The Father Knoweth
And for raiment why are you solicitous?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin.
But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. – Mt:6:28-29
More beautiful flowers:
Blue Pill or Red Pill?
Ever wonder if you remembered to take your pills this morning? A medical tech startup has a novel solution: Swallow a computer chip that will help you keep track.
Proteus Digital Health scored a big victory this week when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted approval for the company’s “ingestible sensor” invention. The 1 square millimeter device — roughly the size of a grain of sand — can relay information about your insides to you, and if you choose, to your doctor or nurse.
The chip works by being imbedded into a pill. Ingest it at the same time that you take your medication and it will go to work inside you, recording the time you took your dose. It transmits that information through your skin to a stick-on patch, which in turn sends the data to a mobile phone application and any other devices you authorize.
The system’s goal is to overcome our forgetful impulses, says Andrew Thompson, the CEO and cofounder of Proteus.
“People live busy and complex lives, and as a result often don’t take their medicines correctly,” Thompson says. “We wanted to develop a solution that would help make existing medicines more effective in real life.”
The European Union approved Proteus’ system device in 2010, according to the company. The Redwood City, Calif., company plans to bring its first product, called “Helius,” to market later this year in the U.K. in partnership with the Lloydspharmacy chain.
Helius includes Proteus’ mobile health app, a supply of its stick-on patches (they last seven days, then need replacing) and a stash of its sensor-equipped placebo chips. The company declined to comment on the system’s planned price tag.
The first wave of Proteus products will rely on placebo pills taken at the same time as the patient’s medication. The company hopes to eventually get its sensors built straight into common medications, Thompson says.
Proteus’ spent four years working through the FDA approval process. Now that it’s got a green light, it plans to begin working on a U.S. version of its Helius system.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/technology/startups/ingestible-sensor-proteus/index.htm
Back In The USSR -Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant 2
Too many people think that freedom, opportunity and a variety of choices are ever-present features of life in the U.S. — that fundamental transformation of America will not affect accustomed standards.
When we lived in the U.S.S.R., locked away from the world, kept from traveling abroad and surrounded by government-controlled sources of information, we couldn’t imagine what kind of life people had on the outside. Simple things, like tomatoes in stores in winter, seemed improbable.
When we immigrated to the U.S., I realized that most of what we were taught about capitalism was false. I was surprised how uninformed and downright clueless Americans were regarding communist ideology and history.
The platitudes of communist propaganda that were all around me in the Soviet Union were accepted as something new and wonderful by well-meaning people in the U.S. While Soviet citizens were excluded from the external world by their government, liberal/progressives in the “free world” were insulated from reality.
In the 1930s, when communists were starving the Russian people with regulations on farmers, New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty reported, “Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.” For his stories, Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize.
Through the late 1950s, liberal newspapers in America ignored stories about work prison camps in the Soviet Union. But more than 20 million people accused of opposition to centralized government perished.
In 1956, Soviets brutally suppressed a revolt against the Soviet-imposed socialist government in Hungary. More than 2,500 Hungarians were killed. In 1968, Czechoslovakia lived through a similar uprising and suppression.
From late 1960s, Soviet dissidents raised their voices against the oppressive, inhumane rule of the communist government in the U.S.S.R. Dissidents were imprisoned, condemned to psychiatric facilities and expelled from work. Their families were persecuted.
Meantime, enjoying the freedoms of the U.S., Weather Underground radicals were calling forces to unite for “the destruction of U.S. imperialism and achieve … world communism.” By 1980, the centrally planned economy of the U.S.S.R. was in shambles. By American standards the population lived below poverty level.
It’s stunning for an immigrant from a socialist country to hear in the speeches of Democratic Party leaders platitudes taught in socialist countries. Even more stunning is how they resonate with people born in the free world.
At the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th calls for “equality,” “fairness,” “sacrifices for collective good” and “social justice” aroused communist revolutionaries in Russia and ushered in the U.S.S.R. They demonized and obliterated any religion that interfered with government authority. They erased individualism and entrepreneurship from society. Animosity among ethnic groups was insidiously cultivated.
In the U.S., fascism and socialism are classified at the opposite ends of the political spectrum; in reality, these two ideologies have a lot in common.
Fascism is “a political philosophy, movement or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition” (Merriam Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary).
That definition of fascism can easily be applied to the socialism I experienced. The only difference is that to organize communities of fateful followers, German fascists used an ideal of racial purity, and communists used class warfare. Fascists confiscated properties of non-Aryans, and communists confiscated all private properties.
Free market capitalism, which created a large, prosperous middle class in America, and government-centered ideologies have nothing in common.
For more than 100 years, old and tired socialist propaganda brought out the worst in societies: envy, hate, intolerance and disrespect for human life, just as these traits have increased in the last four years in the U.S.
The U.S. is not 19th century tsarist Russia, but it is being transformed into something far different from the “land of the free.” The softer-styled European welfare societies are falling apart, leaving future generations broke. Is there a chance Barack Obama’s vision of centralized government, surrounded by a web of sclerotic bureaucracies, will create a fair society?
The same reader who commented on my July article continued: “Or is the grim description of life in the former Soviet Union meant to paint Obama and his party as communists/socialists/fellow travelers bent on destroying America and all it stands for?”
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean — and Obama’s rhetoric, actions and results confirm this point.
Back In The USSR -Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant
In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble.
In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness.
Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures.
The government-assigned salary of the proletariat (blue-collar worker) was 30%-50% higher than any professional. Without incentive to improve their life, professionals drank themselves to oblivion. They — engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers — earned a government-determined salary that barely covered the necessities, mainly food.
Raising children was a hardship. It took four to six adults (parents and grandparents) to support a child. The usual size of the postwar family was one or two children. Every woman had the right to have an abortion and most of them did, often without anesthesia.
There is a comparative historical reality that plays out the consequences of two competing ideologies: life in the USSR and in America.
When the march to the worker’s paradise — the Socialist Revolution — began in 1917, many people emigrated from Russia to the U.S.
In the USSR, economic equality was achieved by redistributing wealth, ensuring that everyone remained poor, with the exception of those doing the redistributing. Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West.
The rest of the citizenry had to deal with permanent shortages of food and other necessities, and had access to free but inferior, unsanitary and low-tech medical care. The egalitarian utopia of equality, achieved by the sacrifice of individual self-interest for the collective good, led to corruption, black markets, anger and envy.
Government-controlled health care destroyed human dignity.
Chairman Nikita Khrushchev released facts about Stalin and his purges. People learned of the horrific purge of more than 20 million citizens, murdered as enemies of the state.
Those who left Russia found a different set of values in America: freedom of religion, speech, individual pursuits, the right to private property and free enterprise. The majority of those immigrants achieved a better life for themselves and their children in this capitalist land.
These opportunities let the average immigrant live a better life than many elites in the Soviet Communist Party. The freedom to pursue personal self-interest led to prosperity. Prosperity generated charity, benefiting the collective good.
The descendants of those immigrants are now supporting policies that move America away from the values that gave so many immigrants the chance of a better life. Policies such as nationalized medicine, high tax rates and government intrusion into free enterprise are being sold to us under the socialistic motto of collective salvation.
Socialism has bankrupted and failed every society, while capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.
There is no perfect society. There are no perfect people. Critics say that greed is the driving force of capitalism. My answer is that envy is the driving force of socialism. Change to socialism is not an improvement on the imperfections of the current system.
The slogans of “fairness and equality” sound better than the slogans of capitalism. But unlike at the beginning of the 20th century, when these slogans and ideas were yet to be tested, we have accumulated history and reality.
Today we can define the better system not by slogans, but by looking at the accumulated facts. We can compare which ideology leads to the most oppression and which brings the most opportunity.
When I came to America in 1980 and experienced life in this country, I thought it was fortunate that those living in the USSR did not know how unfortunate they were.
Now, I realize how unfortunate it is that many Americans do not understand how fortunate they are. They vote to give government more and more power without understanding the consequences.
Hen. Han, Hon
The politically correct idea of equality seems to know no bounds. Sweden has just introduced a new gender-neutral pronoun — hen. In the Swedish language, he is han and she is hon. Now it seems Sweden’s educational establishment is set upon using the nation’s preschools national curriculum to abolish gender distinction among children. The schools have even gone so far as to employ “gender police” to assist teaching staff in identifying language and behavior patterns in children that might reinforce old stereotypes that need to be “corrected.” Old stereotypes can be understood as those models influenced by Christian civilization.
The word hen was first introduced by Swedish linguists in the mid-60s but was curiously added to the online version of Sweden’s National Encyclopedia on the very gender-specific International Women’s Day on March 8, 2012. At one public preschool called Egalia in Stockholm, staff now avoids using words such as him or her and address students as friends or hens instead of boys and girls.
Another preschool has gone so far as to eliminate recess from its curriculum because, as one teacher put it, when children are free to play “stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion and the seed to bullying.”
Every detail of children’s interactions gets micromanaged by “concerned” adults, who end up placing children in a quandary over the development of their sex by how they form friendships, what games they play and the words used in the songs they sing.
This odd behavior was largely inspired by Sweden’s first gender-neutral children’s book written by Jesper Lundqvist, Kivi and Monsterdog. It seems Lundqvist desired to write a children’s story where characters are not identified with any sex and do not conform to a traditional gender-based story line. He (or perhaps hen) was in fact trying to avoid giving his characters roles that children tend to emulate.
The manner in which they do this is by designating as stereotypes those roles based on nature and Western culture. Most people understand stereotyping as a widely held, but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person. While this conjures a negative connotation of the word, those pushing a liberal agenda like Sweden’s school system are able to obliterate the natural distinctions inherent to each sex all in the name of “gender equality” and avoiding stereotyping.
Conveniently this contorted application of Lundqvist’s strange book fits perfectly into the global homosexual agenda by blurring the necessary and natural distinctions between men and women. Sweden is now advocating androgyny among its youngest citizens. When students play house in school, they are encouraged to include daddy, daddy, child; mommy, mommy, child; or any other modern unnatural combination to refer to family.
Not everyone has embraced this radical equality with enthusiasm however. Many critics affirm that it can be psychologically and socially damaging, especially for children. Columnist and former equality expert Elise Claeson, from the Swedish Confederation of Professions stated “that young children can become confused by the suggestion that there is a third, in-between gender at a time when their brains and bodies are developing. Adults should not interrupt a child’s discovery of their gender and sexuality, argues Claeson.” She is quoted in the Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, that “gender ideologues have managed to change the curriculum to establish that schools should actively counter gender roles.”
If Sweden’s school system were really practicing equality, they would put their children on equal footing as themselves and respect the child’s opinion as equal to their own. By teaching them anything at all, they place themselves as superior, and thus, they teach inequality by example. Why would they encourage children to say daddy, daddy, child regarding family if they did not have an ideological agenda? If Sweden’s preschools were consistent with this warped notion of equality, children would be taught to say hen, hen, hen. Perhaps gender equality has simply run amok.
http://www.tfp.org/tfp-home/news-commentary/gender-equality-run-amok.html
On Human Society – Two Popes Speak
“You [United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO] are a hope for peace in the future of mankind and civilization. This is said in the charter setting up your Organization. You are sent forward, as harbingers of peace, into future history. You make of education, science and culture powerful and wonderful factors for the universal spiritual fusion of peoples. Politics, which you leave to other bodies to promote, especially the United Nations Organization, from which you take inspiration and strength, will succeed, we trust, in establishing a peaceful cohesion, an organic juridical and economic relationship, a balanced and ordered harmony between the Nations; yes, but you work to form a communion, you strive for the brotherhood of the peoples of the earth. You seek to give mankind a common thought; you promote a uniform sociology of culture; you render possible an identical civil language among men . . . you carry out a work of silent but prodigious mobilization of minds, which on the contrary seem by the very progress of civilization to be arming themselves psychologically and technically for a terrible and apocalyptic war, which should never happen, but, alas becomes still possible and horribly easier. For your part you dissipate the nightmare of such a deplorable and unthinkable fate. You make once more serene the horizon of future history; today you restore Peace once more to the world, making it safe for tomorrow. Is there anything at all more deserving among the community of the Peoples?”
(Paul VI, Discourse on awarding the John XXIII International Peace Prize to UNESCO, L’Osservatore Romano, 12 December 1974.)
”The same applies to the nation of Fraternity which they [the Sillonists] found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal. But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting.
If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity ….
. . .there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion; it is a proven truth, a historical fact.”
(St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, 25 August 1910 )
” ‘The Church is the new People of God destined to bring about his kingdom on earth’….
This overflowing concept of human society, made up of citizens who are all equal, organized by authoritative and hierarchical ministries, at once earthly and heavenly, animated by the Holy Spirit, destined to spread all over the earth . . ., must constitute the object of our ardent and realistic thought, if we wish to overcome in the first place the scepticism with which the profane mentality is usually imbued, and also if we wish to walk in this life as ‘children of light’ (Eph. 5, 8). The profane mentality, in itself, knows nothing of the true and supreme destiny of mankind, and only catches a glimpse here and there, emanating from natural experience, of the superlative goals to which civilization is progressing: unity, brotherhood, justice, domination over creation, peace.”
(Paul VI, General Audience 5 September 1973, L’Osservatore Romano,
13 September 1973.)
“. . .we must not strive towards the unrealistic dream of … a society of the medieval type, stable and disciplined by one religious ideology alone ,,,,”
(Paul VI, General Audience 21 November 1973, L’Osseruatore Romano,
29 November 1973.)
“. . . you [the United Nations] organize brotherly collaboration among peoples. In this way a system of solidarity is set up, so that lofty civilized aims may win the orderly and unanimous support of all the family of peoples for the common good and the good of each individual. This aspect of the United Nations is the most beautiful; it is its most truly human aspect; it is the ideal of which mankind dreams on its pilgrimage through time; it is the world’s greatest hope….”
(Paul VI, Speech to the United Nations, October 4, 1965.)
St. Pius X
“Finally, He [Jesus Christ] did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.”
(St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique,)
“. . . they dream of changing its [human society’s] natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.
No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker – the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO. [Restore All Things in Christ]
(St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique,)
Pope St. Pius X,
POOR AND HUMBLE OF HEART
UNDAUNTED CHAMPION OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH
ZEALOUS TO RESTORE ALL THINGS IN CHRIST
CROWNED A HOLY LIFE WITH A HOLY DEATH
XX AUGUST, A.D. 1914.
Beatified in 1951, St. Pius X was canonized in 1954. He was the first Pope to be declared a saint since the 1712 canonization of the 16th century Pope St. Pius
The Approach of Midnight
Fyodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian writer of the 19th century, warned that the denial of sin and hell in education and religion would end in a world Socialism where men would surrender freedom for a false security. He pictured anti-Christ returning to the world and speaking to Christ, thus:
“Dost thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger? And men will come crawling to our feet, saying to us: ‘Give us bread! Take our freedom.” – The Grand Inquisitor
In this sobering talk, Archbishop Fulton Sheen examines our death-oriented society, from the advent of abortion to the midnight of our headlong rush to self-extinction.
Poison Fruit from a Bad Tree
The bishops have advocated for socialized medicine for nigh on a hundred years. Now it is here and it does not look good. Wails of “I told you so” are surely tempting, but are, in the end, unhelpful. What would prove to be the most helpful is to understand how this travesty came to be and what ideas would have to be different to prevent it from happening again.
At the root of the error is the idea that there can exist circumstances in which someone has a morally legitimate claim upon what, in reality, belongs to another. This is the false idea upon which so much other error and lies and sin and spiritual poison has been promulgated. It has been mentioned here before that the government’s taxation/redistribution schemes are treated by the bishops as virtually an eighth sacrament.
On the contrary, it is theft– stealing. No matter how many of our fellow citizens enact a positive civil law providing for the confiscation, the truth of its immorality remains. We are reminded in Mark 7:8-9, by Jesus Himself: “You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.” And He said to them, “How ingeniously you get around the commandment of God in order to preserve your own tradition!”
The “your own tradition” that Jesus refers to had a specific reference when He made the pronouncement. The statement is applicable to today’s situation as well. Today’s situation in our country is the result of at least a century of unfaithful, false, and careless stewardship– stewardship of our financial well-being, of our natural resources, of our communion among ourselves, realizable in our nationhood.
Adam and Eve were duped by a clever lie. Our own faithlessness is prompted also by a clever lie. The lie which got us into the extant mess is a twisting of the true and valid charge by Jesus to us that we should care for each other, after providing for ourselves as best we can. This is perfect and reasonable common sense. We, as individuals, discern the legitimacy of the claims of need that come our way from others. Based on that discernment we decide upon the disposition of our charity. Sensible though it is, this is not presently the case.
The fantasy of “Wouldn’t it be nice if… ” has come to precede myriad images, such as if everyone had a house, if everyone had a rewarding job, if everyone had “health care,” and the list is endless. It seems the dream will not die. This is the devil’s clever lie of our time. It is fed during every generation by one proposal after another to bring it to fruition; to make it happen; to “get it done.” Writers from Karl Marx to Thomas More (American writer), to Gustav Gutierrez, Saul Alinski, and others, up to and including the present day USCCB bishops have attempted one or another scheme to implement and institutionalize the desired outcome, to wit: That everyone has all he needs and wants, and it’s all guaranteed, if not free.
This fiction, this dangerous fiction, responsible for the murders of tens of millions in only the twentieth century, is repackaged and presented always as caring for the less fortunate, the poor, the trod upon, the disenfranchised… The Roman Catholic Church lionizes the concept, seemingly, in the phrase, “… preferential option for the poor…”
It is an easy exercise to bemoan this sorry circumstance. That would, however, be akin to “cursing the darkness,” rather than “lighting a candle.” It is the dispelling of the deadly, murderous fiction with the bright candle of truth and reality which is necessary. Toward that end, a critical question is whether the Catholic Church, in the persona of the USCCB, can be weaned from reliance on money provided by taxpayers to government. If (and that’s a big one) the Church would be willing to do without the proceeds of theft, it might follow that they would turn against theft in other forms.
The first thing to do is to separate the Church from government money to the extent possible.
http://catholicdaily.net/politicaltheology/2012/07/10/poison-fruit-from-a-bad-tree/#comments
Community, Identity, Stability
“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
****************
Professor Julian Savulescu said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a “moral obligation” as it makes them grow up into “ethically better children”.
The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to “harm themselves and others”.
The academic, who is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader’s Digest.
He explained that we are now in the middle of a genetic revolution and that although screening, for all but a few conditions, remained illegal it should be welcomed.
He said that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality – with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics.
By screening in and screening out certain genes in the embryos, it should be possible to influence how a child turns out.
In the end, he said that “rational design” would help lead to a better, more intelligent and less violent society in the future.
“Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?” wrote Prof Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor in practical ethics.
“So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice.
“To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality.
“Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children.
“They are, after all, less likely to harm themselves and others.”
“If we have the power to intervene in the nature of our offspring — rather than consigning them to the natural lottery — then we should.”
He said that we already routinely screen embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes.
Rational design is just a natural extension of this, he said.
He said that unlike the eugenics movements, which fell out of favour when it was adopted by the Nazis, the system would be voluntary and allow parents to choose the characteristics of their children.
“We’re routinely screening embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome, and there’s little public outcry,” he said.
“What’s more, few people protested at the decisions in the mid- 2000s to allow couples to test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes, and this pushes us a lot close to creating designer humans.”
“Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance.”
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven
” Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid: for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed “- Lk:1:48
THE Church teaches that twelve years after the Crucifixion, Mary gave up her sorrowful soul to God. We believe that He of whom it has been said that He would not ” let this Holy One see corruption,” did not allow Our Lady’s body to remain in the grave, but admitted her at once into Heaven, where ever since she has pleaded powerfully on our behalf.
Non-Catholic Christians honestly believe that the worship they owe to Christ would be minimized by veneration of His Blessed Mother. In their desire to honor His Godhead, they forget His Manhood. They forget that no human being among the countless millions, who throughout the ages have inhabited this earth, has ever stood in a more intimate relation to their Creator than Mary, the Mother of Our Saviour.
From all eternity the Almighty had singled her out for the greatest honor ever conferred upon a created being. Through her it was that our Blessed Lord was given to us, to her care He was entrusted in childhood, she never ceased in her pure and selfless worship of Him, she kept all His sayings in her heart.
For thirty three years she was His daily companion; she, unlike the disciples, never betrayed Him, but remained with Him until the end at the foot of the Cross. Can we for one moment imagine that she can have been anything but most pure, most chaste, most patient, most lovable, most admirable?
We often judge the moral worth of men and women by their devotion to their mothers. If human children are capable of the most intense love and devotion to their mothers, what must not the love and devotion of Jesus have been for His? Can we believe Him to have been less loving, less obedient, less devoted, than the most perfect son on earth?
We take it for granted that nothing could have exceeded Our Lord’s love and respect for His mother. Almost His last thought on the Cross was to provide for her, in leaving her in the care of His beloved disciple, St. John. In the person of “the disciple whom Jesus loved” He gave her to us all as a mother. Hear Mary herself: “All generations shall call me blessed.” Hear the Archangel from heaven, God’s own messenger, ” Thou art highly favored, thou hast found favor with God.” Hear St. Elizabeth: “Blessed art thou among women!”
From the earliest times the Church has always given to Mary the most wholehearted devotion, the most profound respect, the most filial love. We believe her to be very powerful with God, and therefore have recourse to her in our troubles. She is our intercessor with God, our “Mother of good Counsel,” the” Comforter of the afflicted, and “the” Refuge of sinners.”
We should therefore strive to acquire a very special devotion for Our Lady, for the Church bids us to go to her, and if we do so, she will in time become most dear to us, and in very truth a Mother.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners that we may learn to love and venerate thee as we should, now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
THE CONVERT’S ROSARY
ALICE M. GARDINER
1913
Utopian Dreams
The Utopian dreams of Socialists, if they could be realized, would not give us a Utopia, for they do not take account of some of the most essential elements of human nature. When we have taken away his property and given it to others, we have not thereby turned the millionaire into a nobleman or the recipients of his money into saints. A drastic law or an economic system, which shall make it impossible for men to corner the market, will not place either speculator or producer or consumer within the gates of paradise. For paradise is first of all a condition of heart: it does not wait for crops and it does not follow the markets. It may exist where food is coarse and scarce; it never comes simply because luxuries abound or because men are at ease.
Even if a man makes two blades of grass grow where before only one grew, the exhortation of Carlyle, the extra grass-blade will not solve the deep problems of his life. It may make his cattle fatter, but will it make his life larger and nobler? No, indeed, for out of the heart, not out of fatted cattle, are the issues of life. Another blade of grass? Yes, by all means, for that is good, if used as means to nobler life. But just the grass-blade or the millions of them upon a thousand acres, will not uproot the vice that kills or take away heartache.
The same truth faces us when we go to the other extreme where poverty pinches. And the pinch of poverty is a real calamity in thousands of lives. Church and state may well unite, not only to stamp out pauperism, but to prevent the conditions that breed paupers. But what we see in nine cases out of ten as the real cause of distress is not so much low wages or an unjust land system, as deficiency of life: weak wilt, disordered body, low vitality, feeble conscience, industrial incapacity. What every charity worker deplores is not so much low wages as low life. The problem is human, not simply economic. There is no more necessity that we equalize things than that we equalize knowledge. There is, however, supreme need that we equalize opportunity for knowledge and for property, but on condition that both become the servants of life. We may well put a high value on these material conditions, which Socialism so overemphasizes, and we may well demand a more just distribution of the goods of the world. But let us not be deceived. It is not by such means that a Paul is created, a Sistine Madonna painted, a Hamlet written, or a Washington produced.
“The Way to Utopia: A Brief Essay”
BY
JOSEPH HENRY CROOKER
1907
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