Another couple goodreads ...

From Anthony Esolen on reform and renewal of the culture:

Build new schools, reform old schools, and abandon irreformable ones.  Are your children attending the sub-pagan schools? Get them the hell out of there. What are you waiting for? It’s not as if the sub-pagan schools actually teach children English grammar and give them facility with numbers and make them familiar with the lands and rivers and seas of our world, let alone introduce them to the great works of western civilization. If your children are in the sub-pagan schools, it will require almost a miracle of God to keep them from becoming sub-pagan themselves. They too will learn to worship the three-poisoned god of our times, self, sex, State. Take for granted that everything in their classes will be sexuality and politics; even in science classes. Shakespeare? Sexuality and politics and nothing else. Get them out. Begin, if necessary, with one room and one teacher and ten children. Begin.

 

Read the rest here .

 

And read JRR Tolkien in a letter to his son on marriage here.

 

Oremus pro invicem!

 

 

 

New Heifer

Our heifer freshened yesterday. She had a heifer. Our older Jersey (light cow in pic) is due to freshen in a few months.

What to do with all this wealth?

Oremus pro invicem!

I have been reading ...

The Shadow of His Wings by Fr. Gereon Goldman, OFM. It is a fast moving and inspirational read.

At one point, Fr. Gereon is in a prisoner of war camp and observes:

And who is praying? An inquiry revealed that hardly five percent would admit that they prayed; those who prayed did so from force of habit, and their prayers were mostly the prayers of children. For most of the men, prayer was a burden or merely a habit; in any case, it was an unpleasant thing, and for a man and a soldier it was considered an embarrassing occupation.

 

And isn't this the case and a fundamental problem of our society?

 

Fr. Gereon goes on:

 

That this (prayer) is not merely something for women and children, but that first and foremost it is for the man, the head of the family ..... (emphasis added)

 

And isn't this the fundamental solution to the problems and "innovations" we are seeing in our society?

 

I was reminded today of Thomas Jefferson's statement:

 

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

 

It is my contention that we are now "any other." Men must lead; lead their own prayer lives; lead their family in their prayer life; and thus lead the country to God.

 

Oremus pro invicem!

 

I tell you, Dr. Anthony Esolen can write; and of course it isn't just style. What he writes always has substance, clearly articulated. Try this: 

Most lately, in Obergefell v. Hodges, Kennedy has insisted that “the opportunity to marry is integral to human dignity,” and that “excluding gay and lesbian couples from marriage demeans the dignity of these couples.” ...

 

Suppose the man whom women leave cold takes up residence with another man. Well, across the street live a middle-aged man and his autistic brother. They love one another, and will be together till death parts them. But theirs is not a marriage. It is a good thing, but we do them no injustice to say that they are not married, regardless of how deep their love is, or how pleasant they are to their neighbors, or how nicely they trim their flower garden.

 

What distinguishes the love of the brothers from the love of the homosexual man and his friend? Is it that the latter perform acts of sodomy, while the former do not? Is the membrum virile then the instrument that delivers that dignity which warms the cockles of Kennedy’s heart? Let us think about this for a moment. What does the sodomy add? Why should we value sodomy as such? Why should we value it so highly that for its sake we will overturn millennia of human experience, the social structure of our civilization, and the last tottering guardrails against judicial supremacy?

 

Read the whole thing here.

 

Oremus pro invicem!

 

I feel rich

Yesterday we got up early to beat the heat and slaughtered a hog. A big hog, but not as big as the one on my sidebar. This morning we got up early and butchered said hog. We have been pork poor for a couple months (which is another story.)

 

Now with a freezer full of pork, I feel suddenly rich!

 

(We were tempted to butcher the hog inside because Mrs. Curley is away, but reason prevailed and we butchered outside in the early morning light.)

 

Deo Gratias!

Update: Ham and bacon curing.

 

Oremus pro invicem!