Memorial Day began back in 1868 and is now falls on the last Monday of May. We remember those who were killed in action (KIA), laying down their lives for those of us still alive, in service of God and neighbor.
If you’re travelling, having family reunions on that long-weekend, why not make it a part of the activities of everyone present to go to a cemetery, wherever it is doesn’t matter, and say a Creed, the Our Father, a Hail Mary, a Glory Be and the Fatima decade prayer “Oh My Jesus” for the souls of the departed?
That’s just two minutes, two shocking minutes, two formative minutes for young and old alike. It changes everything. Memories for everyone. Two minutes to draw all of time together.
Here’s a Veterans Day speech of Reagan back in 1985, but, to date, it’s still the best Memorial Day speech, ever. Remember, near 100% of soldiers who died in war were teenagers.
At the public cemetery here in Andrews. Do the math…
He might still have been alive today. Get it? Hail Mary…
It’s perhaps a barometer of violence on university campuses far from this quiet paradise of WNC when the violent communist perps of that violence make their presence known here. This is the smallest, remotest parish in North America. Why would anyone want to bother us? Is the ignorance and violence so very widespread that there is overflow even here? Here’s what happened:
(2) An ultra-low information internet troll guy calling himself Chucky chucked a most low-information and quite violent comment on that post (which didn’t make it through the moderation queue). “DON’T FEED THE TROLLS!” is good advice.
“But Father George! Father George! You’re such an ol’ meanie! I bet you didn’t even offer Chucky a safe space, did you? Huh? Huh? I bet you didn’t! For shame, Father George!”
Oh, I have a safe space for Chucky, alright. Chucky seems to live conveniently near the FBI stations surrounding Olathe, Nebraska, so he would have to travel pretty far to get here. I call the safe-space “The Confessional”. Hey! It’s refurbished with a soundproof door along with a wall-sized double-paned sound-proof window! We’re all set whether he wants to go to Confession or throw a tantrum.
He subscribed to the blog so we can expect more tantrums before any Sacramental Confession, but I’m hoping he’ll make a pilgrimage and use the Confessional especially for Sacramental Confession. All are welcome! as they say.
(3) Meanwhile, our great patriot wearer of patriotic jackets came to Holy Mass again yesterday, this time wearing, as if scripted, a great patriotic T-Shirt pictured atop this post. It’s the perfect answer to the hate-filled comment which Chucky the anti-American troll-guy chucked into the comments box. And our patriot hadn’t even seen it.
Chucky, the troll-guy, let me tell you, has deep problems with his would-be education in etymological issues. He starts his rant by proclaiming (with four letter words) that “patriot” doesn’t come from “pater”. So let’s lower ourselves admittedly with great fanfare of condescension, and ask Chucky a question about a particular varmint of preference to him:
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?
Will Chucky keep chucking his trolling comments? How many chuckings can Chucky chuck? He subscribed to the blog to make sure that he would chuck as much as he could chuck such chuckings.
A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood”… and…
This is getting silly because some humor is needed. Is Chucky perhaps an FBI troll baiting reactions? Probably. Chucky is so perfectly out-of-control throwing spittle-flecked nutties that Chucky is, well, a caricature. It’s like refined stupidity, well studied stupidity, a text-book paradigm of stupidity, which, say, a just-graduated FBI agent would use to bait reactions. It’s almost AI-Stupid. But it’s even more adverbially stupidy.
Patriotism is part of the virtue of piety which is part of the virtue of justice, rendering the honor of prompt service, for instance, to whom that prompt service is due. Is America suffering some difficulties right now? Sure, but that doesn’t mean you abandon your father. You help your father.
Patriotism comes from “pater”, “father”, in Latin. We hear, for instance, of the “fatherland”. We have the honor and prompt service due our parents, our families, our neighbors, our villages, towns, cities, counties, states, countries, for every tribe, tongue, people, nation.
Our “homeland”, our “fatherland” is, ultimately, please God our Heavenly Father, heaven.
Patriotism is a matter not only of justice whereby members of the family support the family, but is also a matter of love. God is love. Patriotism is to be structured by love. Jesus says that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. Can you witness to honesty and integrity, to God who is love by risking your very life? As Saint Thomas More said ever so very patriotically just seconds prior to getting his head chopped off under orders of King Henry VIII:
“I am the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”
Let’s step this up for a moment: Are some apparent members of Holy Mother Church having some difficulties with faith, morality, liturgical discipline and what has turned into geopolitical sycophancy? Sure, but that doesn’t mean we blaspheme Holy Mother Church as the Immaculate Bride of Christ and then abandon the Church. It means we support Holy Mother Church the best we can in the circumstances we have by helping in whatever way we can that wayward individuals rejoice in the Living Truth. It’s like patriotism for the Church, because, remember, our fatherland is to be heaven.
For a moment, two Bald Eagles flew along with me just above my car whilst I was racing through one of the many gorges in the vast territory of the parish. It’s as if they making sure I was safe in the freedom one might enjoy according to the providence of God. I should really re-install my dashcam.
In the picture above they were now in their third circling back over my now stopped vehicle, now above the trees. Because of the silhouette-effect, it’s difficult to see the brilliantly white heads and necks, and tail feathers. Because they were now higher, it’s difficult to gauge their massive size.
With all the slavery to sin going on these days, this sighting, not long after another, did good for heart and soul. But then, in cropping, brightening the pictures I took, I noticed this in the following picture. Sigh. Am I seeing things?
I have been warned multiple times of a local, who is a terribly dark and paranoid neo-Nazi, who could, in his own mind, just about singlehandedly take on entire battalion. But in such cases, I look to my guardian angel, who is well practiced in watching over me, oblivious and naïve as I am.
You will recall that the Weimar Eagle is entirely black. The Bald Eagle is blackish-brown with a brilliantly white head and neck and tail.
Meanwhile, I don’t read tea leaves. This just made me do a double take. I do like making analogies however. Any ideas?
Anyway, this makes me recall a ragged old flag…
And that’s exactly the patriotism our Nazi DOJ and FBI have against believing Catholics.
There aren’t too many believers around any more. We have to team up to bring freedom, protect freedom. We have to ensure that the Holy Sacrifice of the One who led captivity captive, nailed to a cross, but then risen from the dead, is able to offered on our altars in our churches no matter what.
Racing at highway speed, this fellow was seen yesterday, Vigil of Our Lady of Guadalupe, across the mountain, up in Graham County, causing me instantaneously to screech to a stop safely just off the road.
Today, on the great Feast:
Las Mañanitas a la Virgen de Guadalupe, followed by Holy Mass.
Procession with our Lady from one end of town to another, hopefully “blue-lit”, followed again by Holy Mass. I’m gonna try to walk this.
I mentioned to someone that a Chinook was doing some touch and goes the other day at the local farm air-strip here in Andrews. Sometimes these guys circle around over the town so as to get a variety of approaches, getting used to the mountain ridges and often well-hidden power lines. My interlocutor offered that a Chinook can about take the roofs off of houses, but added that:
(1) he doesn’t even look up to see what’s what, as he’s seen enough in the USMC, and so
(2) he doesn’t get excited about such things, and
(3) he’s above the know-nothing present generation.
Great! I get all that, totally. But I love seeing such things. So I mentioned that sixty years ago my USMC dad would go down to the Twin Cities and commandeer a Corsair, fly it back to our small town, and proceed to about take the shingles off the family home. I loved that, of course, and cheered dad on, waving to him as he in turn rocked his wings, waving back to me. Lots of pride for my dad in my infant heart.
But my interlocutor instantly got angry [uh oh…] and said that he should have been court-martialed [um…], and then he literally ran away, angry [yikes…]. I didn’t get a chance to tell him that dad did his JAG schooling at Georgetown while teaching the guys how to fly at Andrews south of DC, and likely knew the law, and followed it, well, as well as any infant terrible.
I gotta tell you that I felt guilty for not being a million percent aware that some form of wildly varying PTSD is quite omnipresent, and that war is still going on interiorly in some way for many even while battles can be decades in the past.
So very sorry, buddy.
But, because of where this guy works I’ll be seeing him again for sure.
I’ll try to be more tactful.
Meanwhile, the Chinook? Just guessing, but it just might make a landing right in town, of all things, just before the fireworks coming up in a couple of days. I hope a court-martial won’t be in order.
We just try to have a little fun dished up with the virtue of patriotism.
This will, of course, be a primary target for terrorist destruction. I’m hoping that those capable will protect this site so that it doesn’t become the next September 11. It is a kind of bait attracting terrorists. But that can be an advantage in neutralizing terrorists. The effect I’m looking for would be something like this:
As we anticipate another Pelosian Summer of Love, I think it’s imperative to know something about the protection of the flag. Remember this account of the battle of 1812 and the flag? This video should be played on loop in the planned museums of this flag park:
Let’s hear our National Anthem, yes, again!
“But the words are racist! The words are racist! The words are about hirelings and slaves!”
No. They’re not.
Let’s do some analysis. Firstly, here are the worlds:
O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: ‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, A home and a country, should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation. Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Now, the analysis:
The lyrics were written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key about the Battle of Baltimore fought against the Brits’ Royal Navy in 1812. The Brits just wouldn’t let it go, and had to engage again, and so lost again, almost thirty years after the end of the Revolutionary War. The Royal Navy would enlist mercenaries, the “hirelings” mentioned in the third verse, and enslave Prisoners of War to fight for them as well, the “slaves” mentioned in the third verse.
Why do I insist on this having nothing whatsoever even remotely to do with black African slaves when Key himself was a slave owner who lived long before the American Civil War? Because of the purpose of the song and what it is describing, that is, a particular night of battle in the harbor of Baltimore against the Royal Navy in which hirelings and slaves were employed in the battle by the Royal Navy, surely other Brits or POW American military.
Even if a tiny percentage of these hirelings and slaves happened to be black Africans, possibly most recently from the United States, the mentions of those hirelings and slaves wouldn’t refer to any previous status of slavery, but only to the slavery imposed by the Royal Navy on any POWs. To win this battle in Baltimore, there would be no interest in going to, say, Mississippi, and killing hirelings and slaves. To hold that to be the meaning of the words is simply ridiculous.
///////// BTW: When I first put up these last three paragraphs in a post some years ago, when this blog wasn’t shadow-banned, when this blog didn’t have posts and graphics removed by third parties of some kind, the analysis on the words of the Star Bangled Banner was visited by basically every State and County government, every school district, every community college, every especially ivy league university, every intel agency, military or otherwise federal. Finally, the narrative changed from the ‘racism’ to mere belligerence in favor of sort of ‘change.’ Well, I’ll tell you what won’t change, the graves of those who gave their lives for the freedom we enjoy today (at least for the next while).
This is as far back in the back ridges of moonshine Cherokee County as you can possibly get. The old guy who lives here makes his way out on Sundays to serve the Traditional Latin Mass, and then afterward, I go on Communion calls, which includes his wife.
He greets me at the door packing heat, I think a .38 Special. Meanwhile, the son, who’s probably as old as I am (which is old), will usually be coming up from downstairs to see what trouble is brewing up top. The son can mag-dump into the same bullet hole a good distance out with – not a revolver, as that would be too easy – but with a grindy-trigger pistol. Hat’s off to him. Then he’ll disappear again. Meanwhile, the old guy’s elderly wife, well, let’s just say that this reminds of her skills and wisdom:
We have a chat, making sure we’re all good to go with food supplies and candles for prayer and such. Then the prayer gets serious with the Holy Communion part of the Communion call. Then we chat a bit more about schedules of doctors and such for the week. We might also talk about guns, because, well, I’m always carrying as well. If I’m not, I get severely reprimanded with lectures about the fallen state of the world and how I have to be at the ready in any situation. If I’m just coming from the Rehab/Nursing Home I might say that it’s still in the car. More reprimands come my way for being so forgetful, with no discipline. I love it. They’re such a day brightener for me.
[I admit it. I put up this post just to annoy the infamous commenter troll guy who wants me out of the priesthood. Just a little humor to lighten things up. But some people just like to be angry. Anyway, I’m in a really good mood today, and so very happy to be a priest.]
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 