Lent 2026

There is, perhaps, no surer mark of folly than an attempt to correct the natural infirmities of those we love. The finest composition of human nature, as well as the finest china, may have a flaw in it; and this, I am afraid, in either case, is equally incurable; though, nevertheless, the pattern may remain of the highest value. – Tom Jones

As Sundays – even in Lent – are never generalizably penitential I will leave a post before my Lenten fast of phone begins anew tomorrow. As an aside I am unfortunately locked out since two weeks ago of all electronic communications related to this blog – my apologies to those who prefer to communicate through email or text. I’m a troglodyte. I have an odd feeling that something is brewing in this world. It is difficult to describe, and yet. Regardless Jesus is King, and He loves you. Return to Him in the confessional. You will return to Him otherwise soon enough. Only in hell are You identified as your mistakes and past, and you are not in hell. So leave your mistakes and past before His throne as you walk out with peace. The Lamb of God first brings mercy. And then the Lamb of God brings peace. I pray we all increase in grace and mercy and peace and even laughter for our loved ones’ natural infirmities – including our own infirmities. As I pray we all crush under the boot of grace our vices. God bless. Mary keep. See yall with chocolate and champagne in Easter.

Reason’s Resin

I sort of appreciate how Reason-tier libertarianism in 2026 is little more than a marijuana leaf and a yankauer sucker fossilized in that pestilent resin of Y2K New Atheism. A nice anecdotal warning – lo, the heaps of abandoned pleather jackets and practiced snide – against all that massive concatenation of debauched stupidity.

On Anna Howe

Anna is a feminine given name, the Latin form of the Greek: Ἄννα and the Hebrew name Hannah(Hebrew: חַנָּה, romanized: Ḥannāh), meaning “favour” or “grace”. – Wiki

I think you told me, sir, you never saw Miss Howe. She is a fine graceful young lady. A fixed melancholy on her whole aspect overclouded a vivacity and fire, which nevertheless darted now and then through the awful gloom. I shall ever respect her for her love to my dear cousin.

Never did I think, said she as she gave me her hand, to enter more these doors: but, living or dead, my Clarissa brings me after her anywhither!

She entered with me the little parlour. The moment she saw the coffin, she withdrew her hand from mine, and with impatience pushed aside the lid. As impatiently she removed the face-cloth. In a wild air, she clasped her uplifted hands together; and now looked upon the corpse, now up to Heaven as if appealing her woes to that. Her bosom heaved and fluttered discernible through her handkerchief, and at last she broke silence: Oh sir!—see you not here!—see you there-the glory of her sex?-thus by the most villainous of yours – thus – laid low! Ah, my blessed friend, said she! my sweet companion!— Anna Howe before the coffin at Harlowe Place, from Clarissa.

Women will have, whether by kin or soul, their sisters. Our Lady upon the Annunciation sought for directly her dear St. Elizabeth. Contrarily, that Hillary Clinton was described by the Shield Maidens during her Presidential run as “a woman but not a sister” must have stung deeply and struck home that cold poison pump of a heart. Clarissa’s glorious Anna Howe is among the first, and inarguably the best, of art’s saucy female friends. The feminine sauce-box soulmate will be portrayed throughout the subsequent three centuries since the publication of Clarissa, but none reach the grandeur of Miss Anna. Perhaps the highest compliment to Anna is that the perfidious Lovelace knows her to be his most dangerous foe, for Anna’s ferocious love for her dear Clarissa will not be brooked. At the fateful ball near the novel’s end, Lovelace and Anna meet for the first time since the totality of his evil has been revealed. The scene is the most beautiful, near allegory, of virtue’s consideration of the demonic. Bunyan could never. Miss Howe wishes nothing to do with Sir Lovelace, and she seats herself far removed in the corner to obviate his advances. Terrifyingly he suddenly appears – unseen by Anna – behind her seat, bending to her bejeweled ear while whispering, “I ask only 15 minutes with you.” Much may happen in 15 minutes, and Miss Howe isn’t here to play his reckless game. She is momentarily unnerved until she remembers her dear Clarissa. Virtue may flee until virtue must fight. Anna stands, directing herself to the exit. Lovelace attempts to detain her as she reaches the door to leave the demon to his admirers. Softly grasping her arm: “I ask, again, only 15 minutes.” Anna snapping open her fan, “accidentally” dislodging Mr. Lovelace’s impeccable wig in a mushroom cloud of hair powder before an entranced gaped-mouth ballroom is the supreme crushing of the serpent’s head in all of literature. It is also very wise advice for us when our own snakes touch our arm, imploring “just 15 minutes.” May God grant us all our own Miss Howe. And, as Clarissa most certainly was, may we be worthy of her.

Dreideling in the Lodge

For as soon as the constitution and the spirit of the Mason sect were clearly discovered by manifest signs of its actions, by the investigation of its causes, by the publication of its laws, and of its rites and commentaries, with the addition of the personal testimony of those who were in the secret, this Apostolic See denounced the sect of the Freemasons, and publicly declared its constitution, as contrary to law and right, to be pernicious no less to Christendom than to the State;

Manifestly from papal documents, freemasonry is not synonymous with Judaism. What if the real conspiracy was Worldwide Freemasonry duping the Jews into the Bad Guy role to unfocus the camera from freemasonic perfidy? A rotary club on every corner so long as no rosary in the county. The Freemasonic benefit of all that would be also to unfocus Christendom from Roman Catholicism.

SPF 15 and the Special Bread

Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us.

It is written, Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.

In some sense everything in this valley of tears is bread and circus. Man literally lives by bread, and it is of his nature to circus. The problem isn’t so much that man lives by bread and circus, so much as man attempts to live by such alone. Boycotting, say, the SuperBowl might be right for you, and I’m all for smashing modernist idols. I just also realize from where most our hammers tend to come. People who read here know I cast a dim eye towards an “anti-circus” crowd which is incapable of answering why this entire wide and beautiful world is swallowed up in that “alone.”

Protect Your Neck

And whereas indeed he was the Son of God, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered

Today is the Feast of St. Blaise, patron of those afflicted in their neck. How often do you think of your neck? Scripture commands us to submit all things to Christ. Roman Catholic devotion to the saints is the Lord Jesus Christ’s gentle reminder: And I mean it.