Learn to Pray the Rosary in Latin

This past Lent I decided to learn to pray the Rosary in Latin.  Years ago I heard a recording of Blessed John Paul II leading this prayer, and thought it would be great to be able to pray along with him.

Having never studied Latin, but having memorized the parts of Mass that we say in Latin, I figured I needed 3 things:

1) The Latin text of the prayers
2) A guide to pronunciation
3) Downloadable MP3s of the full Rosary in Latin

It took a lot of searching, but eventually I found the perfect resources.  Then, using the same skills needed to memorize something in English  I began to learn the prayers phrase-by-phrase, starting with the Ave Maria.  Once I thought I had that pretty well understood, I started using the downloadable recordings, along with the printed text to guide me.  If I hadn't memorized a prayer yet, I read it off my Kindle.  It took about a week of working with the prayers daily to get to where I only needed the text for the Credo, but if I can do it, so can you.

As for the Blessed John Paul II versions, they can be found here.  Unfortunately, they're not downloadable, but they are a great resource if you're online!

If you need help learning the Rosary in English, everything you need to know is on one printable page at NewAdvent.org.  My favorite English downloadable recordings are those of Elizabeth Scalia, who blogs as The Anchoress at Patheos.  The recordings can be found at the "Prayerful Podcasts" on the right sidebar.

Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!

Cue Fonzi on the Waterskis - Register For Your Wedding at Obama's Campaign?

A few days ago I read an article stating that President Obama's staff must surely despise him, because they keep making him look loopier and more out-of-touch with every passing day.  I thought it was jolly good satire, but now I'm not sure.

Today I learned about Obama's newest web site: The Obama Event Registry.  I cut my chin on my desk when I saw it:

NO WEDDING PRESENTS FOR YOU!  COMRADE OBAMA NEEDS THEM MORE!

Does anyone doubt that in a second term, "when he has more flexibility", that he won't go all Bamameister Meisterbama and declare wedding presents illegal, like in Santa Clause Is Coming to Town?

(Pardon my lack of Photoshop skills, but you get the idea)

Resist the Tyrant!  And mock him mercilessly!

If I Wasn't Catholic I'd Give Up, But I'm Not, But We Need To Address This

Charles Murray has a very prodigious intellect, and the courage to speak what comes into it, regardless of the political incorrectness.

In his latest book 'Coming Apart', he looks at how white culture is increasingly fracturing so that the citizenry our founders required for a functioning republic may no longer exist.



The American experiment can only succeed when the populace maintains a certain level of morality.  Unfortunately, Antonio Gramsci's satanic "long march through the institutions" has largely succeeded in much of the United States.  There are very few institutions of higher learning that have not been thoroughly poisoned with the intolerability of political correctness.  Universities that pretend to be bastions of enlightened thought have be transformed into gulags of radical conformity.  And their potential for self-reform is nil.

Lower levels of education have become bureaucratic killing fields of nascent male potential.  There will be no next generation of great men if they are all cowed for years for the sin of being boys instead of conformant student-bots.

But I believe that the seeds of overthrowing this dystopia are already sprouting.  I will explore these in future posts, but I believe that we will see grandparents in these United States will rise up and homeschool their grandsons in defiance of the evil education cabal.

The Forgetting Pill - The Scariest Thing in History?

Wired had an article recently that both fascinated and unnerved me.  Unnerved as in 'This could be abused to destroy the human race'.  Imagine if you could nearly instantly remove any memory you ever had.  Imagine if someone could slip you a 'mickey' and induce you to erase one of your memories just by asking you to recall it?

It's possible with current pharmaceutical technology.  That's the scary part.  Read the whole article, because you need to think about this topic before someone springs it on you like a date rape drug.  This a very complicated topic, because there are seemingly obvious benefits to erasing some memories...or are there?  You read and decide and comment.

Wait - Dino Farts Caused Catastrophic Global Warming?

Well, according to the Daily Mail they did.  And here I bought into that whole Chixulub meteor thing...

Incidentally, how did those artists know what color the Chixulub meteor was?  I'm pretty sure it would be fairly well blackened by the time it hit the Gulf of Mexico.  And I'm certain it would have a great big green flaming tail behind it.  C'mon!  Armageddon comes in Technicolor!!  Stupid artists...

Anyway, it seems that dinosaur flatulence is an appropriate topic for mainstream climate scientists, since honestly analyzing contemporary data series seem beyond their cognitive abilities.  I suggest we go to Toys R Us and buy the researchers mountains of plastic dinosaurs for their 'analyses' of data regarding extinct creatures.  Note to climate scientists:  don't stand behind the purple ones without a hazmat suit!

Cardinal Dolan on Our Impact on Public Policy

Bang! Zoom! For any American Catholic waiting for a rallying cry from our bishops, here it is! Powerful catechesis from Cardinal Dolan. He calls out our enemies and lays out the teachings guiding our conscientious object to the HHS mandate and the culture of death in general. Watch and Learn!

Cardinal Timothy Dolan: Public Policy Day Keynote

Givens and Oughts

7 Givens (Is's):

1) The innate dignity of the human person

2) Human life itself is unquestionably sacred

3) The principle of solidarity

4) The creator has instilled within us and within his creation an inherent order

5) Subsidiarity: the common good is best served by agencies, organizations, and institutions closest to the human person

6) The preferential option for the poor/ care for those left behind/ Jesus, who always seemed to have a radar for those on the side of the road

7) Because of the innate dignity of the human person, because of the sanctity of life, every person has certain inalienable rights given, not by society, not by culture, not by government, but by the creator himself

7 Oughts

1) We ought to be in politics

2) We ought to bring values and convictions to politics - and here he makes the point that "While I'm personally opposed, I cannot impose those views on my constituents" is morally incorrect!

3) Catholics ought to propose, never impose

4) We ought to stand for principle always, above politics

5) We ought to stress responsibility as much as rights

6) We ought to defend the rights of others

7) Catholics ought to stress "us", not "me"

I will be commenting on the 7 Givens and the 7 Oughts in future posts.

Here’s My Strategy on Obamacare: We win, they lose

“At the same time, however, they must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom.”

This most famous of President Reagan’s speeches was given to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983. That surprised me. Most of the speech dealt with pro-life issues and a nuclear freeze controversy, but two lengthy pull quotes are noteworthy for their timelessness, the first to begin the speech, and the second to end it:

”The basis of those ideals and principles is a commitment to freedom and personal liberty that, itself, is grounded in the much deeper realization that freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted.

The American experiment in democracy rests on this insight. Its discovery was the great triumph of our Founding Fathers, voiced by William Penn when he said, "If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.

Explaining the inalienable rights of men, Jefferson said, "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time."
And it was George Washington who said that "of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."

And finally, that shrewdest of all observers of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, put it eloquently after he had gone on a search for the secret of America's greatness and genius -- and he said, "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius of America. America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

Well, I'm pleased to be here today with you who are keeping America great by keeping her good. Only through your work and prayers and those of millions of others can we hope to survive this perilous century and keep alive this experiment in liberty -- this last, best hope of man.”

And then…

”And this brings me to my final point today. During my first press conference as President, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. I think I should point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas -- that's their name for religion -- or ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.

Well, I think the refusal of many influential people to accept this elementary fact of Soviet doctrine illustrates an historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they are. We saw this phenomenon in the 1930's. We see it too often today. This doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves and refuse to seek an understanding with them. I intend to do everything I can to persuade them of our peaceful intent, to remind them that it was the West that refused to use its nuclear monopoly in the forties and fifties for territorial gain and which now proposes 50-percent cut in strategic ballistic missiles and the elimination of an entire class of land-based, intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

At the same time, however, they must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never abandon our belief in God. And we will never stop searching for a genuine peace.

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness -- pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable "Screwtape Letters," wrote: "The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."
Well, because these "quiet men" do not "raise their voices"; because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace; because, like other dictators before them, they're always making "their final territorial demand," some would have us accept them at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I've always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride -- the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for our efforts, this administration's efforts, to keep America strong and free, while we negotiate real and verifiable reductions in the world's nuclear arsenals and one day, with God's help, their total elimination.

While America's military strength is important, let me add here that I've always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversion made him a witness to one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of the Western World exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in communism's attempt to make man stand alone without God. And then he said, for Marxism-Leninism is actually the second oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, "Ye shall be as gods."

The Western world can answer this challenge, he wrote, "but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as communism's faith in Man."
I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increased strength But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary."

Yes, change your world. One of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, said, "We have it within our power to begin the world over again." We can do it, doing together what no one church could do by itself.

God bless you, and thank you very much.”

I think Reagan’s words regarding communism apply to us today with respect to the Obama administration’s persecution of our First Amendment freedoms. “At the same time, however, they must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom.” As patriotic American citizens of all faiths we are blessed with the inalienable right to fight oppressive regimes, whether they are led by men named George or Vladimir or Barry.