Remembrances for March

 

Dear friends, 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

March 3^rd

M. E. Bradford, one of the South’s best defenders in the latter half of the 20^th hundredyear:

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/remembering-mel-bradford/

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/author/m-e-bradford

March 7^th

Jean-Baptiste de Bienville

‘Canadian naval officer Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, served as three-time governor of the French colony of Louisiana intermittently from 1702 to 1743. Bienville and his older brother, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, traveled on an expedition that arrived in Louisiana in 1699. Together they explored the lower Mississippi River valley and established a permanent French settlement in Louisiana, Fort Maurepas. Bienville proved particularly talented, though not always successful, as a negotiator with local Native Americans. In 1718, he chose the site where New Orleans, named for the French Duc d’Orléans, was built.’

https://64parishes.org/entry/jean-baptiste-le-moyne-sieur-de-bienville-2

March 13^th

Elizabeth Madox Roberts, a gem of a writer from Kentucky:

http://emrsociety.com/Biography

March 19^th

Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle

‘French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, is perhaps best known for giving the region and ultimately the state its name: Louisiana. In 1682, while searching for a water route to the Gulf of Mexico, La Salle—accompanied by a small group of European and Native American explorers—arrived at the point where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. There, he planted a post and claimed the river and its basin for France, naming the territory La Louisiane in honor of King Louis XIV. In so doing, La Salle helped set the stage for the next eighty years of French rule in the new colony.’

https://64parishes.org/entry/rene-robert-cavelier-sieur-de-la-salle

March 20^th

Lewis Grizzard, one of the many good comedians Southern culture has produced:

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/its-a-trick-general-theres-two-of-them/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/topics/lewis-grizzard/

March 28^th

Margaret Junkin Preston, sister-in-law to Stonewall Jackson and a great poetess and novelist:

https://civilwar.vt.edu/margaret-junkin-preston-poetess-of-the-south/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Junkin_Preston#Bibliography

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7737366/margaret-preston/photo

March 28^th

Earl Scruggs.  ‘Earl Scruggs, once compared to violinist Niccolo Paganini, not only pioneered the three-finger banjo but played it to standards of taste and technique unmatched by thousands of disciples over seven decades. He was an important figure in the birth of the bluegrass genre, and also brought his artistry to the fields of country, folk, and rock, to college campuses, and to television and the movies.’

https://www.bluegrasshall.org/inductees/earl-scruggs/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJOIqmlI65Y

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87507819/earl-eugene-scruggs

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

https://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2020/03/happy-feast-for-saints-of-march.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!

Modern Day Religions, Part II: The Religion of Wokeness

 

Many folks have pointed out the religious nature of Wokeness/Social Justice.  One ensample (via LewRockwell.com):

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/these-arent-protests-theyre-religious-ceremonies/

The latest ‘sinner’ to be deemed worthy of their post-mortem anathemas is Judge Robert Baylor, the founder of Baylor University in Texas:

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/02/20/baylor-u-students-demand-school-remove-statue-of-namesake-judge-baylor/

If those calling for the dishonoring and erasure of his memory had achieved even a fraction of what Judge Baylor did in his life, then perhaps it would be worth the time to hear their complaints.  However, since that does not seem to be the case for most of the protestors/communicants, it would probably be best for them to spend a little time getting to know the man towards whom they are directing all this rage and violence.  Here is short sketch of his life:

http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3693

It is precisely this lack of mercy in the disciples of Wokeness, however (a point that Rod Dreher hammers on very effectively on his blog at The American Conservative web site), that shows the Satanic origin of it.  Thus, it is no surprise that it resembles quite strongly other demonically-inspired religions that are likewise lacking in mercy - Yankee Abolitionism (the direct ancestor of Wokeness) or Islam - which makes it all the more essential that the South banish it from her midst.

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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!

Modern-Day Religions: The COVID Cult

 

It is a great irony that those who are most strident that they ‘follow the science’ regarding the protection from COVID provided by face masks, social distancing, etc., seem just as likely to be driven to acts of senseless violence against those who reject their views as the Crusaders and Inquisitors of the post-Schism West whom they love to condemn for their barbaric religious fanaticism (and they were unnecessarily brutal; this is not meant as a defense of the latter’s actions):

https://www.britannica.com/event/Albigensian-Crusade

https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Bridgeport-man-charged-with-beating-74-year-old-15845300.php

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-mask-subway-slurs-beating-hate-crime-20201224-7p543s4mozdhpnoremzsbommhe-story.html

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/officer-tases-arrests-woman-wearing-mask-football-game-73237382

https://www.timesofisrael.com/man-says-he-was-beaten-by-police-and-jailed-for-four-days-for-not-wearing-mask/

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/world-news/20201015/cops-beat-man-death-not-wearing-mask

The COVID scientism warriors are thus no more rational than the clerics and soldiers of the Middle Ages they decry.  Indeed, they are driving us towards a remarkably similar society in some ways.  Consider how closely the methods of the Inquisition resemble various proposals for COVID quarantine centers and such like:

 

After consulting with canon lawyers, the inquisitor would sentence those found guilty at a sermo generalis, or public homily. Judicial penances were imposed on those who had been convicted of heresy and had recanted. The most common punishments were penitential pilgrimages, the wearing of yellow crosses on clothing (which was feared because it led to ostracism), and imprisonment.

 

The inquisition employed two kinds of prisons, both staffed by laymen. One type was the murus largus, or open prison, which consisted of cells built around a courtyard in which the inmates enjoyed considerable freedom. The other type was the murus strictus, a high-security prison, where inmates were kept in solitary confinement, often in chains. Heretics who admitted their errors but refused to recant were handed over to the secular authorities and burned at the stake. There were usually not many cases of this kind, because the chief aim of the inquisitors was to reconcile heretics to the church. On rare occasions, however, large public executions did take place, as at Verona in 1278, when some 200 Cathars were burned.

 

--Edward Peters, https://www.britannica.com/topic/inquisition/Early-modern-Europe

Just as with the old Inquisition, for those guilty of the new ‘heresy’ of denying conventional COVID ‘truths’, they are to be throw into prison camps of one sort or another, or marked (with a smartphone app that they are ‘unclean’/unvaccinated/etc.), or, as above, abused physically in some way:

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/GOP-continues-to-draw-attention-to-long-dormant-15844562.php

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia/australian-state-considers-mining-camps-for-coronavirus-quarantine-idUSKBN29J0DT

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/asia/china-shijiazhuang-covid-quarantine-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

Fr Stephen Freeman has recently written about the elevation of strong personal feelings to the level of a religion (bolding added):

 

On a daily basis, I have become increasingly aware of the “religious” nature of almost the whole of modern life. That might seem to be an odd observation when the culture in which we live largely describes itself as “secular.” That designation, however, only has meaning in saying that the culture does not give allegiance or preference to any particular, organized religious body. It is sadly the case, however, that this self-conception makes the culture particularly blind to just how “religious” it is in almost everything it does. I suspect that the more removed we are from true communion with God, the more “religious” we become. It is, I think, an idolatrous substitute for true existence, and a misguided attempt to impose an order and meaning that we ourselves create. Our social life thus becomes dominated by our continual efforts to convince (or compel) others (or to convince ourselves) to accept a worldview and way of life that has no true existence apart from our own efforts to make it so.

 

--https://www.pravmir.com/the-religious-nature-of-modern-life/

‘A misguided attempt to impose an order and meaning that we ourselves create’:  It would be hard to find better words to describe what the COVID scientism warriors are trying to force upon those who disagree with them.

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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!

Offsite Post: ‘The Distortion of Man in the Post-Schism West’

 

Ever since the West made Augustinianism its theological foundation, with its roots in Plotinus’s conception of God as an absolutely simple, impersonal Monad from which all of reality emanates, there has been an ongoing destruction of the human person, his dissolving into a formless, faceless, nameless mass.  While there are times when individualism rises up strongly, this is only a temporary stage in the dialectic that ends once again in the reemergence of the impersonal essence from which everything is supposed to have begun.

Two events illustrate these truths about the West.  The first is very recent, from Las Vegas, Nevada, where a proposal allowing business corporations to form and govern towns is being discussed.  Dr Joseph Farrell explains the significance of this vis-à-vis the West and its conception of man:

 . . .

Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments

Note this:

Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments.

Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state’s economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday.

The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services. (Boldface emphasis added)

Needless to say, this prompts all sorts of ideas to swirl around in my head, none of them too good. Note firstly that there is a certain ineluctable logic here, one that, surprisingly, has taken a rather long time to arrive at, but which - if examined from the standpoint of elucidating the basic steps along the development of that logic - should come as no surprise. It would go something like this. Step one: in our system of government, individual persons are sovereign, and possess by nature certain rights that are not granted and therefore cannot be circumscribed by governments. Step two: as such, persons have the right to ban together and form, reform, or dissolve, governments, as laid out in this country's Declaration of Independence. Step three: somewhere along the way, corporations became persons in law. This step was actually first undertaken in the middle ages for reasons we needn't get into here. So step four - elaborated in Nevada's recent attempt to woo corporations to that state - should come as no surprise, for if corporations are persons in law, then they have the same rights to form, reform, or dissolve governments as any other group of persons.

 . . . Whether or not the measure succeeds in Nevada is, at this stage, a moot point. The important point is that at long last we have arrived at the fourth step in that logic that has been under way for centuries in the West. It is the ultimate fruit of a step taken long long ago, i.e., to view an individual person as part of a great collective called the corporate person, in this case, the corporate, "federal" person called Adam, and his inheritance as being one of moral culpability by dint the inheritance of a fallen, "sinful nature" or "sin nature." (And for those inclined to throw bible verses at me, don't waste your time. There's a great deal of difference between "eph ho pantes hemarton" and Jerome's mistranslation "en quo omnes peccaverunt." And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go do some homework.)

And that recalls a statement of St. Photios the Great, famous Patriarch of Constantinople in the 9th century, whom I paraphrase: to say that there is a sin of nature is a heresy. . . .

This is the stage of man losing his unique individual characteristics - i.e., a number of men being merged into a single faceless bureaucratic corporate ‘person’ - and being collapsed back into the formless essence from whence he sprang.

Another instance of the same process may be seen in the Roman Catholic devotion to what they call the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a novel form of worship that developed in the 17^th century.  The Orthodox Church rejects this devotion.  Fr Michael Pomazansky writes,

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/distortion-man-post-schism-west .

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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!