Sunday, January 31, 2021

Remembrances for February

 

Hello everyone.  If you have time, please pray for these members of the Southern family on the day they reposed.  Many thanks.

But one may ask:  ‘What good does it do to pray for the departed?’  An answer is offered here:  https://orthochristian.com/130608.html

Along with prayers and hymns for the departed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6je5axPodI

11 Feb.

Charles Gayarré.  ‘New Orleans native Charles Gayarré wrote the first complete history of Louisiana: a four-volume series entitled Louisiana History (1866). Originally written in French, his study focused on the region’s domination by France, Spain, and then the United States. Many of the components for this work came out of public lectures that Gayarré began giving in the 1840s. He also wrote and published other histories, political tracts, government reports, plays, novels, biographies, and articles in numerous journals, establishing himself as one of Louisiana’s literary pioneers.’

https://64parishes.org/entry/charles-gayarr

14 Feb.

Alcée Fortier.  ‘Fortier published numerous works on language, literature, Louisiana history, folklore, Louisiana Créole languages, and personal reminiscence. His perspective was valuable because of his French Créole ancestry and he became the first historian to apply the folklore concept to Louisiana's cultural traditions.’

https://64parishes.org/entry-image/alce-fortier

http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/stjames/bios/fortiera.txt

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/146777449/alcee-fortier

15 Feb.

Oscar Adams, Jr.  A sharp lawyer and judge in Alabama.  He was the first black man to serve on Alabama’s Supreme Court.

http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3138

28 Feb.

Abel Upshur, one of Virginia’s many talented and well-respected sons.  He died young in a naval accident while serving as Secretary of State in 1844.  He wrote an important refutation of Justice Joseph Story’s theory that the united States are one, inseparable nation.  It is A Brief Enquiry, linked here along with another of his works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_P._Upshur#External_links

More about Sec Upshur is at these pages:

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/abel-p-upshur/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/lectures/abel-upshurs-critique-of-joseph-storys-commentaries-on-the-constitution-of-the-united-states-by-donald-livingston/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37679771/abel-parker-upshur/photo

Also, to celebrate some of the saints of February from the South’s Christian inheritance of various lands, follow this link on over if you’d like:

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2020/02/happy-feast-for-saints-of-february.html

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Something Good from ‘the Squad’ for a Change

 

They are opposing the use of the police state panopticon apparatus to target and harass Christians, nationalists, libertarians, etc., as ‘domestic terrorists’:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/no_author/the-squad-rejects-expansion-of-domestic-terrorism-powers-aimed-at-trump-supporters/

If only the so-called ‘conservatives’ in Washington City would now join them in limiting the scope of the federal government’s spying and prosecuting powers . . .

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Friday, January 29, 2021

‘Tell Me Who Your Friends Are . . .

 . . . and I’ll tell you who you are.’

Who does Louisiana honor as her great friends?  Well, just recently Baton Rouge has set aside a day (29 Jan.) to honor a TV weatherman celebrity:

https://www.wbrz.com/news/friday-is-pat-shingleton-day-mayor-declares

Via http://www.thedeadpelican.com/

A day honoring a fluff weatherman (though in his defense he did honor St Patrick) but no day honoring St Martin of Tours as Louisiana’s Patron Saint, in Baton Rouge nor any other part of the State?  That is very shameful.  May God have mercy on us for shunning one of His beloved friends, St Martin.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!


Serbia Is not Suffering from Cancel Culture

 

The South should follow Serbia’s ensample of love for, and public celebration of, her ancient culture:

 

“This is not just an act of unveiling a monument to our father, the creator of our state, a saint, and the one from whom it all began. This is an act of taking care of ourselves, our identity, what we have learned, what we know, and where we are going. Long live Serbia!” said Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić at the unveiling of a monument to Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja in Belgrade yesterday.

 

The 75-ft. high, 76-ton statue stands in the center of Belgrade, outside the old railroad station, depicting the father of the medieval Nemanji Dynasty with a sword in his right hand and the charter of the Athonite Hilandar Monastery in his left, reports N1.

 

Instead of a typical pedestal, St. Symeon stands on a cracked Byzantine helmet, which was installed last May. Four large reliefs depict the lineage of the saint’s dynasty.

 

Stefan Nemanja (c. 1113-1199) was the Grand Prince of the Serbian Grand Principality from 1166 to 1196 and is remembered for founding what evolved into the Serbian Empire, as well as the autocephalous Serbian Church. In 1196, he abdicated the throne and became a monk on Mt. Athos. Together with his son, St. Sava, the first Archbishop of the Serbian Church, he restored Hilandar monastery, the Athonite cradle of the Serbian Church. He is venerated as St. Symeon the Myrrh-Gusher, under the name he took in monasticism.

 

The new monument to the great statesman and saint is the work of Russian sculptor and academician Alexander Rukavishnikov.

 

It is “the great story about us (the Serbs), which is big, difficult because the story about us was often difficult. This monument is as beautiful as the story about us is beautiful… This monument is big because it’s the story about us, about who we were, where we were, what we did and what we are today and what we want to be,” President Vučić said at the opening ceremony.

 

The figure of St. Symeon dominates the St. Sava Square on which it stands and overlooks the massive St. Sava’s Cathedral.

 

“Standing here means repentance for all the years during which we forgot it, but also the awareness that we have finally discovered the root from which the most beautiful tree called Serbia originated,” the President said.

 

“Pray to God for us, Blessed Simeon, that your flock may be preserved inviolable! Glory to thee! Long live Serbia!” the President concluded his address.

 


--Image and article from https://orthochristian.com/137008.html; a video of the ceremony is available on the same page.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

The West Is Healing

 

Spiritual healing is happening in the West (i.e., she is returning to the Orthodox Faith of her forefathers), though the pace is slow at the moment.  Let us pray that nothing will disrupt it.


 . . .


In October, at the request of Abp. Nestor, the [Roman Catholic] Archbishop of Granada decided to transfer the Church of St. Bartholomew to the Orthodox parish of the Holy Protection.


The church stands in the historical center of the city. Its construction was completed in 1574.


Many new Orthodox communities have developed in Spain and Portugal in recent years. The Ukrainian Church opened two parishes in two months in late 2017, and early the next year, the Russian Church was given territory in Portugal twice within a month.


In March 2018, a church was consecrated in the Spanish seaside city of Torrevieja, and in September that year, construction began on a church in Estepona, Spain.


In November 2019, the first Romanian Orthodox monastery was consecrated in Portugal, and in September of this year, the Moscow Patriarchate began building its first church in Portugal.


In October 2018, the feast of 200 saints of Spain and Portugal was celebrated for the first time by Romanian and Russian hierarchs in Spain, and in December of that year, the Russian Church added 80 of the Iberian saints to its calendar.


--https://orthochristian.com/136981.html

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

St Macarius the Roman and the Fallen West

 

We like Prof Riley’s idea of a King’s Week to atone somewhat for the regicidal, revolutionary violence that has made its home in the West:

 

 . . . The implied and frequently explicit claim of MLK celebrations is that the only social regime that could be opposed to the multiculturalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-traditionalist value system of the MLK cult is racist, fascist, and evil. This is false. The social order preceding the age of revolutions in the West was known in French as the Ancien Régime. It was founded on traditional authority, centered ultimately on God, and then here on earth on the political sovereign, the King, and the body of law that descended from God and relied on the King for its implementation and protection. It was overthrown by a variety of revolutions—English, French, American—and evolved into further elaborations through the years, including the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s.

 

January marks the striking of the two most significant and earliest blows against that Old Order by the revolutionaries. We might do well to mark those days to remind ourselves what was lost and what tragedies have befallen us because of these outrages. These holidays would be opportunities to celebrate traditional order and authority but still more they would be days of mourning, not only for the nations most directly affected, but for all in the Western world who understand the fundamental values that have been stripped away from us and not yet effectively replaced.

 

On Jan. 30, 1649, the English monarch Charles I was beheaded by English revolutionaries and sent to the incorruptible throne he was certain awaited him in heaven. The brutality of Cromwell and his regime followed. On Jan. 21, 1793, the French revolutionaries performed the same monstrous act against their King Louis XVI, and later in the same year, to their Queen Marie Antoinette. The descent into the demonic savagery of the Committee of Public Safety’s reign of terror would begin before the year expired.

 

In these two abominable moments, the murderous designs of the revolutions now dominating American, British, and French societies were realized, and the already established trajectory of the assault on authority was given still greater velocity. This was the consequence of the foolish utopianism of those who, in the words of the Comte de Ségur, “without regret for the past, without misgiving for the future… trod gaily on a carpet of flowers that hid the abyss beneath [them].”

 

Celebrating Kings Week (I suggest the last week in the month) would not require that one literally be a monarchist. It would simply be a collective opportunity to recall the extreme dangers and violence of revolution, and to recognize the splendors and majesty of the Western tradition even prior to the emergence of the political institutions that most contemporary Westerners, in their ahistorical ignorance of the vast expanse of their own civilization, mistakenly believe to be the only ones possible.

 

On the campus where I teach, this year’s MLK Week events have been, apparently unironically, given the title “Lessons in Resistance.” Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows that adherence to the radical principles articulated under its aegis hasn’t the slightest thing to do with resistance to anything except the traditional American political principles that the Civil Rights Movement assaulted and that nearly the entirety of American elite culture now opposes. It’s a rather long way from courageous “resistance” to standing on the side of those who dominate the entirety of American culture and society. The real resistance in our times is in recognizing what a tremendous loss this revolution that is now orthodoxy produced, and to acknowledge the beauty of what it trampled underfoot.

 

--https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/mlk-and-a-modest-proposal-for-real-resistance/

But it is far more important to understand why this revolutionary madness has descended on the West, and remains rooted there (for a modern ensample of this madness in Texas, from one who wishes to remain nameless:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMLwlvL4Nu0).  As we have said before, it must be traced back to the West’s first overthrow of legitimate Christian authority, when the Roman bishop (the Pope) rose up against the Orthodox Church (Europe’s first Church, the Church of the Holy Apostles), proclaimed himself the vicar of Christ, and made himself a divine figure, a man-god.  From this point, the decay of the West sets in.  And it is such a terrible fall that St Justin Popovich of Serbia (+1979) links the lineage of Antichrist with her cataclysmic falling away, that lineage being from Judas to Arius to the Pope to the Antichrist.  Everything from the Roman Catholic Pope (the Infallible Man) onwards - Luther and the Protestant Reformation, the secular Enlightenment, the singularity and transhumanism - all of these are about mankind deifying himself, are an attempt to realize the promise of Satan that ‘ye shall be as gods’ apart from the Holy Trinity.

But God is merciful and will allow the West to repent and return to her original Church home if she will only bend her stiff neck in humility.  In this respect, St Macarius the Roman is an important figure for her.  Living in Rome during the time of the upheavals surrounding the Protestant Reformation, he longed to know where the Truth lay, and the Merciful Lord led him into the Orthodox Church:

 

Saint Macarius the Roman was born at the end of the fifteenth century into a wealthy family of Rome. His parents raised him in piety and gave him an excellent education. He might have expected a successful career in public service, but he did not desire honors or earthly glory. Instead, he focused on how to save his soul.

 

He lived in an age when the Christian West was shaken by the Protestant Reformation. While others around him were pursuing luxury and lascivious pleasures, he studied the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers. Saint Macarius was grieved to see so many darkened by sin and worldly vanity, and was disturbed by the rebellions and conflicts within the Western Church. With tears, he asked God to show him the path of salvation, and his prayer did not go unanswered. He came to realize that he would find the safe harbor of salvation in the Orthodox Church.

 

Saint Macarius left Rome secretly, and set out for Russia without money, and wearing an old garment. After many sufferings on his journey, he arrived in Novgorod, where he rejoiced to see so many churches and monasteries. One of these monasteries had been founded three centuries before by his fellow countryman, Saint Anthony the Roman (August 3). 

 

Saint Macarius came to the banks of the River Svir, where Saint Alexander of Svir (April 17 and August 30) had founded the monastery of the Holy Trinity. Saint Alexander received Macarius into the Orthodox Church and tonsured him as a monk. Macarius, however longed for the solitary life. He moved to an island on the River Lezna, forty-five miles from Novgorod, where he engaged in ascetical struggles and unceasing prayer.

 

 . . . 

 

--https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2021/01/19/100233-venerable-macarius-the-roman-of-novgorod

May the South and the rest of the Western European peoples find their way home, through the prayers of St Macarius.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!