Pat Buchanan: Can Europe Survive This Invasion?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“A modern day mass migration is taking place … that could change the face of Europe’s civilization,” warned Hungarian President Viktor Orban.

“If that happens, that is irreversible. … There is no way back from a multicultural Europe,” said Orban. “If we make a mistake now, it will be forever.”

Orban acted on his beliefs. He erected a 110-mile fence on the Serb border, redirecting hundreds of thousands of migrants away from Hungary to Croatia, thence to Austria and Germany.

U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club - "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" at U.S.S. Arizona Memorial

Royal British Legion's Festival of Remembrance

While we cannot yet post today's Festival of Remembrance in Royal Albert Hall, we are pleased to post last year's very moving ceremony in remembrance of all those who made the ultimate sacrifice, from World War I to the present day, for God, Queen and Country.

Ross Douthat: Catholicism For the Time Being

On Sunday, with my latest broadside on matters Catholics filed and published, I drove with my family up into northwestern Connecticut — just for the drive, no particular destination in mind. We ended up stopping for mass at a shrine near Litchfield, built in imitation and honor of Lourdes, that I’d visited occasionally many years earlier with my parents. The place was mostly unchanged: A big expanse of land, gray and somewhat forbidding on a cloudy day with the trees half-gone toward winter; a grotto where they have outdoor masses in warmer weather; a long stations of the cross ascending a wooded hill to a lifesize Calvary; and various gift shops and outbuildings scattered around the grounds. One of the outbuildings doubles as a chapel, and that’s where the All Saints Day mass was held: In a crowded, close, carpeted space, with a mostly-gray haired congregation (we were some of the youngest people there) dressed in suburban- Catholic casual and packed into too-small chairs on three sides of the altar.

It was the kind of setting that would annoy a liturgical conservative and give a real traditionalist the hives, and while there was no guitar (that I noticed) the style of worship fit the space: The music mostly came from the Saint Louis Jesuits, (“Be Not Afraid,” etc.) the crucifix was dark and abstract and there was no other iconography to speak of, and the priest was a great ad-libber and elaborator, working his own reflections in here and there throughout the mass.

Read more at The New York Times >>

 

Daniel Hannan: Small Is Beautiful

What are the two richest countries in Europe? According to the Legatum Institute, which publishes an annual prosperity league, Switzerland noses ahead of Norway. Money isn’t everything, of course. The United Nations runs a quality of life index, which also takes account of literacy, longevity, infant mortality and the like. It reaches the same conclusion: Switzerland and Norway are the best places on Earth to be born.

There has been a great deal of focus on these two chilly, mountainous lands recently. Because they are flourishing outside the European Union, Euroskeptics point to them as examples of how it pays to be a sovereign nation. Supporters of the EU, by contrast, are keen to rubbish their arrangements with Brussels, portraying them as oxpecker birds clinging to the mighty EU hippopotamus, voiceless passengers downloading Brussels laws over whose framing they have no say.

Pat Buchanan: The Coming Age of Austerity

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“Are the good times really over for good?” asked Merle Haggard in his 1982 lament.

Then, the good times weren’t over. In fact, they were coming back, with the Reagan recovery, the renewal of the American spirit and the end of a Cold War that had consumed so much of our lives.

Yet whoever wins today, it is hard to be sanguine about the future.

The demographic and economic realities do not permit it.

The Solemnity of All Saints

St Paul : Happy and Blest Are They, No 6 - Felix Mendelssohn

"Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven fix the whole Church more firmly in holiness...They do not cease to intercede with the Father for us...So by their fraternal concern is our weakness greatly helped."

"...as Christian communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace, and the life of the People of God itself: We worship Christ as God's Son; we love the martyrs as the Lord's disciples and imitators, and rightly so because of their matchless devotion towards their king and master. May we also be their companions and fellow disciples. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 956, 957)