Month: September 2024

Four days later and zero FEMA relief sites? Where are Brandon/Harris? Why is no one asking questions?

I must say it’s interesting that 30 inches of rain fell in one hour on the sodomy capital of the eastern US. But Asheville is surrounded by deep red counties, and many, many towns have been wiped out. Don’t be surprised to see the death toll into the thousands. -nvp

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Asheville NC floods: While no government aid distribution sites are up, one nonprofit steps up

By Will Hofmann September 30,2024

ASHEVILLE – While Buncombe County had not yet set up aid distribution stations in the aftermath of the historic floods from Tropical Storm Helene, one nonprofit had taken it into their own hands — soliciting another national nonprofit to send aid.

Asheville Dream Center brought aid to the Asheville Mall on Sept. 29, likely becoming the first mass aid distribution site for necessities in the city. The nonprofit is the local arm of the nonprofit national Dream Center outreach ministry. The nonprofit Global Empowerment Mission was the first to respond to their call to distribute aid in the city, Asheville Dream Center Executive Director Michelle Coleman said…

“We really don’t know how long the water is going to be out,” Michelle Coleman said. “I went through the line here, and I talked to so many people and their fear is how long. Is it two weeks? Is it more than a month?”

I’ve watched the community come together out here. It’s encouraging one another and it’s building hope,” Michelle Coleman said. “We need that right now.”

 

 

“O God, who hast constituted the services of Angels and of men in a wonderful order, mercifully grant, that they who ever stand before Thy face to do Thee service in heaven, may also defend our life on earth.” Collect, Feast of St. Michael

“Bless the Lord all ye His Angels: you that are mighty in strength, that do His will. O my soul, bless thou the Lord: and all that is within me praise His holy name. Alleluia, alleluia. Holy Archangel Michael, defend us in battle; that we may not perish in the dreadful judgment. Alleluia.” Gradual, Feast of St. Michael (Ps. 102, 20, 1)

ORIGINAL PRAYER TO SAINT MICHAEL, POPE LEO XIII, ~1886
“O Glorious Prince of the heavenly host, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in the battle and in the terrible warfare that we are waging against the principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the evil spirits. Come to the aid of man, whom Almighty God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of Satan.

“Fight this day the battle of the Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in Heaven. That cruel, ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels. Behold, this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage. Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay and cast into eternal perdition souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.

“This wicked dragon pours out, as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity. These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where the See of Holy Peter and the Chair of Truth has been set up as the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be. 

“Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious power of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly find mercy in the sight of the Lord; and vanquishing the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen.”

“Thousands of Iraqi protesters are trying to storm the US Embassy in Baghdad, according to posts on social media, protesting Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut yesterday. Videos show protesters clashing with security forces in riot gear. Hezbollah flags and photos of Nasrallah can be seen among the large crowd, along with flags of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Force.Earlier, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani condemned the strike on Nasrallah as “a crime that shows the Zionist entity has crossed all the red lines.”In a statement, he called the Israeli strikes on south Beirut a “shameful attack” and described Nasrallah as “a martyr on the path of the righteous.””

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/thousands-of-protesters-trying-to-storm-us-embassy-in-baghdad-after-nasrallah-killing/

There is no right side in this war. Beware anyone trying to convince you otherwise.

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Gunfire sent field hockey players running for safety during a game at Temple University’s Howarth Field on Friday.

Video captured by ESPN showed the crowd sprinting off the field in North Philadelphia.

“Players are running off the field right now. There were some loud noises and it looks like players are evacuating the field right now,” the announcer could be heard saying.

Just after 4:30 p.m. Friday, Temple sent out an alert saying there was gunfire near the 1300 block of North Broad Street, which is right near the field.

La Salle was playing St. Louis University, which issued a statement saying the game was canceled because of a shooting in the vicinity of the field.

No one on the field was injured.

“At this time, no shooter has been identified, and there are believed to be no victims. The shots were fired in the vicinity of an off-campus fast-food restaurant on Broad Street. The Philadelphia Police Department is leading this investigation,” Jennifer Griffin, the vice president and chief for public safety at Temple said in a statement.

(I have long referred to the current thing as the Gospel according to Whitney Houston: Learning to Love Yourself is the Greatest Love of All. -nvp)

By AARON M. RENN

The dissident left writer Freddie deBoer had a great article about how contemporary therapy culture promotes selfishness. He says this despite liking the idea of therapy and in fact regularly going to therapy himself.

He writes about a New York Times article that questions the wisdom of forgiveness, saying:

Do you want to know what ideology is? What we mean when we say “ideology at its purest”? It’s not a collection of policy positions. It’s not a political party you vote for. It’s not even your conscious beliefs about right or wrong, your philosophy about how humans should act individually and collectively and the relationship between those acts and the public and private good. No, ideology refers to those beliefs you do not examine because you do not see them as beliefs at all. Ideology isn’t a matter of ingesting arguments about better or worse, right and wrong, and evaluating them to determine your own beliefs. Ideology is fundamentally the unexamined framework of the system through which you perform such an evaluation, the part you can’t and don’t see; it’s the assumptions that you cannot understand as assumptions. And the ideology that [NYT writer] Caron demonstrates here, the set of assumptions she can’t begin to examine critically because she does not notice them, says that the individual has no responsibility to anyone but themselves. There is no moral duty, there is only the immediate emotional needs of the individual, which eclipses all other concerns, which is sacrosanct. Read the piece! Find me any suggestion whatsoever that other people exist and that we all have moral responsibilities to them, and that putting those responsibilities first is at the heart of emotional integrity and maturity. Those ideas simply aren’t considered….What disturbs me so much is the notion that the only criteria for deciding whether a behavior is worth doing is the individual’s own emotional comfort.

He then says:

I have spent a good deal of time pointing to bizarre and unhealthy Instagram self-help meme culture. I admit that this is often a matter of picking low-hanging fruit, which is fun and easy because a lot of this stuff really is deranged and people find it entertaining when I make fun of it. But I actually do think it’s important on a more meaningful level. I am convinced that the never-ending adult enculturation process we’re all undergoing all the time is far more directed by the minor influences of ordinary life – ambient cultural attitudes, day-to-day exposure to coworkers and friends and social media and television – than it is by abstract political, religious, and moral concepts. And the culture that we’re creating genuinely frightens me. Between said capitalist selfishness, helicopter parenting, social media platforms that inherently reward narcissism, and this whole bonkers quasi-feminist woowoo school of aspirational self help, there’s a never-ending supply of messages telling impressionable people that they should put themselves before others, inverting the most basic human moral principle.

…

The question remains, who in the world could possibly look out at contemporary society and think that the message “put yourself before other people” isn’t loud enough? Every women’s site on the internet preaches this message. Every hustle bro on Threads preaches this message. Every therapist between San Diego and Sacramento preaches this message. Every eight-word meme in overly elaborate cursive font on Pinterest preaches this message. Every asshole who’s still holding on like death to GameStop stock preaches this message. There’s the girlboss version and the Joe Rogan bro version and horoscope obsessive version and the Wall Street grindset version and the fitness guru on trenbolone version…. Justification for selfishness is not in short supply. It is the water in which we swim.

He argues that this has been heavily pushed by therapy culture, which delivers a stream of toxic ideas to people, including:

In the place of rules devised by moral philosophy and religion, therapy culture has erected others, such as

• You, your feelings, and your goals are always preeminent and in any conflict supersede those of others
• You are entitled to total and complete emotional safety at all times, and this entitlement supersedes the rights and desires of others
• Simultaneously, you are a totally, existentially, permanently fragile being
• Since there is nothing that can be endured or recovered from that is not injustice, the concept of resilience is itself an expression of injustice
• That which makes you feel better is that which is right to do
• In any conflict between any two people, there is always one guilty abuser and one blameless victim
• You argue, they gaslight, you have self-respect, they are narcissists, you are still growing, they are toxic, you have boundaries, they have limitations, you hold space, they stand in the way of your growth
• Your own behavior is always a trauma response, and thus not your fault; the behavior of others is always freely chosen, and thus responsibility-bearing
• Any of your behaviors is merely one small step on your journey, and you are still in the process of becoming yourself, any behavior of others you don’t like is constitutive of their very being and cannot change
• Wanting and not getting, for you, can never be an expression of the basic reality of existence, but rather is always evidence of crime, abuse, mistreatment, pathology, injustice
• Everything you feel, do, and are is valid, always valid, until the end of time

It’s a great piece and I’d encourage you to read the whole thing. deBoer is not to the best of my knowledge a religious person, but even he sees that this a big problem.

This idea that “you should be more selfish” permeates our culture today…

https://substack.com/@aaronrenn/p-147671412

Let me get this straight. Correct me in the combox if I’m wrong. 

Alleged Assassin #2, retreating in haste from golf course, then pursued by LEOs across two counties, writes a confession and love letter to the world with instructions for Assassin #3, offering $150K contract hit (but he has no money), and neatly states motive, with the attempted murderer extolling his own morals over those of Trump. 

How does this not constitute Incitement on the part of DOJ?

B.  The Heretic Excludes Himself From the Church

In subscribing to heresy, the heretic excludes himself from the Church. As Saint Paul states, he is “condemned by his own judgment” (Tit. 3:10–11).

Saint Jerome comments on this text from Saint Paul saying: “Therefore it is said that the heretic has condemned himself; for the fornicator, the adulterer, the murderer and the other sinners are expelled from the Church by the priests; but the heretics pronounce sentence against themselves, excluding themselves from the Church spontaneously; this exclusion is their condemnation by their own conscience.”¹⁶

Saint Augustine comments along the same line: “Separate yourselves from the members of the Church, separate yourself from her Body. But why am I going to tell them to separate from the Church when they have already done so? In effect, they are heretics; they are already outside the Church.”¹⁷

Finally, Pope Pius XII affirms that no sin “of its own nature . . . severs a man from the Body of the Church as does schism or heresy or apostasy.”¹⁸

The heretic excludes himself from the Church, and no intervention is necessary on the part of the Authority. The heretic dictates his own condemnatory sentence.

The abandonment of the Catholic faith entails a tacit resignation of any ecclesiastical office, since those who are no longer part of the Church cannot enjoy jurisdiction in it.

The importance of this theological-canonical doctrine is not strictly academic. It is crucial in the study of the theological hypothesis of a heretic pope, as will be seen in a later article.

https://www.tfp.org/the-heretic-excludes-himself-from-the-church-being-condemned-by-his-own-judgment/

“…by thy Holy Cross.”

By BISHOP JOSEPH STRICKLAND

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“We adore Thee, O Christ. and we praise Thee, because by Thy Holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.” This familiar prayer offered as part of the Stations of the Cross is familiar to Catholics, and well it should be. It succinctly expresses our faith, and the unique reality of Jesus Christ—God’s Divine Son—as the one Savior of all humanity.

We are obliged to adore and praise Jesus Christ because He is God’s Son, and because He has brought salvation to our fallen state. We must cling tenaciously to the truth that only Jesus Christ is Savior, and that He lived, suffered, died, and rose for all humanity for all time. His loving sacrifice of His own life in order to redeem us is the greatest gift that humanity has ever received.

This simple prayer expresses the core of our faith that we are obliged to proclaim to the world if we wish to live as His disciples. The Church exists to proclaim this Truth in order to point the human family, from every nation and race to the means of our salvation. There is no other name by which we can be saved, and no other movement, religion, or human endeavor will save us…

Pope Francis (sic), recently speaking to a group of young people in Singapore, made this statement:

“One of the things that struck me about all of you here is your ability to engage in interreligious dialogue, and this is very important. If you, in the beginnings of your conversations and debates, start to say things like, ‘My religion is more important than yours,’ ‘No, mine is more important than yours,’ that sort of thing, where will this lead us? Because if we start to fight amongst ourselves and say, ‘My religion is more important than yours,’ ‘My religion is true, yours is not,’ where will that lead us? Someone respond. Where would it lead us? It’s okay to discuss. Every religion is a way to arrive at God. To make an example or a comparison, they are like different languages in order to arrive at God. But God is God for all – and if God is God for all, then we are all sons and daughters of God. ‘But my God is more important than your God.’ Is that true? There is only one God, and each of us is a language, so to speak, in order to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian – they are different paths.”

This statement is theological heresy – it is called indifferentism. Indifferentism makes the claim that all religions are of equal value and all lead to the same divine truth. This directly contradicts the Church’s doctrine that there is one true faith, and that the Catholic Church is the only path to salvation…

https://bishopjosephstrickland.substack.com/p/by-thy-holy-cross