Associated Press
A 26-year-old woman was at the helm of the South Korean ferry that sank last week with 476 passengers aboard. Park Han-gyeol had been with the company that owned the Sewol for only six months when she was navigating the most difficult passageway of the trip to the island of Jeju. Aside from her inexperience, it is reasonable to ask whether the mere fact that she was a woman contributed to the loss of so many lives. Women are less adept at spatial skills than men and are by nature less suited to maneuvering large vessels. Eighty-seven people are confirmed dead and 215 are still missing. The captain of the ship, who abandoned the ferry before it sunk, faces criminal charges.
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Giotto di Bondone, Scenes from the life of Christ
PREPARATIONS for our Easter feast kept me so busy yesterday that I could not get to the computer to wish the readers of this site a happy Easter. But I thought of you. I thought of those fond readers whose names and personalities I have come to know and I thought also of those who are entirely anonymous and unknown, sometimes surfacing out of the virtual void. I thought of those who are humorous and sunny, and those who are serious and philosophical. I thought of those who approve of me and those who find me acutely annoying, even revolting, including the very intelligent young girl of 15 who wrote to me last week and said that when she first read my thoughts on various subjects, especially the subject of “working women,” she was so disgusted she felt physically ill. I thought of those who agree and those who disagree. I thought of those who are happy and I thought most especially of those who face grave difficulties. My thoughts encompassed so many of you.
May you have a blessed Eastertide. May the wonder and reality of the Resurrection, this ageless miracle and timeless mystery, fill you with courage and confidence as it filled the hearts of the Apostles who emerged from their back rooms where they were cowering and fearful to proclaim boldly and intrepidly that they had witnessed the impossible. May you realize that all loneliness is illusion, that existence is infused with the supernatural, and walk forth from the tomb that is life without God into the light and everlasting union with the Blessed Trinity.
God is everything, man is nothing.
Happy Easter, dear reader!
The Lamentation, Girard David
HOLY SATURDAY is traditionally reserved to honor Our Lady. At Tradition in Action, there is a beautiful version of the hymn Stabat Mater with this description:
Stabat Mater is a tragic song that meditates on the sorrow of Our Lady as she stood at the foot of the Cross during the crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The song embodies the lament of Mary, for as she watches the agony of her Son she also sees the suffering of her God. As foretold by the Prophet Simeon, her heart was pierced by a sword of sorrow.
This particular version of Stabat Mater was composed by the Italian musician Giovanni Maria Nanino (1543-1607). It was adopted into the book of Gregorian Chant, the Liber Usualis, and is here sung by the Benedictine monks of the Abbaye Saint Maurice et Saint Maur de Clervaux, Luxembourg.
AS Lent comes to a close, many of you will be eagerly indulging in pizza delicacies once again. Truly, there is never a dull moment in the Pizza Industrial Complex, which employs tireless, brilliantly inventive engineers, so while you were away, things have been happening. In our Brave New Pizza World, time never stands still.
Boston Pizza, a Canadian chain, is floating the idea of a five-layer pizza cake and so far has received enthusiastic responses from consumers, as one would expect. This seems like a perfect party item.
Domino’s is also moving into a new frontier, having recently unveiled its chicken-crust pizza, which for a few days last week swept the airwaves, surpassing all other breaking news on the planet, as one would expect. Russell Weiner, chief marketing officer for Domino’s, announced the news. “Our new Specialty Chicken is one of the most creative, innovative menu items we have ever had. Our pizza chefs have taken chicken to a whole new level, using our unique ingredients to create these four bold flavors. There’s nothing quite like Domino’s Specialty Chicken on the market today.”
Creativity has always been Domino’s strong point.
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Tung Ho, of Portland
ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:
Tung Ho and Kyle Yamaguchi, Asian Americans who were employed by Nike in Oregon and are suspected of running a highly lucrative sneaker theft business, used a gweilo as a bagman – and so far, he’s the only one who’s been indicted.
According to The Smoking Gun:
When investigators searched Ho’s residence [in Portland,Oregon] on March 14, they seized 1941 pairs of Nike shoes and “a large sum of United States currency.” After being read the Miranda warning, Ho “admitted that he had stolen several hundred pairs of Nike Look See shoes and sold them in two (2) different ways” He sold about $15,000 worth of samples on eBay, while the bulk of the stolen “Look See” models were peddled through [Kyle] Yamaguchi, his “middle man.” (Continued)
Andrea Mantegna, Calvary
VIEW a live broadcast of the Traditional Good Friday Mass of the Pre-Sanctified and Tre Ore devotions at the website of St. Gertrude the Great in Cincinnati here. It begins at 12:15 p.m. (Eastern Time), but a recording can also be viewed later.
NEW YORK CITY becomes more and more congenial to Islam by the day. The Police Department recently announced that it will disband a surveillance unit that sent undercover detectives into Muslim neighborhoods for the purpose of identifying potential terrorists. The program, started in the wake of 9-11, was dropped in response to civil rights complaints, including civil rights complaints by Muslims.
And, Bill de Blasio continues to pledge to put Muslims holidays on the school calendar. According to one estimate, ten percent of New York public school students are Muslim.
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CHRIS KINNEY writes:
I thought you might be interested in the presentation featured here. The themes of black dysfunction and the destruction of the church are related on a metaphysical level. The presentation is by a Long Island police detective who explains how the Satanic popular culture, loss of the Mass, and rising crime are tied together. The post-Vatican-II church of man promoted by the disastrous John Paul II is directly responsible for the inability of the State to competently dispatch justice. Lawrence Auster ably diagnosed the problems with John Paul II here.
Instead of attempting to save the souls of feral black criminals before their execution, the church of man endlessly prattles on about the inherent injustice of the death penalty.
Imagine what a difference it would make if the Archbishop of Indianapolis called for Simeon Adams to be executed, along with all the other black criminals who prey on the flock, black and white, with which he has been entrusted. Simeon Adams is going to go to Hell, absent some sort of miracle. The current so-called justice system merely enables him to continue in his sins and live off those he terrorized for the past seven years, and does nothing to save his soul. It is not charity, but Satanic narcissism that leads the current crop of bishops to ignore such injustices.
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The Last Supper, Duccio di Buoninsegna; 1308-1311
FROM the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, 11. 20-32, which is the Epistle for Holy Thursday in the Traditional Latin Mass, Paul criticizes those who treated the Eucharist with irreverence and those who did not recognize the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine:
Brethren: When you come therefore together into one place, it is not now to eat the Lord’ s supper. For every one taketh before his own supper to eat. And one indeed is hungry and another is drunk. What, have you not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God; and put them to shame that have not? What shall I say to you? Do I praise you? In this I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye, and eat: this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me. (Continued)
IN the wake of the Nathan Trapuzzano murder, a woman whose husband was also recently murdered by black teens in Indianapolis (not that it’s a trend or anything) has called on men to mentor young black boys to prevent brutal crimes, reports The Daily Mail.
Sgt. First Class Jim Vester, 32, of the Indiana National Guard was killed in Indianapolis in December after arranging to buy an iPad via Craigslist. His body was left in a parking lot. Vester had a one-year-old son and was married.
Sgt. First Class Jim Vester
His wife, Jamie, told Fox News this week:
“I’m really calling out to the males to get out there and mentor those boys and maybe we could prevent some of this violence. Every single person could use somebody to love them and be there for them.
If only Tyron Kincade, 19, and Tyshaune Kincade, 18, (pictured below) had received more mentoring from white men, they might not have slain a white man for nothing and then boasted about their ‘thug life’ on Facebook.
How many people need to be killed by black supremacists before whites stop blaming it all on their lack of compassion? Maybe fifty or sixty thousand more victims? Or will the stupidity never end?
And, what the heck is one “mentor” in the face of an entire culture of racial entitlement, barbaric music and lawlessness?
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Gurpreet Ronald is charged with murder in the death of Jagtar Gill
WANDA SHERRATT writes:
The top news in our city this week is a murder case which seems to draw together a lot of themes that I frequently read about on your blog. This awful murder story in Ottawa is a stew of multiculturalism, infidelity, religion, physical appearance and women’s work outside the home.
A Sikh woman, Jagtar Gill, 43, was murdered in her home on January 29th. It was quite a gruesome murder; she was bludgeoned and then slashed to death. Her two younger children were in school at the time, and her husband and 15-year-old daughter had just gone out to buy cake and flowers, because it was the couple’s wedding anniversary. (The daughter discovered the body when she and her father returned home.) (Continued)
THE Consortium Vocale Oslo sings Crux Fidelis (Faithful Cross), from its CD of Gregorian chants for Lent and Holy Week, Exaudium Eum. Crux Fidelis is sung as a hymn on Good Friday during the Adoration of the Cross and in the Liturgy of the Hours during Holy Week. It is part of a larger sixth-century composition by Saint Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus which begins Pange lingua (‘Sing, my tongue’). It was originally composed for a procession that brought a portion of the true Cross to Queen Radegunda in 570, wife of the Frankish king Clotaire I.
Here is one English translation:
Faithful cross, above all other,
One and only noble tree:
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peer may be.
Sweetest wood and sweetest iron,
Sweetest weight is hung on thee!
Gregorian chant is prayer and song, biblical exegesis and meditation. The chants, which have their musical origins in the ancient Jewish synagogue service, once brought the Old Testament Psalms, in a perfect blending of text and music, to a world without books. Albert Schweitzer, of the vocal group, writes:
What makes Gregorian chant so popular today is its religious power that appeals to the deeper levels of the human heart; its spiritual and transcendental dimensions. (Continued)
