Holy Week: "contrasted pageantry wherein joy and sorrow succeed each other"

"Holy Week at once recalls the contrasted pageantry of those feasts wherein joy and sorrow succeed each other, with soaring hymns and the silence of desolation, in great cathedrals and humble parish churches alike.

The week opens with the scent of freshly cut branches, the branches of our own countrysides symbolizing the palm and olive branches of the Holy Land.

"The Gloria Laus, that echo of the Hosanna of Israel, falls into silence and the night office of Tenebrae, with its alternation of lessons from the Prophets and chants from the Psalms reminds us of the coming tragedy and the repeated prophecies of which it is the fulfillment.

"Maundy Thursday, with its Altar of Repose in a mound of sweet scented flowers, is like a smile on the road to Calvary save that the Host, hidden among the flowers and the candles, is the very flesh of the Victim, to whom we bow down in adoration.

"Then comes the night when the bells are mute and the candles dead; the sad procession of the crowds making the Stations of the Cross, the veiled statues, the empty tabernacle, monument of a mourning world, until the miraculous dawn when the joyful cry goes up: 'Christ is risen!'"

- "Jesus and His Times" by Daniel-Rops

A Young Traditionalist Speaks Out on the "Trump Opportunity"

We Catholics are not seeing the opportunity in front of us with Trump. Right now, in the midst of an Obama presidency, state government after state government is defunding Planned Parenthood. Why couldn't that effort continue under Trump? Better yet, we Catholics could get some balls and have babies, win the demographic war, and change the national thinking on abortion that way.

What we will NOT be able to do is vote the change in abortion policy we want at the Executive level. Local and state political affairs are about meeting people. National politics don't work that way. You have monolithic ideas at the national level, issues that perfectly polarize. The Left aren't classical Marxists anymore; they can't muster a cogent economic criticism. All they care about is sexual politics. And the neocons on the 'right' lure conservatives with abortion so they can get us to die in their wars. The status quo vis a vis abortion at the national level is too valuable for either party for us to expect a change from the Executive. We're no worse with Trump as President than we would be with Cruz or Rubio, and neither of them can beat Clinton, who would be the worst of all. If abortion is your issue, the case is closed.

Now, where can we make a REAL difference in this election? We have the opportunity here to kick the neocons out of the GOP. Because Trump is indifferent about starting World War III, these neocon rats are jumping off his ship and they're going to be voting for Hillary Clinton in November. Clinton's neocon bonafides are rock solid. Just a little while ago she started a color revolution in Libya and hired mercenaries to get rid of Gaddafi - the same mercenaries who would hop the border, call themselves 'ISIS', and try to do the same thing in Syria. Hillary was cutting their checks, so she's an attractive choice for them. If you doubt me, you don't know neocons. These people came from City College in New York. They were Trotskyites. Then they became 'conservatives'...you think they won't switch from the GOP to the Democrats? OVERNIGHT, we'll be rid of them.

Now, here's the kicker: with the neocons out of the GOP, what possible incentive could our Catholic rags and universities have for keeping them around? If Bill Kristol has no influence among American conservatives, why would Catholics care what George Weigel has to say in First Things?! Can't you guys see it? There used to be non-interventionists and anti-capitalists (not socialists) among the American Right. It was the neocons who destroyed that. We've got a chance to have that again, and in resisting the neocons in the political sphere we can also recover the Catholic mind.

Every single 'traditional' magazine in the Catholic world is a neocon rag. This situation is intolerable. Here's a golden opportunity to change that, and only we can screw up, and how?...by voting for Cruz or Rubio.