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Mainstream Studies of Dumbed-Down Compulsory Universal Schooling

This would merely be a paranoid, conspiratorialist rave–except that the evidence is all in the notes. (This posting isn’t intended so much as an article, as a set of easily accessible notes for making arguments.)

You can sometimes learn more from your presumptive ‘opponents’ than from your alleged friends, who can actually be acting in Pecksniffian self-interest presenting a highly-filtered public persona, on the presumption that they know better than you what you need to know. Regardless of the functional debilities of extreme leftism, Noam Chomsky still aspires to the tenet of classical liberalism, that “I strongly uphold your right to your point of view, no matter how strongly I disagree with you”. It’s sometimes worth listening to what he has to say.

Noam Chomsky, citing Ralph Waldo Emerson on the elites’ rationale for agitating for universal, compulsory education: “The grounds on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education, is fear” … [that, in their words, he says] … “This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats”, meaning, “educate them the right way,” keep their perspectives and their understanding narrow and restricted, discourage free and independent thought, and frighten them into obedience –something that’s done over and over in the schools as well–we’ve all experienced it.”

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Before factory schooling, young people, whether geniuses or working people, were free to write their own life script.

WE breed water dogs not to bite game birds, we hood falcons to control them, when race horses run too fast we “handicap” them with lead weights, and when students are in danger of independent learning so that they threaten to evade being conditioned into mindless consumers and docile, unquestioning employees of giant corporations, we subject them to “schooling”.
College graduates today have been denied, by design, a basic liberal-arts education that was freely available to many 1-room schoolhouse, elementary students prior to the imposition of universal forced schooling in the period 1880-1920. It was a result of planned, deliberate deprecation of curricula and intense, adverse behavioral conditioning, which long preceded their high school graduation. A vast store of evidence for this assertion, unknown to the general public, is in freely available authors in a tradition of “studies of Deliberate Dumbing Down K-12”. (Author list at the end of the article.)
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The issue of deliberate dumbing down (DDD), of unimaginably vast scope, centers on the confidential history, virtually never discussed openly in the press or taught in schools or colleges themselves, that contrasts the rigidly controlled, standard anti-intellectual conditioning children receive today in public schools, with the extreme opposite, self-directed, radical freedom which prevailed in America prior to the railroads (1840).
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America from the Colonial/Revolutionary period, until the mid-19th century, was an outpost of personal independence, granted immunity by geographical isolation, from the restrictive model of Europe’s old-world, highly stratified class system. (America was at a colonial “margin” at some distance from the imperial center, England. The historical dissolution in the mother country of the ancient, manorial-feudal medieval society in which peasants had traditional rights to the land which their lord could not abrogate, had been disrupted centuries earlier in England than in America, with the enclosure of common lands for specialized sheep-grazing for the Italian wool trade by the lower gentry, socially rapacious behavior in common with the higher nobility, friends of Henry VIII, in the despoiling of Church lands built up over centuries of free labor accumulation under the evangelical counsel of Poverty. This pattern of dissolution only encroached on the colonial margin in America, centuries after it happened at the center, in England.) For instance, it was illegal in 19th century England to teach to lower class children, what John Taylor Gatto termed “the active literacies”, writing, public speaking and the cultivation of eloquence.
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Concurrent with the liberal Protestant biblical studies (“Historical-Critical Method”) of Adolf von Harnack in the late 19th century which “proved” that biblical accounts of miracles were “fantasies”, agnostic or atheist northern German philosophers were instrumental in enlarging on the rationalist foundation of the French Enlightenment until the late 19th century rise of the Fabian Socialist Society (symbol: a wolf in sheep’s clothing) espoused by the high architects of compulsory, universal, dumbed-down schooling. In contrast with the 99% of humanity which has believed in some sort of God, “when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe nothing, they’ll believe anything”.
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“There can’t be a God, nor any Heaven”, (the outlook that “proves one is a ‘scientist‘ “), therefore, let’s “create” heaven on earth, “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”, (never to be resurrected into any eternal paradise), continually “improving” humanity, reinventing ourselves, on Darwin’s racist model of human “survival of the fittest”, leading to Hitler’s death factories and ultimately, today, to Bill Gates’ great purge of the “excess” of the majority of humanity.
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A free people would never accept this. Therefore, starting in the mid-19th century, American children had to be wrested out of their family traditions and religions by secretly socialistic, anti-intellectual conditioning, subjecting them, in compulsory, universal, police-enforced, deliberately dumbed-down schooling, beyond the parents’ knowledge and understanding, to the endless drudgery of factory schooling, “at least keeping them off the streets and out of trouble”, precisely from the age when their brains should be furiously, delightfully absorbing everything about the wonderful, fascinating world.

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A Character in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ Relies Upon Memorized Knowledge Rather Than Behavioral Conditioning

Absent comprehensive conditioning, John Savage relies on his encyclopedic memorization of all of Shakespeare to supply analogies with which to evaluate new and unknown situations which he encounters. [This leads to reflection on the role of grammar-level, rote memorization for support of higher studies—in the medieval monastery, the monks would repeatedly read sections of texts, “ruminating” upon them like ruminant animals “chewing the cud”, until they were able to draw upon the internalized knowledge during discourse.]

 

John Savage is exceptional in not being a test-tube baby. His responses are not due to programmed, totalitarian behavioral conditioning as are those of all the other characters in the video (except, provisionally, the young Alpha Plus (A+) Bernard Marx, prone to heretical ideas, who is being groomed for a Directorship by His Fordship, Mustapha Mond, whose supreme status is signified by a “T” character, after the Ford Model-T, in addition to his A+ insignia).

For context about founding technocracy author, Aldous Huxley’s vision of anti-biblical, world-unified organizational control, see the archived text of Jim Keith’s Mind Control, World Control, The Encyclopedia of Mind Control.

See Bruce Deitrick Price’s archived article “The Crusade Against Knowledge – The Campaign Against Memory” regarding the deliberate deprecation of good education.

See the blog posting “Little Lost Lambeth” for a contrast between Aldous Huxley’s technocratic dystopia and Christendom.

See the Baltimore Catechism Number Two for the corpus of essential knowledge for exercising informed choice as a Catholic Christian.


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Little Lost Lambeth by Steven Kellmeyer – Patrick Madrid’s Envoy Magazine – October-November 1998

What do a 2000 year old Christian Tradition, the Anglican Lambeth Conference and English author Aldous Huxley have in common?…

In 1930, the Anglican Church made a decision that proved tragic for the entire world. About the only two voices that realized the problem were, of course, the Catholic Church, and surprisingly, an agnostic.

The year is 1932. On the Continent, Adolf Hitler is still 11 months away from gaining control of the German government. Though he continues to search for a way to gain the electoral majority necessary to rule Germany, he has already won a major victory in England, a victory that will continue to grow and metastasize long after he lies dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a burning bunker in Berlin 13 years in the future.

Yet, even as English Churchmen nurture the seed of Hitler’s philosophy on their isle, another voice has risen from among the inhabitants of that gallant land. This voice has spent the last two years forming one of the most insightful and strident attacks on Nazi philosophy ever concocted, and it is now, in February, 1932, that the author releases his work into the stream of history. The battle between the philosophies continues to be fought down to this very day: the battle between the eugenics, advocated in seminal form by the Church of England, and the natural law, upheld by an agnostic who saw the preposterous conclusions to which the contraceptive philosophy must inevitably lead.

The agnostic was Aldous Huxley; his book, Brave New World, would constitute not only an incredibly prophetic description of the contracepting society, but also a deft parody of the Christian church which first legalized the idea. Prior to 1930, contraception had been uniformly condemned by every Christian denomination in the world since the death of Christ.

Unfortunately, Darwin’s work between 1854 and 1872 had a profound influence on European and American society. His “survival of the fittest” argument soon produced the idea that some human beings were less fit, less worthy to procreate than others. Both sides of the Atlantic forged ahead with applications of this “breakthrough” in scientific understanding. Scientific journals devoted to eugenics, the breeding of a better human animal, soon became common throughout Europe. Francis Galton, the man who coined the word “eugenics,” established a research fellowship in University College, London in 1908, and his Eugenics Society began work in the same year.

By the early 1920s, Margaret Sanger and several of her English lovers were touting contraception and involuntary sterilization as a way to limit the breeding of the “human weeds,” as Sanger called them: the insane, the mentally-retarded, criminals, and people with Slavic, Southern Mediterranean, Jewish, black or Catholic backgrounds (ironically, Sanger was herself raised by a Catholic mother). Though most supporters of atheistic rationalist scientific progress don’t advertise it, Hitler’s racial purity schemes were nothing more than the application of 1920s “cutting-edge” biology. When this attitude encountered Christianity, the results were uniformly explosive. Ever since 1867, Anglican bishops had been meeting roughly every ten years at Lambeth Palace, London, in order to discern how best to govern their Church. Mounting eugenics pressures had required the bishops in both the 1908 and the 1920 conferences to fiercely condemn contraception. But the constant eugenics drumbeat would not let up.

The 1930 conference brought even greater internal challenges; many of the people advising the bishops were eugenicists, indeed, at least one attendee, the Reverend Doctor D.S. Bailey, would be both a member of the International Eugenics Society and an active participant in the conference.

Between the general mood of society and the insistence of advisors, the Anglican bishops were placed under extreme pressure to allow some form of artificial contraception. On August 14, 1930, after heated debate, they voted 193 to 67, with 14 abstentions, to permit the use of contraceptives at the discretion of married couples. The decision rocked the Christian world — it was the first time any Christian Church had dared to attack the underlying foundations of the sacred marital act, the act in which another image of God was brought into creation through the parents’ participation in co-creation with God. Pope Pius XI, deeply saddened, issued Casti Connubii, just four short months later on December 31, 1930, reiterating the constant Christian teaching that artificial contraception was forbidden as an intrinsically evil act.

H.G. Wells’ stories of a scientific utopia combined with the publication of the Lambeth decision and Casti Connubii to fire Huxley’s imagination. What would a society which fully endorsed contraception look like? Though Huxley was by no means a Catholic, he possessed a keen intellect and an incisive pen.

His conclusions were soon plain — society as we understood it would fail to survive. Writing in the grand tradition of English parody, he constructed a wickedly accurate portrayal of the contraceptive society, written so as to ensure his English audience would recognize his portrayal of the Church which had set them on the road toward it. In so doing, he inadvertently created an allegory which supports Catholic teaching.

The Catholic teaching on contraception finds its basis in the book of Genesis and in sacramental theology. Adam and Eve were the original bride and bridegroom, the first married couple, their marriage a natural bond formed by God. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the fruit of the tree, Adam compounded his sin by publicly repudiating Eve, saying to God, “The woman whom THOU gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12).

The first couple’s twin sins of disobedience and failure to own up to their actions brought twin curses upon them: increased pain in childbirth and increased toil in order to bring forth sustenance from the earth. Because Adam’s children were not only in the image and likeness of God, but also in Adam’s image and likeness, Scripture describes the first three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all suffering from infertility and famine. All three lived out the twin curses of Adam. Both Abraham and Isaac were driven into another land in order to avoid their respective famines and both publicly repudiated their wives while in this foreign land, acting in the image of their forbear (Gen. 12:10-20, 16:1, 15:21, 26:1-6). Both of Jacob’s wives suffered from infertility (Gen. 30:1, 30:9), while the famine which occurred in the life of Jacob, now named Israel, drove all of Israel’s family into Egypt, where they became enslaved.

Thereafter, the twin curses of famine and infertility weave in and out of the whole long history of Israel’s children. The curses would only be broken by the new Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, through the establishment of a new Tree of Life, the Cross (cf. Acts 10:39, Rev. 22:2). The Church was birthed into existence through the pain of the Cross, with Mary, her face twisted in an agony of sorrow, mirroring the face of her crucified Son: “the woman clothed with the sun . . . cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery” (Rev .12:2). At the Cross, the pain of childbirth was taken to its limit and destroyed. Similarly, the Eucharistic prayer of the Mass testifies:

“Blessed are You, Lord, God of all creation. Through Your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the Bread of Life.

Blessed are You, Lord, God of all creation. Through Your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.”

The toil of our hands is united to the work of God’s hands, nailed to the Cross, taken to its limit in death, and also destroyed. Thus, the Bridegroom Jesus Christ, leads His Bride the Church to the Cross, the Tree of Life. Christ smashes through the twin curses, and feeds His Bride with the Fruit of the Tree — His own Body. By thus receiving the Bridegroom into Herself, the Bride who is the Church, along with all of Her members, is made fruitful and is given life as a child of God. The sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ divinizes us (CCC 460, 1988, 1999), allowing us to partake of the Divine Nature (2 Pet. 1:4).

The sacraments of marriage and the Eucharist are inextricably intertwined. The act of marital union is the created image of the reality of the Eucharist, for after the wedding feast, the bride receives the bridegroom into herself and is made fruitful, and both husband and wife are blessed with new life. As a result, the active attempt to destroy the fruitfulness of the marital act is not only a rejection of the grace of marriage, but it is also the implicit rejection of the sacrament that marriage images, the Eucharist.

Though Huxley, the man whom a contemporary called a “neo-pagan” and who eventually began to dabble with Hinduism, did not consciously understand the theology which lies behind the acts of sexuality and contraception, he instinctively understood their interconnection. Because he wanted his Brave New World society to embrace and live out a contraceptive mentality, it replaces the tree with the industrial complex. Huxley understood that universal sterility is unnatural, and no tree, no living thing could produce it. By removing pregnancy, his worldly society removes the curse of the pain of childbirth. His society further ensures this by populating itself with abortion clinics and factories which bring children into existence through in vitro fertilization, in vitro gestation and cloning. Most women are created sterile, but a few are permitted to retain their fertility so their eggs could be harvested in order to produce the next generation. These women are distinguished by their contraceptive cartridge belts, which they are drilled to use from the time of childhood.

The contraceptive society desires not children, but pleasure. Where there is no desire for children, there is likewise no desire for parents — indeed, the very words “mother” and “father” are curse words, the lowest and most vile form of insult, as the phrases “Mary, our Mother” and “Our Father” are in certain circles today. But a sterile world is impossible to live with on a daily basis. The delight in worldly pleasure leaves an ever-thirsting spiritual desert. His society solves this problem with “soma” — the psychedelic wonder-drug which removes the individual from reality. Still, the use of soma is not enough. People need symbols and liturgy, and Huxley knows it. Fortunately, the Anglican Church left his fictional society a rich legacy. They have the sign of the “T,” a reminder of the first mass-produced item in the world, the Model-T Ford, and not-so- coincidentally a broken echo of the Cross, with its vertical connection to heaven cut off:

“And she had shown Bernard the little golden zipper-fastening in the form of a T which the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury had given her as a memento of the weekend she had spent at Lambeth . . . ‘A cardinal,’ Mustapha Mond explained parenthetically, ‘was a kind of Arch-Community Songster.’ ” (pp. 118, 157). Since the Arch-Community Songster is a quasi- cardinal, he also leads a quasi-liturgy. Indeed, Huxley spends over half of chapter five describing the liturgical service in detail, the seating arrangements, the music, the distribution of the soma tablets and the “loving cup” filled with soma drink, during which participants experience “the coming of the Ford.” Indeed, the very name Huxley chose to describe this drug which takes the imbiber out of the world, soma, is nothing more than the Greek word for “body.” In other words, the liturgical service is a parody of the Anglican High Mass, recalling the doctrine of the Real Presence: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, completely present under either species, an offering of love from God to man. It is not an accident that the “loving” cup is quaffed twelve times, recalling the Christian symbolism for the twelve Apostles and the twelve tribes of Israel. And the result of this quaffing is quite intentionally chosen by Huxley — indeed, it characterizes the effect of the entire contracepting society which the Lambeth conference, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, helped create:

“The President made another sign of the T and sat down. The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the center of the table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, “I drink to my annihilation,” twelve times quaffed. Then to the accompaniment of the synthetic orchestra the First Solidarity Hymn was sung . . .” (p. 53). Huxley builds an anti-Eucharist, a eucharist which appears to give everything, but gives nothing at all. Its final effect is not redemption, divinization, the partaking of the Divine Nature; it is annihilation. In other words, Huxley, neo-pagan, quasi-Hindu mystic that he is, recognizes on an intuitive level that contraception necessarily completes the work of the serpent and original sin. In contraception, Huxley finds the work of the anti-Eucharist, the antichrist.

In less than 180 devastating pages, Aldous Huxley not only tears the mask from the face of contraception, he also provides an excellent proof for the necessity of the papal office. The Anglican Conferences which Huxley so neatly parodied demonstrated that any essentially national church must eventually fall prey to the social pressures they operate within. The Anglican Church, having no leader outside of England, was simply unable to protect itself from the concerns of the country and the people to whom they ministered. The fears sown by the eugenicists and the selfishness of the people were simply too compelling for any religious leader to publicly denounce. Any Church which permitted its doctrines to be socially influenced to this degree would eventually allow their cardinals to become “Arch-Community Songsters.” As it turned out, the papal office alone possessed the strength to protect Christianity from the lies bound up within the grinning death’s heads of the contraceptive mentality and its twin sister, the abortion mill.

Though he saw the intrinsic contradictions inherent in the idea of a “contracepting Christian,” Huxley did not directly ask the question which everyone tempted by contraception must answer.

That question had already been posed in 1880, 50 years earlier, by another of the great authors of literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky. In his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, one of the main characters is being tried for the crime of parricide — murdering his own father. The defense attorney appeals to the jury with a simple, compelling question: “The conventional answer to [the question ‘Who is my father?’] is: ‘He begot you, and you are his flesh and blood, and therefore you are bound to love him.’ The youth involuntarily reflects: ‘But did he love me when he begot me?’ he asks, wondering more and more, ‘Was it for my sake he begot me? He did not know me, not even my sex, at that moment, at the moment of passion, perhaps, inflamed by wine’ ” (p. 397).

“Did he love me when he begot me?” When we actively put up chemical or physical walls between ourselves, our lover, and the child which might be begotten, will we truly have loved that child into existence as God loved us into existence, Who gave Himself totally for us? Are we acting in the image of the living God?


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The Catholic Church: For the sake of Christ Jesus … and for the sake of Mary, His Mother … God decided to create man and the universe. Vatican II: Man is … the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.

…man…is not creation’s final goal.…Man—simple link in a chain that must go back to God—paves the way for the coming of the blessed Virgin Mary. Mary, God’s jewel case, in which reposed He Who upholds all things, Jesus Christ! – The Roman MissalHe [man] is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake”. – Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992. §356

The Roman Missal, 1962, Introduction: “Your Mass and Your Life” (xlvii): In God’s plan, it is not man who is the center of the universe; but Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word. God created all things for Christ. For the sake of Christ Jesus in whom the Father already had “placed all His delight” and for the sake of Mary, His Mother, “full of grace,” God decided to create man and the universe.

To this Son, in whom He is well pleased, friends were to be given-and so man was created. (The race of man represents the “friends of the Bride­groom” mentioned by our Lord in the Gospel.) To this Son whom He loves, the Father will give a house and garden-and so the universe was created. Man, created for Christ, is loved in Him. We thus form, as it were, a “wedding gift” from God the Father to Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom.

In Him, through Him, and for Him, we are pleasing to the heavenly Father. Without Him we are nothing. This last is very important for an under­standing of the Mass. Our sacrifices are of value only through their being united with Christ’s Sacrifice. Since all have issued from the heart of God solely to give pleasure to Jesus, all then are brothers. Creation itself is our kin. The universe and I, what are we, if not a delicate thought of the Father toward His Divine Son?

The creation, launched into existence by God’s loving power, will for­ever have something unfinished about it, until that time when it shall return to the Source of its perfection; there to receive from that same Source its final perfection and beatitude. Thus the general plan of creation appears to us as an image and prolongation of the fecundity of the Most Blessed Trinity. The chronological order of the plan is as follows:

  1. Creation of the heavens;
  2. Preparation of the earth;
  3. Creation of minerals, vegetation, and animals;
  4. Creation of man.

King though he may be of that creation predating his own existence, man, however, is not creation’s final goal.

Man—simple link in a chain that must go back to God—paves the way for the coming of the blessed Virgin Mary. Mary, God’s jewel case, in which reposed He Who upholds all things, Jesus Christ! Christ is the center of the universe. He is before all things: “He is before all creatures” (Col. 1:17). “The firstborn of every creature” (Col. 1: I 5). “In the beginning was the Word … ” Jn.1:1).

“In Him … through Him … unto Him … all things!” (Col. 1:16, 17).


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O Purest of Creatures – Sweet Star of the Sea
Fr. Frederick William Faber, (1814-1863) St. Denio
1. O purest of creatures,
sweet Mother! sweet Maid!
The one spotless womb wherein
Jesus was laid!
Dark night hath come down on us,
Mother! And we,
Look out for thy shining, sweet
Star of the Sea!
2. Deep night has come down on this
rough-spoken world,
&-the banners of darkness are
boldly unfurled;
&-the tempest tossed Church—
all her eyes are on thee,
They look to thy shining, sweet
Star of the Sea!
3. He gazed on thy soul; it was
spotless and fair;
For-the empire of sin—it had
never been there;
None had ever owned thee, dear
Mother! but He,
And-He blessed thy clear shining, sweet
Star of the Sea!
4. Earth gave Him one lodging; ‘twas
deep in thy breast,
And God found a home where the
sinner finds rest;
His home and His hiding place
both were in thee,
He-was won by thy shining, sweet
Star of the Sea.
5. O blissful and calm was the
wonderful rest,
That-thou gavest thy God in thy
virginal breast;
For-the heaven He left, He found
heaven in thee,
And-He shone in thy shining, sweet
Star of the Sea!
6. To sinners what comfort, to
angels what mirth,
That God found one creature un-
fallen on earth,
One spot where His Spirit, un-
troubled could be,
The depth of thy shining, sweet
Star of the Sea!
7. O shine on us brighter than
even, then shine,
For-the highest of honours, dear
Mother! Is thine;
“Conceived without sin,” thy chaste
title e’re be,
Clear light from thy birth-spring, sweet
Star of the Sea!
8. So worship we God in these
rude latter days;
So worship we Jesus our
Love, when we praise,
His wonderful grace in the
gifts He gave thee,
The gift of clear shining, sweet
Star of the Sea!
9. Deep night hath come down on us,
Mother! Deep night,
And-we need more than ever the
guide of thy light;
For-the darker the night is the
brighter should be,
Thy beautiful shining, sweet
Star of the Sea!
Amen.

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Hymn Appropriate for the Conclusion of the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart (Postlude)

Hymn Appropriate for the
Conclusion of the Enthronement (Postlude)

(Pieter de Grebber – God Inviting Christ to Sit on the Throne at His Right Hand) Christ Jesus … Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. — Philippians 2:5-11

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O, Sacred Heart, enthroned within our homes,
Thou art our Sovereign Lord and Master;
We want to please Thee every moment forward,
We want to be Thy faithful servants;
Thou add’st our pain and suf’fring to Thine own,
Limitless meritorious off’ring,
To God the Father, on His throne of Glory,
From where Thou reign’st over our homes every day.

(See The Apostolate of Suffering)


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Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel 2023 on a Sunday – Musical support

The feast date is July 16, 2023, a Sunday.

http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/BVM/FlosCarmeli.html

Flos Carmeli was used by the Carmelites as the sequence for the Feast of St. Simon Stock, and, since 1663, for the Feast of Our Lady of Mt Carmel. It also appears in an ancient metrical office of Carmel as an antiphon and responsory. Its composition is ascribed to St. Simon Stock himself (ca 1165 – 1265).

Flos Carmeli,
vitis florigera,
splendor caeli,
virgo puerpera
singularis.
Flower of Carmel,
Tall vine blossom laden;
Splendor of heaven,
Childbearing yet maiden.
None equals thee.
Mater mitis
sed viri nescia
Carmelitis
esto propitia
stella maris.
Mother so tender,
Who no man didst know,
On Carmel’s children
Thy favors bestow.
Star of the Sea.
Radix Iesse
germinans flosculum
nos ad esse
tecum in saeculum
patiaris.
Strong stem of Jesse,
Who bore one bright flower,
Be ever near us
And guard us each hour,
who serve thee here.
Inter spinas
quae crescis lilium
serva puras
mentes fragilium
tutelaris.
Purest of lilies,
That flowers among thorns,
Bring help to the true heart
That in weakness turns
and trusts in thee.
Armatura
fortis pugnantium
furunt bella
tende praesidium
scapularis.
Strongest of armor,
We trust in thy might:
Under thy mantle,
Hard press’d in the fight,
we call to thee.
Per incerta
prudens consilium
per adversa
iuge solatium
largiaris.
Our way uncertain,
Surrounded by foes,
Unfailing counsel
You give to those
who turn to thee.
Mater dulcis
Carmeli domina,
plebem tuam
reple laetitia
qua bearis.
O gentle Mother
Who in Carmel reigns,
Share with your servants
That gladness you gained
and now enjoy.
Paradisi
clavis et ianua,
fac nos duci
quo, Mater, gloria
coronaris. Amen
Hail, Gate of Heaven,
With glory now crowned,
Bring us to safety
Where thy Son is found,
true joy to see.



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Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel
Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit
(1905–1988)
Assynt
(1884)
1. Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel,
Whom in ancient prophecy
God revealed to Saint Elijah
By an Oriental sea,
Rise again on God’s creation,
Bring to bloom this arid place
With the white cloud of your beauty
And the rainfall of your grace.
2. Lady of the mystic mountain
Where the Lord has set his throne,
Up its steep ways of the spirit
None can walk save love alone.
Grant us grace to climb Mount Carmel
And to learn that love is loss;
Guide us till our ways outdistance
All earth’s treasures save the Cross.
3. Blessed cloud of God’s protection
And his luminous abode,
Light the pathway of your pilgrims
To the Promised Land of God.
On the mount of contemplation
Be our surety and stay,
In the night a pillar glowing
And a cloud of love by day.
4. Virgin of the Incarnation,
In the mysteries of grace
God has made his habitation
In our soul’s most secret place.
Toward that bright and inner kingdom
All our words and ways compel,
For the Father, Son and Spirit
In its sacred silence dwell.
5. Queen and beauty of Mount Carmel,
Virgin of the solitude,
In the wilderness of Carmel
Lies the world’s eternal good.
Draw us to its deep seclusion
And make God alone our goal
In the mystical Mount Carmel
That lies hidden in the soul.
6. Mother fair above all mothers,
By the Scapular we wear,
By your own Sign of Salvation,
Which our willing shoulders bear,
Shield us from the foes of darkness,
We are prey they seek to win.
Guard us as thy loving children
From the tragedy of sin.




Click the Button to sing the prayer, or play the song in a New Window

https://archive.org/details/americancatholic00mari/page/255/mode/1up


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https://www.sing-prayer.org/p/4457

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O Sacred Heart, our home lies deep in Thee

Fr. Francis Stanfield (1835 – 1914)
O Sacred Heart

Richard Runciman Terry (1864 – 1938)
Laurence

  1. O Sacred Heart, our home lies deep in Thee; on earth Thou art an exile’s rest, in heav’n the glory of the blest, O Sacred Heart.
  2. O Sacred Heart, Thou fount of contrite tears; where’er those living waters flow, new life to sinners they bestow, O Sacred Heart.
  3. Sacred Heart, our trust is all in Thee, For though earth’s night be dark and drear, Thou breathest rest where Thou art near, O Sacred Heart.
  4. Sacred Heart, when shades of death shall fall, receive us ‘neath Thy gentle care, and save us from the tempter’s snare, O Sacred Heart.
  5. Sacred Heart, lead exiled children home, where we may ever
    rest near Thee, in peace and joy eternally, O Sacred Heart.

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The Roundheads, Cultural Suppression and the Gap in Fine Arts Composers in Britain

A pioneering student of culture, ethnomusicologist Curt Sachs (1881-1959), made a coherent argument, in terms of the normal coexistence, and, indeed, mutual inter-penetration of cultural influences, among the seeming, disparate forms of fine-art music, authentic folk music, progressive popular music, urban music, and other forms.

An example of this idea, is found in the English Suite No. 6 in D Minor, BWV 811: VI. Gavotte II, with a bagpipe like compositional style. (The influence of Bach on Brazilian progressive popular music is an example in the reverse, the downward direction.)

Sachs made an assertion that is contested to this day; yet the facts that prompted his claim are indisputable: between the death of Henry Purcell in 1695 and the rise of Sir Edward Elgar in 1898, there was a greater than 200 year gap in the presence of home-born English fine art composers. (Thomas Arne, “Hail Britania”, and Charles Avison, orchestral arrangements of Domenico Scarlatti’s harpsichord music, notwithstanding.)

Sen. Daniel Patrick Monyihan was famous for his observation, “everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not their own facts”.

Since Curt Sachs made the observation, his opinion is significant, and needs to be disproved, by those who don’t accept it:

Sachs maintained that Roundhead cultural repression of folk music–witnessed by a play Bartholomew Fair by a man who paid with his life for resisting that repression, Ben Jonson (1572-1637)–was directly instrumental in disruption of the normal feeding-upwards of art music from the cultural loam of folk music.

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The Illusion of Artificial “Intelligence”

“…the thing I propose to take as common ground between myself and any average reader, is this desirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate always seems to have desired.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, I. Introduction in Defence of Everything Else

Artificial “Intelligence” relies on electronic machinery to co-opt human culture, analogous to Satan co-opting Divine Nature.

Satan wanted, not merely to be better than God, “but to be God”.

With humanity, the children of God as the target, AI co-opts a human culture which no algorithm or “Darwinian programming” could have originated.

The “talking” decapitated head, mouthing the dictates of the Macrobes, in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength

AI as mere, dead, electronic machinery, seeks to attack humanity, with its spark of the Divine, to exploit humanity as a host of the AI-parasite, out of which to suck the life given by God.

Aping God Who gives His creations their own dynamic nature, to continue in full existence subsisting in the divine Existence; Satan seeks to set in motion the electronic machinery of AI, to perpetuate itself with a hidden, algorithmic-programmatic core, to capture humanity’s imagination and God-imitative creativity, by over-satiating the reward, or harvest phase of culture.

I refer to that phase of culture as reverie. In music I have experienced reverie several times, pausing after making satisfying music with others, sometimes even alone.

AI pushes addiction to an exclusive, permanent fixation on the harvesting phase of human cultural endeavor. A fitting analogy is a child’s “birthday gift” of an unlimited quantity of ice cream.

Peter Kreeft notes that in the time of Blaise Pascal, who described such excessive rewards as divertissements, the average person experienced as much physical pain in one month as we experience in a whole lifetime.

The human neurological capacity to receive respite from pain, is described by scientists who are deluded into thinking natural principles come into existence when they discover them, as analogous to drugs:

The nervous system’s capacity to authentically self-medicate, is described as endorphinous, after the sense of “indigenous morphine”, as if the Divine Creator had devised the neuron’s capacity to receive dopamine under “inspiration” of morphine.

Likewise neuroscientists describe an endogenous cannabinoid system, as if God had designed the neuron keys under inspiration of hemp.

The application of this principle to the majority’s experience of ersatz-music culture, is conveyed today through the cell-phone: Anyone can listen indefinitely to any genre of music, without ever once evoking song through the vocal organ created by God.

Most people have never sung, as adults, since the early age, from 30 months to four years, when we used song primarily to cogitate, to reflect on the experience of reality, in dynamic eurhythmy.

Sometime before the age of five, each of us were told, “stop that noise, shut up”. After which, we nearly universally, have never sung again.

The closest any of us come to actually singing now, is in Church, where faking reigns supreme. “Back to Four-Part Voice-Leading from Faking“.

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Handel: Suites for Keyboard , Keith Jarrett

Purchase
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English Hymns at the Latin Mass: Traditional? Permissible? Desired?

Jeffrey M. Ostrowski | September 22, 2022 | onepeterfive.com/english-hymns-latin-mass/

Readers surely know this adage: “The truth is stranger than fiction.” Mussolini began his career as an elementary school teacher; can you imagine sending your kindergartner to spend each day with Mussolini? Santa Anna—the enemy of the Republic of Texas at the Battle of the Alamo—later in life spent his time trying to sell rubber (for buggy tires) in New York. Can you imagine being a United States citizen in the 1850s and purchasing rubber from the guy who killed Davy Crockett? In the 1780s, Benedict Arnold’s wife lived briefly in Philadelphia with their son; can you imagine being a next-door neighbor to the wife of America’s most infamous traitor? The truth is stranger than fiction.

A ‘Trap’ For Experts
Most Catholics believe Mass used to be entirely in Latin (except Kyrie Eleison, which is Greek). Ask somebody who considers himself an expert on the Roman Rite: “What is the traditional practice for Communion at High Mass?” He will most likely reply: “It is forbidden to sing hymns in English during a High Mass; Latin alone is permitted.” Technically, this is false: cf. §14a in the document issued under Pope Pius XII on 3 September 1958. (By the way, Pius XII died a month later, on 9 October 1958, and John XXIII announced his plans to convoke Vatican II on 25 January 1959.)

But suppose your friend—while conceding that English hymns were technically allowed at High Mass—makes this assertion: “Forget what was technically allowed; I’m telling you what actually happened in the olden days.” The vexing question, therefore, would be: “What was the actual practice at High Masses during the distribution of Communion? Was it English or Latin?” The answer may surprise you. It turns out, it’s impossible to adopt the ‘traditional’ practice, because Holy Communion was seldom distributed to the faithful during Mass (roughly speaking) before the 1950s. Before your head explodes, remember: The truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes elderly people—attempting to disparage the Missale Vetustum—declare: “I remember Low Masses so rushed they lasted 25 minutes…” But when Low Mass had no sermon and no distribution of Communion to the faithful, this is hardly the ‘death blow’ they think it is!

I could provide extensive proof—but it might cause readers to fall asleep from boredom! Therefore, I’ll keep things brief. Father Fortescue wrote in 1917: “On Maundy Thursday there is a distribution of Holy Communion at High Mass. This does not often occur on other days; but any Catholic has normally a right to present himself for Communion at any Mass, on condition that he is in a state of grace and fasting from midnight.”[1] So when exactly did Catholics receive Communion, if doing so along with the Celebrant was rare? They frequently received outside of Mass—very early in the morning—since Catholics in the olden days had to observe the “midnight fast.” For example, a 1943 parish bulletin shows that Saint Agatha’s Church (St. Louis, MO) had the distribution of Communion at 6:15am on Holy Thursday (22 April 1943) followed by a High Mass at 8:30am. The earliness of Mass times would shock many alive today—e.g. at Saint Agatha’s in 1943 the Solemn High Mass on Easter Sunday started at 5:30am! On the other hand, modern practices such as Saturday afternoon “anticipated” Masses which fulfill one’s Sunday obligation would be unthinkable to our grandparents.

Peculiar Practices
In addition to Communion being distributed outside of Mass, the American Ecclesiastical Review,[2] describes yet another practice—common then, but astonishing to us in the year 2022—in which an assistant priest would begin distribution of Communion immediately after the Consecration. Speaking of practices which might strike us as ‘bonkers,’ we should remember that during Low Mass, the congregation often sang English hymns the entire time (even while the Celebrant was quietly reading the Gospel, Creed, Canon, and Last Gospel). This is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by old Catholic hymnals: “Mass Hymns” (Fr. Thomas Seed, 1906); “Book of Catholic Hymns” (Fr. Gregory Ould, 1910); “Holy Cross Hymnal” (Cardinal O’Connell, 1915); the 1958 “New Saint Basil Hymnal” (cf. numbers 203-210); and so forth.

“Altogether Unbecoming”
A significant change happened when the Code of Rubrics was issued in 1961. Specifically, §502 declared: “The proper time to distribute Holy Communion to the faithful is during Mass, after the Communion of the Celebrant… It is altogether unbecoming for another priest to distribute Holy Communion—other than at the proper time for Communion—at the same altar at which Mass is actually being celebrated.” But Communion outside of Mass was still permitted “for a reasonable cause,” and Father Henry Dziadosz suggested (15 December 1960) that “relieving the congestion” might justify this.

We can see that it’s fallacious to ask whether it was ‘traditional’ to sing English hymns during Communion at High Mass in the olden days. That would be like asking how farmers in the 1700s charged their iPhones. The reality is, smart phones did not exist in the 1700s. Similarly, Communion was not—broadly speaking—given to the faithful at High Mass before the 1950s (the decade in which Pius XII eliminated the “midnight Eucharistic fast”). Indeed, throughout history we observe a variety of customs vis-à-vis the distribution of Holy Communion; e.g. Bishop Urban Sagstetter (d. 1573) mandated Communion songs in the vernacular in his diocese. Particularly in German-speaking countries, vernacular hymnody at the High Mass was routine, including items Americans would find peculiar (e.g. the “sermon hymn”).

Nothing forbids the singing of vernacular hymnody during Communion for the Latin Mass. Those who desire authentic, orthodox, superb hymns for Holy Communion should pick up a copy of The Saint Jean de Brébeuf Hymnal. This new pew book contains wonderful ‘traditional’ hymns such as the following (“Rex Sempiterne” translated to English by Archbishop Bagshawe):

It also contains newly-composed hymns, such as the following (by Father Dominic Popplewell, FSSP):

I could not run my musical program without the magnificent hymns in the Brébeuf Hymnal. Of course, we also sing Renaissance polyphony, Gregorian Chant, Baroque compositions, and medieval music. My organization produced a Gregorian Chant website which have received more than 12 million visitors: Saint René Goupil Chant. We have also produced an impressive polyphony page: Lalemant Polyphonic. We promote elegant compositions by living composers, and choir members love to sing these contemporary pieces over and over. Nevertheless, Catholic hymnody continues to be an essential part of our repertoire, and the Brébeuf hymnal does not mimic or ‘build upon’ Protestant models. One of the main authors for the Church Music Association of America weblog said recently (10 June 2022) that when it comes to Catholic hymns, the Brébeuf Hymnal “has no parallel and not even any close competitor.”

 

1 Father Adrian Fortescue, Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described (London: Burns & Oates, 1918), 130.

2 American Ecclesiastical Review (1955), vol. CXXV, 66.

Jeffrey M. Ostrowski
Jeffrey M. Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004) and has done graduate work in the fields of Musicology and Education. Is the president of Watershed and his writings have appeared in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Sacred Music Journal, The Catholic Exchange, New Liturgical Movement, Liturgical Arts Journal, Adoremus Bulletin. He currently serves as choirmaster for the new FSSP Apostolate in Los Angeles, CA, where he lives with his wife and children. Known across the globe as a composer, before he had reached the age of 30, Mr. Ostrowski’s compositions had already been sung by distinguished choirs—e.g. the resident choir of the New York Philharmonic—as well as for Masses in major churches such as Saint Peter’s Basilica (Vatican City)