De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

When fishes flew and forests walked  And figs grew upon thorn,  Some moment when the moon was blood  Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry  And ears like errant wings,  The devil’s walking parody  On all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth,  Of ancient crooked will;  Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,  I keep my secret still. Fools! For I also had my hour;  One far fierce hour and sweet:  There was a shout about my ears,  And palms before my feet. GK Chesterton, The Donkey Image: Christ's Entry into Jerusalem Artist: Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (March 1809 – March 1864) was a 19th-century French painter Date: 1846 Location: Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris Matthew 21:5 relates Jesus' entry into Jerusalem 21:5. ”Tell the daughter of Zion: Behold your king comes to you, meek and sitting upon a donkey and a colt, the foal...

The Battle of Lepanto,  H. Letter, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich/London . Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. This is also the anniversary of the Victory at the Battle of Lepanto. The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of southern European Catholic maritime states, decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire in five hours of fighting on the northern edge of the Gulf of Corinth, off western Greece. The Ottoman forces sailing westwards from their naval station in Lepanto met the Holy League forces, which had come from Messina, Sicily. The victory of the Holy League prevented the Ottoman Empire expanding further along the European side of the Mediterranean. Lepanto was the last major naval battle in the Mediterranean fought entirely between galleys and has been assigned great symbolic importance by historians. Some assert that Turkish victory could have led to Western Europe being overr...

Happy New Year to you all! A great blogging start to the year I have to say. Credit where credit is due; @PartTimePilgrim drew my attention to these great posts yesterday morning. So good, I felt I had to share some sort of conspectus with my own readers. First off, you must read this post by CCFather. It is concise, yet contains all the main historical, social and philosophical developmental points of the argument. CCFather correctly identifies that what is missing in broader society is any real concept of what marriage really is. We must address this fundamental point before we can begin to be heard on issues like same sex marriage. It is extremely valuable that he has placed the currently position squarely in its correct temporal context, i.e. that it is not first step 'on a path that we shouldn't take, but rather because..[it constitutes] a further step on a path we have already gone too far along'. @PartTimePilgrim suggests the penultimate paragraph of Be...