it ain't no smorgasbord

If you believe what you like in the gospels, 

       and reject what you don’t like, 

              it is not the gospel you believe,

                                but yourself.

                                      Augustine of Hippo

...

don't ignore the signs

I suppose the gates of hell to be
the doctrines of heretics by which men
are ensnared and drawn into hell.


                              St. Jerome







.....

words refashioned

Sticks and stones can only break my bones,
words alone can harm me.














...........................got to watch what you say
















/

palestrina lays down the law by damn

Dissonances are to be confined to suspensions,
 passing notes and weak beats.
 If one falls on a strong beat (in a suspension)
 it must be immediately resolved.
















....

i do declare, says the conservative

Take any aspect of the Western inheritance of which our ancestors were proud, and you will find university courses devoted to deconstructing it. Take any positive feature of our political and cultural inheritance, and you will find concerted efforts in both the media and the academy to place it in quotation marks, and make it look like an imposture or a deceit.




...since truth is relative












                                                                Roger Scruton






































.

a lyric from the chinese

I leaned against a sturdy oak;
I thought it was a trusty tree —
But first it bent, and then it broke.
My true love has deserted me.












.

prelude to a book

The cello is like a beautiful woman
 who has not grown older,
but younger with time,
more slender, more supple,
more graceful.  



― Pablo Casals  








....

from: Pascendi Dominici Gregis

 












That We make no delay in this matter is rendered necessary especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies; they lie hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in her very bosom and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously they appear. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, nay, and this is far more lamentable, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, feigning a love for the Church, lacking the firm protection of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, vaunt themselves as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring, they reduce to a simple, mere man.








                                                                                    -something stinks




























.....

some catholic statistics

Satan 
stations more devils
 on monastery walls
 than in dens of iniquity,
 for the latter offer no resistance.

                              Fulton J Sheen






...

nietzsche's crazy love

 








                                           Parable of the Madman

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning
hours,
ran to the market place, and cried incessantly:
"I seek God! I seek God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God
were standing around just then,
he provoked much laughter.
Has he got lost? asked one.
Did he lose his way like a child? asked another.
Or is he hiding?
Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?
Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
"Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you.
We have killed him—-you and I.
All of us are his murderers.
But how did we do this?
How could we drink up the sea?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?
Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?
Away from all suns?
Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
Is there still any up or down?
Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?
Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?
Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers
who are burying God?
Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?
Gods, too, decompose.
God is dead.
God remains dead.
And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?
What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled
to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?
What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
What festivals of atonement, what sacred gamesshall we have to invent?
Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?
Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -
For the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all
history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners;
and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment.
At last he threw his lantern on the ground,
and it broke into pieces and went out.
"I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet.
This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering;
it has not yet reached the ears of men.
Lightning and thunder require time;
the light of the stars requires time;
deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard.
This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -
and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day
the madman forced his way into several churches
and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo.
Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing
but:
"What after all are these churches now
if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

sir thomas more's epitath

Within this tomb Jane, wife of More, reclines;
This More for Alice and himself designs.
The first, dear object of my youthful vow,
Gave me three daughters and a son to know;
The next—ah! virtue in a stepdame rare!—
Nursed my sweet infants with a mother's care.
With both my years so happily have past,
Which most my love, I know not—first or last.
Oh! had religion destiny allowed,
How smoothly mixed had our three fortunes flowed!
But, be we in the tomb, in heaven allied,
So kinder death shall grant what life denied.
















....

found poem # 5,886

WASHINGTON


 — In the estimation
of American officials,
Oleg V. Deripaska,
 a Russian oligarch
 with close ties
 to the Kremlin,
 has faced credible
accusations of extortion,
 bribery and even
 murder.




the U.S. tried
 to tie
some Russian oligarchs
into sources.


It didn't work
but the fallout
helped fuel
President Trump's
anger.










                     ballad of an old friendship




















.....