Vestments from the Queen's Mantle

Here are vestments made from a mantle that belonged to Marie-Antoinette. (Via Vive la Reine.) To quote:

France is a country where every village has a history and where all these stories have been the history of France. La Ferriere-aux-Ponds, small town of Orne in the Netherlands-Norman has, also, many accounts of this history that range from basement of his castle, built after the conquest of Normandy by William the Conqueror (part of which was excavated ten years ago), to the remains of its iron mine exploited industrially from the beginning of this century and closed in 1970.
Among all these traces ancestral one, though very little known so far and discrete dimension to its competitors archaeological, historical value and has an especially sentimental like no other: it is a mantle of Court of Queen Marie Antoinette of France that has been transformed, in the early nineteenth century, in liturgical vestments. These ornaments, classified as "Historic Monuments" in 1990 because of their rarity and beauty, were given to the parish of La Ferriere in 1859 after having been repeatedly worn by priests attached to the memory of the martyrdom of the Queen.
Recently, these ornaments were exposed twice to the public in 1982 at La Ferriere in 1993 and the castle of Chambord. On this occasion, it was found that, on the one hand, they required a restoration and, secondly, they undoubtedly deserve to be exposed continuously under all inside the church La Ferriere rather than remain locked and unknown in the chasuble of the sacristy. (Read more.)

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On the Urgent Need for a Militant Catholicism

 From Radical Fidelity:

There is no shortcut to sanctity. There is no Christianity without the Cross. Holiness is a thousand decisions daily, each one a cut, until you bleed out for Christ. And yet, we live in a time when the very notion of suffering is considered pathological, something to be treated, numbed, or medicated out of existence. The modern world, including not a few within the Church, has declared war on pain—and in doing so, has declared war on Christ. To reject and avoid a path of suffering is to reject the Gospel.

Christ did not flee suffering; He ran toward it. His entire mission was to embrace the wood of the Cross and be lifted upon it. “I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized,” He said, “and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). Archbishop Fulton Sheen, recognizing the soldierly soul of Our Lord, declared that victory over evil would come only through “the glad acceptance of suffering.” Not resignation, not mere endurance—but gladness. Joy in pain. This is incomprehensible to a culture raised on convenience, consumerism, and comfort. It is especially incomprehensible to the average modern Catholic, whose soul has been disarmed by softness and seduced by the false gospel of comfort.

The disease of effeminacy, long warned against by saints and doctors of the Church, has become epidemic. St. Thomas Aquinas defines effeminacy as the vice by which a man “shuns what is hard because of an attachment to pleasure” (ST, II-II, Q.138, a.1). In simpler terms, the effeminate man cannot endure discomfort—he recoils at fasting, avoids discipline, shrinks from confrontation, and flees from spiritual hardship. This is not just a moral weakness; it is a spiritual defect that cripples the Church’s ability to form saints. It breeds men who are unwilling to be martyrs, husbands who will not sacrifice, fathers who will not lead, and priests who will not preach the truth. This is the kind of man who scrolls through his phone looking at the lives of the rich and filtered, addicted to envy, lulled into acedia by social media’s satanic liturgy of vanity.

We are living under the threefold tyranny of the modern mind: pleasure, safety, and self-worship. These idols rule the culture and now increasingly infect the Church. Christ calls men to take up their cross and follow Him; the world calls them to take up their remote, take another bite, and follow their impulses. We are told suffering is to be avoided at all costs, and in place of mortification we are given mindfulness; in place of fasting, self-care; in place of penance, pop psychology. Catholic men have exchanged the hairshirt for the gym shirt and pretend they are warriors because they lift iron instead of spiritual burdens. They are more formed by dopamine than by discipline. They have learned to fear discomfort more than they fear Hell. (Read more.)

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The Green Man

From El Antiguo:

Both The Stations of the Sun and The Stripping of the Altars demonstrate conclusively that the strange rituals, beliefs, and material cultures of the Middle Ages were anything but remnants of forgotten paganism. The Green Man, the Christmas tree, Hallowe’en… these had emerged in medieval Europe, not in defiance of Christianity, but as a result of Christendom’s full flowering. I was floored. I dug into a hundred other examples. Yule logs and bonfires, maypoles and flower crowns, folk dances and herbal lore. Christian, Christian, Christian. Of course the pagan people had lit fires and danced, sung and decorated. Some things had lasted for centuries, but it didn’t mean that these rituals were hidden bits of Ye Olde Religion snuck in under the noses of the imperious Inquisition and meddling bishops. These ancient things were either baptized and gracefully incorporated into the Faith, or they had come from the Faith itself. And the people participating in these strange rites were unapologetically, unmistakably Christian.

What could this mean?

Even while I was teaching a class on paganism and magic, my personal conviction about its superiority to Christianity was wearing thin. The more widely I read, the more the history of this incarnated version of Christianity became clear. And my research was rewarded. I began, finally, to understand the inescapable conclusion. This earthy, living Christianity was indeed suppressed. But not by the medieval Church. It was suppressed by State Protestantism. 

The Church in full flower had problems, of course, but I quickly recognized those problems as stemming not from the Faith itself, but rather from human failure to live up to Christ. The various cruel sins of medieval Catholics were not a “problem” for me; sinful humans exist at all times. The structure, the aim of their society was remarkably beautiful. It was a mystical, mysterious, living structure.

And it was this structure that was eroded by the Reformation, especially the English Reformation. Henry VIII’s greed for monastic land. Puritans who believed the apocalypse was just around the corner. Merchants and bureaucrats who saw their chance for wealth. Princes who wished to break from Rome—for purely political purposes.

It is impossible not to note that most of the Reformers had good intentions—but more often than not, their followers were motivated not by conscience, but by greed and frustration. And the things that they were frustrated by were not the sacraments or the hierarchy or Marian dogmas, but corruption and apocalyptic dread. Corruption and fear can be fixed more easily than a broken worldview. They had made a mistake.

I came to a two-fold conclusion: One, that the Reformation was not progress, but a rupture in society that crippled the Christian worldview. And Two, that the Reformation led directly to modernity. This was confirmed again and again, in study after study. Even the Protestant historians agreed, though they put a positive spin on it. This wasn’t my instinct. This was factual history. While the leaders of the Reformation were genuine, the change from old Europe to new Europe had to be enforced on the common people. I was surprised at the brutality of it, the obviousness of it.

I wasn’t just reading the history of Early Modernity. I was reading about the systematic dismantling of a world that I loved and understood, a world that fit every instinct that I had. And worse, this dismantling was often not motivated by genuine religious fervor, but rather money and power. This was explicitly confirmed by Protestant historians: Franklin Baumer, Jacques Barzun, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Steven Ozment, Jaroslav Pelikan, Peter Gay… the list could be extended ad infinitum. (Read more.)

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Vestments Made by Saint Thérèse

 

From Liturgical Arts Journal:

Thérèse had great devotion to the Holy Face of Tours and this is reflected in the image on the chasuble. The decoration is full of symbolism. Thérèse chose two white roses to honor her parents, Sts. Louis and Zélie. She also chose to depict white lilies to symbolize the nine children born into her family. Four died in infancy and so they are the flowers that have not bloomed. The five siblings who survived into adulthood all became fully professes sisters, depicted as the flowers in full bloom. Thérèse identified with the lily half hidden behind the Holy Face. (Read more.)

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Questions About Epstein

 From Overton:

This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to questions about the Epstein client list in light of these new DOJ and FBI statements.

A reporter asked, “Karoline, the DOJ and FBI have now concluded there was no Jeffrey Epstein client list. What do you tell MAGA supporters who say they want anyone involved in Epstein’s alleged crimes held accountable?”

Leavitt replied, “This administration wants anyone who has ever committed a crime to be accountable, and I would argue this administration has done more to lock up bad guys than certainly the previous administration.”

She continued, “The Trump administration is committed to truth and transparency. That’s why the Attorney General and the FBI Director pledged, at the president’s direction, to do an exhaustive review of all the files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and his death. They put out a memo in conclusion of that review.”

“There was material they did not release because frankly it was incredibly graphic and contained child pornography, which is not something that is appropriate for public consumption,” she added.

“But they committed to an exhaustive investigation. That’s what they did and they provided the results of that.”

“That’s transparency,” Leavitt said. (Read more.)

 

From Tierney's Real News:

How do you think Trump got the UK to make such a great trade deal for the American people? It's called leverage using the Epstein files. There were likely British elites in there - or Trump and Bondi let the UK Prime Minister believe there were. The UK can handle their own punishment. That's not our responsibility. But Trump used that leverage to help the American people get BILLIONS in trade deals and tariffs. Smart.

Nobody could figure out why Trump and Bondi did that. Now you know why. LEVERAGE. Many called them stupid for doing the binders. Nope. GENIUS. The truth is most of the evidence in the Epstein files has probably already been destroyed by now.

The paid influencers on X (including Elon) want you to think Trump is somehow guilty and Bondi is covering for him. They’re doing everything they can to try to tie Trump to Epstein when Trump literally threw Epstein OUT of Mar-a-Lago. STOP BUYING THEIR LIES. (Read more.)

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History of Pendennis Castle

The castle from which Queen Henrietta Maria made her perilous escape to France in 1644. From English Heritage:

Pendennis Castle is one of England’s finest surviving coastal fortresses. Together with the fortress at St Mawes, Pendennis guarded the anchorage of Carrick Roads and the port towns below for over 400 years. The castle began as a gun fort in the mid-16th century. Bastioned defences were added in the 1590s following the threat of Spanish invasion and were periodically updated, notably during the Second World War when the guns again saw action.

Pendennis Castle was built from 1539 to 1545 when England faced a possible invasion from the united powers of Catholic Europe. To defend against this, Henry VIII implemented a national programme of military and naval preparations, including new coastal artillery forts. These were equipped with guns to shatter enemy warships and troop transports that might attempt to capture English ports.^[1]

The important anchorage of Carrick Roads, a deep estuary at the mouth of the river Fal, was a perfect location for an enemy to establish a base. To protect it, Henry built gun forts on opposite shores, at Pendennis and St Mawes. Pendennis Castle had a circular design that allowed all-round fire from guns mounted at several levels.

The fort was fully garrisoned (guarded) by up to 100 men only when there was an imminent threat, notably during the planned Spanish invasions of 1574, 1579, 1588 (the ‘Great Armada’) and 1596–7. On the last occasion, a Spanish fleet intended to land troops at Pendennis and capture Carrick Roads. The attack never came, but the threat forced Elizabeth I to review the defences.^[2] (Read more.)

 

More HERE.

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The Synagogue and the King

In 1787 Louis XVI gave full civil rights to Protestants and Jews in the Edict of Versailles. But even before the edict, the king practiced religious toleration. From The Times of Israel:

The monumental synagogue built from pink sandstone from Vosges and decorated with royal symbols in honor of Louis XVI’s recognition of the Jewish community, cannot be seen on the 1915 photo. In the 18^th century you could not have known what was behind this street and the actual building itself would not have been identifiable as a synagogue from the outside. It was tolerated to be built on condition that gatherings were held discreetly.

Visibility is everything. They had to function in a material context in which their Jewishness was officially hidden. There was no visible public status, and, in this way, the community was almost imaginary and preserved their sense of Jewishness in secret. The permission of the king to build a synagogue allowed them to practice their religion more openly. But the non-public appearance of the building was aimed to hide the rituals and beliefs. They were only permitted to carry out the outwards forms in a secret building.

That what had disappeared by the fire, revealed a Jewish building, previously absent. So, to speak, the synagogue came out of hiding after the arson attack. The destruction created visibility and as the vanished buildings were not replaced, anyone could read the words “To the God of Israel, by permission of the King of France, the year 1786” (“Au Dieu d’Israël, par permission du Roy de France, l’an 1786”) on the front of the synagogue. Even though a light was cast on the synagogue, it was not until in recent years that the French façade text was replaced by one written in Hebrew. (Read more.)

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Rainmaker

 From Tierney's Real News:

I’m going to cover some facts about the horrific flooding in Texas that I have NOT seen mentioned on TV by the fake news. I haven’t spent much time vetting the downpour and flooding - but here’s what I know so far to help your research.

General Flynn posted an inquiry about a geo-engineering company from Delaware called RAINMAKER - the leading cloud seeding company in America - that seeds clouds for weather modification in Texas, and elsewhere, and asked them to respond if they were in the area and had any impact on the flooding.

Augustus Doricko started RAINMAKER in 2023, a cloud seeding geoengineering startup, that aims to create water abundance in the United States. Cloud seeding was actually invented in Schenectady, New York in 1946, and that group of inventors included atmospheric scientist Bernard Vonnegut, the brother of novelist Kurt Vonnegut. And, from 1962 to 1983, the U.S. government’s Project Stormfury sought to weaken cyclones by flying airplanes dispensing silver iodide into them. (Read more.)

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The Jerome Mansion

 The house of the grandparents of Winston Churchill. From Ephemeral New York:

In 1859, Leonard Jerome—one of the richest men in New York City, who amassed a pile of cash in stocks and a name for himself as a horse fancier—made a promise his wife.

“I’ll build you a palace yet!” he told her, while the two were temporarily living abroad and enjoying the social swirl of Paris. Jerome was a competitive and driven man who would build a racetrack in the Bronx and make and lose fortunes throughout his life. But he certainly stuck to his pledge. Once back in New York later that year, he bought a parcel of land on the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 26th Street, a posh neighborhood of new brownstones reserved for New York’s wealthiest. (Read more.)

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