I was standing in line at a post office yesterday, waiting to buy money orders to mail to various police departments to pay for police records. That’s part of my work.
Ahead of me is a dark complexioned young guy, and behind me is a middle age woman whose husband has just brought her a wheelchair so she could sit. Like many people with ailments, she started telling us her problems. When you are working thru your illness or injury, it becomes your life. Most people don’t want to hear about it, but the young guy and I listened to her.
We both told her we would pray for her recovery. Then I asked the guy where he was from, because he sounded like a Euro. He said, “I’m an Italian — and a proud American citizen!”
I asked the guy what brought him to the States.
“Love for an American woman,” he said.
“Women are the ultimate travel magnets,” I agreed cheerfully.
“So, where in Italy are you from?” I asked.
“Puglia County!” he said.
For those of you playing at home, imagine Italy on the map as a thigh boot that the woman has folded the top down to make a cuff. Puglia is her spike heel.
I said, “St . Nicholas was in Bari (a nearby town).”
He looked puzzled.
Then I said, “Uh, Santo Niccolo” in my best broken Italian pronunciation.
“Yes! San Nicola! I’ve been to his church!” the guy said.
Basilica San Nicola, Bari, Italy
Whether the PC crowd likes it or not, we share Western civilization and culture, which is based upon Christianity and Judaism, with Europe. And our languages, with a little tweaking, become understandable to each other.
If I was talking with Teutonic or Slavic Europeans, they would understand Klaus or Vaclav as the Saint’s name.
For we are talking about Saint Nicholas, aka Santa Claus.
Who was Saint Nicholas?
He was the bishop of Myra in present-day Turkey. He lived in the late 200s and in the first half of the 300s AD. Nicholas was in prison during the last years of Diocletian’s massive persecution of Christians. When Constantine became emperor, he freed the Christians from prisons throughout the Roman Empire, and eventually made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.
Mosaic of Constantine and his CIty, Hagia Sofia, Constantinople
Constantine, the son of Roman officer Constantius (from today’s Romania) and a tavern girl Helena (variously said to be Greek or Serbian, living near the sea in Turkey when she reportedly caught Constantius’ eye), made the new capital of the Roman Empire at Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. The city guards the exit from the Black Sea into the Aegean Sea … it is at the end of the Balkans, across from the Anatolian Peninsula aka Asia Minor that makes up modern Turkey.
St. Paul and his successors had evangelized Asia Minor, so it was inevitable the Church would need bishops for the land as it grew in Christian faith.
Saint Nicholas, as bishop of Myra, was one of the bishops who attended the First Nicaea Council of the Church in 325 AD.
Christianity was only a decade out of hiding and in the light. The Church fathers met to standardize doctrine. There were still many pagans, who were openly antagonistic, and who practiced slavery, child sacrifice, exposure of crippled children, orgiastic perversions, and other barbaric behaviors.
In those days, the Church fathers were discussing which books belonged in the Bible. During the long Roman persecutions, it was very hard for them to meet and decide such things. The Romans martyred many popes and bishops.
Power doesn’t make a man. St. Nicholas’ character is what causes him to use his power for good or for evil. Saint Nicholas was undoubtedly a kindly man who used his power for good. He saved three girls from being sold into prostitution by providing them with dowries so they could marry.
Italian artist Bicci de Lorenzo illustrates Saint Nicholas putting dowry money into the house where three sisters lived, to save them from being trafficked.
Bishop Nicholas also saved three wrongly-accused soldiers from execution.
The great Russian historical realist painter Ilya Repin depicts Saint Nicholas saving three innocent soldiers from execution.
St. Nicholas protected many other children from the sex trade. And he was an anonymous giver of money. So after his death, tall tales about his deeds in time became the legend of Saint Nicholas. In the Netherlands, he is known as Sinter Klaas, and the Dutch took his holiday with them to America. The prune faced English Puritan cultists (who mostly stayed on England’s side during the American Revolution) refused to celebrate Christmas, but the Catholic-turned-Protestant Dutch weren’t so snooty.
Saint Nicholas has become Santa Claus in America, and Father Christmas in England, and he remains Saint Nicholas in all the Catholic and Orthodox Christian nations of Europe. He stands, even as PC people try to destroy Christmas and Christian heritage in general.
What happened to Saint Nicholas and his diocese?
In the late 1000s, Moslem Seljuk Turks from central Asia invaded and polluted Asia Minor They persecuted Christians. They destroyed churches and desecrated graves. Sailors from Bari, Italy, sneaked into the church in Myra and took most of Saint Nicholas’ bones to protect them from destruction by the Moslems. They brought them home and the Church leaders in Bari enshrined St. Nicholas’ bones in this church. Venezian sailors took his remaining bones to Venice.
Saint Nicholas’ bones will not go back to Turkey until the land is Christian again. The Moslems would probably desecrate them.
Now on to another saint, who was from Italy, who a few days ago was snubbed by the leftist pukes who run New York City.
From reporter Christine Rousselle of the Catholic News Agency, 8/19/2019, this:
“A New York City public arts program has said it will not build a statue in honor of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, despite the saint receiving the most nominations in a public poll.
Mother Cabrini, a pretty young Italian nun, became a giant of service and charity in America.
She Built NYC was established in June of 2018 under the patronage of Chirlane McCray, wife of New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, to create more statues of women around the City of New York. The public were asked to nominate women for a potential statue and the campaign received over 2,000 votes for over 300 eligible women.
The results of the nominating period were published in December, with Mother Cabrini receiving 219 nominations – more than double the number received by second-place finisher, Jane Jacobs.
Despite the public vote, the New York Post reported on Aug. 10 that the selection committee, led by McCray and former New York deputy mayor Alicia Glen, had excluded the first American saint from the planned statutes, instead choosing to honor Rep. Shirley Chisolm, Katherine Walker, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Billie Holiday, and Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias. They received the third, fifth, seventh, 19th, 22nd, 24th and 42nd-most nominations, respectively.
LGBT rights activists Johnson and Rivera were biological males and will be featured together in a single statue. Both were self-identified “drag queens” and co-founders of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The pair received a combined 86 nominations.
Rodriguez-Trias, the first Latina to be elected as the American Public Health Association, was one of the founding members of the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse, received just seven nominations to Cabrini’s 219.
The She Built NYC program was created after Mayor Bill de Blasio commissioned a study into existing statues and monuments in the City, setting aside $10 million to craft new monuments better representative of the city’s ethnic and gender diversity.
Of the 150 statues in New York City, only five figure women. She Built NYC will spend $5 million to build the new monuments.
A spokesperson for Ms. McCray told CNA that the public nominations process was not intended to determine which women would be honored, but only to inform the judgment of the selection committee.
“Nominations made by the public were the foundation of this entire process – only those submitted were considered by the advisory committee and the City,” Siobhan Dingwall, press secretary for the Office of the First Lady in New York City, told CNA in a statement.
In addition to the public nominations, She Built NYC also considered other factors, such as proposed locations, existing monuments, and site availability when deciding who and where to erect new statues.
“Everyone agrees: there are countless New York City women deserving of recognition, and we look forward to continuing our work with New Yorkers to honor their contributions to our City,” said Dingwell.
New York City Councilman Justin Brannan told CNA that while he supports the core mission of She Built NYC, and is “delighted” that his “personal heroes” Chisolm, Holiday, Jennings Graham, and Rodriguez-Trias will be honored, he is “dismayed” that Cabrini was excluded.
“The will of the people was denied,” he said in a statement provided to CNA.
“Mother Cabrini received more nominations from New Yorkers than any other woman during the process but these results have been completely ignored,” he said.
“Why open this up for a public vote and then ignore the results? I would hate to see a meaningful campaign undermined by a process that tries to appear to value public opinion without ever actually doing so.”
Cabrini, an Italian immigrant, arrived in New York City in the late 19th century. She founded the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and opened many schools and orphanages in New York City. She was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1946, who named her the patroness of immigrants in 1950.”
Just like the New York leftists. Shirley Chisolm was an irritating congresswoman. Billie Holliday was a great singer who fell upon hard times …. she died an addict. Then the abortionist. And the two clowns who failed biology.
New York Times writer Jonathan Wolfe 7/27/2018 noted there were statues of Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, Golda Meir, and Gertrude Stein in New York City. Joan of Arc and Harriet Tubman definitely deserved statues, and Eleanor and Golda, despite their faults, tried to help people. Stein clearly was a joke.
Mother Cabrini is too big in Heaven for some godless pissants in New York to harm. But it’s good to set the record straight why she matters to the Church and to America. Her life was Catholicism and Western Civilization at its finest.
Francesca Saverio Cabrini, a Catholic nun from the Lombardy region of Italy (the middle of the cuff of the woman’s boot), emigrated to America in 1889 on the orders of Pope Leo XIII to help the Catholic immigrants to America. Some anti-Catholic fanatics would call her an agent of the Vatican; many grateful immigrants would call her a saint. For Mother Cabrini would establish an orphanage in New York, and other institutions in Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Washington State, and Colorado. (Mother Cabrini’s middle name was “Saverio” – Italian for “Xavier.” Saint Francis Xavier was one of the greatest of the Jesuit missionaries, so Francesca Cabrini would have an apt middle name.)
Mother Cabrini’s Sisters on the job in New Orleans.
Mother Cabrini and William Williams, the great commissioner of Ellis Island, shared the view that more immigrants should move out West, and to rural areas where they were needed and where they might feel more at home. Here is a letter she wrote from her facility in Colorado on that theme, and on the themes of immigrants being cheated and the terrible working conditions of many immigrants who labored in construction and mining in the early 1900s. At the end of this letter, she voices her awe at the awesome craftsmanship of God in His creating the United States.
Letter to the Students of the Magistero, boarders of the
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Rome
A.M.G.SS.C.J.
February, 1906
My Dear Daughters,
I think I wrote to you of my work in Denver for the enlargement of the Orphanage we have in that city for the daughters of our emigrants. It will be enough for you to know that, with the help of the Sacred Heart, always ready to favour us, I have been able to acquire a beautiful property at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, standing upon a pleasant hill which descends with a gentle slope to the banks of the Rocky Mountains Lake. The house, to which a wing is being added, because space is already limited on the account of the thirty orphans which are gathered there this first year, is surrounded by trees laden with fruits and enhanced by the proximity of the clear waters of the lake. To the west extends the imposing Rocky Chain with its summits covered with snow; to the east is the beautiful city of Denver. To the south and north are great plains, three-fourths of which include the territory of Colorado.
Meanwhile, seated in a comfortable carriage of the Santa Fe railway, which was taking me to Los Angeles, my glance swept across those immense plains which , around Denver, are dotted with the cottages of our Italian agriculturists, and which, further on, are uninhabited, there being immense tracts still of virgin soil. My thoughts flew to our emigrants, who, in such great numbers, land every year on the Atlantic shores, overcrowding still more the already populous city of the east, where they meet with great difficulties and little gain. In the west there is still room for millions and millions, and its most fertile soil would offer occupation more congenial to the Italian emigrants, as well as a field in which to develop their activities and their agrarian knowledge, and to crown their efforts and labors with copious results….
Poor emigrants are so often cheated by those who pretend to be their protectors. This deception is all the more cruel, because these so-called protectors know well how to colour their private interests under the cloak of charity and patriotism.
Railroad workers. Courtesy Library of Congress.
During my journey I saw these dear fellows of ours engaged on the construction of railways in the most intricate mountain gorges, miles and miles away from any inhabited region. Hence they are separated for years from their families, far from the Church, deprived of the holy joys which in our own country the poor peasant has on Sundays at least. In Italy the peasant is able to put his hoe aside, and, in his best clothes, after having consecrated the morning to Divine Service and heard the words of the priest, who reminds him of the nobility of his origin and of his destiny, and of the value of work consecrated to God, has one day in the week to devote to his family and to honest amusements, and is thus able to resume his work the next morning with his mind invigorated.
Here the hardest labor is reserved for the Italian worker. There are few who regard him with a sympathetic eye, who care for him or remember that he has a heart and soul: they merely look upon him as an ingenious machine for work. It is true that here the Italian wins esteem because he is sober, honest, faithful and industrious, but how much real joy does he not give up in leaving his native country for foreign lands, without anyone to guide him on the road of true happiness, which does not consist in hoarding heaps of money, which, more often than not, cannot be enjoyed when misfortune comes. How much better his little field in his native country would be for him. What a great social and philanthropic work could be achieved by anyone who knew how to turn these hands, which waste their activity to the advantage of foreign countries, to the benefit of our own lovely land! I do not mean to deny that there are advantages in these immense fertile virgin lands. They certainly offer the emigrants work and a comfortable life, but I trust that some really generous minds may arise who will take to heart the interests of the poor, and direct them well and conscientiously when they land on these shores.
I can assure you, now, that in my journey through our Missions, the evidence of the good that is being done by our Institutions for the emigrants is of the greatest comfort to me. That which, being women, we are not allowed to do on a large scale, such as helping to solve important social problems, is being done in our little sphere in every State and in every city where our Houses have been opened. In them, the orphans, the sick and the poor are sheltered, but the good done by coming into contact with a great number of people, which such institutions of charity make it easy for the Sisters of the colony to get into touch with, is immense.
The relations between the Sisters and the people are very cordial. The latter call the former Mothers and Sisters, and they feel these words are not without meaning, for they know that with such titles hearts truly maternal correspond. They know that the hearts of the Sisters palpitate in unison with theirs, and that, having put aside all thoughts of themselves, the Sisters make their troubles their interests and their jobs their own. All this, however, is not merit, but the fruit of the love of Christ and of the prodigious fertility of our Holy Religion, the true friend of the people, the light which guides them in the darkness, the house of refuge, tower of strength and post of safety.
Garden of the Gods, Colorado.
While I am conversing with you, we have reached the Colorado Springs, the aristocratic city of Colorado, which rises out of the shadow of Pike’s Peak, one of the highest summits of these mountains. The weak and consumptive are attracted here by the mildness of the climate, the salubrity of the surrounding mountains and the many and various mineral waters, which on every side spring up fresh, foaming and gaseous. The Indians, astonished at such a wealth of mineral waters, thought their god Manitou, an Indian word which means Great Spirit, lived in these mountains, and especially in the one called the “Garden of the Gods.” On my return I will show you a view of this natural park, several hundred acres in extent, in which brightly-coloured rocks are scattered in thousands and sculptured by Nature in the most strange forms, now imposing, now grotesque, sometimes austere, sometimes frivolous, as it were, presenting the strangest appearances. Here, a little farther on, General Palmer, one of our good benefactors, possesses a private “Garden of the Gods,” a real jewel of art, both as regards the palace has built and the natural beauty of the rocks, which here form very high peaks, reflecting the most varied colours. Among the rocks can still be seen the nest of an eagle, which for years lived here as queen of the mountains. But a short time ago the young eagle was killed, and since that day the noble bird has deserted the nest, to the great regret of the General, as may be imagined, as he had become very proud of it.
Miners, Leadville, Colorado
Leaving the Colorado Springs, we reach Trinidad in a few hours. This is an important field of various mines, especially coal, in which direction many Italians are employed. Our Sisters visit them regularly, and to these poor people such a visit is like a ray of sun in the darkness of the bowels of the earth. They speak to them of their daughters whom they have under their charge, and of their families whom they have visited. They remind them of their religious duties, comfort them in the sadness of their miserable conditions, and always leave them happier, or at least more resigned to their poverty. The fatigue of the Sisters in climbing up the steepest mountains is rewarded by the smiles which light up the faces of these poor people on hearing the maternal tongue resounding in these dark vaults. Poor miners! Do you want to know what their life is? Those who work on a day shift enter the mines at six o’clock and remain buried there till mid-day. They come out at twelve o’clock for a short meal, and go in again at half-past twelve to leave at five. Half-an-hour is spent in washing themselves and preparing for supper. When they have finished this meal, feeling worn out, they throw themselves on their little beds, to rise again the following morning at the sound of the whistle which calls them to work. On Sundays they smoke and sleep. This is the life they lead far from their families and separated from the company of men. They continue uninterruptedly year in and year out, until old age and incapacity creep over them, or at least until some day a landslide or explosion or an accident of some kind ends the life of the poor worker, who does not even need a grave, being buried in the one in which he has lived all his life.
Oh, if the voice of religion at least could reach all these poor people and teach them to make holy and noble such fatiguing work, and to render it fruitful for Eternity, what a boon it would be for them!…..
Having left the large manufacturing city of Trinidad, the train enters the heart of the mountain district. As the locomotive ascends slowly, we are able to admire the beauty of the landscape. Every minute the view changes. We behold austere mountains whose summits are whitened with shining snow, hills quite green with pine trees and reddened by the colours of the rock and soil, sharp peaks which seem to touch the sky and on which the eagle alone rests, plateaus where the hardy goat back from his mountain excursions comes to browse upon the sweet grass in which they are so rich, and where the slow ox and the proud buffalo pasture together quite unconscious that in the neighbouring glen the howl of the white bear resounds. Here and there silver streams descend among the rocks and soon become threatening torrents which, in rapids and waterfalls, follow their beds of many-coloured rocks. The name Colorado was never better applied than to this enchanting country, to these most beautiful natural parks, where the hand of man could never add greater beauty than that with which Nature has enriched it.
In truth, here one exclaims spontaneously: How wonderful is God in His works!….
Yours most affectionately in Christ Jesus,
Mother Frances Saverio Cabrini
I reproduced this letter with the permission of the good people of the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colorado. Mother Cabrini bought the land the shrine is on now as a farm and summer camp for the girls at her Denver orphanage. Golden is also the site of the first Coors brewery, so you know the water in the area is good.
Mother Cabrini’s native language was not English, but Italian … and yet look how well she wrote in our language!
Mother Cabrini and another Sister, girls and boys of her Colorado orphanage, and a benefactor. Courtesy Mother Cabrini Shrine.
Mother Cabrini became an American citizen in 1909. She crisscrossed the country and crossed the Atlantic Ocean many times for her life’s work. She was in Chicago at Christmastime 1917; she was busy wrapping presents for children when she died suddenly. She was 67. Mother Cabrini was the first American citizen to be named a saint by the Catholic Church. In her era, she was a member of about the only class of women who were executives – Catholic nuns. In an era when most American women didn’t have the right to vote, Mother Cabrini and others like her founded and ran schools and hospitals and orphanages across the United States.
Mother Cabrini visits the sick, Chicago. Courtesy Mother Cabrini Shrine.
Again, Christians build civilization.
How many hospitals has the ACLU built? That’s a trick question. Those greedy and evil shits built none. They have no charity, just greedy lawyers and hateful activists. The only time they would give a victim first aid is so they could suck the gold and silver out of the victim’s teeth.
Or what hospitals have the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries built, for that matter. Did any of their butches in the construction industry even volunteer?
The ACLU has torn down mental institutions by suing them into nonexistence, and they brag about it.
The ACLU has never been pro-orphanage.
The ACLU’s answer to throwaway children is not orphanages, but abortions.
In recent years, exposes on state-run orphanages as places where homosexual staffers enslaved and abused and killed boys and girls have emerged.
And the government’s track record on foster care sucks also. Government social worker pinheads routinely place children into homes with sex offenders and other hateful people. Lawmen say most of the American children they free from sex trafficking rings are foster children.
Despite the evil clergy molesters, the record of religion-based orphanages was much better than the records of the government orphanages at protecting children and making them into productive citizens. Mother Cabrini was a key reason for this.
Saint Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, in Baltimore, was the orphanage where George Herman Ruth learned how to play baseball. He was sent there as an incorrigible by his parents, who threw him away as a little 7-year-old boy. The Babe, who was Catholic, helped the school financially. Singer Al Jolson, who was Jewish, was also a grad of St. Mary’s.
Babe Ruth with Saint Mary’s Brother Mathias, his first baseball coach. The Babe was a big man, but Brother Mathias was even bigger.
Why didn’t the New York bitches put up a statue to Margaret Sanger, the New York racist bisexual abortion pimp who started Planned Parenthood?
Because they at least had a little sense. Being a trannie is not as evil as being a racist bisexual abortion pimp who wanted to kill nonwhite people and wanted to kill many white people as well.
Black pastors have demanded La Sanger’s bust be thrown out of the Smithsonian Institute of DC. Predictably the leftists who run the place refused. Coathanger Banger Sanger was a degenerate of historical proportions, which is essentially how they justified enshrining her.
Again, whether the PC bedwetters like it or not, we share Western Judeo-Christian civilization and culture with Europe. America is the last best hope of Western Judeo-Christian civilization.
The Catholics built hospitals and universities. They copied and saved what was good from pagan civilizations like Greece and Rome as well as copying and saving the books of the Bible and other source documents of Christianity.
To a lesser extent, so have the Orthodox Christians, the Protestants, and the Jews.
Even if you watch TV, you see commercials for St. Jude’s Hospital and Shriner’s Hospital. Tell me you’ve not watched one of those commercials without feeling pity for the poor children with cancer or some other debilitating condition.
Now … think for a minute and recall if you have ever seen any news or commercial about an ACLU or Antifa or atheist ministry devoted to healing.
Don’t waste your time.
Planned Parenthood facilities don’t count. Every society has its slaughterhouses and charnel houses. Besides, Planned Parenthood affiliates make some of their money selling aborted baby body parts, which is borrowing the business model of Auschwitz. (Photo courtesy of Coalition for Life, St. Louis.)
This is my point. Civilizations that are worth anything try to protect their people. God-centered religions, in which God is a holy and loving and and kind and good God as well as an all-powerful and all-knowing God … and a God Who demands ethical conduct from His creatures …. are at the heart of worthwhile civilizations, from the Jews through Christendom in Europe to what is good in America today.
Destroyers of civilizations, like the Assyrians, the Aztecs, the Islamists, the Mongols, the Nazis, the Communists, and the secularists of today have no God demanding ethical conduct from humanity at the core of their belief systems. This is why they knee-jerk oppose what is good. At best they have an absence of religion coupled with the desire to boss other people around; at worst, their god is Satan. This is why they have no charity, and why they attack the core beliefs of the patriotic and the faithful.
Hell is vile and miserable beyond all description. As our parish priest said, no one has any friends in Hell. He says the thrust of all revealed religions should be to keep as many people as possible from going to Hell.
Abe Lincoln reads the Bible to one of his sons.
In your family circle and in your circle of acquaintances, the culture and civilization begin with you.
How you behave and how you treat others is a start.
If you can learn your history and culture and religion, and pass on the worthwhile lessons and traditions of these to your children, the gift of your heritage will continue in them.
God bless all of you readers, even you atheists. Even an honest atheist understands there is a natural law that requires ethical conduct of all people, even if he or she is confused about Who gave the law.
SHERLOCK RESEARCH
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
