The Index of Forbidden T.V. Shows

With the same implication as that tired maxim, "You can't turn back the clock", the worst of the Newfangled People are apt, from time to time, to point out the plain fact that "this isn't Leave it to Beaver, you know?".

To which I say, a very good thing it isn't. May the Saints preserve us from that foul archetype! For you see, my unsuspecting reader, Wally and the Beav were nothing but operatives in a wildly successful International Freemasonic Plot backed by Communists, financed by Illuminati, and designed to subvert the American Family.

Consider it: the lessons Beav and Wally learned from their wise old dad always depended on purely natural consequences and especially on getting caught in the first place.

It's not that I mind natural consequences, but where is the concept of right and wrong? Where is God's law?

Why didn't Ward's wisdom ever include a tidbit like this?

"You know boys, that Eddie Haskell is a wretched sinner and if you keep running with miscreants like him you'll end up suffering in hell for all eternity. You don't want to suffer in hell for all eternity, now do you boys?"

"Gosh Dad, no way."

The Cleavers never went to Church. They never even mentioned God.

And neither has every story got to be about good Catholics, but the Cleavers were presented as the perfect family at a time when Americans were naively gobbling down the lie of the American Dream.

Accursed heretics are one thing, but the Cleavers weren't even. They were a perfect little godless, contracepting family. They were a filthy damnable lie, however pleasant; and that's the worst kind.

Oh sure, the Cleavers always sat down together to dinner. Oh sure, June always wore dresses. Sure the boys were always polite and called people mister and missus. Sure. A clever disguise for their secular atheist-communist conspiracy.

Ward, June, Wally and the Beav were there to give that first freemasonic push from the top of the slippery slope to perdition.

You can take it from me. I'm telling you.

Summa Alcoholica

A few weeks ago I wrote that there was some Bushmills 1608 in my hip flask. The genteel reader may not realize that Bushmills is Ulster-made. A correspondent, therefore, accuses me of "sinning with a protestant whiskey".

I reject the very possibility.

God wants us drinking whisky. He says so in the Apocalypse: "he that will, let him take the water of life, freely."

Did you get that? Aqua Vitae, man. That's whisky. Drink it freely, he says.

A chapter later he's talking about the "sanctified still". Now I'll grant you the whisky that comes off a still that's sanctified has got to be Catholic, so, confident that the Angelic Doctor would have got around to it if he'd had the time, I thus present my second of the supplement of the third part of my Summa Alcoholica.

Here we consider:

Whether it is sinful to drink protestant whisky.

Objection 1: It would seem that it is sinful to drink protestant whisky. For, protestantism is evil and an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit. Since the fruits of a protestant distiller are evil, therefore it is evil to drink protestant whisky.

Objection 2: Further, whiskey always leads to drunkenness and drunkenness is always sinful, therefore it is evil even to drink whisky.

On the contrary, Saint Paul says "Do not still drink water" (Tim. 5).

I answer that, there is no sin in drinking protestant whisky, for as St. John tells us, "believe not every spirit, but TRY THE SPIRITS". So I'm trying the spirits. Now this particular bottle of spirits happens to have been made by prots. Still, where's the harm? It is written that "the pot of meal shall not waste" (3 Kings 17). Obviously that means Irish Whiskey. It's made in a pot-still, of corn meal, and I ain't wastin' it.

Reply to Objection 1. Our Lord tells us "you then being evil, know how to give good gifts". It is therefore evident that protestants, being evil, can still make a damn fine whisky. The Scots do, and they're Presbyterian. Nobody's as evil as Presbyterians.

Reply to Objection 2. It is written "after he had recovered his spirits he fell down at her feet" (Judith 13). Now this guy was falling-down drunk, but have you ever tried to take a drink away from a drunk? He'll go to lengths to recover his spirits, I can tell you. So, after buddy gets his drink back, he falls down and starts praising God. Praising God is good fruits. You don't gather figs from thorns. Therefore drunkenness is not always evil, and drinking protestant whisky is an incentive to piety.



Of note, Irish and American whiskies are spelled whiskey. All others are whisky. I hope I have kept it straight above and only spelled it with the 'e' in specific cases.

What else is there? III

To the two or three readers still reading this blog, I apologize. I hadn't meant to leave this much time before putting this third part together. I apologize also because this post is badly written. The new baby cometh and I feel pressed for time.

The first part, the reader will have long forgot, suggests that nothing is quite so important as the Liturgy. If Divine Worship isn't done well, all the rest will come to naught.

The second part concerns the theory, articulated so well by C.S. Lewis, that "You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first."

My premise all along is that the near-uselessness of the modern Church is the result of putting second things before first things. Liturgy, you see, is First Things and as long as the Church continues to bungle public worship, she will fail in every other way.

The clever observer will need no enumeration of this late monumental and tragic failure.

So continues my outreach to the Newfangled Catholics. Don't take my word for it. I present here the case for First Things in the words of Pope John Paul II, and from Vatican II (that inferior sequel of inferior sequels).

If you ain't seekin' you first the kingdom, whatever else you're doing isn't going to work out.

John Paul II, of happy memory, put it pretty well when he said, "The first duty of a creature is to glorify the Creator".

And Vatican II's Sacrosanctum concilium says it is the Mass "wherein God is perfectly glorified".

Perfectly glorified. In the Mass. One supposes a creature, if he were well inclined to discharge his duty, would want to do so as perfectly as possible.

So we concern ourselves here with the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by which God may be perfectly glorified and man may most perfectly accomplish his First Duty.

"Oh sure" you're thinking, "but it doesn't say a thing about which Mass or how it's celebrated. The Novus Ordo has every bit as good an effect as the traditional Latin Mass".

I give you Vatican II again: "But in order that the liturgy may be able to produce its full effects …when the liturgy is celebrated, something more is required than the mere observation of the laws governing valid and licit celebration".

"Something more you say? I just love Eucharistic Payer Number Seventy Three. More than valid and licit? What on earth or in heaven is there more than that?"

Well, if you ask John Paul, he'll tell you that "like the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, the Church has feared no "extravagance", devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist".

The Newfangled Catholic will want to take a moment here to consider that of late, on the contrary, the Church has feared every extravagance. No heed has been paid to the proper orientation of the people, the wonder has been cut away and with it the liturgy's full effects are missing.

The Liturgy, you see, is broken, and because of that Man fails miserably in his first duty, to glorify the Almighty.

But how can we tell it's broken?

Vatican II again: "The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows".

Who wants to argue that the Church has not been powerless in the face of the secularist onslaught? The Church is powerless because she has disconnected herself from the font of all her power. It's there in black and white. You don't want to go rejecting Vatican II, now do you?

"Okay," saith the Newfangled Catholic, "you've made your point, but why is the liturgy so important? The protestants have been screwing up public prayer for as long as Cranmer was a damned filthy heretic and the world has only just now started going completely to crap".

I could scarcely have said it better myself.

Divine Worship is not only our first duty. It is our last end.

In this world of ours, God gives us quite a lot more than the Liturgy to show us of our place in the Universe, and pagans and heretics could rely on these to remind them.

Sex, for one. Monarchy for another. The sky, for a wonerful third.

But man imagines now that he has conquered the created world and himself. Sex is all screwed up. Man is no longer in any awe of his capacity to procreate. Babies turn up in test tubes or in garbage bins, and none of it seems noteworthy. Government is at man's whim and there is no more king as a reminder of permanent things, the godliness of paternal love, hierarchy, man's place before God.

A man used to be able to look at the stars and feel at once significant and insignificant; just as he should before God.

Now the stars only fool modern man to thinking that nothing lies beyond his understanding.

So that's it. It's because so little else is left that man needs the liturgy more than ever to remind him of his place before God. It is the last thing keeping man from going over completely to the original temptation:

You shall be as Gods.

And when Divine worship becomes all about me, what could we be but lost?


This is the third of three parts. Read part one here here and part two here.

HBQ no. 3: Flaming Ted Edition

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"Oooo Eminenth! You're tho hot you're on fiy-yah!"

Our most fragrant burning to date: Smokey topnotes with undertones of lavender and pansy!