeli Defense Forces recently killed some Egyptian border guards, of some type, somehow. If the Israelis want a much wider war, they can hardly do more to start one. 

Inshallah, if Allah wills it

The Muslim people of Egypt want war, or are at least, in classical Muslim fatalism, ready for it. "Inshallah" means pretty much whatever happens, Allah has willed it. This is the famous Muslim fatalism. The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is in Peking (I know, old spelling) begging the ravenous Red Dragon for help, along with Saudi Arabia, etc. Isn't that nice? (Sisi knows he's hated by the "Muslim-on-the-Street".) Ironically, the Chinese slaughter the Muslim Uighurs for their organs, and the Muslim world ignores that. Inshallah. Instead, they focus on Israelis killing Muslims "closer to home". That's a lot less acceptable. Whatever.

Muslims-on-the-Street seem to only care about violence to Muslims if Jews or Christians are somehow involved. All the Middle East is seething over Israel's smashing of Gaza. Their rulers bide their time; if the opportunity arrives, however, they themselves would slaughter every Jew "from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean sea." In a heartbeat. Inshallah! Other than that, they talk nicely about peace. "Taqiyya" is another Islamic doctrine: to dissimulate or openly lie for the good of Islam.

As for Israel, and for Jews in the USA, sometimes having too much is just too much. Having too much money, too much influence, too much self-confident chutzpah can bring one down. Hard. Yet to even survive in an area that hates them so, Israelis have to have all three: more money, power, pride. The Jews and Israel are in this doom cycle; and, as I've written before, Jews need Jesus now more than ever. (See my essay on that: https://corvinescatholiccorner.blogspot.com/2024/04/they-need-christ-more-than-ever-instead.html) Of course, Our Lord, a Jew Himself, is the last person either Jews or Muslims would turn to in order to escape all this "blood sacrifice" both sides are engaging in, and escalating. In this essay, I'll consider the Jews and Israel. In a subsequent one, the Muslims.

Israel

Israel is in dire straights, on many levels. The goals of the Hamas terror attack on October 7 attack last year are still being fulfilled as Israel in retaliation reduces the Gaza strip to rubble, and accounts multiply of Israeli atrocities going on there of the worst kind – and growing revelations of Israeli bad behavior in the West Bank – as bad as anything the Israelis have been on the receiving end of. That was a Muslim goal of the attack. All of which attracts renewed world attention in the unique Israeli apartheid state (i.e. the privileged position of Jews in Israel, which, after all, was founded precisely to be a Jewish state). This is another Hamas goal. The war is not going the way Israel wants it, either; in other words, it is dragging on and on. Hamas is quite pleased. Sun Tzu said a long war benefits no one. Gazans of all ages die, starve, and suffer, and Israel's casualties increase as well. They're paying the Gazans back for October 7. "Turn the other cheek" is not an option with either people. And of course, Hamas is VERY pleased.

As fighting in Gaza itself breaks out behind the Israeli advance, Israel is also attacked by Hezbollah from the north and Iran in the east. (Foolish American commentators boast how Israel shot down Iran's missiles, but now Iran knows where Israel's missile counter batteries are, A, and B, Israel spent incredible amounts of money on its missile counter attack and it will be difficult to replace its counter-fire missiles.) Israel's economy is under great stress, if not near meltdown, its people tied up in the various military fronts, all of which temporarily covers up deep splits in Israeli society and body politic between its own factions. 

• Now the International Criminal Court is seeking indictments of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his defense minister. Little will come of this except bad publicity for Israel. The prosecutor also seeks indictments against Hamas leaders, but he has been careful to have arranged for a committee of international lawyers to investigate "genocide" allegations against Israel, and this committee has now unanimously stated genocide exists in Gaza. Whether true or not, it is very damaging to Israel's credibility.
  
• Israel's neighboring Arab states offer only an old two-state solution (i.e. the creation of a Palestinian state out of Gaza, the West Bank, and bits of Israel, like East Jerusalem) that almost all Israelis categorically reject. As long as Israel exists, no two-state solution will exist. As long as Israel is the toughest dog in the yard, however, these other countries will not attack – but if Israel loses or even falters much further in this Gaza war, then all bets are off. Inshallah!
  
• The leaders of these states could not care less about the actual Gazans and West Bank Arabs – they care about their own people no more than any Muslim terrorist does; this is traditionally true. There's not much "love" of Arabs for Arabs. Taqiyya, and all that. Their own Arab populations, however, the non-terrorist Muslims-on-the-Street, are growing extremely outraged in a Muslim-level pan-Arab/Muslim sympathy for Palestinian Arabs and traditional Muslim hatred of Jews. How long can the governments therefore "keep the lid on"?
  

America

Meanwhile, in the USA. the most supportive country of Israel, the Jews are demanding that Christianity shut down by changing its central teachings. That's the result of their Congressional Bill in the U.S. that would label as "antisemitism" any sort of criticism regarding Jews or Israel. How in the world could Jews do that, and why would they, you might ask. Is this the time to outrage the average American Christian against Jews? Again, the American government is committed to Israel, for the crappy reason of being paid to be so, as I detail below. But the people? The U.S. Congress is trying to pass a law that would essentially outlaw Christianity. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!

House Bill 6090

OnePeterFive has a great article (yes, I know, but it is not written by Tim Flanders) on this issue: https://onepeterfive.com/the-house-endorsed-definition-of-antisemitism-provokes-a-rift-with-christianity/. The author, Carina Benton, gives a succinct overview of the problem. The American government seems about to make Christianity – and certainly orthodox, Traditional Catholicism – illegal because of "antisemitism". They want to make the core teachings of Christianity into "Thought Crimes" by labeling them "antisemitic", a "phobia" of Jews. We can add that to Islamophobia and Homophobia and Trannyphobia, all "thought crimes" that government must pass laws against. And of course free speech and civil rights be damned. But notice there's never a Christophobia or Catholicphobia?

We Catholics hardly need this problem as we have Bergoglio constantly trying to incinerate us as it is. His recent 60 Minutes interview was simply grotesque: Bergoglio's silly double-talk makes a laughing stock of the Church; just about everything out of his mouth screams "I am not a pope, haha!" so of course the hierarchy keeps the Toad in place, to the detriment of the entire world and the Church's own demise. Though he'll never be charged with it, Bergoglio exhibits a perfect Catholicphobia, all right.

Now we have Jews telling us, as a certain Rabbi Michael Barclay told conservative pundit Candace Owens that essential Christian teaching – from the beginning of the Faith, you understand – is the reason for the world's antisemitism. (Owens rebelled at that, and eventually after various twists and turns, got fired from where she worked.) Basically, if this Bill 6090 becomes law, then the Gospels, especially the Gospel of St. John and much of the writing of St. Paul, etc., becomes illegal antisemitism because they teach that the Jews got the Romans to kill Christ, and are described generally as religiously blind and lost souls cut off from the ancient covenants that define them as a people. (For details on how religious Jews view Christianity, which they consider an anti-Jewish pagan idolatry, see: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-noahide-laws-a-universal-religion-without-christ/; the Noahide Laws are what they want to replace Christianity and Islam with.)

Even strongly pro-Israel and yet conservative American pundits like John Zmirak are opposed to H.B. 6090. Its passage caused him to write this article: https://stream.org/unconstitutional-speech-ban-it-may-sound-good-but-dont-fall-into-this-hate-speech-booby-trap/ Zmirak might well condemn me as a vile Jew hater, but he still protests this anti-free speech bill that the Jewish lobby is buying from Congress. I think this thought-police ploy just backfires on everyone, however, especially the people paying for it. It's all so self-defeating, an "own goal".

So, why do it?

1. Ostensibly, this is about the raging antisemitism on America's elite college campuses, Academia's mix of Israeli politics and war as way to "tar and feather" American Jews, and the general social violence and rising crime and open assault on American streets.
2. Jewish students have been harassed or beat up or threatened, and riots ensue. It's been developing over time. In New York, Blacks have attacked Jews often enough that it has become a problem before the latest Israeli war.
   
3. Basically, for modern-day Jews in urban America it is become about like what it was for Catholics during the Know-Nothing era before the U.S. Civil War. Back then, no "phobia" gambit existed; now, however, we get House Bill 6090. 
4. One would deduce the importation of Muslims into America has a lot to do with this, and it massively does – the extreme antisemitism in Europe is a direct result of the Islamification of Europe – but you can't say that without being politically incorrect and perhaps investigated by the FBI. Taqiyya has Deep State teeth! In England, they appear to be going to pass an "anti-Islamophobia" law as strict at H.B. 6090. What irony! A world in which neither Jews nor Muslims can be criticized! But Christianity can be emasculated. Literally, with Christ reduced entirely.
   

Do Jews Want To Be Hated?

The burden of this essay weighs the question: Do the Jews who are getting Congress to pass this House Bill 6090 (as they have done in a number of states already with something similar) want to make themselves hated – actually hated, as opposed to just resented or considered an annoyance. I ask because this legislation attacks directly their strongest U.S. supporters, Evangelical Christians. Oh, sure, the American Jewish Lobby, AIPAC, owns most politicians and can buy their "support". But real support, emotional and spiritual support, the true "friends of Israel" are the Christians. And this attempt at thought control will just tick them off. 

• The Catholic Church's Vatican II hierarchy has bent over backwards to be nice to the Jews, doing a series of mea culpas for the Holocaust (even though pagan Nazis inflicted that horror and Christians saved many Jews, something Pope Pius XII personally did). All that, only for all Christians to be formally told, "You guys and your false religion is the root of the whole antisemitic phenomenon, and we need to pass that into law."

Human Nature, People; It Isn't Nice, But it IS predictable

Jews – i.e. speaking collectively of Jewish movers and shakers, opinion and policy makers – don't seem to realize that being the single most privilege ethnic group in the U.S. and in the West generally – as they most certainly are on many levels, in terms of influence, education, and income – people can get very tired of an ethnic group bearing such weighty influence that yet also claims victimization status. I refer to their constant "wailing and gnashing of teeth" shtick about how the world hates Jews. This is, after all, the rationale for Israel: a safe-haven for Jews in a hostile world. Well, beware of human nature. Keep telling the world they hate you and they might just develop a hatred for you! That's not news; it is hardly antisemitic. It's human nature. And it is predictable.

• The Black Americans a century and a half ago were literally slaves, then 3rd class citizens for another century. 
• Beginning in the 1960s, they began to be placed on a pedestal by Democrats, given welfare money and Affirmative Action. The Democrats ironically are the ones who enslaved them and kept they on cotton plantations; a century later they re-enslaved them and stuck them on asphalt plantations. And equally incongruous, at the same time, the Democrats made them feel privileged, in perpetual need of assistance.
  
• So, after decades of special status, hiring, college admissions, etc., human nature kicked in and Whites (and certainly Asians and Latinos) began to resent all that special status, and began to seriously tire of the 'We're so oppressed" shtick. Again, that's human nature. Again, it is predictable.
  

Persecution Is Now Real

Now Jews are facing a serious rise in actual, real-time true Jew-hating antisemitism throughout the entire West – mainly because of Israel's wars in the Mideast. But other causes exist, as well. They are now running out of friends, both Israel as a country and Jews in general. They can buy political support – to a point. But real friends? They seem to endorse Lord Palmerston's famous comment (short version): "England has no friends, only interests." And "interests" are fickle, especially bought ones.

So, sensing the mood changing indeed, the Jews now will antagonize even more people. And again, remember, they are the most privileged minority group in the Western world. Jewish bankers actually won the Russo-Japanese War for the Japanese, for a well-known example. The Japanese won the battles at sea and on land, but were bankrupt. Jewish bankers in New York, hating the Imperial Russians for persecuting Jews, loaned the Japanese government the money keeping the war going long enough for advantageous negotiations. Now, that is clout!

• In the U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, they've produced this House Bill 6090 that's gone to the Senate. It casts an extremely wide net about "antisemitism": talking or writing in any way that is critical or maliciously critical of Jews, like, you know, Jews run the banks! Jews run entertainment! Jews run academia! Jews run the American Government! Israel bosses the U.S. around! Myself just writing this essay, the law would make me an antisemite. And soon it might land me in jail.
  

Oh, wait, you thought all that was true? That some privileged Jews, and no, hardly all Jews all the time, but their power brokers, have stupendous influence in everyone's lives? You thought that was self-evident?

1. Well, regarding banking, it is true in the sense that banks have traditionally been Jewish strongholds because in Medieval times, Christians couldn't charge each other interest, but Jews could. (The Reformation changed that, and thus the Protestant countries developed capitalism economically faster than the Catholic ones could.) And also Jews were restricted in the occupations they were allowed to do, so many went into banking. Think of the international banking family of Rothschild; that's how they started. Or think of George Soros today. Not all bankers are Jews, obviously, but still even now they have a tremendous deal of financial clout. They've been on the inside of that business for literally centuries. And Congressmen dance to the tune of those who give them money, not "the folks back home".
   
2. Jews also indeed are influential in the entertainment industry, which caused the Catholics to form the Legion of Decency, an organization that Archbishop of Cincinnati John T. McNicholas founded in 1933. Why was this so? Hollywood and movies were a big deal in the 1920s and '30s, of course, but Jewish producers and writers always tended to push the carnal envelope simply because the "Judeo-Christian" morality is something of a myth. 
3. It's a myth because many versions and types of Judaism exist, so which "Judeo" does the phrase refer to? Clearly, for every straight-laced Orthodox Jew there's a large number not so "inhibited" by Judaism's 613 laws. These less religious or non-religious Jews – most Jews are "non-religious" – saw sex-related things a bit differently than Christians did, which is an understatement. Sex sells, and they sold it.
   
4. Archbishop McNicholas was opposed to that. So, Catholics created an organization to oppose their influence and try to restrict what the Church saw as immoral or irreverent content. It is a simple equation: in its heart, Western Civilization is the product of Medieval and Counter-Reformation Catholicism, which had a fading echo effect in Protestantism. (I.e. Protestant countries became more sexually "progressive" than Catholic ones.) Judaism had a completely different culture and religion to begin with. (The Torah allows divorce, for example, and even polygamy; see: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/770990/jewish/Why-Does-Torah-Law-Allow-Polygamy.htm) And on top of that, non-religious Jews carried the day culturally. They had their own much more materialistic culture than religious Jews did. A powerful dynamic of cultural change brought on by making money, and a warping of cultural standards, resulted, such that when one considers the entertainment industry of today: it produces by and large either mindless titillating trash or a constant engine of violence and an obscene sexualizing of the kids.
5. And the same could be said of academia, too. Although Orthodox Jews, like Catholics, created their own educational institutions, less religious Jews, many of them Socialist or Communist, coming into the country at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, had by the 1950s and '60s changed American academia massively from what it had been. But that's not from JEWISH believers' perspective, you see? Again, most Jews are not "religious", actually. And a lot of Jews were Socialist because they had abandoned their religion over in Europe.
   
6. Then, finally, of course the American Government. It is heavily influenced by The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish lobbying group. On a recent show of his, Judge Andrew Napolitano discussed with Colonel Douglas Macgregor how those Republican Congressmen, about 15 or 20, who recently voted against House Bill 6090 and also against more money for Israel were removed from AIPAC's website as punishment for their vote. (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswQ9w5wETI at 33:15 minutes in.)
7. At AKA Catholic, Louie Verrecchio has an article: https://akacatholic.com/antisemitism-awareness-attempt-to-silence-god/ on this, and mentions one Benjamin Freedman, a Jewish convert to Christianity, who said back in 1961 that: "Here in the United States, the Zionists and their coreligionists have complete control of our government." Listen to Freedman's speech here: https://soundcloud.com/zionistreport/benjamin-freedmans-1961-speech-at-the-willard-hotel-complete/sets.
   

So, round and round it goes. The most privileged ethnic (some might say religious but they're not really that "religious") group in the Western world is wealthy enough to buy legislation that not only silences critics, but makes illegal the core tenants of the world largest religion (assuming Christianity has more believers than Islam, which is a question these days). Certainly, I would be considered an antisemite for even writing this, or at least not in condemning antisemitism every other sentence. It's absurd, and that very absurdity will hurt the Jews themselves, like an ancient Greek drama where the hero does something to avoid a nasty fate, but the thing he does is the very act that makes the fate inevitable.

So, does Israel survive? It has lasted about as long as the Crusader States did in the Middle Ages. That's something, I guess.

AnP

"The Church has buried every one of her undertakers." The Catholic Reconquista examined

Amici,

Funny, but I've said something like the title quote on the Church outlasting her critics – not so pithily – to a number of Protestant acquaintances over the decades. They've always scoffed; they don't understand the Incarnation, its necessity, and our participation in God's Incarnation as constituting salvation, our being a new creation in Christ (they're kinda Jewish or Muslim, actually), so they remain on the outside of the Traditional Apostolic Christian Faith. Unlike Jews and Muslims, Protestant acknowledge the Incarnation, sure, but they don't get the ramifications of what it means. And hence, they scoff at the necessity of the Church and its sacraments. "All you need is Jesus," they say, meaning talismanic belief divorced from corporal act. 

1. The truth is, however, that God Incarnate set up the incarnate and sacramental Church via His Incarnation and His orders to the Apostles about baptism of course, the Holy Eucharist, Confession (for this sacrament, see: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." St. John 20:21-23); the laying on of hands for Confirmation: Acts 8:14-17, 9:17, 19:6, and Hebrews 6:2; healing the sick via anointing with oil: Mark 6:13, James 5:14, etc.; all physical acts that transfigured via the Incarnation infuse grace, making us new creations in Christ.
2. We Catholics put up with the clergy in order to receive these sacraments, the visible signs of God's infusion of grace into our being – physical and spiritual – what the Greeks call Theosis. Any clergy that deny or restrict the sacraments are anathema. Remember that.
   
3. Vatican II fell upon us as the 16th century Reformation Come Again, a Reformation 2.0, trying to Protestantize, i.e. de-incarnationalize or hyper-spiritualize the Western Church, and while this dolorous 'church" seems to have made many conquests, it is failing, too. God is simply not with it. For always remember what Gamaliel said of Christianity. If it doesn't come from God, he told his fellow Jews, it will die out of its own accord, but if it does come from God, you cannot fight against it and will find yourselves opposing God; Acts 5:34-39. And indeed, the Church has "buried its undertakers" since Gamaliel's day. (Curious how Jews still don't listen to Gamaliel, isn't it?)
   

Now here again in this article linked below is a mainstream news report about the Traditional Church making a comeback. ‘A step back in time': America’s Catholic Church sees an immense shift toward the old ways.

"Who laughs last, laughs best" goes the old saying. May it be true. As readers of this unworthy blog know, your correspondent remains an unreformed Catholic, and Latin Masser, a Pius X Catholic, and something of a Counter-Reformation Catholic (with a good dose of Celtic Church thrown in), so I read an article such as this one above with a cautious joy. (By the way, hat-tip to Frank Walkers at Canon212 for referencing a Fr. Zuhlsdorf article about this article on his blog.)

It's not a bad investigation, as these mainstream news reports go, though one has to be careful since the author sets up various 'straw-men arguments" as Anthony Stine points out here. Yet even so, it is especially valuable, I think, for its continuous expression of bewilderment so many Vatican II Catholics experience about the Reconquista, the Return to Orthodoxy. They just don't get it. Fr. Zuhlsdorf has some comments about it but what struck me was the obdurate stubbornness of Vatican II Catholics simply refusing to participate in the Catholic Reconquista. It's beyond them. In fact, it is obvious that they are become Protestants. One woman quoted excoriates this return to tradition, and says she has left the Church and won't raise her daughter as a Catholic. Well, Mrs Obdurate, you were obviously raising your kid as an Episcopalian anyway, so go literally join that Church, then. They are about dead, that Church, and need new members. (I write this with sarcasm.)

The article reports how younger priests are more orthodox (or "conservative" as modernists would have it), more Traditionalist. The author, who has the very Irish name of Tim Sullivan ("Timothy" was a name the Irish used when they switched to English, changing the old Celtic name Tadhg to "Tim"), writes:

The progressive priests who dominated the U.S. church in the years after Vatican II are now in their 70s and 80s. Many are retired. Some are dead. Younger priests, surveys show, are far more conservative.

I must hasten to write we should pray for those old farts, so full, alas, of a false Catholicism. And all this, of course, against the very strong Vatican II headwinds, exemplified by that blowhard Bergoglio (another one we should pray for, for his conversion before it is too late), who is also quoted:

And the pope clearly worries about America.
The U.S. church has “a very strong reactionary attitude,” he told a group of Jesuits last year. “Being backward-looking is useless.”

Thanks, Bergi, for being a shallow martinet worshiping at the altar of the mindless imp named "Progress". Your anti-American Perónista skirts are showing, BTW. You've canned Bishop Strickland and are making noises about cracking down on the American Church, haha, as if you were really a pope rather than an heretical imposter. Yet note that the above bit about "progress" was a constant and standard Vatican II refrain: "You can't go against progress!" 

• Yeah, and when you finally pass from this world, Bergi, you can join all your fellow Progressives progressing to wherever Progressives progress to. What was it King Caspian said? "Progress! I have seen it in an egg, We call it going bad in Narnia". (IIRC, from memory.)
  

I remember many years ago some enterprising American journalist sent a questionnaire around to Liberal/Leftist/Progressive U.S. Congressmen and Senators, trying to ascertain how much Progress they thought would be enough. They kept harping on change and progress; alright, well, the journalist asked, just when would they say, "OK, we've reached our goals and have enough progress?" 

• Of course, none of the idiots could answer. They hadn't a clue. 

The nebulous idea of Progress in itself had become the goal, like insisting on traveling without a destination except toward some vague Utopia. That's Vatican II in a nutshell. And that's why it is dying: it is going absolutely nowhere, and fast.

The orthodox Catholics reported on in the article, though, they want to go somewhere. They want to embrace the Incarnation, and the Most Holy Spirit is directing them right back onto the correct road to that. If one has to "go back" to find the right road, so be it. Only a fool, or a Vatican IIer, fast becoming a Synod Churcher (or maybe a Jew or Muslim or at least a One World Religioner), would keep on going into the gathering darkness.

The Reconquista cannot be stopped. The Holy Ghost clearly wills it.

An Préachán

. 

The Synodal Church, cognitive dissonance, and the video "What on Earth Is Going on at the Vatican"

Amici,

Michael Matt has for years been a major player in the Trad Catholic scene in America, and so has his family. But at the moment, like so many others, he insists Bergoglio is actually pope. See an interview here at LifeSiteNews for details. One commentator to that article wrote that Matt is making a lot of sense. 

Matt is not making sense. Honestly, this whole "Bergoglio is pope" meme has to stop. Why? Insisting Bergoglio is pope will force anyone maintaining that position into severe cognitive dissonance. Insisting that ANYTHING is X, when it is clearly Y, will make you "cross-eyed" as it were; i.e. induce in you cognitive dissonance. Allow that cognitive dissonance to continue, not clearing it up immediately, will leave you psychologically prone, knocked flat. Leave it too long, allow it to fester in you, and you'll lose your faith. 

And THAT is the plan, my friends, of Bergoglio or whoever is managing him. Drive regular, "orthodox" Catholics out from their faith, and ultimately simply render them deeply ill in the soul. Let me prove this very easily. 

Did you-all see the circus like freakshow video of the capering and antics of performers around Bergoglio? All the exotic dancers and contortionists? Here it is, on Rumble. I assume they were "celebrating" the opening of the synod – yet with Tio Jorge, any reason would do – and it looked for all the world, well, Hellish. Just simply Hellish. Watch. Decide for yourself. Bergoglio enthroned in the City of Dis, rather distantly flanked by two high-level churchmen, impassive as a Mardi Gras-like carnival swirls around him. 

• Merely seeing that would make me ill were I somehow thinking Bergoglio in some way actually served as a valid pope. 
• I do not, not for an instant, and so I dismissed what I saw as idiocy. Fluff. Nonsense. 
• But the producers of this twaddle did not intend this show for people like me. 

Oh, no. It was intended for those who insist Bergoglio is pope. For such folks, it will cause great pain and torment. For them, it's an insidious manipulation. Grotesque. A mockery of everything they ever believed about the Church. A stake through their hearts. And please believe me when I say it is making Catholicism a laughing stock among Protestants, Jews, and Muslims. I'm seeing endless comments from them via the conservative political blogs regarding the descent of the Church into, well, Sodom. I've never read such a aggregate of vehemence against the Catholic Church before on these sites. And the sites and their commentators are "conservatives", and generally religious and valuing the importance of religion. 

Just crazy.

Just brutal.

And very effective.

Do not fall into their trap. 

Do not allow yourself to be devastated.

         AnP

September 24 Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham

 Amici,

Today is September 24, the feast day of Our Lady of Walsingham. If you don't know the story, here's a nice video from a couple of years ago that explains the history of this amazing Marian Shrine, founded a thousand years ago in Norfolk, England, before the Norman Conquest, and suppressed completely by that wretched Henry VIII, who died saying, "All is lost – Kingdom, soul, life. Monks. Monks. Monks!"

The Story of Walsingham - Full EWTN Documentary 

If you watch this documentary, you learn the story of how one young Anglican vicar, significantly ecclesiastically named "Hope Patten", beginning in 1921, began to revive the pilgrimage – which sort of started up again on it own when Patten had a replica of the original statue of Our Lady and the Christ Child made. (The original had been burned up, along with the original Holy House, but the general appearance remained on Medieval seals.) His Anglican Bishop made Patten take the replica out of the local Anglican parish, itself a medieval survivor the Protestant Church of England "appropriated", as no "Mary Worship" was allowed in an Anglican Church. So, the enterprising vicar, with the name of "Hope", began building a shrine for it nearby, and the rest is, lo and behold, history. 

But prior to that, and again, profoundly Providently, an English lady named Charlotte Boyd, interested in Medieval ruins, bought an old, tumble-down stone barn standing out in the fields. It turned out to be nothing less than the Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Patroness of Pilgrims, otherwise known as the Slipper Chapel, part of the colossal Medieval Shrine Complex. (One huge arch of the Medieval Abbey still stands, which gives one a staggering idea of its gargantuan scale.) She began its restoration as a Church for Mass yet the local Catholic bishops wouldn't let it be used until the 1930s. You see, they told her, "But no Catholic families reside today anywhere near Walsingham." (Henry the VIII had been successful, though two hundred years after his demise, the great Protestant revivalist John Wesley preached that if "There had been a grain of virtue...in Henry VIII, these noble buildings need not have run ruin."

And you will learn to some extent the incredible modern-day popularity of the Catholic Shrine to people from around the world, such as the Charismatics, who are indeed mentioned. This being EWTN, though, Traditional Catholicism is played down or not mentioned (caveat: I suppose I could have missed it).

Whatever.

 

Walsingham had been one of the three greatest Medieval pilgrimages, and for about 400 years absolutely nothing went on there except the normal life of a very small English village. I've never been there, myself, or to Knock in Ireland, for that matter (the architecture there – just looking at photos of it – wallops me with something resembling an epileptic attack/tremens; it is so Modernist, it's Lovecraftian, I swear!). However, I did do the pilgrimage to Loch Derg, a.k.a. St. Patrick's Purgatory (though the cave of that is closed), and spent three nights barefoot in the rain. It was, to be sure, the most "Celtic" thing I've ever experienced.

So, may Our Lady of Walsingham succor for England – an abject, pitiful place ruled by Godless bureaucrats and overrun with Muslim hordes, but once known as "Our Lady's Dowry" – a return to its True Faith. Like her Son, she never gives up on us.

Amen.

AnP