Merry Christmas, Day 7

Shamelessly pinched from here

At the end of that pilgrimage, Jesus returned to Nazareth and was obedient to his parents (cf. Lk 2:51). This image also contains a beautiful teaching about our families. A pilgrimage does not end when we arrive at our destination, but when we return home and resume our everyday lives, putting into practice the spiritual fruits of our experience.

~Pope Francis, Homily for Feast of the Holy Family

Merry Christmas, Day 6

Don't know anything about this piece; shamelessly pinched from a stranger's FB page.

the most beautiful thing which emerges from the word of God today is that the whole family goes on pilgrimage. Fathers, mothers and children together go to the house of the Lord, in order to sanctify the holy day with prayer. It is an important teaching, which is meant for our own families as well. Indeed, we could say that family life is a series of pilgrimages, both small and big.

~Pope Francis, Homily for Feast of the Holy Family 2015

Merry Christmas, Day 5

Mantegna, Madonna & Child c 1470

...this Child calls us to act soberly, in other words, in a way that is simple, balanced, consistent, capable of seeing and doing what is essential.  In a world which all too often is merciless to the sinner and lenient to the sin, we need to cultivate a strong sense of justice, to discern and to do God’s will.  Amid a culture of indifference which not infrequently turns ruthless, our style of life should instead be devout, filled with empathy, compassion and mercy, drawn daily from the wellspring of prayer.

~ Pope Francis, Homily for Midnight Mass 2015

Merry Christmas, Day 4

The Holy Family, Francesco Zaganelli da Cotignola

...when we hear tell of the birth of Christ, let us be silent and let the Child speak.  Let us take his words to heart in rapt contemplation of his face.  If we take him in our arms and let ourselves be embraced by him, he will bring us unending peace of heart.

~ Pope Francis, Homily for Midnight Mass 2015

Merry Christmas, Day 3

Lorenzo Monaco, Madonna of Humility

The way to begin healing the wounds of the world is to treasure the Infant Christ in us; to be not the castle but the cradle of Christ; and, in rocking that cradle to the rhythm of love, to swing the whole world back into the beat of the Music of Eternal Life.  

~ Caryll Houselander 

Merry Christmas, Day 2!

Gari Melchers, The Nativity

Merry Christmas!

Lorenzo Lotto, Adoration of the Shepherds 

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

The joyful mystery of Christmas moves people. Even the skeptics and the scrooges end up getting touched by it. Every year, Christmas works its magic on someone. As Chesterton has it: “Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial . . . joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.” And so even in our unhappy abode, Christmas shows us that grief is the fleeting, superficial thing and joy fundamental.

     ~The Joyful Mystery of Christmas

Christmas Eve, 2015

Fritz von Uhde, Heilige Nacht

Tonight we have been shown the way to reach the journey’s end.  Now must we put away all fear and dread, for the light shows us the path to Bethlehem.  We must not be laggards; we are not permitted to stand idle.  We must set out to see our Saviour lying in a manger. 

~ Pope Francis, Homily for Midnight Mass 2015

Things About A 75F Christmas

It's warm and raining in DC this week. I know half the world celebrates Christmas in warm weather, but for us it's unusual.

On the one hand, the geraniums on the porch, which have never needed changing out for Fall plants this year,  are blossoming, so that's kind of festive.

On the other hand, I cannot get in the spirit of the required bake-and-cook-a-thon for tomorrow's Christmas Eve gathering when the wind is not blowing through the drafty old house making the kitchen the place to be. I had to change into shorts and none of these cakes and pies and casseroles and such seem appetizing.

Think anyone would mind if I skipped the roast beast and roasted veggies and served nachos and cold beer tomorrow instead?

(Which reminds me: I never made the final tomato post of the year. I'll have you know I harvested the last tomatoes of the year the day before Thanksgiving.  That's weird, but quite gratifying, since I planted late this year and expected a piddly season).

Sigh.  Back to the oven.  

This Is Excellent

Last night I was having one of those "all Muslims" / no, not all Muslims conversations with some friends and family and in following up I found this 14 minute film. It's excellent.

Need A Little Christmas, Right this Very Minute?

Do yourself a favor and read Bill McGurn's wonderful tribute to his daughters' piano teacher, who just passed away. It's about many things: excellence, dying well, great teachers, Christmas:

how wondrous it is to watch your children introduced to excellence by someone who lets them know it’s within their grasp if only they are willing to work at it.
Naturally in this world there were consequences for showing up unprepared. Not just for the children, either. Once, while Mrs. Alvey was reprimanding a daughter for some dereliction, I was sitting in the back of her living room busying myself on my iPhone.
Without warning, she turned both her attention and her cane in my direction: “And may I ask what Dad is doing to make sure his daughter puts in the practice she needs?” After that, this father prudently opted to wait in the car for the conclusion of piano lessons. 

But really it's about how communities are forged: through dedicated persons, who form mediating institutions:

In our public domains we obsess over the Big Happenings: what Putin is doing in Syria, whether ObamaCare can be repealed, if Donald Trump will win, and so on.
In the meantime, our lived lives are dominated by neighbors, coaches, teachers, crossing guards, cops, local shopkeepers, library volunteers and so on. These men and women seldom make the headlines, but they command the little platoons that make us human. Even in places with no shortage of money, perhaps especially in such places, it is our Mrs. Alveys who civilize society and turn our towns into communities.

I've been thinking about this a great deal as we watch the slow-to-rapid unraveling of our institutions.  Progressivism, I maintain, has reached its high-water mark, has already failed, and is eating its own: Germaine Greer can't speak on college campuses. Andrew Sullivan is shut out of LGBT discussion. The Vagina Monologues are banned because they don't include "women" without vaginas. Rahm Emanuel's in heap big trouble.  (Plus: the state of the world, which they run.) 

But the Right is equally spent (I refer to its popular forms at the moment; there are a number of "bright lights" out there under the radar). It's reduced to angry a'gin'  'er populism on the one hand (Trump, Cruz, Talk Radio), or Libertarianism, which shares with the Progressive Left a complete inability to defend marriage or the family.  The Left is all statist, all the time, and the state views the family and the community as rivals to its power, so crushes them at every turn. The popular Right is all individual, all the time, and because it won't defend the family, it allows the Left to crush it, not realizing that individual liberty depends on the family even more than on free markets. Neither has any interest in the family, the community, the Toquevillean "mediating institutions" that make for civil society. 

Did you notice this at the front of the Pope's speech to Congress (emphasis mine)?

Today I would like not only to address you, but through you the entire people of the United States. Here, together with their representatives, I would like to take this opportunity to dialogue with the many thousands of men and women who strive each day to do an honest day’s work, to bring home their daily bread, to save money and –one step at a time – to build a better life for their families. These are men and women who are not concerned simply with paying their taxes, but in their own quiet way sustain the life of society. They generate solidarity by their actions, and they create organizations which offer a helping hand to those most in need. 

I practically jumped for joy when he said it, thinking the Pope must have been thinking about Tocqueville, and was utterly mystified by the cool reception the speech received from social issues Conservatives. What is he saying there?  Community isn't built by the state. It's built by the family, and the mediating institutions built out of love and neighborly concern.  And people are not "taxpayers," for funding statist projects. They are persons who through their work, but also through their decency and the clubs and associations they form, build society itself. In one brilliant paragraph he said what needed to be said. Men and women aren't reducible to either libertarian or statist worker bees -- and it's no part of the legitimate aims of government to crush the family or the associations that flow from it. 

I keep thinking this is the moment for people who are serious about Catholic Social Teaching (properly understood, not as hijacked by Progressivism) to seize the day and remind people how to build communities, which is where we find man at his best and most fulfilled and most happy. There are some happy signs this is indeed happening (check out the work being done by CUA Business School, and the latest books from Arthur Brooks and Michael Novak).  But more on that another time. For now, just read that McGurn column and feel a bit better about the world.  

Al Mohler Comes Around

Woah, Nellie! Dr. Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, just gave a radio interview in which he said:

"We are clearly at a very important turning point, but you have to go back to the early twentieth century when sexual revolutionaries largely funded an effort to separate sex and procreation, and that was birth control," Dr. Mohler said.
Most Christians seem to think today that birth control was just something that came along as something of a scientific or medical development," Mohler said. "They fail to see that it was driven by moral revolutionaries who knew that you couldn’t have a moral revolution, you especially couldn’t have a sexual revolution, unless you could separate sex and babies."

Here's what he says about Evangelicals & divorce: 

Dr. Mohler, who released the new book We Cannot be Silent in October, said the second major development that undermined the family was the no-fault divorce "revolution."
In the six year period between 1977 and 1983, 39 states passed laws allowing either party to end a marriage for any reason, or no reason.
"That was massive," he said. "Evangelical Christians just didn't recognize it for what it was."
"You can't have anything like same-sex 'marriage' until you redefine marriage, eliminating it as a lifelong covenant," he said.

Yup. This is simple logic, not theology. Still, careful, Dr. Mohler! People who start noticing the Catholic Church was right all along on such questions generally end up "poping." 

Oberlin College Food Fight

Students at Oberlin College have suddenly discovered that school cafeteria is bad. RTWT. Honestly the funniest thing I've read in a long time. 

What Does the Koran Say About Jesus?

A former Indian imam tells us how he became Christian by taking to heart what the Koran says about Jesus.


Very worthwhile listening to his entire conversion story, too.

Rubio, Not Cruz, Is Killing Obamacare

The single most depressing thing about our politics to me is not its harshness or divisiveness, but how  appearances and showmanship Trump accomplishments every time. I've ranted previously about the calumniation of Pius XII and Lincoln in this regard. In their time, everyone knew their nobility and was grateful for what they'd done. Today we look in our history books for pictures of the pope at the big anti-Hitler sit-in or look for Lincoln's Black Lives Matter t-shirt. Finding no such pictures or apparel, we denounce them. Because what is saving 860,000 actual Jews or actual emancipation in comparison with carrying the right protest sign?

I always prove wrong in these matters, but it feels to me as if momentum in the GOP race has swung to Cruz. I don't hate that idea as much as I did a year ago (thank you, Donald Trump, for making me realize I could swallow a Cruz presidency), but I nonetheless do hate it, because Cruz strikes me as just as much a demagogue as Trump, albeit one with an actual commitment to conservatism (and less dangerous because he's less likable).

The person who makes my little heart beat faster when she speaks is Fiorina, because she talks about restoring the American character and understands that corruption and crony capitalism are what's killing us.  She speaks credibly to normal, hard-working people about their difficulties instead of pitching everything to businessmen. I love the fact that she doesn't play games with dumb questions like what woman should we put on our money.  I've heard her a couple of nights on Hugh Hewitt recently, and she's impressive on what to do about terrorism, too. (Her take: it's not the policy, it's the technology, stupid. Govt. is four generations, she estimates, behind the times in how you track people). However, I don't see her going anywhere, and I think she may have contributed what she can in that all the candidates now use her language to talk about crony capitalism, climate change, and de-funding Planned Parenthood. 

I want to think that Marco Rubio is too young and "establishment," except that every time I hear him in an interview he says pretty close to what I think, and he is impressive on foreign policy questions -- and it's suddenly a foreign policy election. Moreover, unlike the bombastic Cruz who is campaigning on being the only person to stand up to Obamacare and not sell out, Rubio is the one who has actually almost killed Obamacare. 

while the shutdown may have helped boost Cruz into the top tier of Republican presidential contenders, it had zero impact on undermining Obamacare.
Rubio, by contrast, didn’t read Dr. Seuss on the Senate floor, but he has quietly pushed Obamacare into what may prove to be a death spiral.

Seriously. Read that linked piece and remind yourself of two things: 

1) Hardly anything in politics ever happens directly. If you want to sink a law when your opposition is in power, you have to kill it with a poison pill as Rubio has done to Obamacare -- and that takes being shrewd and attentive to opportunities and knowing when to be quiet. There is a time for bluster and filibustering, but if those are the only arrows in your quiver, you are not going to get much done. Every time in the debates I hear Cruz talk about being the only person to stand up for "x," he is describing battles he lost. Talk to me when you stood alone and something changed because of it.

2) In politics, you have to be able to make friends, not just enemies. Here's a piece from Mark Steyn that makes this point in a back-handed way. He praises Cruz for being the sole Republican to stand up against climate change bullies. But what I ask myself is what Cruz must be like that on an important matter he couldn't get a one of his colleagues to join him for a crucial hearing? How did he allow the hearings to go forward under those conditions, but that he's convinced he can handle things all by his lonesome? And then, to hear Steyn tell it, he let his guests get eaten alive. Cruz is supposed to be a genius, but that wasn't smart. 

[Begin disappointed rant] In general I'm not impressed with the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus politicians. I share their policy goals on the whole, but it doesn't seem to me they do their homework. Benghazi hearings? Planned Parenthood hearings? Embarrassing. Hearings are about fact-finding, not making speeches. Our guys didn't appear so much as to have consulted each other on who would take which line of questioning or what their goals were. Because, hey, we're not the "Establishment," so we've got nothing to learn from anyone. You want to do nothing but grandstand? Get a radio show. You were elected to govern. [End disappointed rant]

How is the guy who can't get a Senate colleague to back him up in a sub-committee going to get any judges or nominees through the Senate -- where the cameras are rolling and a million interest groups are pressuring people to vote their way? 

Plus, I've never really forgiven Cruz for his behavior at the In Defense of Christians conference, where he threw persecuted peoples to the wolves for political purposes -- and 30 seconds after this embarrassing performance, he was raising money on it, once again playing the Sole Noble Soul (TM) in our corrupt Republic. Blecch. 

All of which is to say, going into tomorrow night's GOP debate: it feels like Cruz, but I hope it's Rubio.

Update: As for Trump...

Updater:  If you aren't following Hugh Hewitt's weekly interviews w/ every candidate, you are missing something. Trump is more likable in Hewitt's hands; a good interviewer can draw people out. You can find them all (I think it's, like, 90 interviews) in his archives.

3rd update: Thanks to several folks who shared this on Facebook, and welcome to their readers! Now that the debate is over, I stand by what's written here and add that while the debate was serious and substantive in a certain respect, I did not like the overall tone of fear-mongering coming to a degree from everyone except Fiorina & Rubio, but especially from Christie & Cruz. And I didn't like their war-mongering one bit, either. I understand Christie calculates his one remaining shot at this is becoming the security candidate -- but threatening to shoot down Russian planes? Really? And interrupting substantive debate to say the bottom line is Americans are terrified? No we're not -- and to the degree we are, a statesman should be urging calm and showing the way forward, not encouraging the panic as a means of gaining ascendancy.  Cruz smiled w/ self-satisfaction when his own comment about carpet-bombing was read back to him -- just delighted with himself! That was weird. You know it was a weird debate when I agree with Rand Paul's critique of Christie that we need a steady hand on the helm, not a guy armed for [Russian] bear.  

Which is to conclude: all of the above, plus: Rubio's the only happy warrior, and the American people don't go for mean and scary. I don't see any of the other guys, whatever their merits (which are considerable -- they'd be an excellent cabinet) beating Hillary.

Lady of Guadalupe, Pray for Us!

Four cool things about the Our Lady of Guadalupe image.  See also this prophetic article about Our Lady & Islam from Fulton Sheen. I connect these two things because, as noted almost annually here, Admiral Doria had an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in his cabin at the battle of Lepanto. Therefore, Our Lady of Victory is Our Lady of Guadalupe.