Author: Bill Vallicella

Thomas Merton on the Destruction of the Liturgy

It was with no excess of charity that I described Merton the other day as "a flabby liberal both politically and theologically." So let me balance that out a bit with a quotation from Volume Five (1963 – 1965) of his Journal. Here is an excerpt from the entry of 13 April 1965, Tuesday in Holy Week, p. 227:

On Palm Sunday everything was going well and I was getting into the chants of the Mass when suddenly the Passion, instead of being solemnly sung on the ancient tone in Latin, was read in the extremely trite and pedestrian English version that has been approved by the American bishops. The effect was, to my mind, disastrous. Total lack of nobility, solemnity, or even of any style whatever. A trivial act — liturgical vaudeville. I could not get away from the impression of a blasphemous comedy.  

What was going on in the Church in those days? The Second Vatican Council. It ran from October 1962 to December 1965.  Merton's attitude toward Vatican II was ambivalent as you might expect, but above he strikes a traditionalist note.

I myself would like to return of a Sunday morning to the piety of my pre-Vatican II boyhood and a Latin mass with my wife, a good Catholic girl, but the RCC seems bent on reducing itself to a pile of leftist junk, secular and useless.  A comparison of the RCC with Budweiser seems fitting.

They have this much in common: they don't understand their respective clienteles. 

Who drinks Budweiser? Connoisseurs of the brewer's art? No. Different sorts, but mainly country folk, rednecks, Hillary's deplorables, and Barack Hussein Obama's "clingers" to guns and Bibles.  So what were the head honchos thinking when they enlisted Dylan Mulvaney to promote their swill?  You know, that cute little narcissistic sweetie-pie who wants to grow up to be a girly-girl.

Beats me.  Apparently, drinking Bud makes you none the wiser. The 'suits' seemed shocked by the predictable boycott and backlash and have reversed course with an appeal to Harley riders. They should have gone 'whole hog' with  an appeal to outlaw bikers.

As for the RCC,   I have vented my spleen and blown my stack over at the Stack:

People who take religion seriously tend to be conservatives and traditionalists; they are not change-for-the-sake-of-change leftist utopians out to submerge the Transcendent in the secular.  The stupidity of the Vatican II 'reforms,' therefore, consists in estranging its very clientele, the conservatives and traditionalists.  

The church should be a 'liberal'-free zone.

Rise and Shine

I quit the bed of sloth at two this morning.  I slept in a bit. But I understand that not everyone prefers the monkish life. Kant arose at five. It's now 5:30 or so. Rise and shine with Manny!  Or at least with Boston.  If this '70s tune doesn't get you bangin' on all eight, you need a brain re-wire. 

And if this first post of the day is not yet meaty enough for you, there's more:

"The bed is a nest for a whole flock of illnesses." (Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, tr. Gregor, p. 183)

I read Kant and about Kant at an impressionable age, and it really is a pleasure plowing through his texts again as I have been doing recently. I suspect my early rising goes back to my having read, at age 20, that Kant was wont to retire at 10 pm and arise at 5 am.

Soon enough, however, I was out-Kanting Kant with a 4 am arisal from the nocturnal nest. And when I moved out here to the Zone, 4 became 2:30. (A Zone Man must make an early start especially on outdoor activities in the summer before Old Sol gets too uppity.)

2:30 became 2:00, the time the Trappist monks of Tom Merton's day got up. I don't know whether the Trappist regimen is as rigorous today as it was in the '40s and '50s, and I'm not sure I want to know given the ubiquity of decadence these days. But then 2:00 became 1:30 which is now my preferred time of arisal.  

I don't use an alarm clock. I have an alarm cat. Max, a husky tuxie, jumps over me as he did this morning, more for his benefit than for mine: he wants his treats.  He used to jump on my chest, but I cured him of that with a slap or two.

Malcolm Pollack is Back in the Saddle . . .

. . . with a series of outstanding posts. Start with A Higher Duty and scroll down.  If I have his story straight, he did not attend college. And it shows. 

UPDATE

A correspondent sends the following comment from a post at Powerline that will help you understand the gravity of the situation at the southern border.  It underscores the outrageousness of the 5-4 SCOTUS decision upon which Pollack comments in the entry cited above:

Diego Palma an hour ago

"The disaster on what used to be the southern border has become such a catastrophe that even a large percentage of clueless nitwits among the citizenry are starting to take notice. I appreciate the seemingly increasing interest on the part of the owners of PLB to address and report on the invasion.

Most people outside of Arab immigrants to America and anti semitic democrats were horrified at what happened in Israel on October 7th and what has been happening to the surviving hostages.

I want to tell all of you plainly, clearly and forcefully that there is a terrorist organization, equally as savage and barbaric as Hamas, that is in total control of our southern border with Mexico. Not only are they in control of our border, but they are venturing further and further into the interior of the United States. They are richer than Midas, numerous and armed to the teeth.

On our land here, there is a wash which extends almost to the town of Cananea in Sonora. A wash is similar to a dry river bed. It only contains water after a decent rain. The Narco coyotes used to use this wash as their "highway" into Arizona. One morning I was out checking on the livestock and at the point where the wash enters from Mexico was something I thought I would never see in real life. The Sicarios had taken mesquite limbs, sharpened both ends, put one end into the ground and impaled the heads of 7 illegals who had tried to enter Arizona without paying their fee to the narcos. I rode to Cananea, got the chief of police and took him to see what I had found. The man bent over and threw up for almost a half hour. He returned to Cananea, drove to Nogales, Sonora, and got the head of the Federales and some of his men to return with him to the scene. Our own CBP had neither the time nor the resources to investigate as Biden has them too busy ushering illegals across the border into our country.

After this incident, I most every night go out and keep watch. It's sort of hard to sleep knowing such monsters are prowling very close to where one sleeps. One night as I was headed to my normal lookout. I heard crying and whimpering which I was certain was coming from women. I crawled up to look over a rise and there in a small sand clearing were a group of women tied up, The men were laying on the ground, and I later found out they had all been stabbed to death. The Coyotes were one by one gang raping these women and girls. As I was alone, there wasn't too much I could do other than fire one of my guns into the air. I rode home in the pitch black as fast as I could and called my friend in Cananea. He notified the federales and we led them to where it had happened. We found the bodies of the men and several of the women. They had been brutally murdered.

Your government is betraying you. Your Republican senators eager to make a horrible deal with the government for the sake of expedited aid to Ukraine are betraying you.

I really don't know what else I can say to you people. I look at most of the politicians in Washington and I see bird brains. Nikki Haley, the darling of the neocon GOP establishment wants to bring one million Arabs from Gaza to live permanently in our country. What is wrong with this woman? What is wrong with the people who know what is going on and look the other way? What is wrong with the people who don't even want to look at all? One of these days these monsters will be looking you in the face. What will you do then?"

Political Perception, Advocacy, and Reality

Hans Meyerson:

There are, I think, three chief obstacles that stand between Biden and re-election: the public’s perception of the economy, the public’s perception of immigration, and Biden’s own weaknesses as an advocate for his policies and his presidency. [Emphases added.]

This is the sort of garbage one expects from a delusional leftist who thinks that Trump poses an Hitlerian threat to 'democracy.'  Blind to their own reality denial, such people think that everything is a matter of perception, messaging, advocacy.  So it it is not Biden's disastrous policies that are the problem, but his failure to persuade the ovine masses to go along with them.

How stupid can these stupidi be?

My Angelic Wife

One indicator of her angelicity is her support of my chess activities — in stark contrast to the wives of two acquaintances both of whose 'better' halves destroyed their chess libraries in fits of rage at their time spent sporting with Caissa.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," wrote old Will.

I'm no bard, but here's my ditty in remembrance of my two long lost Ohio chess friends:

   Forget that bitch
   Dally with me.
   Else I'll destroy
   Your library.

Ron and Vivek: Their Day Will Come

Both are outstanding patriots. Their day will come. They will serve the republic well if there is any republic left to serve five years from now. We have reason to be hopeful. But Trump is the man of the hour. He alone can get us back on track. When Trump's work is done, the young guys will be well-placed to take over.

Listen to Vivek Ramaswamy's fabulously hard-hitting, content-rich, and super-articulate speech in endorsement of Trump. (7:18) 

Ron DeSantis' speech is also impressive. (4:33)

But no complacency! The filthy Dems will use every Alinskyite tactic and commie-playbook trick to win by any and all means. 

If you are a conservative who can't abide Trump, you are just going to have to suck it up and shut up about the man's obvious flaws.  As DeSantis said, he's superior to Biden — an understatement! — and I would add: superior to any Dem who might run against him. 

No infighting! Circle the wagons. No RINO-fueled circular firing squad. No Libertarian/Losertarian or other third-party circle jerk. As Ramaswamy said, it's a war. In a war, you have to take sides. You can't float above the fray as if you are a transcendental spectator with no stake in the bloody battle below. 

Do you have RINO friends? Confront them brusquely with 'Which side are you on?'

Do you have Democrat friends? Cut 'em off! Make them pay a price for their willful self-enstupidation. Why should they get the benefit of your friendship? (The usual ceteris paribus considerations apply.)

And if Nikki the Neocon should get the nomination? Then too you must suck it up and  support her and not hang back because she's not Trump. She can't turn things around, but she could stave off collapse until DeSantis and Ramaswamy are ready to enter the lists.