“Peoples without traditions become savages.” ~ Juan Donoso Cortés [1]
Praying Time by Fortunino Matania
Thirteen years ago today we launched our blog to augment and reflect our cultural and religious activities and, to the best of our abilities, fill a glaring void left by the various cultural and educational institutions claiming to serve our community. Generally well-received, in that time we carved a respectable online niche for ourselves, notwithstanding the partisan censorship, biased algorithms, and deplatforming by the gatekeepers of information. Since little, if anything, has improved with the institutions, we still feel impelled to continue our work, even though we find the internet to be profoundly boorish and distasteful.
Despite the many pitfalls that come with the web, we see social media as a necessary evil in the modern world. Unquestionably a useful tool for information and communication, the reality is social networking can never really replace human bonding. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Like television before it, the internet has contributed mightily to society’s deep cultural malaise, incivility, social isolation and alienation.
This is why, in addition to the religious and historical material we provide, a big part of what we do is promote social gatherings to help strengthen existing local communities and, God willing, forge new ones. Healthy group interactions and friendly associations foster trust, cooperation, and learning. In stark opposition to globalization and its progressive onslaught against ethnic and religious groups, we unapologetically celebrate our faith, culture, and time-honored traditions.
Making the Most of a Bad Situation
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| Blessed Karl and Servant of God Zita, orate pro nobis |
“In the face of ever mounting insanity in Church and State, I can only ceaselessly recommend prayer to Karl and Zita: they endured it all and worse.” ~ Charles A. Coulombe [2]
On a personal note, the lockdowns (and temporary unemployment) over the past two years have given me a chance to spend more quality time with loved ones, hone my cooking skills, read, study, and most importantly expand my interior life.
Prayer is of vital importance for our spiritual growth and relationship with God. It is our principle weapon against the enemy and our best defense from the incessant devilry that looks to corrupt the hearts of men. Quick-tempered by nature, spiritual combat, frequenting the holy Sacraments, carrying out the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and devotion to the saints have all helped bring me closer to God, and stay measured and sane in an increasingly insane world.
“The ink that dyes my pen is not soaked in the blue of literary chimeras, but is red like the blood of the soldiers of the "tercios" of the kings of Naples, in which my Neapolitan ancestors, sons of Italian land, established the truth absorbing us with the perfect grace of the whirling flash of their imperial swords.” ~ Francisco de Tejada [3]
During this period, I knocked off more than a few books on my shamefully long to-read list, the most recent being the late fourteenth century chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso respectively. Not limited to epic poems and sagas, my studies have also included the works of relatively obscure, sometimes unfashionable, historians and socio-political thinkers.
Do Not Comply
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| Flair at an anti-vaccine mandate protest in New York City |
Lex iniusta non est lex. [4]
Doing our best to circumvent the unjust mandates, restrictions, and regulations, we continue to live our lives as we see fit, regardless of all the attempts by our corrupt power-hungry elites to prevent us from doing so. Needless to say, this course of action was only made possible with the cooperation of other rational souls who didn’t fall victim to all the lies, kept a cool head, and refused to comply with illegitimate authority.
For the record, these brave individuals and their businesses have earned our undying loyalty and will receive our support and preferential patronage long after all this nonsense is over and we've moved on to the next artificial emergency.
“Outside the limit of our sight, feeding off us, perched on top of us, from birth to death, are our owners! Our owners! They have us. They control us! They are our masters! Wake up! They're all about you! All around you!” ~ They Live [5]
In addition to the unhinged cultural and socio-political subversion being imposed by our iron-fisted overlords, the swine engage in unmitigated fear-mongering in order to wage war against the people they rule. Driven by ideology or naked lust for power and wealth, they perpetually manufacture pseudo-crises to undermine and manipulate the masses. Striving for an unattainable utopia based on arrant delusions and self-assured hubris, they gleefully destroy what is left of our moribund civilization and its traditional guiding principals: faith, family, and culture.
A domineering political class in lockstep with a duplicitous media, academia, and big tech, not to mention a seemingly endless rout of useful idiots and opportunists, are all in thrall to the global revolutionary oligarchs. Once tacit, the current regime has made censorship, discrimination, indoctrination, financial ruin, physical intimidation and other strong-arm tactics part of its official policies, especially when dealing with dissidents and thought criminals.
Not alone in seeing them for who they really are, today’s hushed gatherings in church halls and underground salons are eerily reminiscent of the closed Captive Nations meetings my friends and I attended back in the ’80s in the backrooms of cafés and beerhalls. Necessary precautions at the time to thwart potential revenge attacks from Soviet spooks, I see too many similarities in today’s morally bankrupt Democratic controlled Amerika.
Naturally, the nest we were loosely affiliated with disbanded soon after the fall of Ceausescu in 1989, when many Romanian expats gallantly returned to their homeland to fight for freedom. At the time I remember feeling a bit envious of them, but who knows, the way things are looking now, I still may get my chance to stand up against the red menace.
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| San Martino di Tours, ora pro nobis |
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien [6]
Surrounded by great evils, we knights errant don’t have to search far for chivalrous adventures or quests. We are blessed in these trying times with golden opportunities to be heroic. Stop waiting for “the people to rise up,” before taking action. This deluded, and quite frankly, Marxist fantasy is a dead end. The defense of the weak and helpless has always fallen on the shoulders of a few brave and virtuous heroes. Yes, we must be prudent and effective, but don’t let the gutless and obsequious cowards deter us from our duties.
Audentis fortuna iuvat. [7]
Girded for battle, our energies should be used to invigorate the natural and supernatural orders in our families and communities. Strive to lead noble and honorable lives and spurn modernity in all its odious manifestations: materialism, secularism, and social atomization, to name but a few. Those in a position to restore any vestige of beauty or sanity to society need to do so, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant the enterprise, and the rest of us need to support and defend them however possible. If we are to topple the whores and traitors firmly entrenched in power, we will have to make great sacrifices, embrace the inevitable hardships, and gaily emulate our heroes and saints to better serve God’s greater glory. Viva Cristo Re!
~ Giovanni di Napoli
Notes:
[1] Translated from La monarchia tradizionale, Francisco Elías de Tejada, Controcorrente Edizioni, 2001, p. 102-103. The original reads: “i popoli senza tradizioni diventano selvaggi.”
[2] Charles A. Coulombe, Twitter, 3 February 2022.
[3] Translated from La monarchia tradizionale, Francisco Elías de Tejada, Controcorrente Edizioni, 2001, p. 16. The original reads: “L’inchiostro che tinge la mia penna non è intriso nell’azzurro delle chimere letterarie, ma è rosso come il sangue dei soldati dei “tercios” dei re di Napoli, in cui i miei antenati napoletani, figli di terra italiana, stabilirono la verità che ci assorbe colla grazia perfetta del roteante balenio delle loro spade imperiali.”
[4] “An unjust law is not law.” Attributed to St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.
[5] Quoted from They Live, a 1998 science fiction film directed by John Carpenter.
[6] Quoted from The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien.
[7] “Fortune favors the bold.” Virgil, Aeneid.
