culture war

if not art school

Larabie and Miz Kitti ran into each other outside the local art school.

“Three prominent twentieth-century characters were failed art students,” he reminded his friend.

“Explain away, Larabie,” the Miz wanted to know.

“I’ve always been interested in the Catholic intellectual world,” he went on, “So I know that G.K. Chesterton dropped out of art school.”

“Because I’m a John Lennon fan,” he told her, “I know that he did too,”

Then he reminded her, “Hitler never even got accepted when he applied.”

“Behind every failed artist,” she mused, “there’s a revolution waiting to happen?”

Dale Rogerson supplied this week’s photo prompt. Rochelle Wisoff~Fields leads, as always, Friday Fictioneers.

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st. cecilia as a metaphor and warning

“Henry and Peter made their daily trip to Erika’s House of Music at the South Bay Shopping Center.

The owner and her husband, as always, greeted them in their Austrian and German accents.

“The twenty second’s coming up,” Henry intoned.

“It’s interesting that J.F.K.was killed on the feast day of the patroness of music.”

“Yeah,” Peter reminded him. “So much of the nauseating Sexual and Cultural Revolutions of that era was set to such perfect music. A little charisma can be poisonous.”

“There’s good and bad in every era,” Henry noted as they looked around for Jimmy Page’s sheet music.

This week’s photo prompt was supplied by Bjorn Rudberg. Rochelle Wisoff~Fields guides us weekly in Friday Fictioneers, as each of us writes a hundred~word story based upon a photo prompt.

unity, happiness, and peace

“Well, you know,” chortled the King of Marigold “it’s not so bad being the king of an insignificant country.”

“Couldn’t agree more, darling,” boasted his wife the Queen.

“We have no war, a stable economy,” she continued.

“We don’t have to be bothered with things like Brexit or unethical election tactics, and everyone respects our flag and national anthem. What’s our secret,honey? Do you know?”

“It’s that way because we all have pretty much the same ideas, my dear,” he reminded her.

“Can’t be done otherwise.”

“You see, this ‘vive la difference’ crap isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Each week Rochelle Wisoff~Fields leads us in Friday Fictioneers. Sandra Crook supplied this week’s photo prompt.

the great society

“You see, Throckmorton,” bellowed Wilburforce, “since the 1960’s we’ve supplanted Christianity in man’s religious worldview.”

“Our Unholy Materialist Trinity is the intellectuals, the State, and the cultural elite.”

“We make blacks and whites, Christians and Jews bitterly resent each other. It’s always someone else’s fault, you know.”

“We’ve invented a phony virtue, tolerance, and developed a deceitful language to fool people.”

“Anyone we deem intolerant, or a hypocrite, is given a lobotomy here.”

“Divisiveness and sexual degeneracy, all in the name of freedom and equality, will make people happy in our great society. Count on it sir. You have to.

Rochelle Wisoff~Fields leads us in our weekly Friday Fictioneers, a hundred~word story based upon a picture. This week’s photo prompt was provided by Amy Reese.

false nostalgia

“All was not perfect before World War I, you know,” Charles told Harold.

Professor Blanc, at Farmingdale, just started a chapter on The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire yesterday.”

“It was March 25, 1911. One hundred forty six people, mostly young Italian and Jewish immigrant women, were killed.”

“Yes, I get your point”, his friend sighed.

Everybody remembers Princip’s assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Sophia, that set off World War I. We all know about World War II, the Sixties’ sexual revolution, and all the other recent poison. Sometimes man needs a bit of a nudge nudge about the before picture though.

Friday Fictioneers is our weekly attempt to write a hundred word story based upon a photograph. Rochelle Wisoff~Fields is in charge. This week’s photograph has been supplied by Sandra Crook.

canonize pope pius xii

O’Brien was talking happily about the canonization prospects of Pius XII, and Rabinowitz, as always, begged to differ.

“Haven’t you read Rolf Hochhuth’s “The Deputy”? He blurted out.

That’s as big a load of garbage as Maria Monk’s novel in the nineteenth century.” his friend reminded him.

“Pius saved no fewer than 860,000 Jews. He ghost wrote Pius XI’s “Mit Brennender Sorge”.

“Chief Rabbi Israel Zolli changed his name to Eugenio and his family converted.”

“Read Sister Margherita Marchione instead of that fanatical poison and you’ll see my point, old bean. Facts and figures are better than ideology.”

Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff~Fields both for supplying this week’s photograph and for being our weekly Friday Fictioneers fearless leader.

trouble in scranton diocese

Raymond De Souza, K.M., of EWTN, is on my Facebook friend list. Unfortunately I found out, by way of a post of his this afternoon, that there is big trouble afoot in the Scranton Diocese. My parents were both from northeastern Pennsylvania, and I lived, for around seven and a half years, in  the Borough of Wyoming. I was a parishioner at Our Lady of Sorrows (now St. Monica’s) in West Wyoming. I have always been rather fond of northeastern Pennsylvania so I was quite disappointed to find out that St. Peter’s Cathedral, the mother church of the diocese, on November 23, 2015,  hosted an interfaith service during which the Moslem god, Allah, was invoked.

Besides that, and other Moslem references, a woman was allowed to read the Gospel.

controversial interfaith service

Monday Mass

Considering how controversial Islam has always been, this service must have raised quite a large number of eyebrows.  According to all I’ve been reading about the service, and the comments on Mr. De Souza’s page, Bishop Joseph Bambera may have quite a difficult time explaining the decision to allow such an event.

undeniable and inexplicable order

Today is the ninety ninth anniversary of the birth of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty fifth President of the United States.  His younger brother and attorney general, Robert Francis Kennedy, was fatally shot on June 5, 1968.  J.F.K. was assassinated on November 22, 1963, two days after R.F.K.’s thirty eighth birthday.  

Over the past very many years I have always noticed that death has no respect for special occasions.  People often die on, or close, to times like Christmas, Easter, and other milestones.  My mother died exactly a week after my fifty fourth birthday. neral was on my father’s eightieth birthday.

So many things are like that. Between William Henry Harrison in 1840 and John F. Kennedy in 1963, each president elected at a twenty year interval died, either naturally or by assassination, while an incumbent.  This has been attributed to the curse of Tippecanoe, dating back to Harrison’s  questionable tactics in the Treaty of Fort Wayne with the Indians.

Another example of inexplicable coincidences can be found in the 1917 Our Lady of Fatima apparitions and events that are relevant to them. In 1517 the world was afflicted with the Protestant Revolution,  the first of many evil milestones. In 1689 Luis XIV refused Jesus’ request to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart.  During 1717 the Masons were founded. 1789  was the beginning of the French Revolution.  The Russian Revolution occurred in 1917, and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. There are so many other supposedly coincidental dates that are crucial to the circumstances surrounding Fatima. I’ve only skimmed the surface.  These, and many other dates and milestones, fit a most undeniable pattern that cannot possibly be overlooked.

This kind of order, visible only in retrospect, has to be reckoned with. I have no idea of exactly what’s going on but it has always made me so insatiably curious.

daily post~:orderly

no order..haiku

a place for everything

orderly

ladies, form an orderly queue

orderly