Monday, November 28, 2016

Major Apocalyptic Sign Will Appear in 2017 Tuesday 29 November, 2016 Vigil of St. Andrew, St. Saturninus

Major Apocalyptic Sign Will Appear 23 September 2017

 

  _____________________

 

A vision seen by St. John and described in Apocalypse or Revelation 12:1, will appear in the heavens in 2017.    Speaking of His Second Coming at the end of the world, Jesus says in Luke 21:25 ... "And there shall be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars ..."

Jesus says that these signs will signal to mankind that we are very close to His Return at the end of the World.

In Genesis 1:14 it says:  "And God said:  Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years."

Here God says one of the purposes for the lights of heaven is that they are signs given to mankind.   Planets can also be considered lights of heaven, because they reflect the light of the sun, and they look like stars when we look at the night sky, because planets reflect the light of the sun.

Some refer to planets as wandering stars.   

 

In Matthew 24:3, the disciples asked Jesus, "Tell us when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of your coming and the consummation of the world?"   

 

And they asked him, saying" Master, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when they shall begin to come to pass?" Luke 21:7

  A few verses later Jesus says " ... there shall be great signs..."

 

In Apocalypse 12:1, it speaks of a great sign.  "And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon at her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars:  And being with child, she cried travailing in birth and was in pain to be delivered."

Now, take a look at how the different constellations and stars in the heavens will line up in the very near future on September 23, 2017.

 

We see the constellation Virgo, the virgin, which one could say is a representation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

On September 23, 2017 the virgin is clothed with the sun.  You can also see that the moon is at her feet.   Also notice the serpent below the virgin's foot.   On September 23, 2017, above Virgo, the virgin's head we also see the constellation Leo, the lion, which contains 9 stars.

Near these 9 stars we see the planets Mercury, Mars and Venus.   Since planets reflect the light of the sun, these planets also look like stars.   Therefore this gives you what appears to be 12 stars near the head of Virgo the virgin.

So on September 23, 2017, we will have the woman, Virgo the virgin, clothed with the sun, the moon at her feet, and near her head 12 stars, as you can see, at the exact same time Jupiter, which is known as the King Planet in our solar system, will be right near the womb of Virgo the virgin precisely in the area where a child would be born.  This is a symbolic representation of the Birth of Jesus Christ, the King from the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This is how things will line up on September 23, 2017.   It all lines up in the heavens exactly like the vision St. John describes in Apocalypse 12:1.   

 

According to non-Catholic astronomers who have studied how these different constellations have moved and will move around in the future, this will be the only time in history that it will all line up like this.    

 

On November 20, 2016, Jupiter went inside the constellation of Virgo the virgin, near the belly area.  One could see this as a symbolic representation of Jesus Christ, the King represented by the King planet, Jupiter entering into the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, represented by Virgo, the virgin.


Jupiter moves around inside of Virgo and finally comes completely out of Virgo 42 weeks later on September 9, 2017.

 

 A normal human pregnancy is around 38-42 weeks.


Thus the time period of 42 weeks in which Jupiter will be inside Virgo is the same as a normal period of time for the pregnancy and birth of a human being.

About two weeks later on September 23, 2017 we have the moon at the virgins feet, with a crown of 12 stars, and Virgo is clothed with the sun exactly as St. John described in his vision in Apocalypse 12:1.

 

This is a clear sign given to us by God that we are very deep into the last days foretold in the Book of the Apocalypse

 

 

 

 

 ____________________

The Point

 




Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M. — Saint Benedict Center

 

St Michael defeats the Devil “Essential to the understanding of our chaotic times is the knowledge that the Jewish race constitutes a united anti-Christian bloc within Christian society, and is working for the overthrow of that society by every means at its disposal.” — April 1958.


1952  1953  1954  1955  1956  1957  1958  1959 1959

 

In Memory Of William Thomas Walsh — Who Tried To Warn Us (About The Jews) Before It Was Too Late (March)

 

Some Summaries After Seven Years — Jews, Masons, Communists Etc. (February)

 

Should Hate Be Outlawed? (January)

 

Site Map

 

Year list

 

1958

 

The Protection Of Christmas (December)

 

The Jews And The Saints — What Our Canonized Catholics Are Lately Suffering (November)

 

Catholics, The Bible, And The Jews (October)

 

How The Jews Invaded The Holy Land (September)

 

He Fought Our Enemies And Kept The Faith — (Belloc) (August)

 

The Problem Of Monsignor Ronald Knox (July)

 

Anti-Christians In Capital Letters — (Jewish Organizations) (June)

 

Monsignor Ellis In Wonderland (May)

 

Newspapers And The New York Times — (Jewish Media Control) (April)

 

On Making The United States Catholic — Reasons For Our Failure (March)

 

Soldiers Of The Church Militant — Our Canonized Saints At War (With The Jews) (January-February)

 

Site Map

 

Year list

 

1957

 

The Price Of Christmas In Mexico — Freemasons (December)

 

Six Pointers On The Jews (November)

 

The Jewish Lie About Brotherhood — The Catholic Answer — Israeli Brotherhood (October)

 

An Unholy People In The Holy Land — The Actions Of The Jews (September)

 

A Sure Defence Against The Jews — What Our Catholic Bishops Can Do For Us (August)

 

The Judaising Of Christians By Jews — Tactics Of The Church’s Leading Enemies (July)

 

The Rejected People Of Holy Scripture — Why The Jews Fear The Bible (June)

 

Our Lady Of Fatima Warned Us (About Jewish Communists) (May)

 

The Fight For The Holy City — Efforts Of The Jews To Control Jerusalem (April)

 

Dublin’s Briscoe (Jewish Lord Mayor) Comes To Boston (March)

 

When Everyone Was Catholic — The Courage Of The Faith (Regarding The Jews) In The Thirteenth Century (February)

 

Jewish Invasion Of Our Country — Our Culture Under Siege (January)

 

Site Map

 

Year list

 

1956

 

The Enemies Of Christ At Christmas (December)

 

The Jewish Plan To Destroy Christianity — The Real Purpose Of Interfaith 

(November)

 

The Church Militant And The Jews — Some Front-Line Reports (Through The Centuries) (October)

 

Another Challenge To Jews And Masons (September)

 

Some Jews In Gentile Clothing (August)

 

Christmas In July (Jews Against Christmas) (July)

 

The War Between The Bible And The Jews (June)

 

Masons, Jews, And Catholic Schools (May)

 

The Story Of God And The Jews: Nineteen Hundred Years Of Rejection (April)

 

Foreign Allegiance Of American Jews (March)

 

Profiles Of Two White Jews (Jews All The Same) (February)

 

The Jewish Gangs Of Boston (Jewish Domination) (January)

 

Site Map

 

Year list

 

1955

 

Some Needed Information About The Jews (Jewish Domination, Jewish Destruction Of Christian Sites, Etc.) (December)

 

Pointers; American Power And Catholic Freedom, Etc. (November)

 

Recent Protest In The Streets Of Boston — Christian Defense Of The Blessed Sacrament (Against The Jews) (October)

 

Catholic Power And The Plots Of The Jews (September)

 

Some Needed Information About The Jews (Jewish Media Control, Etc.) (August)

 

Should Hate Be Outlawed? (July)

 

The Plans Of The Jews For World Control (UN) (June)

 

The Jews And Their New University (In Boston) (May)

 

The Holy Land And The Jews (Jewish Destruction Of Christian Shrines) (April)

 

More News About Jews And Others — Some Current Threats To Our Faith And Country (March)

 

The Catholic Church And The Jews — Traditional Policy Toward The Haters Of Christ (February)

 

World Government By The Jews (UN) (January)

 

Site Map

 

Year list

 

1954

 

The Buyers And Sellers (Jews) At Christmas; The Present Position Of Cardinal Newman (Jew), Etc. (December)

 

The Secret (Jewish) Strength Of Communism (November)

 

Uncle Sam And Anti-Semitism; The Monkeys And The Jews, Etc. (October)

 

In Search Of A Catholic Education; The Catholic Church And Jewish Converts (Marranos) (September)

 

American Gentiles And The Jews; Masonic Inroads In Italy, Etc. (August)

 

In Shepherds’ Clothing; The Menace Of Magazines, Etc. (July)

 

Recent Halo In The Vatican (Pope St. Pius X); A Reply To Lady Abrahams (A Jewish "Convert"), Etc. (June)

 

Signs Of Spring In Boston (American Catholics), Etc. (May)

 

Pointers (Brotherhood, Jews, Masons, Communists Etc.) (April)

 

The Gospel According To John Bull (English Protestantism); Brotherhood And Motherhood (Masonic-Jewish Internationalism), Etc. (March)

 

The Hammer Of Freemasons, Etc. (February)

 

Site Map

 

Year list

 

1953

 

Glory To God In The Manger; Pointers; Virgin Mother; The Native — A Tract In One Act, Etc. (December)

 

Lambs Without Shepherds; Catholic Mexico And Catholic Canada, Etc. (November)

 

The Masons And The Jews; The Newman Clubs, Etc. (October)

 

What Happened In Chicago (SBC Brothers Jailed) (September)

 

New Versions And Perversions Of The Bible; The Finalys And Baptism Betrayed, Etc. (August)

 

More Statistics And Less Faith; There Are Only Eleven Million (Jews) (July)

 

Our Thirty-Third Degree Enemies; Calling All Protestants! Etc. (June)

 

The Overseers Of American Theology; Dear Catholic Priests Of America, Etc. (May)

 

Frauds: Pious And Otherwise; The Priest, The Minister, And The Rabbi, Etc. (April)

 

The Oracle At Adelphi; The Anti-Semitism Of The Jews, Etc. (March)

 

An Open Letter To President Eisenhower; Pointers; American Catholics And Ex-Protestants, Etc. (February)

 

The Interfaith Of Our Fathers; The Starving Children Of America, Etc. (January)

 

Site Map

 

Year list

 

1952

 

The American Christmas Story; Pointers; Dim Lights On A Christmas Tree, Etc. (December)

 

The Church Militant And The Church Dilettante; The New Society Of Jesus, Etc. (November)

 

The Apostle Of Invincible Ignorance, Etc. (October)

 

Portrait Of A Pious Fraud; Our Vanishing Seminarians, Etc. (September)

 

How To Win Friends And Influential People; Saints For The New York Times, Etc. (August)

 

Thoughts To Add To A Harvard Commencement, Etc. (July)

 

The Threat Of A National Church; The Christophers — Change The World To What? Etc. (March)

 

The Center Of Interest In Cambridge (SBC); Saint Agnes, Etc. (February)

 

Year list

 

Site Map
_______________________

The Point


Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M. — Saint Benedict Center

 

February, 1952

 

POINTERS

 

With this issue, The Catholic Observer changes name to The Point. It is a name we feel is wonderfully fitting. If there is any adjective that describes American life today, it is “pointless.” What are we here for? where are we going? what is the point of it all? are questions that are left unanswered. Our particular concern, though, is that Catholics are sharing in this general regime of pointlessness. And for them it is especially tragic, for they have been entrusted with keeping the one true Faith, and today they are losing sight of the point of that Faith. They treat it as an efficient organization for the suppression of Communism, as a fund-raising, enterprise — as almost everything, except what it is, the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ for our salvation. 

 

If you want to get The Point, send us your name and address, and we will put you on our mailing list. We can promise you a monthly [edition] of notes and comment in which all of the remarks will be pointed, pointed in the direction of the Catholic Faith. 

 

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Christmas has passed for another year, and the Infant God and His Mother were no more noticeable in this Christmas than in any of the past few. It was once again a day of Seasons Greetings, Santa Claus, department store gifts, and package-store spirits. Boston Catholics, however, were given the privilege of observing Christmas in the traditional Catholic manner. They were thoughtfully provided with Midnight Mass on television, enabling them to witness the real absence of the Real Presence in the comfort of their living rooms. 

 

The boys and girls of Saint Benedict Center have in the past month been going around Boston selling Catherine Goddard Clarke’s new book, Gate of Heaven. In the course of doing this, they have spoken with some 70,000 Boston Catholics. Needless to say, their experiences have been many and diverse. Some of these experiences we will tell you of in future issues. But, in general, they have this to report: While there remains a large number of those unworthy Catholics who are ashamed of their faith or indifferent to it, yet there is unmistakably a new vitality among Boston Catholics — a kind of waking up — a growing concern for the state of the Faith and determination that it be not lost. These are the people who have been responsible for making Gate of Heaven the most widely read and discussed book in all of Boston. 

 

Incidentally, Gate of Heaven will soon be available through bookstores, in a clothbound edition coming out March 3. 

 

*   *   *   *   *   
 

To say “regardless of race, color, or creed” is like saying “regardless of butcher, baker, or murderer.” The people who want us to disregard our creed are usually people who have no creed of their own worth regarding. 

 

*   *   *   *   *   
 

The following question appeared, so help us, in a Harvard Philosophy Exam: “7. Prove that when an irresistible force meets an immovable body, Hell freezes over. (This can be done by pure logic.)” 

 

Which shows what you can get away with when you have ivy on your walls. 

 

*   *   *   *   *   
 

Archbishop Cushing, in a recent address: “One-half of the world today is anti-God.” 

 

Father Keller, of the Christophers, in a recent pamphlet: “Less than one percent of the world is causing all the world’s troubles.” 

 

Things seem to be a lot better in the New York diocese. 

 

THE CENTER OF INTEREST IN CAMBRIDGE

 

Saint Benedict Center is the third point of a triangle whose other two points are St. Paul’s Church, pastored by Msgr. Hickey, Vicar General of the Archdiocese, and Adams House, one of the Harvard dormitories. The arrangement is an extremely interesting one, as the occupants of each of the three points can testify. It is also a much-visited one. 

 

There are undoubtedly many places in greater Boston with more mossy traditions than the Center, but there seems to be no place currently so fascinating or notorious. For instance, there is a woman we know who was visited recently by a friend from California. Since it was her first trip to Boston, the woman asked her friend what she would like to see first in the historic old city. “Take me to Cambridge,” the friend replied. “I want to see Saint Benedict Center.” 

 

The reason for all this interest and excitement is, of course, Father Leonard Feeney, the Center’s spiritual director, the priest who dared to decry the carefully-established methods of expediency and to proclaim the Catholic Faith in its traditional purity. By doing this, Father has disturbed the peace of mind of more people than any other man in the United States. Many people are quite prepared to be charmed by Father, who made his first reputation as a poet and lecturer, until they find he is really saying what rumors have reported him as saying — that without the Catholic Faith you cannot save your soul. People who never had any interest in salvation, who laughed at Hell as a medieval superstition, become suddenly alarmed when they find that this priest says that, unless they change, they are going there. They gasp in horror, step back, and cry that Father is “preaching hate.” In this land of religious freedom, there seems to be only one thing that must not be said, and that is that Jesus Christ is God and that He founded one Church for the salvation of all men. 

 

Harvard College has been particularly upset by Father’s Christian challenge. This stems not only from the proximity of the Center to Harvard, but also from the fact that almost half of the Center boys are ex-Harvard, most of whom resigned before receiving their diplomas, giving as their reason that attendance at an anti-Christian institution was incompatible with their Faith. This won for Father early recognition among the Harvard deans as a man of dangerous ideas. Then, too, Father has never pulled his punches when attacking Harvard’s teachings or its teachers. He has openly and strongly denounced J. B. Conant, the self-styled “skeptical chemist” who is Harvard’s president, for his answer to someone who asked him if he thought we were right in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. Conant’s reply was, “I think we should have dropped ten atomic bombs.” He has also attacked such professors as F. O. Matthiessen, the Harvard English teacher who eventually jumped from a hotel window and thereby won for himself the veneration of all loyal Harvard men. (It is a Harvard custom always to refer to its own suicides as “martyrs.”) 

 

As far as the doctrine of “No salvation outside the Church” goes, Harvard would be quite willing to admit as an academic point that this is the traditional teaching of the Church. But Father’s insistence on its application to every single individual, even those with a Harvard degree, has made it a little too personal for Harvard’s comfort. 

 

The latest evidence of Harvard’s hostility is an article in the Harvard Crimson, a nervous, two-page diatribe against Father. Although the article is somewhat in the nature of an “expose,” its exact purpose is a little vague. The reporter seemed to be torn between trying to fit Father into one of the categories he had learned about in sociology class and trying to dramatize himself as a sort of counter-spy, like the ones he’d seen in the movies. The article resulted in typical Crimson repercussions (someone broke the window of the St. Benedict Center). 

 

Finally, and worthy of special mention, there are the Harvard Catholics, that self-conscious, apologetic little group of misfits, who are constantly trying to convince Catholics that a Harvard education doesn’t hinder their Faith and to convince Harvard that their Faith doesn’t hinder their being Harvard men. Among these Harvard Catholics there has been each year a large number of priests, sent there to give their education the finesse of the atheistic point of view. When Father attacked Matthiessen, three Jesuits who were studying under him retaliated by attacking Father. Matthiessen’s leap left these three Jesuits sitting in his classroom. As evidence of their faithful discipleship, they could offer, besides the prestige of a Harvard degree, their notebooks, in which were carefully recorded all of the suicide’s ideas. 

 

BY FATHER FEENEY

 

The generic religion of the United States of America is meeting-house Christianity. Its ritual requires three items: a pew, a pulpit, and a preacher. Add to that a small organ, to assist in its single devotional indulgence: a hymn. 

 

The meeting-house itself is a sacred edifice which looks something like a church, partly like a library, and a little like a bank. It is often covered with ivy, and in more cultivated sections of our country, as in New England, is usually rich in historical reminiscences. 

 

Meeting-house Christianity discourages an intellectual outlook on the subject of salvation, and thrives on sincerities rather than on certitudes. Its theories in the field of Christian Doctrine are so diverse that its disciples have fairly run out of hyphens trying to link them all together. This program leaves it with a confused Christology, and even with a theology which is sometimes a matter of conjecture. The lifework of a devout meeting-house parishioner is to be a perpetual seeker after truth, whose proper chastisement comes from never being permitted to find it ... 

 

Lacking system, even in its morals, meeting-house Christianity was bound to have an explosion of pride somewhere in its ranks, and it had one about a hundred years ago in the State of Massachusetts, by way of an eccentric doctrine known as Unitarianism. The Unitarians, many of whom were men of abstemious habits and great wealth, finding the Christianity they were experiencing too complex to be a reflection of God, delved into Deism and discovered a God too fastidious to become man. As a result, the divinity of Christ went overboard in Boston as lightly as tea had gone overboard in an earlier revolt. But the genius of Christ, like the excellence of the flavor of tea, has never been questioned there. In Boston, Christ continues to be quoted by Unitarians, more at tea parties than in church, and not for what He said, but for what He “put so well.” 

 

(from The Leonard Feeney Omnibus

 

SAINT AGNES

 

Three hundred years after the first Christmas, there were still numbers of people who believed in it with the freshness of Bethlehem’s Shepherds. Many of them lived at Rome; and, of these, one was Agnes. Agnes was a child and a Christian, and Rome was a bad place to be either. Beyond being a child, Agnes was a girl, in a city where that was discouraged. Beyond being a Christian, Agnes was a Catholic, in a time before such a distinction was needed. For Agnes was born in the catacombs, when the Rome overhead was still an Empire. And it was twelve years before the Empire would be obliged, regretfully, to require Agnes’ head. 

 

In those twelve years, she learned, in its simplicity, the Catholic Faith. That there was once a girl so loved of God that God’s delight was to be born of her. That God as man had lived in our world and, before He died for us, had devised a way in which man might become God. Indeed, this Way was God — the Flesh and Blood of Jesus. Having received this Divine Flesh and Blood into her body, Agnes vowed her virginity to the Jesus with Whom she was so one. This vow, and the Faith that prompted it, were Agnes’ transgressions against the Empire. 

 

The removal of a head by a sword is a process that varies little with individual performances. In this sense, Agnes’ martyrdom was, if not routine, regular. But, as St. Ambrose says of the twelve-year-old Agnes, “Behold! a strange martyr! She is not grown of stature to fight the battle, but she is ripe for the triumph; too weak to run in the race, she is still clearly entitled to the prize; unable from her age to be other than a learner, she is found a teacher.” 

 

For years after the death of Agnes in 304, Rome pretended to be still an Empire, and perhaps this is why St. Agnes is seldom called “of Rome,” lifting her city to her sanctity, in the way a Teresa would one day elevate Avila. As if to compensate for this lack of length in her name, Holy Mother the Church gives to St. Agnes the liturgical length of an “octave-day.” On January 28th we have the “little feast” of St. Agnes, exactly one week after her “great feast” of January 21st, giving us a double dose of her annual love to warm our Januaries. 

 

God’s saints are abundantly remembered. The truth of this is realized in learning that St. Agnes has not only taken over two feast-day Masses, but that she has established herself in the middle of each Mass of the year. Secure in the Canon, between St. Lucy and St. Cecilia, St. Agnes is every Mass’ reminder that an Empire is no match for a girl, when that girl is out to win God’s heart. 

 


Point Magazine Index

 

The Point


Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M. — Saint Benedict Center

July, 1952

POINTERS

 

The past few weeks were great ones for the Interfaithers. From everywhere came reports of Catholic willingness to compromise the Faith for the sake of some common interest with heretics and Jews. 

 

In the mid-west, the National Catholic Rural Life Conference decided that Interfaith was being neglected down on the farm. The decision resulted in a union of the NCRLC with the non-Catholic Rural Life Association. From now on, the two groups will have one name (The National Committee on Religion and Rural Life) and one head — this year a Protestant, next year a Catholic. 

 

This inter-creedal agriculturalism should produce some interesting religious hybrids. In such an arrangement, the opportunities for a new Luther Burbank are exceeded only by those for a new Martin (Luther). 

 

*   *   *   *   *   
 

In The Catholic World last month the Paulists gave Interfaith a boost by printing an article which described an unbaptized Jewish girl’s “true mystic union with the God she so genuinely loved.” With all sympathy and respect, The Catholic World explained how Simone Weil, a Jewish mystic, could fulfill God’s Holy Will by spurning baptism and stoutly refusing to join the Church. The article does not explain just how Simone Weil got into Heaven without baptism, but the clear impression is that she did. 

 

When speaking infallibly, the Catholic Church tells Catholic mothers that their children who die without baptism can never go to Heaven. 

 

When speaking interfaithfully, The Catholic World tells Jewish mothers that their unbaptized children can. 

 

*   *   *   *   *   
 

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Bishop Francis J. Haas was chosen to receive the B’nai B’rith Interfaith award. While thanking the Jewish assembly for liking him regardless of his creed, Bishop Haas got off some choice Interfaithery. 

 

Speaking on the great dangers facing our United States culture, the Bishop, like a true orator, touched upon those concerns which were nearest the Hebrew hearts of his listeners — “the high cost of living, prices, wages, rents ... the entire economy.” Then, as any gentile must, when addressing a Jewish audience, Bishop Haas launched into an attack against “discrimination.” 

 

His Excellency had the usual condemnations for those who “look down upon others.” Notably missing from Bishop Haas’ talk was any reference to the Divine Person Who, two thousand years ago, looked down upon B’nai B’rith’s ancestors, a howling Jerusalem mob who accepted the consequences of murdering God when they shouted, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” 

 

*   *   *   *   *   
 

In Boston, Interfaith went collegiate when the Jesuit priest who heads Boston College paid a visit to Temple Israel Meeting House and stayed long enough to give the baccalaureate address for a Protestant girls’ school. 

 

*   *   *   *   *
 

In contrast, at the Eucharistic Congress in Barcelona, Generalissimo Franco reaffirmed the policy that has made him an ogre to American Protestants and an embarrassment to American Catholics: “We are not a bellicose people, but if the hour of need should come, Spain, without any doubt, would once again be in the vanguard of those in the service of God. With the humility fitting in a good Christian, I proclaim the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Faith of the Spanish nation and its love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and for Pope Pius XII. By loving God, Spaniards love peace, and they unite their prayers for peace to those of the Holy Father and of Catholics everywhere at this time. The history of our nation is inseparably linked with the history of the Catholic Church. Its glories are our glories, its enemies are our enemies.” 

 


THOUGHTS TO ADD TO A HARVARD COMMENCEMENT

 

On June 19, Harvard College held its annual commencement exercises. On that day, the graduating class of 1952, having been presented with diplomas in testimony of four years of faithful discipleship, was spewed out into the world, to put into practice the lessons it had learned at Harvard. 

 

A large part of this class of ’52, like all Harvard classes, will end up as alcoholics, drug-addicts, and suicides; but another large part, to some extent overlapping the first, will end up in the most influential positions in the country: as the officials and policy-makers in our government, as the writers of our books, and the editors of our newspapers, as the teachers of our children. All of these Harvard graduates, whoever and wherever they may be, can be relied upon to have this in common: they will all think, feel and act according to the prescribed Harvard pattern, which they will attempt to impose upon the rest of the world. 

 

Harvard makes a great commotion about how it encourages freedom of opinions; and while it is true that Harvard allows its students the kind of freedom in choosing their intellectual diet that a farmer allows his hogs, still, no matter what variety of swill a student may feed his mind on during his four years, he comes out unmistakably branded with the same mark as every other Harvard student. 

 

The reason for this is that Harvard is fundamentally mediocre. The only thing that distinguishes it from the rest of mediocrity is the influence it commands by reason of its wealth, power, and prestige. It is mediocrity organized and made effective. But it is mediocrity nonetheless. That is Harvard’s milieu, its climate, and it cannot get away from it. For the doctrines that Harvard has committed itself to teach are the doctrines that mediocrity has made and that it thrives on. 

 

Whatever might lift a man out of the class of the mediocre Harvard teaches its students to avoid, by making it appear ridiculous or unimportant. It teaches them to be suspicious of greatness, fearful of courage, scornful of holiness. It teaches its students to revel in their second-rateness; it teaches them to be smug, complacent, and self-satisfied. It pretends to foster individuality, but the individuality of Harvard is the same in every individual. If a boy were ever to realize himself as a person, unique and to endure forever, he might revolt against this mediocrity, and so Harvard teaches him his insignificance. It tells him he is in existence by sheerest chance, helplessly determined by his environment, a descendant of apes, one of billions who have lived over billions of years on an unimportant planet of an unimportant universe, a structure of atoms accidentally gotten together, likely to be destroyed at any moment by the explosion of other atoms, and then to be gone forever. 

 

Harvard is just as cheap and vulgar as any daily tabloid. It has a more refined vocabulary, but its interests are exactly the same. What the newspaper presents as a sensational bit of scandal, Harvard presents as a case history in psychology. As for Harvard’s pretenses to culture, they are as fraudulent as Hollywood’s. Harvard will teach its students to laugh at American millionaires who import castles from Italy in which to have their cocktail parties, or who hang Renaissance paintings on their walls to give their homes an air of refinement. But Harvard itself will import anything it has read about in history, in an effort to give the place a tone, and is blissfully unaware, as only an American bourgeois can be, of the grotesque contrasts that result. For instance, Soldier’s Field, where the Harvard band forms itself into big H’s while blaring “Wintergreen for President” and where the Harvard football team gets trounced by Yale, is modeled on the Roman Colosseum, where Christians once were martyred for their Faith. 

 

The courses at Harvard, which the students refer to familiarly as ec, gov, phil, lit, etc., present either a hopelessly superficial survey of some subject, or else encourage the student to blind, intense specialization. “Sorry, that’s not my field,” is a frequently heard Harvard expression, offered as excuse for anything from not knowing the chemical structure of coal to not knowing that God has become man. The Harvard faculty includes such men as Pitirim Sorokin, a mad Russian who periodically, and in scarcely understandable English, assails the rest of the faculty and the world in general for their failure to adopt his sociological theories. Ernest Hooton is another Harvard teacher who receives great kudos. He is a somewhat simian anthropologist who, to amuse his friends, named his son Newton. Hooton’s task is to convince his students that all men originally descended from creatures like himself. 

 

Probably the most representative of all Harvard teachers is the late F. O. Matthiessen, who was professor of History and Literature. He exemplified perfectly the kind of man Harvard likes to boast of and to hold up to its students for their admiration and imitation: he was literate, liberal, agnostic, and successful. But one night he took a room in a Boston hotel, wrote a note telling of his pique at the state of the world, and then stepped from his twelfth floor window. 

 

Harvard had considered Matthiessen’s brains one of its most valuable assets, and it was upset to find them splashed vulgarly across a Boston pavement. To cover up for this disgrace, Harvard organized an association that would give perpetual honor to Matthiessen’s name and his ideas. The ultimate comment, however, the summing-up of both Matthiessen and Harvard, was provided by John Ciardi, an Italian apostate in the Harvard English department. Asked for a statement by the Boston newspapers the morning after Matthiessen’s suicide leap, Ciardi, striking a literary pose, remarked, “At times like these, one finds oneself on the edge of things.” 

 

BY FATHER FEENEY


There is a Holy House of Bread
Where friends may feast and foes are fed,
And none is starved, none surfeited;


Where souls can relish the ideal
And bodies revel in the real
Where mind and mouth can make a meal;


Where simpletons who suck their thumbs
Can share the carvings and the crumbs
With Constantines and Chrysostoms.


Within this Fortress I was brought,
A little thing without a thought,
And given all for giving nought.


I was anointed with a Sign,
And someone’s promise, made for mine,
Attached my branch unto a Vine


Of Immortality and Love,
With Intimations from above
That Wordsworth was not thinking of.


Arriving at the age of two,
I found the faith I held as true
Enhanced my infant point of view.


I could believe a rubber ball,
Although somewhat phenomenal,
Would really bounce against a wall;


A jumping-jack when squeezed would squeak,
As though unwilling, so to speak,
To wait for reason’s pure critique.


When toys were trunked and school begun,
I was, among a many, one
Entrusted to a wimpled nun:


A virgin vestaled with three vows
Who had the Holy Ghost for spouse,
And tried devoutly to arouse


An aptitude for long divisions
Involving cerebral collisions
With theological precisions.


This gentle girl in cape and coif
With softest silver in her laugh,
Prepared me for my epitaph:


“Here lies a Lad whose sins were sins,
Not streptococcic orange skins;
Nor were his virtues vitamins.


He learned the rules and knew the game;
If Hell or Heaven hold the same —
Himself, not spinach, was to blame.”


(from Songs for Listeners, Macmillan)


Good Night, Sweet Princeton!

 

Maritainism is a system of thought which allows Catholics to be both Catholic and acceptable in the drawing rooms of Protestant and Jewish philosophers. Maritainism is not a seeking and a finding of the Word made flesh. It is a perpetual seeking for un-fleshed truth in an abstract scheme called Christianity. Maritainism is the scrapping of the Incarnation in favor of a God Whose overtures to us never get more personal or loving than the five rational proofs for His existence. This plot to encourage only pre-Bethlehem interest in God takes its name from its perpetrator, that highly respected religious opportunist, Jacques Maritain. 

 

The slightest acquaintance with Maritain’s history is sufficient to indicate how awry he must be in his Catholicism. He is a former Huguenot who married a Jewish girl named Raïssa. During their student days in Paris, both Jacques and Raïssa felt a double pull in the general direction of belief. Intellectually they were attracted to the religious self-sufficiency of a Jewish intuitionist named Henri Bergson. Sociologically they were attracted to the spurious Catholicism of Leon Bloy, a French exhibitionist who made a liturgy of his own crudeness and uncleaness and tried to attach it to the liturgy of the Church. At some point in their association with an unbaptized Bergson and an unwashed Bloy, the Maritains figured out that there was a promising future ahead of them in Catholicism. 

 

Jacques Maritain is noted for his solemn-high, holier-than-thou appearance. For this reason, more than one priest reports that by the time a Maintain lecture is over, any priest who is present has been made to feel that the Roman collar is around the wrong neck and that perhaps he, the priest, ought to put on a necktie and kneel for Maritain’s blessing. 

 

One explanation of Maritain’s distant expression is that he fancies himself to be the Drew Pearson of the Christian social order. Judging by Maritain’s passion for the abstract, the fulfillment of all his prophecies will come in an era when mothers can sing such songs as “Rock-a-bye Baby, on the Dendrological Zenith,” and children recite such bedtime prayers as “The Hail Mariology.” 

 

Jacques Maritain prefers Thomism to Saint Thomas Aquinas and, similarly, he much prefers the notion of the papacy to the person of the Pope. He could not, however, turn down the prestige of an appointment as French ambassador to the Vatican. Maritain went to Rome, but he protected himself against over exposure to Italian faith by visits to Dr. George Santayana. In Maritain, Santayana recognized a brother, the kind of European intellectual cast-off that is annually being grabbed-up by American Universities. 

 

That Jacques Maritain should now be found preaching at Princeton University is not so strange. It did not require too much insight on Princeton’s part to see that a Catholic who hates Franco, speaks at Jewish seminaries, and favors “theocentricity” in place of Jesus, would be a bizarre, but harmless, addition to anybody’s faculty club. 

 

Perhaps Princeton realized also that a Catholic’s admirers are a good measure of his militancy. Among Maritain’s more prominent sympathizers are John Wild, Charles Malik and Mortimer Adler, who are, respectively, an Anglican, a Greek schismatic, and a Jew. Naturally Maritain could not insult intellectuals like these by telling them that although they are outside the Church they can get into Heaven because of their “invincible ignorance.” It was necessary that Maritain concoct a new way of getting around the dogma, “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” 

 

After a lot of abstract deliberation, Maritain decided that a man could be “invisibly, and by a motion of his heart, a member of the Church, and partake of her life, which is eternal life.” According to Maritain’s new covenant, the important salvation-actions in our world are no longer a head bowed to the waters of Baptism, a hand raised in Absolution, a tongue outstretched to receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. “A motion of his heart,” says Maritain, is all that is required before a man may partake of eternal life. 

 

The Sacred Heart might have saved Himself a lot of inconvenience had He only known this, one Friday afternoon on Calvary. 

 


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