FLOTUS Melania Trump in Japan with School Children

I loved every part of this video - even watching the Secret Service Agents - of First Lady Melania Trump with school children in Tokyo, Japan in November, 2017. She is polished, graceful, quiet and kind. The children start singing at 2:32, but even the introductions before that are interesting to watch. Melania's poise is unparalleled in First Ladies.

Every child wants to shake her hand which is impossible until at last (at 7:07) Melania holds up her palms so that each child can do high fives or touch her hands. At 7:00 - 7:06 after shaking hands with her a group of girls look at their hands in awe, and even smell them! Melania truly enjoys being with the children.

In case you're wondering, she is wearing a caped midnight blue Dior dress. For the state dinner she wore a cardinal red Valentino dress. One picture showed her entrance at the state dinner with President Trump, where every man's eye was following her, so to all the designers who said they would refuse to dress Melania Trump, I say: "Melania is far too classy to condescend to wear your garish outfits. Her taste in clothes is far above what you are able to create."

Don't Despair Over Bad Bishops -- The Suffering They Inflict on Faithful Priests will Bring Graces Flowing on Our Poor Church

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin

Irish Priest Punished after Pro-life Homily

After reading this article, I left the following comment:

One more example of bad bishops undermining the faith. Priests can attend pride marches and shill for same-sex marriage like Fr. Martin and be lauded and given Vatican posts. Faithful priests get the cross and the nine inch nails. That's why I don't despair. The blood of the martyrs (even white martyrs) is the seedbed of the faith. This persecution is the Good Friday that will bring the Resurrection! I'm praying for Fr. Larkin and exposing this rot on my blog with an address for the bishop. May he hear from people all over the world about this injustice!

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin removed Fr. Larkin from his pastoral assignment forbidding him to say any public Masses or have any contact with former parishioners.

Why?

The Longstanding Rotten Stench of Cardinal McCarrick

Former Priest Solicited by McCarrick Speaks Out

We can pray that this latest scandal of a high level cleric will make those in charge accountable, but it's not likely. Read the article and see how McCarrick, the pharisee, told his priests they would be responsible for their own defense if accused of abuse knowing full well that he was absolutely guilty. So he had all the resources of his diocese to defend himself, but any innocent priest facing a false accusation from a money-grubbing liar with a grudge would be on his own. Great spiritual father, eh?

God Secretly Watched "The Lone Ranger" on His TV Set in 1949

I'm pure evil. What're ya gonna do about it?

God got the idea of Donald J Trump as POTUS from secretly watching the 200+ episodes of The Lone Ranger on His TV set from 1949 to 1957. 

God liked Clayton Moore's role of a brave masked man fighting evil, rescuing the day. In the TV series all the evil of the world was personified by Lee Van Cleef as the Kansas Kid or Joe Singer or Bull Harper, Jango or whatever other sinister character lurked behind every rock to leap out with guns blazing thereby destroying the equanimity of the happy townsfolk. 

So in real life, when times got tough with the Left and Communism and Islam and the EU, the OIC, and Dhimmicrats out to banish Him from the face of the earth, God, remembering His happy moments watching The Lone Ranger, looked around and thought, "Hmmm. The world needs another Lone Ranger, 'a man whose presence brings fear to the lawless.' Whom shall I send?" 

I'm Shocked!

At the hearing held last week in Congress there was, as far as I am concerned, only one bright spot.  It shocks me that it is this same brief moment out of the whole day that the media is fixed on saying was the “low point.”

Abuser McCarrick got the Red Hat; Fr. Haley Who Tried to Protect the Flock Got the Butcher's Knife

He Preyed on Men Who Wanted to Be Priests

Reading stories about Cardinal McCarrick's sordid history of abuse make me so angry I need to go out and pound rocks. Sadly, he is becoming the icon for the hierarchy. How many of his "brethren" are just like him? If not abusers themselves, enablers and advancers of the abusers.

The Synods on the Family gave us a magnified view of so many evil men in red hats willing to lie and preen in front of the cameras while they undermined the faith. When I see the dissent to Church teaching among the "princes" of the Church, I recall Bishop Bruskewitz at the Dallas meeting making a motion to study the link between dissent and the sex abuse scandals. He couldn't even get a second! The bishops just wanted the bad news to go away or at least be redirected away from their own culpability.      Read more...

Taking the Family to Europe This Summer?

Multiculturalism! It's so great! 

Treat the family to a taste of it in Europe this summer!

EUROPE 2018

More fabulous scenic travel videos below!

Choose the country you want to visit with your family! 

Do your teenagers want to backpack through Europe for the summer?

Does your college age student want to do a study year abroad?

The Perfect Example of Liberty Run Amuck

Last week I posted an article titled "Freedom, Liberty, What's the Difference."  Friday, I read a piece on The Catholic Thing titled, The Left (prematurely) Freaks Out, which drives home even more clearly the point I tried to make.  

 In my own essay I stuck to the topic of religious liberty and how that is dangerous.  David Carlin in his article

On Retreat with Brendan

I just returned from my annual five-day silent retreat using the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. I asked my blogging partners, Susan and Chriss, to fill in for me while I was gone and they did a stellar job of it. Thanks Chriss and Susan! And, really, you need to post more often.

Having the time and freedom to retreat from the world is a great gift. Doing it in silence is an even greater gift! I think of the movie a few years ago, Into Great Silence, about life in a Carthusian Monastery where the monks live in profound silence offering their lives and work for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. What a blessing it is to be engulfed, even for a few days, in profound silence.

I was awake and walking one morning before sunrise and heard the birds in symphony as they welcomed the new day. The wind was blowing rustling the leaves. I felt like I was hearing God's voice as Elijah did in the small whispering sound which is often lost in our noisy world.

Adoro Te

O hidden Godhead, humbly I adore thee,

Who truly are beneath the forms before me.

To Thee I bow my heart and bend the knee,

As failing quite, when contemplating Thee.

A Principle As Novel As It Is Wrong

Trump supporters of all stripes were praising to the hilt the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh on Monday evening after his brief acceptance speech in the East Room of the White House.  I don’t know Kavanaugh and maybe people like Laura Ingram are right when they say he’s a stellar choice.

The Death of the Catholic

The third man lived and died here

Continued from yesterday's post: God and the Deaths of Three Men - One Protestant, One Atheist, One Catholic

THE CATHOLIC

The third man to die was the Catholic who led a Catholic life, but not without pain and suffering. 

He was born in Dublin, Ireland to a middle class Irish couple, the first of three sons whose father always made certain the family went to Mass every Sunday. All three sons grew up to be handsome men with turquoise blue Irish eyes, each one possessing a pleasing temperament and a graciousness not seen today in many people. Even their mother would marvel at the beauty of her sons. 

As a child, the oldest brother contracted polio and as a result one leg never grew as long as the other and he limped all his life. His mother, once, in sincere anguish literally clutching her chest, told me that it “tore her heart” when she would see him as a child and then teenager limping down the street. She would stand at the door and could see her three sons walking home from school, one of them limping along.

Arm in Arm With the Democrat Party Platform

It has been a while since this blog said anything about VOICE, Virginians Organized for Interfaith Engagement.  This is a link to their membership page.  Please, take a minute to ponder this diverse coalition of people dedicated to forcing their political agenda down other people’s throats through intimidation.