Month: January 2019

Facing the people in 1955, Paul Claudel’s lament continued . . .

Paul Claudel’s final statement.

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

The new, experimental mass in France drew fevered objections from the poet, dramatist, and diplomat Paul Claudel in a Figaro article a month before he died . . .

“It is true that in the traditional liturgy,” priest with back to worshipers, “the most moving part of the Holy Sacrifice is hidden from the faithful. But it is not hidden from their hearts and their faith.”

At Solemn High Masses of old, this sense of wonderment was such that the sub-deacon, one of the regulation three celebrants, at the foot of the altar remained standing during the Offertory, hiding his face with his left hand in reverence.

“We too are invited to pray,” he said, “to withdraw into ourselves, not in a spirit of curiosity but of recollection.

[Emphasis added throughout]

He took note of the (Catholic) Eastern-rite practice of in effect hiding the altar behind the iconostasis, a…

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When Will Pope Francis Update the “Hail Mary”? – Crisis Magazine

Make everything new.

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Has the time come? How about:

Hey, Mary, very nice person! The Lord is with us, and happy are we. Super is your child, Jesus. O, lucky one, accompany us on our journey. Amen.

Those who draw the line at such modernization should have a look at the man’s argument.

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Will Jussie Smollett make the hate hoax list?

Blog called Moonbattery has a “hate hoax” list, on which the Jussie Smollett story has not yet arrived, pending fulfillment of certain qualifications.

First, the list as of 1/29/19, at least the first screen-full, of which there are dozens more:

Hate Hoax List

Nathan Phillips

Marcus Boyd and Derrick Brooks

Fynn Ajani Arthur

Drake University Coed of Color

Nicole Wallace

Michael Kadar

Masud Ali

Anthony Derlunas

Heath Levey

fiji

Anna Ayers

Seneca Valley High School mean girls

Adwoa Lewis

Grand Rapids golden showers

Etc.

Then the qualifications/requirements:

Jan 29 2019

Will Jussie Smollett Join Hate Hoax List?

As a general policy, hoaxes must be confirmed by confession or police investigation to qualify for the Hate Hoax List. Empire star Jussie Smollett may soon find his way onto it.

Presenting qualifications so far:

Smollett was allegedly attacked at 2:00 this morning in Chicago by two men in ski masks.

Reports of the incident state that Smollett was walking from a local Subway sandwich shop when the two men started yelling homophobic and racial slurs to get his attention, including: ‘Aren’t you that f***ot “Empire” n*****?’

Smollett sits atop the Cultural Marxist caste system, being both black and homosexual.

The two then started beating on the actor while pouring bleach on him.

A noose was said to have been tied around his neck during the attack.

Racists always carry around nooses and bleach when they are out and about in Chicago in the middle of the night during single-digit cold for just such purposes.

Sources close to the singer told TMZ that both of the men were white and yelled that ‘this is MAGA country.’

Who would have guessed that homogeneously Democratic Chicago, colloquially known as Chicongo, is MAGA country rife with white supremacists?

Surprisingly, the assailants were not said to be wearing MAGA hats.

At least (conservatively), it’s 50-50 the Jussie incident will make it.

The crime of sentimentalism . . .

Yvor Winters, cont’d.

Not for attribution

More from Yvor Winters . . .

This association-of-ideas idea — promoted by 18th-century philosophers Hobbes and Locke and fingered by Winters — seems to absolve the thinker of a need for coherence and unity, leaving him with nothing but emphasis — lots or less of it depending on the weather. In other words, your ideas are great, kid, even if they don’t hold water. They’re yours, aren’t they? And who am I to say you’re wrong? Etc.

Romantic poets — one of whom coined or made memorable the phrase “blithe spirit” — followed Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney and looked in their hearts and wrote. (And there’s something to be said for that.) Winters, however, favored “a logical, plain-spoken poetic,” as reviewer-commentator David Yezzi put it in the June 1997 New Criterion. This meant he vastly preferred the far less known and honored Barnabe Googe to Sidney, both…

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“When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” by John Milton

Hear Milton out.

Not for attribution

The blind poet asked God what he could do for Him. The answer:

“God doth not need
   Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best
   Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
   And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Seems that would go for the rest of us, physically blind or not. A reminder to hang loose while doing the best we can.

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Newsweek’s source for its “EMPIRE’ ACTOR JUSSIE SMOLLETT HOSPITALIZED”?

Plus its closer, “Smollett was admitted to Northwestern Hospital and released on Tuesday morning”?

Conradicted by the police account in Chi Trib:

After being treated for lacerations to his face, Smollett did not spend the night at the hospital, [police spokesman Anthony] Guglielmi said.

It’s entirely Smollett’s story in any case.

From Newsweek:

Much of the online conversation surrounds the possibility of the “Make America Great Again” appearing in the altercation. It’s unconfirmed that Trump-endorsed hats or sayings were used.

Newsweek:

Unconfirmed accounts claim the men who attacked Smollett were wearing ski masks and yelled “This is MAGA [Make America Great Again] country]”

Sun-Times:

Smollett told officers the attack happened at 2 a.m. about one block away. Not much else can be determined from the [“really dark”] photos [both Chicago papers ran].

Well not much can be determined by anything but Smollett’s account and his condition at the hospital, apparently in its emergency room.

So we should stay tuned, with only Smollett’s word as to how he got lacerations to his face and neck.

Facing the people in 1955, Paul Claudel’s lament

Famed dramatist reacts . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

From the eminent poet, dramatist, and diplomat Paul Claudel, January 23, 1955, in the French daily Figaro a month before he died:

I wish to protest with all my strength against the growing [unauthorized] practise in France of saying Mass facing the people.

He explained:

The most basic principle of religion is that God holds first place and that the good of man is merely a consequence of the recognition and the practical application of this essential dogma.

Basic, that. Let God be God in your worship. The rest will follow.

More:

The Mass is the homage par excellence which we render to God by the Sacrifice which the priest offers to Him in our name on the altar of His Son. It is us led by the priest and as one with him, going to God to offer Him hostias et preces [Victims and prayers]. It is not…

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Shifting Stories Cloud Claims of Alleged Hate Crime Attack Targeting ‘Empire’ Actor Jussie Smollett | Trending

Had instant doubts about this, before I knew this, if only for this line, allegedly delivered in Chi-town, anywhere, any place:

“Empire” star Jussie Smollett was brutally attacked by 2 men who beat him up, put his head in a noose and screamed, “This is MAGA country.”

MAGA country? You kidding?

U.S. is Quickly Making Headway in Economic Freedom

Econ freedom is good in itself — freedom is the goal — but it’s the best, the only way to prosperity, which is everyone’s goal, right?

The authors surveyed 180 countries, looking at things like tax burden, property rights, trade freedom, and regulatory efficiency. They then assigned a score from 0-100. The average score is 60.8, which they say is the third-highest level in the 25 years of making their Index.

Let’s start with the bottom five countries:

  • Republic of Congo (39.7)
  • Eritrea (38.9)
  • Cuba (27.8)
  • Venezuela (25.9)
  • North Korea (5.9)

It’s probably easy to guess the bottom three, and very timely in the midst of the economic turmoil and widespread citizen revolt in Maduro’s Venezuela. It’s also a continued stinging rebuke to the Bernie Sanders’ and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s of the world who peddle their sanitized version of socialism; the “Socialism WILL work if you just do it THIS way” crowd. Sadly, I don’t think the Heritage Index will sway their “Democratic Socialist” minds.

The top ten are as follows:

  • Hong Kong (90.2)
  • Singapore (89.4)
  • New Zealand (84.4)
  • Switzerland (81.9)
  • Australia (80.9)
  • Ireland (80.5)
  • United Kingdom (78.9)
  • Canada (77.7)
  • United Arab Emirates (77.6)
  • Taiwan (77.3)

The United States just missed the top ten, coming in 12th with a score of 76.8. This is up six places from 2018, and every speaker at the release event credited President Trump with the increase. They noted the nation’s low unemployment rate and the Administration’s dialing back and the outright elimination of regulatory burdens. They reminded the audience that when governments do less, companies do more, and that there’s no economic challenge that can’t be solved with free market solutions.

Dems and other never-Trumpers want more regulations, less freedom, to the harm of all but the elites.

Our Therapeutic Bishops | Darel E. Paul | First Things

The see their role as the CEO tamping down a situation lest matters get out of hand. The big picture is their focus, as if their responsibility is for the totality of a situation, managing it.

The line between a therapeutic CEO and a therapeutic bishop is vanishingly thin. By Tuesday, January 22, [following the
Covington boys incident after the March for Life] Catholic leaders began backtracking their earlier condemnations.

Bishop Roger Joseph Foys of Covington spoke less as a shepherd than as a therapeutic manager when he said, “We pray that we may come to the truth and that this unfortunate situation may be resolved peacefully and amicably.” He announced the beginning of an “independent, third-party investigation” into the matter, and declared there would be “no further statements until the investigation is complete.”

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of neighboring Louisville could only echo the managerial cant, lamenting “the regrettable polarization in our Church and in our society” while offering vaguely to “reach out and respond to those who were impacted by these events and media reports.”

This is even worse than cravenness. Many have suggested that [Covington HS] Principal Rowe, Bishop Foys, and Archbishop Kurtz simply lacked moral courage. Yet these men also lived out our elite’s moral ideal by condemning their own children in the interest of self-realization and social order. Perhaps they rushed to judgment not so much out of fear as out of fidelity to an ideal of character—an ideal foreign to Catholic Christianity but quite at home in a rival church.

In this case, the church of public opinion, apparently.

The author,

Darel E. Paul is professor of political science at Williams College and author of From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage.