Girls Teach the Boys Some Chivarly

Speaks for itself.

from hotair.com

The Church of Oprah

Oprah has become a real cult prophetess. For some time, she has been in cahoots with sham artist and new age guru Eckhart Tolle, as was pointed out here by prolepticlife not so long ago. The latest information indicates that this is not just a passing interest. What is more, her new religion is also good for her bottom line:

And what’s different about the Tolle connection for Winfrey is that for the first time in her much-applauded Book Club’s history, she’s gone into business with the author. And the author is not one of a novel, memoir or cookbook; he’s the mysterious creator of a philosophy that Winfrey endorses and suggests her readers live their lives by.

I noticed that even Salon.com was scandalized by Oprah’s crooked promotion of The Secret.

Just how shameless is all this too-good-to-be-true hype that has become the hallmark of Oprahware? Salon author Peter Birkenhead refers to The Secret sham as a “bottle of minty-fresh snake oil.”

Here is just one example: when I was researching The Secret, I took a look at the cast of characters employed by the author Rhonda Byrne. One of her gurus is a gentleman by the name of “Dr.” Joe Vitale, who goes under the revealing nickname of Mr. Fire (take it as you like), and promotes himself as a marketing expert. Indeed. I checked out some of his books. If this is not a red flag, I do not know what is. That’s right, the title is Hypnotic Writing: How to Seduce and Persuade Customers with Only Your Words. Now that’s shameless.

I cannot emphasize enough how destructive this way of thinking is to our moral and cultural future. Turn Oprah off.

OprahFried

I don’t watch TV, you see, so I had no idea that Oprah was this far out. I am not surprised, because of her wholehearted endorsement of The Secret.

This kind of thinking is rampant even among Catholics and it is a plague not only to faith, but to any real intellectual life. We are feeling our way to hell. BTW, I am not recommending the book mentioned at the end of this video. I know nothing about it.

I am posting this in connection with the “pregant man” business.

Hat tip to Other Mary.

The Passion of Joan of Arc. . . Again

Well, good St. Joan was betrayed by the Burgundians, condemned by ecclesiastics who should have protected her, abandoned by the King she fought for and burned by the English. As a reward her story has been printed to celluloid I don’t know how many times now, and most of this waste of celluloid should be burned in the square of Rouen in reparation for the crimes of Hollywood against this great Virgin Warrior.

In spite of his flaws, I have a great deal of respect for Mel Gibson and wrote a little booklet, praising his Passion movie. Even so, I have been stopped in my tracks. Tabloid sites are claiming that he now plans to produce another Passion movie, this time a remake of the The Passion of Joan of Arc, a 1928 French silent movie that has been hailed as a landmark of cinema.

The gossipy part of the story (and I hope it is just gossip) is that he has asked Britney Spears to play the title role. The funny thing is, given Gibson’s quirkiness, he is just the man to do it and perhaps even to pull it off. Nevertheless, the yuck factor is a bit too much for me. I wish Miss Spears well, and hope she gets her life together; however, she would have to turn a miraculous performance to make me forget what she has stood for, which is diametrically opposed to the holiness and purity of the Maid of Orleans. I know. . . I know. . . This is what actors do. Their job is to pretend to be someone they are not. Even so . . .

I just hope this is not another crime that Hollywood will have to atone for. I will be the first to throw a fagot on the pyre.

Truce of God

Hear ye! Hear ye! Here ye!

Ladys and Lords of the household you are hearby ordered by decree of the King of Kings to defer all hostilities until Monday of Eastertide, being the first day of the Paschal Octave. Out of reverence for the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection all violence and revenge, domestic or otherwise, from Vespers of Spy Wednesday till daybreak of Easter Monday shall be considered reprehensible and unchristian.

Chesterton said two things that are apropos here: first, that chivalry is the baptism of feudalism, the Christianization of the military ferocity of the feudal system. The Medieval Truce of God (here, here and here, the last one is pretty funny) was an effort on the part of clerics and monks to control the knights and prevent them from amusing themselves at the peasants’ expense. Thus, the Truce was a way of preventing chivalry, which was always a delicate commodity, from being entirely undermined.

Secondly, Chesterton reminds us that the real adventure is not fighting dragons, but surviving in marriage. Here are some priceless tidbits:

“The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.” - “David Copperfield,” Chesterton on Dickens, 1911

“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.” - Manalive

“I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.” - The Victorian Age in Literature

“Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.” - (This might be a paraphrase)

Ephesians 5, gentlemen. Lay down your lives. And ladies, obey and honor your heroes.

The Easter Triduum = Ephesians 5. Think about it. Think Christ and the Blessed Mother.

Noble Behavior in Holy Week

The following is an account of the Holy Week piety of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Try this on for size, ladies:

Nothing can express the fervor, love, and pious veneration, with which she celebrated those holy days, on which the Church, by ceremonies so touching, and so expressive, recalls to the mind of the faithful, the sorrowful and unspeakable mystery your redemption. On Holy Thursday, imitating the King of Kings, who, on this day, rising from table, laid aside his garments, the daughter of the king of Hungary, putting off whatever could remind her of worldly pomps, dressed herself in poor clothes, and, with only sandals on her feet, went to visit different churches. On this day, she washed the feet of twelve poor men, sometimes lepers, and gave to each twelve pieces, a white dress, and a loaf.

All the next night she passed in prayer and meditation upon our Lord’s passion. In the morning, it being the day on which the divine sacrifice was accomplished, she said to her attendants, “This day is a day humiliation for all: I desire that none of you do show me any mark of respect.” Then she would put on the same dress as before, and go barefoot to the churches, taking with her certain little packets of linen, incense, and small tapers; and, kneeling before one altar, would place thereon of these, and, prostrating herself would pray awhile most devoutly, and so pass to another altar, till she had visited all. At the door of the church she gave large alms, but was pushed about by the crowd, who did not know her. Some courtiers reproached her for the meanness of her gifts as unworthy of a sovereign. But though, at other times, her alms-deeds were most abundant, so that few ever were more splendidly liberal to the poor, yet a certain divine instinct in her heart taught her, how, in such days, she should not play the queen, but the poor sinner, for whom Christ died.

Science Confirms It

Wires. Just like the nice man said.

See we fuddy-duddy chivalry guys are not all washed up after all.

Gray Matters

This should turn up the heat. Too funny. Too true.

Hat tip to Jen.

Marian Chivalry in Merry Ol’ England

A friend of mine knows of my preoccupation with chivalry, just went to a used book store nearby. Well, I now have in my hot little hands a gem of a book. Its entitled: The Age of Chivalry, and it was written in 1963 by Sir Arthur Bryant. The author is a controversial British historian, who seems to have had some personal baggage; however, the passage from his work cited below is consistent with everything I have ever read on Marian devotion in Medieval England. It is also very much supportive of one of my basic contentions, namely, that the spirit of chivalry is in its origin essentially Marian.

Most loved of all who interceded for man was the Virgin. The Gabriel bell rang at evening to call Christians to recite Ave Maria, and the pilgrims flocked to see the replica of her house in the Augustinian priory at Walsingham, believing that the heavenly galaxy, the Milky Way, had been set to guide them there. The cult of supplicating Mary to intercede for human weaknesses which only a woman could be expected to forgive was then first reaching the height of its immense popularity. The great events of her life, the Annunciation, Purification, Visitation and Assumption, had taken their place among the feasts of the Christian year; at the Purification in February, known as Candlemas, everyone walked through the streets carrying candles blessed at the altar in her honour. She was thought of as the embodiment of every womanly virtue; tender, pure and loving and so pitiful that even the most abandoned could hope for forgiveness through her aid. “A woman clothed in the sun with the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,” a preacher called her: “this great sign and token stretched down into the depths of Hell, for all the devils there dread the name of this glorious Virgin.”

The Damsels Are Dropping Like Flies!

Too Funny.

Politically Chivarly!

“Somebody got a bottle of water?

I find the enthusiasm a bit scary.