An essay by Jeeves & Wooster creator P.G. Wodehouse, which satirizes the invention of free verse, its increasing domination of the literary world, and the growing number of poets who would have done the world a greater service as accountants and civil servants. Hilarious! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kbNxezQBRg4
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fc_bkDnLHk0 This video based on the legend that at the first Ecumenical Council, at Nicaea in 325 AD, St Nicholas was so angry at Arius' heresy about Jesus not being fully divine and human at the same time, that he punched him right in the face. For this he is thrown into chains in a cell, [...]
From "A School in South Uist: Reminiscences of a Hebridean Schoolmaster, 1890-1913", pages 14-15. Sunday arrived and after a cup of tea and some oat cake, we watched the people coming to church. As Father Allan had to say the eleven o'clock Mass, of course he was fasting. From before ten o'clock I could see figures, [...]
In the recent controversy over whether or not to permit the display of the Confederate Flag, we forget, in my opinion, what the issue is really about. As a reminder to both sides in the debate, I am sharing an 1866 poem by Francis Miles Finch. A New Yorker and staunch Abolitionist, Finch was deeply moved [...]
In her essay “The Church and the Fiction Writer”, Flannery O’Connor expressed disgust at the pious cliches which then masqueraded as Catholic literature during the 1950’s. Rather than take joy in fully formed characters with mixed flaws and virtues, Catholic readers preferred the simplistic, the sentimental, and the shallow. This problem is not only confined to [...]
About a year ago, while reading Dorothy Sayers’ translation of “The Divine Comedy” aloud to a terminally ill friend, I was struck by the behavioral similarities between the demons in Dante’s “Inferno” and the Orcs in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”.’ Both share a viciousness toward their prisoners, both have to be forced to [...]
On this site, I have often gone on record as both critic and a satirist of Peter Jackson's Tolkien travesties. From letting the Catholic out of the Baggins to the dumbing down of the dialogue, Peter Jackson's film treatments would not have received an enthusiastic reception had the creator of Middle Earth still been alive. They [...]
On this site, I have often gone on record as both critic and a satirist of Peter Jackson's Tolkien travesties. From letting the Catholic out of the Baggins to the dumbing down of the dialogue, Peter Jackson's film treatments would not have received an enthusiastic reception had the creator of Middle Earth still been alive. They [...]
Pope Pius XII to "an enormous crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square" to protest the show trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, February 20, 1949. Excerpted from "His Humble Servant: Sister M. Pascalina Lehnert's Memoirs of Her Years of Service to Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII". Page 150. "Do you want a Church that remains silent when She [...]
Many years ago, my father asked my grandfather, Scottish immigrant Laurence Joseph King, about the abdication of the Duke of Windsor. My dad was then a teenager with Marxist ideas and considered it ridiculous that an abdication was insisted upon by the British Government. To Dad's shock, Grandpa Larry responded, "He could not be King because [...]