Epiphany Monuments

The word "epiphany" means "manifestation."

On January 6th the Catholic Church celebrates in its Mass the Epiphany, which commemorates a triple manifestation of Christ:
(1) to the Magi - i.e. to the Gentiles;
(2) in His Baptism, when the Voice from Heaven declared, "This is my beloved Son;"
(3) in the miracle of changing water into wine at Cana.

Since the time of the Apostles, Christians in the Holy Land have marked the spots where these events took place. When they were able, the Christians built churches and other monuments at the locations. Even when war and various disasters leveled or ruined the structures, the Christians always built again on exact the same spot.

Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem - Holy Land 

Built on the site of the stable where Christ was born

Cologne Cathedral - Germany

Where the relics of the three wise men are kept

The practice of building monuments in honor of the Faith holds true in Gentile lands too

 

Jordan River - Holy Land

At the spot where John baptized Christ
 The structure on the right is a church,
of necessity made of wood (i.e. easily rebuilt) due to frequent flooding

Cana of Galilee - Holy Land

Church at the site of the wedding where Christ performed His first miracle at the request of His mother

All photos by the author.

The Next Heritage Tour

Today I hop on a series of flights that will land me in Vienna, Austria, good Lord willing. This will be the start of my next pilgrimage, which will wind its way through the Austrian countryside, through a bit of Germany, and end in Switzerland.

Vienna
Vienna (German: Wien) is the capital of Austria. The former capital of the Holy Roman Empire, Vienna is a cultural center for music and the arts, science, and fine cuisine. The city is 50% Catholic, and is home to numerous beautiful churches; my stops will include St. Stephen's Cathedral (which houses the miraculous icon of Maria Potsch and the body of St. Valentine) and the Church of St. Mary where the relics are kept of St. Clement Mary Hofbauer, patron of Vienna.

Danube Excursion
Overlooking the Danube is the baroque basilica of Maria Teferl, which is my next stop. After that I'll visit the renowned Benedictine Abbey of Melk, with its famous library and scriptorium; the whole is embellished with a vast array of marble sculptures and brilliantly colored frescoes.

Salzburg
Salzburg is next, with a stop in Mariazell, who 800 year old shrine is the chief Marian pilgrimage site in Austria. Then a visit to the church of Maria Plain and other sacred sites.

Altotting
I'll hop across the German border for a second visit to Altotting, returning to Salzburg in the evening.

Innsbruck
Innsbruck is next, for some sight-seeing and souvenir gathering.

St. Gallen
I cross the Swiss border this time, arriving at the Benedictine abbey of St. Gallen and its famous library.

Einsiedeln
The Benedictine monastery of Our Lady of the Hermits in Einsideln is next.

Fribourg
A tour of the Gothic cathedral of Fribourg is my next destination; from there I'll go to the church of St. Michael, which houses the remains of the Jesuit St. Peter Canisius. Afterward, the Abbey of St. Maurice, where the Theban Legion was martyred.

Econe
A personal high point of the trip, Econe is a small town where Abp. Marcel Lefebvre formed the first seminary of the SSPX and so commenced Operation Survival. His tombs is in the seminary crypt, where I will go to pay my respects and offer my petitions. The next day I will attend the ordinations of several new traditional priests.

Geneva
I'll get only a peek of Geneva: it's where the will be that will carry me back to the States.

Conspiracy Junkies II

In this post I covered the topic of conspiracy junkies. In that entry I:
(1) showed how the claims of one Fred Leuchter regarding the Nazi's gas chambers were demolished;
(2) provided a reference to the solid science of a Popular Mechanics article demonstrating that the Twin Towers were brought down by airplanes;
(3) concluded with plausible explanations for why some people were inclined to pursue the chimera of conspiracy notions.

One reader of this blog wrote to say that "Firemen, military men, and others are not onboard with the official story of 911." No names or examples were provided. As phrased, the meaning of my critic's remark is that not a single fireman, military man, and other person is on board with the official story. Perhaps what was meant that some persons don't accept it? But how many? Who? Absent any examples or evidence comparable to what was provided by the other side of the discussion, the best response to a sweeping generalization is often a categorical denial. But I will add that the vast majority of firemen, military men, and others recognize that it was two airplanes that brought down the Twin Towers; the ones who think otherwise are few and far between, and their differing accounts can be readily explained by the chaos and confusion of the day.

My reader added, "As for what happened in Germany, well, let's just say we can't even question it so what are they hiding?" I'm reminded of a conversation I had some time ago with another Holocaust denier who said that what was needed was a thorough investigation of the matter. I pointed out that numerous reliable investigations had already been conducted, and that a thinking man would see that the findings were thorough, conclusive, and satisfied all reasonable doubts. The other chap said that we still needed more investigations. It seemed clear to me that facts were not the answer to such an attitude; about all one can do is tell them they're unreasonable and move along.

That is, unless they are in positions of influence and seek to publicize and win support for their calumny. In that case, I think lawsuits for defamation of character are entirely appropriate. After all, this is a matter of bearing false witness against the victims of Nazi atrocities, and a man is entitled to his good name.

At about this point my critics will sometimes talk about other atrocities that are given a free pass -- why do only the Jews get to complain about what was done to them?

For example, the Ottoman Turks inflicted genocide on the Armenian Christians, murdering upwards of a million innocent souls. Adolf Hitler, commenting on the silence surrounding this great crime, said that if nobody talked about the Armenians, nobody would talk about the Jews either. The Turks of today say that there was collateral damage inflicted on both sides during that time; world opinion has been slowly turning against them, but the denial of the genocide is still considered acceptable in many quarters.

Long-time readers will recall the numerous blog entries I've written about the 100+ million innocents murdered by the Soviet Russians, Maoist Chinese, and other Communists in the 20th century. Beware the useful idiots who say that socialism is a viable system and that certain tyrants just gave it a bad name! And the popular press has long looked the other way regarding the evidence of the outcome of what happens when the flawed notion of "separation of Church and state" is consistently applied. Secularists, not religionists, have caused the most suffering in human history, bar none -- another point where our "watchdog" media is a no-show.

And it was from Iraq that the neologism "genocide" was coined in 1943. The author was Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer from Poland. Lemkin was describing the systematic extermination of Assyrian Christians carried out in the 1930s by the Muslim governors of the new nation of Iraq that had been born after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Silence is the order of the day here as well. And yes, it is another injustice.

Should lawsuits be brought against all these entities? The answer, I think, is a prudential one: if you think you can win the case, then yes. Otherwise, you just have to walk away from it.

Just like you have to walk away from conspiracy junkies who won't permit themselves to be persuaded by credible evidence.

Odin Go Home

Christmas Eve

Source

Hugo Jaeger, one of Hitler's personal photographers, took pictures of the Fuhrer, his generals, and a herd of Nazi thugs at a Christmas-time gala for SS officer cadets in Munich on December 18, 1941. Jaeger buried the images in glass jars on the outskirts of Munich; later he sold them to Life Magazine, which published many of them this week.

The mass murderers are not having a good time of it, judging by their dispirited scowls in the color prints. Small wonder, as the Russians had been knocking them about the eastern front pretty well.

The photos are interesting on multiple levels, one of them being that they help demonstrate how much the Nazis really hated Christianity.

From the article:

* Hitler believed religion had no place in his 1,000-year Reich. He replaced the Christian figure of St. Nicholas with the Norse god Odin. He directed Germans to celebrate the season as a holiday of the "winter solstice."

* The angel atop the Christmas tree in one photo has been replaced with a swastika. Many of the tree's ornaments carried runic symbols and iron cross motifs.

* A few years later, in 1944-1945, the Nazis tried to reinvent Christmas as a day to commemorate the war dead.

Points to ponder the next time someone trots out the calumny that the Third Reich was the consequence of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.

Conspiracy Junkies

A while back I was party to a 9/11 conspiracy discussion with a chap who had a Doctorate in Grassy Knoll Philosophy.

For the record, I'm of the camp who thinks that:
(1) The airplanes flown into the twin towers brought them down;
(2) The Pentagon was hit by a plane and not a missile;
(3) War planes did not shoot down the fourth plane in Pennsylvania.

Very official story of me, I know. And anyone who thinks I'm a news media groupie had better take another look at my posts on this blog over the past few years.

Anyway, as the exchanges with the individuals who were half a bubble off plum were winding down, I was reminded of another conspiracy discussion I'd been involved in.

Once I was dining with a friend's out of town guest who offered as a lunch-time conversation topic the idea that not everything we've heard about the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust can be trusted, and that the persons murdered were far fewer than is commonly believed. In support of this point he cited the work of one Fred Leuchter. Curiously, my fellow diner couldn't recall Leuchter's name; I had to provide that detail.

Which tips my hand: I'd already read up on Leuchter's activities, and I replied that the report had been thoroughly discredited as fraudulent. I added that Leuchter had collected his samples for the cyanide tests from reconstructed buildings and not the original gas chambers.

My rebuttal was greeted with a dull, pod-person stare and a slight nod; the matter was dropped without further comment, and we moved on to other subjects.

Backstory
The Leuchter report was written in 1988 for the legal defense in the Canadian trial of one Ernst Zündel, Holocaust Denier (or, as his ilk prefers, "Revisionist"). Leuchter himself was an opportunist and professional witness who would say just about anything his employer required of him -- in this instance, for the grand sum of $38,000.

For the Zündel case Leuchter traveled to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lublin-Majdanek to conduct a study on the presence of cyanide in the death chambers. Leuchter spent four days at the death camps scraping and stealing bricks and cement fragments. He then had the samples tested for the presence of cyanide. When what Leuchter arbitrarily deemed was only insignificant traces of cyanide were found, he declared that no gas chambers had been used to exterminate the Nazi's inmates.

Leuchter was entirely uncredentialed for the task he attempted:
* He was a history major, not an engineer;
* He had no formal training in toxicology, biology, or chemistry;
* He fraudulently represented himself as an expert in gas chambers.

The methodology of Leuchter's study was gravely flawed on several points:
* His collection method diluted his samples, making it impossible to gather accurate data about the presence of cyanide;
* He did not advise the chemist who analyzed the material as to where it originated or how it was collected, which further compromised the tests;
* He was unaware that the chambers from which took his samples had been rebuilt using a good many bricks that were not in the original buildings, thus skewing his findings;
* He did not consult any of the large documentation archive readily available at Auschwitz.

For the record, subsequent tests using methods to account for the variables Leuchter ignored or was unaware of refuted his conclusions. The cyanide was there.

Leuchter's testimony as an expert witness was accepted by the court, but his accompanying Leuchter report was excluded because of his lack of engineering credentials -- thus, the court accepted the report only as evidentiary display and not as direct evidence. Leuchter testified to the veracity of his findings under oath in the trial, yet on cross-examination he failed to provide satisfactory answers about rudimentary matters touching on his supposed field of expertise.

After hearing Leuchter's testimony, the presiding judge dismissed the report as "ridiculous" and "preposterous." The court ruled unequivocally that Leuchter's testimony was without merit on the grounds that he had no expertise whatsoever. Leuchter had also failed to demonstrate any concern for the truth, even while under oath.

An aside: Zündel's case was thrown out because the law under which he was being prosecuted was deemed unconstitutional. Zündel promptly declared that the courts had ruled he was innocent of any wrongdoing. He was later deported to Germany, where he served prison time for inciting racial hatred.

Analysis
I suppose conspiracy theories superficially simplify things. A conspiracy notion might make for a false or bad remedy when dealing with subjects outside one's area of expertise, but it is a readily grasped remedy, particularly for the intellectually challenged.

It also brings closure, which can be reassuring: people endure prolonged turmoil and uncertainty only with great difficulty. And our age excels in producing prolonged turmoil and uncertainty.

There's also the appeal to pride in having an insider's knowledge that most other people are not privy to -- sort of a modern day gnosticism. What smugness there is in knowing what everyone else has missed!

Some people, of course, could just be confused.

Others, meanwhile, are simply bigots.

Whatever the root cause, the modus operandi of the conspiracists is to neglect chronology, treat rumor as history, and use citations fraudulently; hypothesis morphs into fact, authorities that don't bolster a thesis are maligned, and the absence of proof becomes evidence of a cover-up. Dogged repetition is key to winning the day.

For my part, I tend to simply avoid that crowd. If I encounter them and they persist, however, I have few qualms about setting the record in order. Aside from the fact that bearing false witness is a violation of Commandment #8, I don't want to be complicit in their assault on reality by remaining silent.

Education, Reich Style

Source

In this post I wrote, "The education of children...is chiefly the responsibility of the parents. If the state ever tried to usurp that roll and mandate certain schooling in spite of the parents' desires -- like Robert Reich has done -- I'd vote against that candidate too." I based my remark on Reich's comments made on an NPR broadcast several years ago.

Reich's dream has now become reality in Salzkotten, Germany, where parents are being jailed for refusing to allow the state school to educate their children in objectionable ways. The subject is sex education, and in Germany the instruction is explicit and involves play-acting classes. Said issue is one of the major reasons why German families choose to homeschool their children; homeschooling, however, has been outlawed in Germany since the fall of the Third Reich. Parents are being punished for their non-compliance with the regime.

Reflection: A world based on secular values will inevitably become depraved because there is no religion to counteract the corruption. Owing to this depravity, moderns hate innocence and purity, which is why they also hate children (i.e. the epitome of purity by way of innocence) and want to remove or minimize them, whether by preventing their birth through contraception, aborting them, or perverting and contaminating their innocent minds with warped ideas.

SSPX Priest Celebrates Mass in St. Peter's

Source (in German)

Fr. Marcus Jasny, prior of the SSPX House of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse in Germany, celebrated a series of early-morning Masses at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

St. Peter's Basilica - Early Morning

The Masses were celebrated during an August 24-September 2 pilgrimage to Rome of graduates of the Schöneberg High School for Girls.

Lucky girls.

Himself in Germania

This photo was snapped when I was in Germany in 2007.

Himself in Germany, June, 2007

The trip was lovely.

The itinerary:
May 31: Atlanta, Amsterdam, Munich
June 1: Munich, Altotting
June 2: Altotting, Eichstatt, Rothenburg
June 3: Rothenburg, Dettelbach, Bamberg, Wurzburg
June 4: Wurzburg, Walldurn, Wurzburg again
June 5: Wurzburg, Fulda, Marburg, Cologne
June 6: Cologne some more
June 7: Cologne, Aachen, Trier
June 8: Trier, Mosental, Rhine cruise to Rudesheim, Frankfurt
June 9: Frankfurt, Atlanta

Photos on Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/73834238@N00/sets/72157609899805786/

Aachen, Germany

June 2007 saw me jaunting about Germany. One of the ports of call was the town of Aachen, where the Emperor Charlemagne had built an imperial chapel in which numerous relics of saints were stored. Here are a few photos snapped from the trip.

The ceiling above the sanctuary

The sanctuary

Charlemagne

Himself in front of the door of the church

Man Decapitates Wax Hitler Figure

Today the Berlin branch of the London-based Madame Tussauds wax museum opened with a new wax figure: Adolf Hitler.

This morning the museum's second visitor knocked aside the museum's manager, jumped the barrier, and ripped off the wax Hitler's head.

His mission accomplished, the protester then surrendered quietly to police.

Vintners of the World, Unite!

What: Karl Marx Wine
Where: Trier, Germany (birthplace of Karl Marx)
When: June 8, 2007

Questions: Proof of the lasting influence of Karl Marx, fomenter of atheistic communism? Or the commoditization of Marx and the triumph of capitalism? And why isn't it a red wine?