Saturday, February 25, 2017

Crackpots Online

Taketh the booze outta the Fruit-a-man
Ye still a have a Fruit-a-cake.


Don't believe me?

Read the com-boxes and blogs of ... me, or anybody else ... or, try this one here: "Things are getting ugly, very fast".

Paging Ann Barnhardt! Paging Ann Barnhardt!


What happened last night?


I digress ...

As of this writing I have seen nothing online documenting any type of Walpurgisnacht-style celebrations occurring last night to take down Trump and the administration.  If curses were flying, nothing happened.

It made me wonder, however.

Many think Trump is evil - so what does that say about evil curses against him, by so-called witches?  Judeo-Christian tradition condemns witchcraft - hence my associating it with evil.  I do not like the occult and link it to the devil - so I do not even like to write about it.  But if he's evil, and witches cast spells - how does that make sense?  A house divided cannot stand ...

That said, many critics of Trump think of him in terms of a dictator, such as Hitler.  Supposedly Hitler was into the occult, yet I discovered that is most likely not the case.  I mention this because of all the weirdness related to the witches curse on Trump - who professes to be a devout Christian, yet some consider him fundamentally anti-Christian.  Don't respond to those contentions here, because it isn't my point, and it's not necessarily my opinion either.

The interesting thing to me goes back to whether or not Hitler was an occultist, or just a dangerous politician.  An evil man, no doubt.  Today, people love to blame everything on the devil, they associate everyone they don't like - or those they fear - with Satan and/or the Anti-Christ, suggesting all sorts of weird mystical influences.  I don't deny these things, but when we call out names and causes like that, we are missing the fact that human beings are capable of error, sin, and perpetrating great evil.  Fallen human nature is capable of committing atrocities and are the sole agents responsible for spreading errors throughout the world, causing wars, and persecutions, and so on.  All by themselves.

So anyway - I came across something in my search regarding today's date, wondering if there was any special association with the occult - e.g. because of last night's witches curse - and also because today is the feast of another St. Walburga, I searched for Walpurgisnacht.  It's a different event, taking place on April 30/May 1.  While I knew there was some connection to Hitler, I couldn't recall what it was.  Turns out Hitler died on Walpurgisnacht.

So, if you can follow all of that, I came across a site discussing the stories surrounding Hitler's occult connections.  The author, Sean Munger, about whom I know little more than what he says on his website, dismisses the stories as myth.  What impressed me about that is his assertion that the evil perpetrated by the Third Reich "was not an act of “black magic” or some sort of brainwashing trick, (but) a very tragic example of politics gone wrong."

Hitler was a politician and a nationalist. He wanted to advance his vision of Germany, of course; but it’s simply false to project occultist motives onto his behavior.
It is interesting that, despite the profusion of Nazi occultism books, real scholarly works about Hitler and the Third Reich–the ones that are based on primary sources—do not mention occultism at all. The topic never once comes up in the 1600 pages of William L. Shirer’s mammoth 1965 work The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, nor is it mentioned at all in Alan Bullock’s seminal biography Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. I consulted both books before writing this article. I’m certainly not a scholar of the Nazi period, but I’ve taken and been involved with several university-level courses that deal with it, and occultism never seems to come up there either.
Indeed, the mythology of Nazi occultism is a dangerous distortion of history. As argued by Swedish scholar Mattias Gardell, the view that the Third Reich was heavily motivated by or used occult themes and practices tends to paint Hitler and the Nazis as a band of “evil sorcerers” who attained power by casting some sort of mystic spell over the German people, who followed them out of compulsion. This is not what happened at all. Millions of ordinary Germans, the vast majority of them rational and in their right minds, supported the Nazis for years, or at least did not oppose them. Casting Hitler as a sort of Svengali, using witchcraft and black magic to entrance the German people, is utterly false and leads to an “it can’t happen here” kind of complacency. It’s a convenient shortcut that absolves us of trying to understand a difficult and dark episode in recent history. - Source
Having said all of that, that's my point in this post - or what I'd like to say and help convince religious people who are so quick to think the devil is doing this or that, or this or that happened as a direct intervention of supernatural powers - to get a grip.  Wake up.  Avoid complacency, scapegoating, playing the 'devil made me do it' excuses, or spreading warnings and locutions all over, assuming some sort of rescue or rapture is going to deliver us from the duties of our state in life and our responsibilities.

Snap out of it.

Correction:

It's interesting, one finds a couple of paragraphs which seem to confirm one's thoughts on a certain subject and then inserts them in a post to substantiate one's point.  Pay no attention - ever - to me.

This morning a friend sent me a wealth of information on Hitler and the Third Reich's association with the occult.  I stand corrected.  Click on the links below if you are interested:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3498908/Heinrich-Himmler-s-stash-books-witchcraft-discovered-Czech-library-hidden-50-years.html

http://www.guiltandpleasure.com/index.php?site=rebootgp&page=gp_article&id=101

http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Ariosophy



Friday, February 24, 2017

Oh-oh...

O Maternal Refuge, Queen of the universe, 
Mediatrix of men to God, 
Refuge of all our hopes, 
have mercy on us. 


I clicked on Pewsitter tonight - just a few minutes ago in fact ...

It was hacked.  Something said something about dark-net take-over or something like that, with a video, but I clicked off asap.  Tried one other time after Google-ing the site - same thing happened.

The witches seem to be out early.  I didn't think anything was supposed to happen until Midnight - according to this site here.  It might just be a Carnaval prank too.

O Mary, conceived without sin - pray for us who have recourse to thee!  
O Mary!  Most holy and immaculate virginity!  
Pray for us who have recourse to thee, and for those who do not 
- especially the enemies of the Church, and those recommended to thee.


While you are busy outing people, or asking indiscreet questions ...



Take care to examine your own conscience first.

Some considerations for the self-appointed, divinely-called inquisitors among us ...  look for those defects in your own eye first.

DEFECTS OPPOSED TO SIMPLICITY

According to St. Thomas, simplicity is attached to the virtue of veracity, which puts truth into speech, gestures, manner of being and of living. Simplicity, in fact, is opposed to duplicity, by which we interiorly wish something other than what exteriorly we pretend. 
A man wishes other people's money and pretends to render them service; in reality, he wishes to make use of them or of what belongs to them; or again, he wishes power and honors, and to obtain them pretends to serve his country; he pretends to be magnanimous, when in reality he is only ambitious. This defect of duplicity, which may become Machiavellianism or perfidy, inclines a man to be two-faced, according to the people he is addressing, like the Roman god Janus that was represented with two faces. A two-faced man pretends to be your friend, tells you that you are right, and he tells your adversaries that they are not wrong.
Duplicity inspires lies, simulation, which leads a man to make himself esteemed for something other than he is, hypocrisy, by which he affects a virtue, a piety which he does not have. It also inspires boasting, because one prefers appearance to reality; one seeks to appear rather than to be what one should. It also inspires raillery, which turns others into ridicule in order to lower them in their neighbor's esteem and to exalt oneself above them.
All these defects, which are frequent in the world, show by contrast the value of uprightness or veracity in life.
Veracity, a virtue attached to justice, leads a man to tell the truth always and to act in conformity with it. This does not mean that every truth should be told to everybody, sermonizing right and left and boasting of a frankness which borders on insolence or lack of respect.
It is indeed difficult at times, when faced with an indiscreet question, to keep a secret which has been entrusted to one and at the same time not to speak contrary to the truth. - Garrigou-Lagrange

It's interesting the pious atmosphere five dubia can lead to among the very, very fervent.


Thursday, February 23, 2017

I said "so gay" on Facebook ... and someone was offended.

“In the gay world, some of the most enriching ... 
relationships between younger boys and older men 
can be hugely positive experiences.” - Milo
This teen boy clearly consented just by getting in the car.
What?


I was responding to a thread on Richard Dawkins.

Yesterday on Facebook a friend posted an article from Salon wherein Dawkins said 'mild pedophilia' or a little 'touching up' is not so bad: 
The biologist and author described the sexual abuse that occurred among his former classmates as "mild touching up" ... - Salon
While recuperating, I had been updating myself on the flurry of articles examining Milo Yiannopouloswhose endorsement of what I call man-boy love, or as others prefer to call it pedophilia or even ephebophilia, for clinical/legal reasons perhaps?  Yet when it is male on male, it's historically and academically referred to as pederasty.  Call it what you will, it's gay.  Which explains why I took issue with the Dawkins statement.

Of course, gay people don't want that sort of attraction/orientation identified with gay or lgbtq culture, suggesting it is myth - but I disagree completely.  To be sure, not all gay men are interested in adolescent boys, and not all men who have been mildly touched up or involved in “relationships in which (those) older men help (those) young boys to discover who they are” seek relationships with younger men when they are older.  Nevertheless, it is a gay phenomenon.  Hence I responded on Facebook:
"He's totally amoral - our culture is totally amoral - therefore, as he says, 'a little touching up' is perfectly fine. Imagine the kid that is exploited and damaged by more than 'a little touching up'. Milo claims the same. So wrong, so disordered, so gay." - Me
Another person agreed with me, but asked if it was necessary to add the 'slur' at the end.  I said it was.  It was my point - although it wasn't necessarily a slur - perhaps I should have said 'that's so queer' because queer culture is more about sexual fluidity, genderlessness and as related to cases like this, consent and the need to lower the age of consent.

I've written about this stuff many times over the years, my POV maturing as I explore my thoughts in and through writing about it.  In my experience, growing up in the 1960's - that is, coming of age in that period, it was very common for older gay men to cultivate relationships with teen boys.  My experience was similar to that of the much younger Yiannopoulos', who says he was in a gay relationship at the age of 17 with a 29 year old man, although later defending himself against gay critics for using such sloppy phrasing, Milo originally explained that “in the gay world, some of the most enriching ... relationships between younger boys and older men can be hugely positive experiences.”  LGBTQ 'authorities' freaked out, because in saying this, the 'myth' that homos are on the lookout to molest boys is resurrected and decades worth of pro-gay propaganda, normalizing and sanitizing gay culture, is threatened by that.

(Please note: My age gap with Yiannopoulos and his experience, is similar to the age gap between my personal experience and the experience of Christopher Isherwood with his much younger lover, Don Bachardy.  I mention it to emphasize such attractions and relationships have an established history and cannot be easily dismissed as a gay myth.)

Amorality is the new morality, yet it can only be determined by subjective reasoning, and new language is required to do that.  On one hand you can't say 'gay', or 'that's so gay', but you can say 'gay' and 'I'm gay' if 'you're queer'.  Kinda sorta.  So the woman who responded to me on Facebook, wasn't looking for an argument, but evidently she did think my saying, 'that's so gay' was a slur.  But I digress.

They cancelled my book.


Milo's "bitchy gayness" and sincerity makes him likeable.

Evidently, Yiannopolous has some problems with being gay.  Therefore he may not be 'completely' amoral, according to conservative religious people?  My whole thing about the current amorality occurred to me recently as a result of the great acceptance shown to Trump and conservative politics by conservative Christians, including devout Catholics.  Not to mention watching Ellen looking for a new boyfriend for Jennifer Lopez, while I was laying bed with the flu.  No doubt, relativism has certainly played a huge role in the erosion of morals.  I'm not a social scientist so I can't really address that intelligibly, it's more an intuition or impression I get.  Anyone with a well formed conscience ought to be able to understand and recognize moral collapse into amorality, right?  Or am I rambling on and on?  Perhaps I'm too ill to write intelligibly?


It's all very complicated.*


Yiannopoulos appears to have garnered respect and sympathy from the strangest sources.  I haven't quite figured that out as yet because I've mostly listened to those critical of the support, who also seem to think Milo is in need of compassion, help, and even intervention due to his screwed up past which apparently catapulted him to his current celebrity status.  Okay - now I'm rambling.

Nevertheless, it's interesting to me that Milo continues to look back on his first love affair as an enriching and positive experience.  I can say I learned a great deal from my experience, but it was in no way enriching or positive.  Someday maybe I can write about it - although why bother?  Yet it pretty much destroyed my reputation for the rest of my life - professionally that is, if I may phrase it that way.  The relationship also really screwed up, or disordered any moral direction I might have had.  A complication which gives deeper meaning to 'objective disorder' when speaking of a May-December homosexual romance.  The facade seemed glamorous and sophisticated to me at the time, but when I felt myself becoming immersed in that milieu, it was at times painfully obvious I was not well socialized and easily scandalized, or frightened by my proximity to the debauched aspects of gay life in the 1960's, so commonly characterized by dishonesty, promiscuity and intemperance.

It's odd how stories like those which claim that a 'mild pedophilia is not harmful' can trigger flashbacks of earlier events of abuse in my life.  Such statements do so much harm, gay people should be ashamed for not admitting, that under the LGBTQ umbrella - they've always accommodated that behavior - if not publicly, then secretly.  In fact, in my experience, they covered up for people who were into it.  Today I think the behavior fits in with the Q of LGBT - that is - queer.  I may be wrong - but I think it's there someplace.

Yiannopoulos once stated: "There are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age. I certainly consider myself to be one of them, people who are sexually active younger. I think it particularly happens in the gay world by the way."  For me his reasoning comes very close to the mental gymnastics it takes for a so-called ex-gay person to come to the conclusion that 'homosexuality is chosen'.  Even though there are some people who can do that, so what?

That said, just because it is controversial, the attention this guy is getting is good - albeit saturated in contempt from the right and the left - it has the potential of dispelling the myths.  For the time being.

Go to the light while you have it.

My apologies if I have offended anyone with this - remember I'm old.

And experienced.

So now I wonder why Voris is on a campaign to out priests?  Talk about 'bitchy gayness'.



*[H/T Mark Shea for his post on the Culp's support of Yiannopolous, which kept me awake last night as I suffered through my illness.  What?]

Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy.
Gay.

On February 23, 1858

My dove in the clefts of the rock,
in the secret recesses of the cliff ...
A garden fountain, a well of living water ...


February 23 was the day Our Lady told St. Bernadette a secret - the first of 3 secrets.  St. Bernadette never revealed these secrets to anyone.


Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Get yourself really sick ...



If you don't do a lot of penance - or even if you do - get yourself really sick.

So sick you can't pray or rest or sleep or eat.  So sick you can't even think a good thought, except to recall this or that in your life that makes you moan or regret or feel so ashamed that you can't even hide it.

I'm not kidding.

When you finally get a lucid moment, you will not care what anyone thinks or says about you or anyone else.  You will not care about controversies regarding the pope or the president or anyone.  Your faith will be clarified, purified another degree.

Be grateful.

I think I'm going to throw up now.

I'm breaking in with a recent revelation ...



Though I'm fighting for my life and barely able to breathe with this cold, I want all of you Storm-Troopers to know something important about the President.

He is chosen.  He won the Electoral College vote, true, but there is something else.

Yesterday we heard about the prophecy from the Hermit of Loreto.  We also learned how Michael Voris likened him to Constantine.  Yet, in a fevered moment I understood something more important.

Trump is El Cid!

He is America's El Cid.  He will do even more for America than El Cid did for Spain.  He will run the Canadians out of the United States.  He will return the Mexicans to Mexico.  He will drive out the Moors and restore Christianity to the United States.  Besides, his wife looks a lot like El Cid's wife, Doña Ximena Díaz, as played by Sophia Loren in the film.


Intensive Care Unit for Men With Colds


Colds are especially severe for men ... believe me I know.


The Münster University Hospital has set up an intensive care unit exclusively for the treatment of male patients suffering from coughs, colds, or even both. A specially trained team provides 24/7 care.
This “long overdue treatment site”, as Chief Physician Dr Klaus Schaffers, MD, calls it, will primarily serve men between the ages of 18 and 85. “It is well known, that this group are particularly severely affected by colds, and therefore need intensive care in order to save their lives.” - Read more here.

I called my doctor and several ERs but not one local hospital has an ICU for men with colds yet.

I picked up my severe cold from Mark Shea I think - from his "I'm deathly ill" post.  (People - do not post when you are sick.)

I'm not sure I can survive this one.  I've been in bed for twelve hours.

Monday, February 20, 2017

He's Back: Drain the Clerical Swamp

Voris: Last week, in Friday's Vortex, we asked the question directly to Fr. James Martin: 
Do you identify as a homosexual? Yes or no?


It must be sweeps week for Catholic media.


Tom Zimmer and the Holy House ... Oh, and Trump will lead America back to God?



I've met Tom Zimmer a few times.

He was a pilgrim when I met him, years ago.  He compiled the original Pieta prayer book.  He was at Garabandal when I was there, I later ran into him at San Damiano, then at Rome.  I thought he was crazy - but holy.  He wrote a journal and spiritual thoughts on every square inch of paper in minuscule printing, up the margins and on the back - sort of like crazy people do.  He also followed many spurious apparitions, some he discredited, others he believed, but he seemed genuinely holy.  He went to Mass several times a day, all over Rome and all over St. Peter's in the mornings.  In retrospect, I wondered if he was like St. Benedict Joseph or a Russian Fool for Christ?  His premonition about Donald Trump doesn't surprise me.  He said many strange things - he also knew many saints - or persons who have since been beatified or canonized.  In those days, I did too.

I was always such a skeptic though - I am still.  One of my greatest faults I suppose.  I have to pray more.

A fascinating story about Zimmer here.

I'm going back to this type of posting: Redux - I think I got it figured out ... On Pope Francis and Benedict and Cardinal Burke ...




The Esurance ad was prophetic ...

See ... Beatrice is Pope Francis ... the lady on the couch who likes her wall with the vacation photos is Pope Benedict ... the woman with the flair who contradicts .... or rather, 'offers a correction' .......... is Cardinal Burke:  "That's not what any of this is about."  And so Francis unfriends him.



I still think this is what's going on.

Fake News and Fake News Fact Checker sites and Church Militant is a right wing fringe group ...

I'm more concerned over the terror attack in Sweden the other night.


I think I knew all that.

WND - which is like a right wing fringe group all its own - posted a list on fake news fact checker sites.  I knew of a couple of them, and for sure, would never place all my confidence in this type of online fact checking.

That said, how very dare USA Today refer to Church Militant as a right wing fringe group.
FERNDALE, Mich. — Inside a plain, two-story brick building in Ferndale hums the nerve center for a growing, religious group hoping the forces that elected President Donald Trump will tear down the wall between church and state. 
Church Militant, a fringe group claiming to be Catholic but denounced by the church, broadcasts pro-life, anti-gay, anti-feminist, Islam-fearing content on its website, churchmiltant.com, and through social media using production studios that rival those at local TV news stations. It has 35 full-time employees who publish about 10 stories and three videos every weekday. 
Its leader, Michael Voris, has compared Trump with Constantine, the Roman emperor whom he says was "not a moral man" but a "power-hungry egomaniac," but who saw it desirable to end the persecution of Christians. He was a human vessel who elevated Catholicism to the state religion, Voris said. - USA Today

As for me, I'll stick to GloriaTV for fact checking and breaking news.  Oh look, this just posted to my wall:
George Soros, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton orchestrated a coup in the Vatican to overthrow the conservative Pope Benedict and replace him with radical leftist Pope Francis, according to a group of Catholic leaders citing evidence from various sources including WikiLeaks emails. - MORE HERE!!!!!!!!

Nothing says real news like Catholic social media.

Trump is right, you know.  It's all fake.

Catholic leaders cite new evidence uncovered in emails released by WikiLeaks to claim the conservative Pope Benedict did not actually resign on his own initiative, but was pushed out of the Vatican by a coup that the group of researchers are calling the “Catholic Spring.” - Source

Forced to resign, held against his will ...

They keep him quiet with boilermakers.
What?

Blessed Francisco and Jacinta Marto of Fatima

"I am happier than you are 
because I have the hidden Jesus
in my heart.  - Bl. Francisco


Today is their feast day.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?



I was thinking about all the people I know who are dead.

All the stuff - the things they said, the things they did, their station in life.  How important they were ... at the time.  Where has all their piled up wealth now?

Now they are dead.

I remember some of them.

Some of them.

I might be the only one who does.

But then ...
I am like a dead man, forgotten,
like a thing thrown away.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Fake News ... Mexico has a wall on the Guatemala border.



Okay.  So here's the deal ...

I was watching local news this morning and Janet Beihoffer, Minnesota, National Republican Chairwoman, and adjunct professor at Metropolitan State University, stated in an interview that Mexico has a border wall with Guatemala - so what is so bad about building a wall?

Really?

Listen, there is no border wall between Mexico and Guatemala.  In fact, many of the online photos purporting to be the Mexican wall are in fact Israeli walls and fences.

Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala is notoriously porous...
There is no wall along the Mexico-Guatemala border. Most of that frontier consists of rain forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, or other natural barriers, and few of the sections passable by foot or automobile include any walls or fences. - Source

Look Janet, see.

See who's spouting fake news.

Run Janet, run.