On Labor

HERESY CREATES PROBLEMS, and since even heretics are often decent enough men, they seek ways to fix those problems — just as long as the solutions don't require them to repudiate their original erroneous opinion. New heresies are born, or rather, they are revived, and so new problems are created, which leads to new solutions to fix these problems, which creates new problems in turn. The plight of labor under the current regime is understandably chaotic.

But we must not be under any illusions. We were promised, due to Original Sin, that

“...cursed is the earth in your work: with labour and toil shall you eat thereof all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, and you shall eat the herbs of the earth. In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread till you return to the earth out of which you were taken: for dust you are, and into dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3)

Labor, we must expect, will never be pleasant and without its burdens. But we have been redeemed, and we ought to expect that this redemption — if we cooperate with it — will make even difficult burdens light.  But contemporary man does not believe in a Redeemer, nor the need to be redeemed; he seeks comfort and complains greatly under burdens — although he often does not mind placing burdens upon other people.

Two things that ensured a just economic order were wiped out with the rise of heresy: subsistence farming and the guild system. These ancient, organic, and very Catholic systems allowed families to be self-suffient in an orderly and stable society, and both systems had the now-unusual circumstance that the owners of the businesses were also the primary workers, who controlled their own conditions of work and had a direct influence in the regulation of the market. It was the absolutists and revolutionaries, heretics all, who ended both systems by violence, due either to greed or by a mistaken idealism, or both.

Labour Day, as observed in the old British Commonwealth countries, celebrates the eight hour work day. But is eight hours of work, eight hours of leisure, and eight hours of rest, with a two-week paid vacation something to celebrate?  Do not forget that the people of Christendom had the time available to go on pilgrimage to Walsingham, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, or even Jerusalem — on foot — and could offer week-long marriage celebrations, and pray the entire Hours of the Divine Office every day.  For the most part, their lives and work were their own, and they could allocate their time as they saw fit. They chose the better part.

If things are so much better now, then why are people so unhappy? Perhaps it is because they have little control over their lives.

Heretics, ancient and contemporary, love slavery. Even if not actual chattel slavery — although they most certainly did love it— they still love great conscript armies sending revolution to distant lands, high burdensome taxes, and people who are willing to give up their entire lives for work, or are willing not to work in exchange for political support. This is also the root of the current immigration problem in the Western world. They simply cannot rest knowing that there are people who aren't working for them. They cannot bear to let others earn their own living.

Way of the Cross

This Medieval tapestry is at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

"When they talk of a paradise... they mean the grave"

SEE THE ARTICLE Discovery TV Gunman Demands Halt to 'Parasitic Human Infants,' Credits Al Gore with ‘Awakening’, from LifeSiteNews.

A hostage-taker reportedly wanted to rid the earth of "human filth". Shocking, but he simply took contemporary thinking to its logical conclusion... which is universal homicide. Ideas have consequences, and the consequences of contemporary ideas are very bad indeed. I was reminded of this excerpt of a book by G. K. Chesterton:

"I will tell you," said the policeman slowly. "This is the situation: The head of one of our departments, one of the most celebrated detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a purely intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of civilisation. He is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the Family and the State. He has, therefore, formed a special corps of policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is their business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense. I am a democrat myself, and I am fully aware of the value of the ordinary man in matters of ordinary valour or virtue. But it would obviously be undesirable to employ the common policeman in an investigation which is also a heresy hunt."

Syme's eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity.

"What do you do, then?" he said.

"The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartle pool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet."

"Do you mean," asked Syme, "that there is really as much connection between crime and the modern intellect as all that?"

"You are not sufficiently democratic," answered the policeman, "but you were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment of the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's."

Syme struck his hands together.

"How true that is," he cried. "I have felt it from my boyhood, but never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed—say a wealthy uncle—he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spying upon the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anybody else."

"But this is absurd!" cried the policeman, clasping his hands with an excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, "but it is intolerable! I don't know what you're doing, but you're wasting your life. You must, you shall, join our special army against anarchy. Their armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt is ready to fall. A moment more, and you may lose the glory of working with us, perhaps the glory of dying with the last heroes of the world."

"It is a chance not to be missed, certainly," assented Syme, "but still I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that the modern world is full of lawless little men and mad little movements. But, beastly as they are, they generally have the one merit of disagreeing with each other. How can you talk of their leading one army or hurling one bolt. What is this anarchy?"

"Do not confuse it," replied the constable, "with those chance dynamite outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really the outbreaks of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast philosophic movement, consisting of an outer and an inner ring. You might even call the outer ring the laity and the inner ring the priesthood. I prefer to call the outer ring the innocent section, the inner ring the supremely guilty section. The outer ring—the main mass of their supporters—are merely anarchists; that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the system that has called it crime. They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe that the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a man seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless as the flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket he would naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the innocent section."

"Oh!" said Syme.

"Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,' and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak—the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths"—and the policeman lowered his voice—"in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave.

"They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody."

— The Man Who Was Thursday: a Nightmare, by G.K. Chesterton

Ripe for Harvest

Cornstalks, in the Chesterfield Valley of Saint Louis County. Autumn has come upon us quite suddenly.

Shrine of Our Lady of the Way

FACING INTERSTATE 70, in the town of Saint Peters, in Saint Charles County, Missouri, is a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary, under her title Our Lady of the Way.



I was driving eastbound on the highway, and this little shrine caught my eye, I did not know of its existence beforehand. The grounds are nicely maintained, with many flowers in bloom, planted in beds around the shrine. The shrine is a few blocks from All Saints Church.



Our Lady of the Way, or Our Lady of the Road, or Madonna Della Strada, is patroness of the Society of Jesus. The original icon bearing this name resides in the Society's church in Rome, the Gesù. Click here for a description and photos, in Italian.

Our Lady of the Way is patroness to pilgrims and travelers. But morally, Mary is patroness to our way of life — do we follow the Commandments and live a virtuous life? And also consider our final destination: where are we ultimately headed?



The shrine was originally located about a mile or so to the west of here. Both its old and new locations are near what is now Interstate 70, which follows in part the route of the old Boone's Lick Road — for 40 years the major overland road leading to the great American West. Fittingly, the Interstate Highway system was started a few miles from here, where Boone's road also started.

Saint Francis de Sales Oratory, at night. This shows new lighting on the tower.

Saint Louis, in the chapel of CBC High School, in Town and Country, Missouri.

Feast of Saint Louis

Statue of Saint Louis, at the Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France, popularly known as the Old Cathedral, in downtown Saint Louis, Missouri.

Humility in leadership does not mean ineffective leadership as this sainted king proves.

Fecundity

Wine grapes, in New Haven, Missouri  The harvest starts tomorrow.

Water Lilies

WATER LILIES, at the Jewel Box, in Forest Park.















These pictures were taken at dusk.