7 Quick Takes...Random Chesterton Quotes

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“We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.” – The Quotable Chesterton

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“Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself.” – The Common Man

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“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.” – Orthodoxy, 1908

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“It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged.” – The Cleveland Press, 3/1/21

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“The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.” –Illustrated London News  1-3-20

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“Our materialistic masters could, and probably will, put Birth Control into an immediate practical programme while we are all discussing the dreadful danger of somebody else putting it into a distant Utopia.” – GK’s Weekly, 1/17/31

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With 35 Days to Go...A Chestertonian Perspective

Over at The American Chesterton Society website is a reprint of an editorial from the January/February 2012 Gilbert Magazine.  With the outcome of the election still uncertain, it behooves all of us to think about the issues from a perspective that is neither Left nor Right, but Catholic.  And how better than to look at issues the way Chesterton (one of the patrons of this blog) would.

The editorial's author, Sean P. Dailey, makes the following very cogent point in comparing the Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements:

They remain enemies because they are stuck in outmoded and counterproductive partisan divisions. Occupy Wall Street attacks Big Business, but remains blind to the fact that the Obama administration is stuffed with Wall Street fatcats who not only helped engineer the current recession, but made enormous profits doing so. The Tea Party attacks Big Government, yet ignores the fact that when a Republican administration once again occupies the White House, it too will be stuffed with those same Wall Street fatcats, as was the Bush administration.

And this willful ignorance will be aided and abetted by the great corporate ally of Big Business and Big Government, the Mainstream Media.

We deplore the negative elements in both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, especially OWS’s alliances with abortionists and the Tea Party’s silence about abortion. But until both movements recognize they are fighting the same fight, neither will be an effective agent for real reform.

It is time for the good guys and the bad guys to stop shooting at each other and recognize their common enemy.

You can read the entire editorial here:  Good Guys, Bad Guys, and Hudge & Gudge.

For any pro-Obama readers who think that they are electing an Occupy Wall Street sympathizer, read the great article by Timothy Carney at the Washington Examiner exposing the President as a corporatist.

And ultimately, as Catholics we should be primarily concerned with the Holy Father's non-negotiables over economic issues--Life, Marriage, and Freedom.  Our Lord assures us that if we seek the Kingdom, all of our temporal needs will be taken care of.

"My Calling is Love": The Little Flower's Feast Day

Today is the feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the little French Carmelite girl (she was only 24 when she died) whose Little Way has inspired both laity and Popes.  Because of her teaching that the way to holiness was through all things done out of love for Christ, Blessed John Paul II named her a Doctor of the Church--only the third woman so honored up to that time.

Here is a portion of her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, from today's Office of Readings; if you have not read it, I encourage you to do so.  You will also be captivated by the story of the little French girl who became a great saint.

From the autobiography of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, virgin
(Manuscrit autobiographiques, Lisieux 1957, 227-229)

In the heart of the Church I will be love

Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of Saint Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the first epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.

I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.

When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognized myself in none of the members which Saint Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favorably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realized that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.

Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.

Preparing for the Month of the Holy Rosary

October is a special month for Our Lady.  With the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7 and the commemoration of the Miracle of the Sun by Our Lady of Fatima on October 13, there are many reasons in particular to increase our devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  One particular thing we can do is to say a Rosary every day;  if that is already part of our devotional life, we can add another Rosary.  With the upcoming election, think about dedicating that extra Rosary for the needs of our country.  For more information about October, click on the following link.

Liturgical Year : October, Month of the Holy Rosary - Catholic Culture

Fabulous post from Simcha Fisher

Hello all, sorry I haven't been on for the last week, but my computer died and it's been with the Geek Squad.  But I'm back.  Simcha Fisher has another great post over at National Catholic Register. She demolishes the radical turn the pro-choice movement has made, going from saying that abortion is necessary though undesirable to advancing it as a normal and positive event in most women's lives.

Who are the "one in three?" |Blogs | NCRegister.com

7 Quick Takes Friday--1 to 4 from Susan, 5-7 from James

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1.       Maggie and I watched a movie a few weeks ago called The Perfect Family.  While the movie itself was far from perfect, I thought it did do a nice job of portraying what real families are up against when they try to live out their faith in a seriously fallen world.  

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1.       Apparently there is a new sort of Internet scam going around.  The other night, while Josh was watching a movie on a website, a page popped up telling him that the site he was watching had violated some copyright law and that the FBI was going to prosecute him.  He could, however, simply go ahead and pay a fine of $200 to a website they had set up for that very purpose.  Not surprisingly, he panicked, as did I when I saw it.  (James is always warning us to make sure that any site we use is a legal one).  Fortunately, we checked it out and found that it was just a scam. So, beware.

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1.       This has been the first week in many that I haven’t had any writing to do and I have to admit that I don’t like it.  I find that I get much more done and am even happier when I have a lot to do.  Rest assured, there are still plenty of things I ought to be doing, its just that I find I miss an intellectual outlet.

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1.       Maggie and Josh are now both baby-sitting every afternoon, which I find to be delightful.  They are both so good with kids and I find it very encouraging to hope that they will make excellent parents someday.

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I think I posted a while back about a new organization, Catholics Called to Witness.  The husband and wife founders, Dr. Manuel and Adriana Gonzalez, were on EWTN Live with Fr. Mitch Pacwa on Wednesday.  During the program they played the great video they have featured on the CC2W website, "Test of Fire."  If you haven't seen it, here it is.

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One of my favorite forms of music growing up was Broadway show tunes.  I may be the only heterosexual in America who can say that.  My favorite singer was Judy Garland.  Again, see previous sentence.  Simply because I like the song, here she is singing "The Trolley Song" from Meet Me In Saint Louis.

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Everyone have a good weekend.

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We are the 53%!

By now, everyone in the United States, Canada, Europe, and parts of Antarctica have heard about Mitt Romney's statements, secretly recorded and leaked to a left-wing magazine, concerning the dependency of 47% of the American people on some form of government assistance.  This dependence, Romney stated, made this 47% unlikely to vote for him.  Since this statement, the mainstream in-the-tank-for-Obama media have been heralding this as a major candidacy killing gaffe--one so bad that the campaign might as well be over.  We might as well not have an election.  We should just declare Obama the winner and go back to watching Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo.

So while the media is eulogizing the "late" Romney campaign, no one is asking the obvious question.

What exactly is wrong with what Romney said?

It certainly is not the truth of what he said.  While a broad brush statement, in general Romney hit the nail on the head, as this Wall Street Journal article pointed out.

So if the furor is not because what Romney said was wrong, could it be because what Romney said was right?  I think the answer is yes.  Romney incurred the wrath of the media and the left because he took the class warfare argument Obama has been using for years and turned it on its head.

What do I mean?  Let me explain.  For the last couple of years, since the Occupy movement popularized the  notion of the 99% against the 1%--the latter being the rich members of our society.  The vision is that the 99% of average Americans are exploited by a small wealthy elite.  Obama has taken this and incorporated it into his campaign against Romney.  With Romney's comments, however, people have another vision to consider--a growing group of people who do not pay taxes, who rely on some form of government assistance, supported by a steadily shrinking percentage of Americans.  Romney's description is much more supportable by the evidence than the Obama/Occupy perspective.

Obama is the candidate of the 47%.  He is the candidate of dependency.  He is the candidate of victimhood.  He is the candidate of irresponsibility.  He is the candidate of the handout.

Romney is the candidate of the 53%.  He is the candidate of independence.  He is the candidate of possibilities.   He is the candidate of personal responsibility.  He is the candidate of the hand-up.

Let us stand up and say proudly--WE ARE THE 53%!