Hi, Ann-

I admire and appreciate your stubborn, staunch advocacy for the importance of visual beauty, and the power of clothing to convey it. And I will never forget having been struck, around three years ago now, by the utterly unexpected sight of a lowly counter attendant at our local UPS store, a man perhaps in his late thirties, wearing a 1940-style vest and long-sleeved dress shirt complete with sleeve garters.

Ann, I was stunned. This was not a conventionally handsome man — in fact, an unkind person might say that he looked like a stereotypical “nebbish” — but he sure got my attention, and in the very best way. I complimented him on how wonderful he looked, and he seemed startled and shyly appreciative.

A few weeks later, my husband and I happened to be walking near the store and lo and behold, the same fellow was walking down the street with purposeful stride, this time in a beautifully-tailored 1940s-style overcoat, and wearing a fedora! Well. I decided then and there that if I were young again, unattached and ready to settle down, I would want to make THIS gentleman’s acquaintance, just on the basis of his appearance in those clothes (and also, I guess, having seen that he was employed, 😅)

Cheers, and Happy New Year-

C

This wafted in gracefully over the transom. This is from a Catholic girls’ high school newspaper in the mid-west from the late 1940’s.

Look upon this and let it sink in that our culture is truly, literally INVERTED. 

Teenaged girls today are, as a rule, revolting ugly slobs by their own choice. Beauty is actively, openly despised. Most girls today do not own ONE pretty dress. Not one. The notion that striving to always present oneself beautifully in public – and beauty is OBJECTIVE and REAL, being a constitutive quality of God Himself – is considered hate speech against fat, ugly dykes and really ANY actual females. You do notice that the only acceptable manifestation of “feminine” beauty is now transvestitism; in MEN masquerading as women. The transvestites are completely free to doll themselves up, but an actual woman? No way. Actual women are expected to conform to the cultural embrace of ugliness.

And the notion that we owe it to OTHERS to present ourselves beautifully in public, to put others first by asking ourselves, “Would I want to see me in yoga pants and a t-shirt with bedhead looking like hell? No, so why would I subject others to that? What gives me the right to inflict ugliness upon others?” – the very question is completely incomprehensible to today’s teeming throngs of narcissists.

And folks, this is about EFFORT. Speaking as a rock-solid 4 on the 1-10 scale, I turn heads on the daily NOT because I’m some great beauty. What turns heads in the EFFORT. Just being put-together and dressed in actual clothes; hat, gloves and tasteful and flattering makeup is the shocking sight. That’s it. I’m still physically a 4, but the fact that I fulfill my DUTY in the striving towards beauty actually creates beauty, just as striving for virility creates virility, striving for goodness creates goodness, and ultimately striving for sanctity creates sanctity. 

Physical beauty is obviously the most worldly of these qualities, BUT it is therefore also the most readily identifiable, relatable and accessible. So, start there. Showing a fundamental respect of oneself and of others by ALWAYS appearing in public with a SOLID EFFORT towards beauty will lead to higher, non-physical qualities and virtues IF one is so oriented and has a proper, solidly Christian conception and proper ordination of true, objective beauty commensurate with one’s sex.

Also over the transom from a long-time reader (and a VERY spiffy dresser) is this link to the beautiful coat as seen here.

I wish this was still the standard.. now people are wearing pajamas outside pic.twitter.com/RmHcnDrP76

— The cooking lady (@wolffdew) December 11, 2024

It isn’t cheap, but if you’re in the market, this is the actual coat. Sigh…

Fit and Flare Coat with A-Line Skirt in Black | 'Timeless Polka Dots'

 

EIGHT DAYS.  It took Him EIGHT DAYS from His birth to shed His Blood for us, and He shed His Blood in testimony to the Law, which is derivative of Himself.

And those few drops of His Blood shed at His Circumcision WERE ENOUGH. Every drop of the God-Man’s Most Precious Blood is in itself an infinity of Mercy. But He went thirty-three years further and all the way to the Pillar and to Calvary.  Why? Love. Love of US. Love of YOU, specifically, personally and individually. Pure, infinite gratuitous LOVE.

Ponder this, and then ask yourself these questions:

Would Jesus abandon His Church, EVER? No.

Is there hope, or is hope just a lie, a mere platitude for the immature and/or uneducated peasants who simply can’t come to grips with the futility and hopelessness of it all? Of course there is hope.  The second of the three theological virtues, which is also the Fruit of the Second Glorious Mystery of the Rosary (the Ascension) can never be a lie, and to say that it is a lie is blasphemy of the highest order.

Is God Almighty hamstrung and defeated by a bunch of reprobate, apostate sodomites and Freemasons?  If you think He is, then you don’t know Him very well, if at all.

If God Himself submitted to the Law, does it make sense to say that His Vicar could completely upend Canon Law and only “partially resign”, thus making the Law Itself a violation of the Law of Non-contradiction, that is, both an extant thing and a non-extant thing?  Are Canons 188 and 332.2 both Law and NOT Law? Is the entire Code of Canon Law, the Divine Law and the Natural Law both REAL and NOT REAL?  Is chaos the Divine Will?  If you think that it is, might I recommend that you visit your local mosque.  They worship an irrational faux-deity that they claim is pure will, mutable (changeable), capricious, contemptuous and deceitful.

Is Jesus a jerk who is Himself trying to “give us all the shake” and trick us into apostasizing and entering an Anti-church and going to hell, or is His Church and its visible head… VISIBLE? Extremely, stunningly, shockingly VISIBLE? Terribly VISIBLE, like an… eclipse.

He was VISIBLE in life, VISIBLE in death, and now the absence, the vacancy, is so clearly VISIBLE.

Ponder these things today, on the Feast of the Circumcision.

Happy New Year to one and all.

Pray.

Go to confession.

Pray.