Recta Ratio

GO RED SOX!!!!!!!!!

Today the Church honors more holy women martyred by the Jacobins. These Ursuline nuns, led by Mother Marie Clothilde, taught at Valenciennes, until deprived of the right to teach in August, 1792. In September they were ordered by the revolutionaries to vacate their convent and given passports to go to Belgium, then held by the Austrians.

In November of 1793 Valenciennes fell to the Austrians, and the Ursulines returned in their baggage wagons to resume the job of teaching. At Valenciennes, they were joined by two Brigittines and a Poor Clare who had been deprived of their convents by the revolutionaries.

In August, 1794, the Austrians pulled out of Valenciennes, and the revolutionaries resumed control. The Ursulines were at first confined to the convent. Two-thirds were able to escape. But eleven, including Mother Marie Clothilde, remained, to face the guillotine. They were executed in two groups, on October 17, and 23rd. All died courageously for the Faith, happy they proclaimed, to teach the "Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion."

An old man was asked, "What is humility?" and he said in reply, "Humility is a great work, and a work of God. The way of humility is to undertake bodily labour and believe yourself a sinner and make yourself subject to all." Then a brother said, "What does it mean, to be subject to all?" The old man answered, "To be subject to all is not to give your attention to the sins of others but always to give your attention to your own sins and to pray without ceasing to God."

The latest issue of National Review devotes its cover to the magazine's endorsement of President Bush's re-election.

Not exactly a big surprise. But it is nevertheless well done.

Op-ed in todays's New York Times. You have to register.

Another prelate I ardently wish had been appointed to the See of Boston instead of the current incumbent.

The proof is in the testing.

Nah nah nah nah nah nah.

Just for the record, I would not wish such a thing on anyone.

Red Sox Versus the Cardinals, tomorow night, at Fenway.

The Cardinals have kept the Sox from world titles two times previously. Since Boston settled old scores with the Yankees this year, why not with the Cards, too?

I think this is a list that will grow.

There are quite a few Republicans in the ranks of former athletes. The names Corey Everson, John Hanna, Charles Barkley, and Dave Cowens come to mind without much effort.

And I know more than a few pro-golfers have been on with Rush (and can be assumed to be ont he side of the angels in this election).

You won't get a Doug Flutie endorsement, as we at the old Observer of Boston College did for Reagan in 1984, because Flutie has turned left pretty relentlessly, but I noticed his old opponent of the "Hail Mary Pass Game", Bernie Kosar on the list. And Matt Hasselbeck, son of former patriot Don, and another former BC QB is making up for Flutie's absence.

It was said of Abba John the Dwarf that one day he said to his elder brother,"I should like to be free of all care, like the angels who do not work, but ceaselessly offer worship to God." So he took leave of his brother and went away into the desert. After a week he came back to his brother. When he knocked on the door he heard his brother say, "Who are you?" before he opened it. He said, "I am John, your brother." But he replied, "John has become anangel and henceforth he is no longer among men." Then John besought him, saying, "It is I." However, his brother did not let him in but left him there in distress until morning. Then, opening the door, he said to him, "You are a man and you must once again work in order to eat." Then John made a prostration before him, saying, "Forgive me."

In 1805 on this date, the British fleet under the command of Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson decisively defeated a combined French-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar. The victory set the tone for the remaining ten years of the wars with Bonaparte, with Britannia ruling the waves, and Napoleonic France supreme (more or less) on the Continent.

Bonaparte's threat to invade England was smashed at Trafalgar. At the end of September 1805, Bonaparte marched off his army, which had been cantoned on the Channel ports waiting for a favorable wind and control of the seas to invade England, to fight the Austrians (this was the campaign when he beat them and the Russians at Austerlitz in December, which meant the end of the Holy Roman Empire).

Part of Bonaparte's reason for abruptly turning to deal with the Austrians was that he lacked confidence in the commander of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Pierre Charles Villeneuve's ability to ever get control of the Channel.

Currently blockaded in Cadiz by Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood's squadron after a fruitless chase across the Atlantic and back, Villeneuve knew he had to do something to regain the Emperor's confidence. On the morning of October 19th, after a storm, the Combined Fleet of 33 ships of the line, including the massive Spanish Santissima Trinidad of 130 guns, began to slip out of Cadiz.

Lord Nelson had joined Collingwood now with his squadron, his flag flying from HMS Victory a 102-gun first rate launched in the Year of Victory, 1759, but laid up until the crisis of the American Revolution.

Nelson had long planned for a general engagement with an enemy fleet. He planned to ignore the prevailing tactic of fighting in line-ahead, with ships of the line sailing one behind the other with their broadsides to the enemy, who would be doing the same thing. Such tactics produced only stalemates.

Nelson planned to sail his ships through the enemy line, raking the ships on either side with his own broadsides and creating a general melee. The enemy fleet strung out in a long line would find only two-thirds of its strength fighting the entire British fleet. By the time the rest of the enemy fleet could come up to aid its comrades, it would be too late. "It will surpise and confound the enemy."

Early on the 21st, the two fleets maneouvred for position and to gain the weather gauge, but the Combined Fleet was clumsy in its movements due to poor seamanship and training. Nelson's 27 ships had the advantage of the wind (the weather guage), better seamanship and training.

Nelson, ever the showman, paced the quarterdeck of Victory with all the medals he had won in his previous victories at Teneriffe, the Nile, and Copenhagen on his coat. He signaled the fleet, "England expects every man to do his duty." He followed it up with the signal to "Engage the Enemy More Closely," his favorite signal. The men of the fleet cheered loudly enough to be clearly heard aboard the ships of the Combined Fleet. Aboard the Spanish ships, many were busy receiving Extreme Unction.

Admiral Collingwood (whose first important action had been ferrying Howe's redcoats from Boston to Charlestown for the Battle of Bunker Hill) in the massive 100-gun HMS Royal Sovereign, took the lead, holding his fire until his broaside was between the Spaniard Santa Ana and the Frenchman Fougueux. As Royal Sovereign squared off with Santa Ana, Collingwood calmly munched on an apple while pacing the quarterdeck.

Nelson's flag captain, Hardy, asked if it might be better to wear undress rather than full dress, as the decorations would surely single Nelson out for attention from enemy sharpshooters in the rigging. Nelson, with an eye patch and missing an arm, as well as being a slight man in a service filled with large ones, stood out anyway. Nelson said it was too late to be shifting his coat.

Victory and the ships of Nelson's sqaudron did just as much damage as Collingwood's ships. Nelson broke the enemy line between the Redoutable, whose Captain Lucas had vigorously trained his men for sharphooting, and even equipped some with rifles for the purpose, and the flagship Bucentaure.

Just as Nelson had predicted, his ships were closing on their chosen adversaries, while the remainder of the Combined Fleet was having difficulty coming to their comrades' aid.

But Lucas brought his 74-gun Redoutable alongside Victory, and clawed her with everything at his disposal. His sharpshooters were firing at the upper deck of the Victory from a mere 50 feet. And every one of his sailors knew who the little one-armed man on the Victory's quarterdeck was. The medals on his chest made Nelson an excellent target.

A few minutes later, Nelson was brought down to the orlop deck, with a musket ball lodged in his spine. He could feel a gush of blood every time he took a breath. He had no feeling in the lower part of his body. He said that he had felt the ball break his back.

Lucas' men had managed to litter the upper deck of Victory with dead and wounded, and almost succeeded in boarding her. Then another British ship, HMS Temeraire(as the name implies, she had been captured from the French) came up, and gave Redoutable a heavy broadside. Then a French ship, Fougaux, joined the tangle. Victory was also still firing on Bucentaure and on Santissima Trinidad.

The battle as a whole was going according to Nelson's plan. Collingwood's 15 ships captured or sank 12 of the 16 enemy ships they engaged. Unaccountably the first seven French ships continued on a northly course away from the battle.

Nelson, meanwhile, below decks on Victory, was dying. Hardy came down to report that he could count 14 or 15 surrendered enemy ships. Nelson managed, "That is well, but I bargained for 20." A few minutes later, after kissing Hardy goodbye, he whispered, "Thank God I have done my duty." He breathed his last shortly afterwards.

Losses were lopsided in the British favor. They lost 1,600 killed or wounded. The Spanish had 1000 dead, and about 1,400 wounded. The French did not report their losses, but had about 3,000 dead and at least 1,100 wounded. Over 8,000 French and Spanish sailors were captured.

With Collingwood in command now, British crews worked frantically to rescue wounded adversaries from ships in danger of sinking. A powerful storm threatened the lives of all. The Santissima Trinidad, with a crew of more than 1,100, had been ganged-up on by a half dozen British ships. Half her crew were lost. A cat who had taken shelter in a gun barrel was the last rescued from that ship.

A dog lowered overboard had stayed on a ledge of HMS Conqueror throughout the battle, exposed to cannnon and musket fire throughout. Aside from being in understandable shock, the dog was fine.

In the week-long storm that battered the survivors, many damaged ships went down. Many men wounded in the battle died due to the rough handling of nature.

Nelson was placed in a barrel of spirits, and brought to England for burial (he did not wish to be buried at sea). It was December 22nd before the badly damaged Victory reached Portsmouth. He was given a magnificent state funeral.

Bonaparte reported to the French people only that "some ships were lost in a gale after an imprudent engagement." Villeneuve committed suicide the next year after being exchanged.

French naval power was broken (though the blockaded remnants of the fleet grew to an even larger size by the time Bonaparte abdicated in 1815). Never again could Bonaparte seriously contemplate an invasion of England. Britannia indeed ruled the waves, and would for more than a century to come.

Read more about the Battle of Trafalgar here.

Here you can take a virtual tour of HMS Victory, the world's oldest commisioned warship (she is in drydock at Portsmouth, thus USS Constitution's claim to be the world's oldest commissioned warship afloat).

A glass of wine tonight to the immortal memory, Lord Nelson, who was mourned almost as feelingly in Boston and Salem as he was in London and Portsmouth.

One of the most critical saints in popularizing the devotion to the Most Precious Blood.

And I love one of his titles, "Hammer of Italian Freemasonry."

To the surprise of almost all, especially me, one of the most hardened cynics when it comes to the fortunes of the Olde Towne Team, the Boston Red Sox beat the Yankees for the third consecutive time in Yankee Stadium to win the American League pennant and advance to the World Series.

Incredible. For a team that dropped the first three games of the series to come back and win it in seven games when they did not enjoy home-field advantage is, I think, unprecedented.

And it is especially incredible when you consider that to do it, they beat the vaunted and much-hated New York Yankees, in Yankee Stadium, three straight.

Doesn't get any better than that!

This will be the fourth Red Sox' World Series appearance in my lifetime, the fifth since 1919. The lost the Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946 (during my Father's lifetime), and again in 1967 (when I was 3). They lost to the Cincinnati Reds in 1975, and to the New York Mets in 1986.

They do not know yet whether their opponent in Saturday's Game One will be the St. Louis Cardinals, or the Houston Astros with old friend Roger Clemens.

A World Series win in 2004? It could happen, if they avoid the oddities and freak circumstances that have deprived them of ultimate victory so often in the past.

Go Red Sox!!!!!

Now she is saying that Laura Bush's jobs as a teacher and librarian (not to mention as a mother) were not "real jobs."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&u=/ap/20041020/ap_on_el_pr/heinz_kerry_1&printer=1
(hyper-link thingee does not work here, either, because you can't right-click the mouse).

I guess TaRESah's real job, marrying millionaire senators counts, but putting up with 20 howling, bawling, blabbing kids and trying to pour some knowledge into skulls full of mush does not count.

Can anyone reasonably see this crass, , classless, foolish, indiscrete person as First Lady? I can't, and am baffled why the polls are so damn close, aside from the 45% built-in Democrat vote (which I find utterly scary and the best argument I've ever heard for taking away the vote from anyone who gets a paycheck or a dole check from government).

"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be good and bad, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away.

But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man ett's porch, or the hairy ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA on the last night of the month. And if it's around October twentieth and everything smoky smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners. "

From the Prologue to Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, published in 1962.

I just happened to remember that it is October 20th. Who can't remember feeling the way Bradbury describes as childhood Halloweens approached?

Ray Bradbury is very much a modern. But his work is not imbued with modernism. You might call his style modernity without modernism. His Fahrenheit 451, which I read two years ago for the first time at the helpful instigation of my wife, is one of the most conservative statements in favor of classical learning and against the mainstream pseudo-culture of TV.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dandelion Wine, and the Illustrated Man show us a most welcome positive view of small town America (with a twist, of course, this is fiction, and imaginative fiction at that). Bradbury's normative themes are refreshing and real and far more authentic to the human experience (while being faithful to the cultural tradition of which they are a part) than the works of hundreds of authors whose books cram the local Barnes & Noble or Borders.

The difference is that, in 100 years, no one will recall who these authors were, or why what they had to say was read by people in 2004. But people will still read Bradbury for pleasure.

Others achieve the same plateau of excellence: Tolkien, Lewis, Frost, O'Brian, O'Connor, Kirk, Hawthorne, Pope, Wodehouse, Waugh, Faulkner, Wolfe, O'Conner, maybe Rowling. Their stuff will stand the test of time.

Bradbury has for me made October 20th a milestone, a day in which Halloween begins to be anticipated. Halloween, the eve of All Saints' and the build-up for the Catholic Day of the Dead, All Souls', has taken some hard knocks, mostly unjustified. Opportunistic modern wiccans and pagans, especially in Salem, have claimed as their own a holiday that has nothing to do with them, and never did.

The celebration of the day is Celtic and Christian. It is the dying time of the year, with the harvest almost all in now, and even the green leaves of summer suddenly blazing into brilliant color and then dropping to the ground. The days are growing notably colder (this fall more so than last year, I think). It is the appropriate time to recall our dead, to think about, and to pray for the all the dead. The merry season of Christmas lies ahead. But, as the liturgical year winds down over the next 4 weeks, let us pause to recall death. It is the first of the Four Last Things, after all.

If part of thinking about it is reading old gothic ghost stories over a mug of mulled cider by candlelight in the privacy of one's study, or watching movies about ghosts, witches, vampires, werewolves, and monsters, or impressing the imagination of children by decorating a "haunted house" and handing out enough candy to make them spit out teeth the next day, or carving pumpkins in imitation of the Irish custom of the carved turnip of Jack of the Lantern, or burning leaves at night, there is no harm in it.

But the experience is made richer by remembering the saints of the Church on All Hallows' Day itself, and by praying for the dead, our dead, and the forgotten, unknown poor souls in Purgatory throughout November. And if dressing up as ghosts in bedsheets (I used the Charlie Brown costume once or twice as a kid) and going door to door like the people who dressed up as those who had died during the year did seek propitiary offerings in Celtic village life, or those who, in Christian times, performed the luck-visit ritual of going a'souling, then it is a start. The important thing is to get people to start to remember the dead. Then build on that foundation. Just getting them to think of the dead as something other than inventory for a graveyard and an object of horror is a necessary start.

The series is tied 3 games apiece.

Our Red Sox, always striving, year after year, to find new and more exciting ways to tear our hearts out.

"I consider the activities of terrorists in Iraq are not as much aimed at coalition forces but more personally against President Bush," Putin said at a news conference after a regional summit in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.
"International terrorism has as its goal to prevent the election of President Bush to a second term," he said. "If they achieve that goal, then that will give international terrorism a new impulse and extra power."

And they pay you with crack cocaine.

Or something like that.

They only went 9 innings. It takes them 12-14 innings to beat the Yankees.

If you want to check out various historical monstrances, or just plain interesting ones, head over to the Monstrances photo album of Recta Ratio: the Yahoo Club (whose link is conveniently located at the top of the list of links now) and scroll through or do a slide show.

Just added this morning.

When I get a chance, I'll go through the 65 or so images, and label them. But for now, I think it is cool just to look at the various receptacles Catholics have used to hold the Blessed Sacrament for the purpose of Adoration.

Read all about the speculation here. It is an old story. The issue seems to be, will he do it before he retires. I'm guessing that he will not.

Just barely with a win over the Yankees in the 12th inning.

Meanwhile, the Patriots won their 20th consecutive game (including last year's playoffs).

Catholic Forum has the details on this Evangelist's extensive patronage.

Well, according to polls I have read in the last 24 hours, the President is either 5 points or so ahead of John Forbes Heinz Kerry (aka Lurch sounding like Thurston Howell III), or they are in a dead heat.

Electoral College projections are all over the place. I have seen some, allegedly based on the latest polling data that say, if the election where held today, the President would be comfortably re-elected, and others that he would be ignominiously turned out of office.

The closest states are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Nevada.

Dusting off the old crystal ball, I would say that the President will prevail in Florida and Ohio, as well as Arkansas, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Nevada. Kerry will hold on to minnesota and Pennsylvania, and the two New England states that are being tempted to come into the light. And he'll hold Oregon and New Mexico.

That makes George W. Bush the next President (all things being equal as they are today).

I think the GOP will drop Senate seats in Alaska and Illinois (as much as I like Alan Keyes, he has zero appeal as a candidate for office to the people who would be voting for him), and pick up 2 seats in the Carolinas, the Georgia seat, and will unseat Tom Daschle. The House will see about a 5 seat GOP net gain.

And we won't even mention what happened to the Red Sox.

But BC plays Notre Dame next weekend, and it is just a shame the Shrine of the Holy Whapping crew has taken to the road this week, or they could be available to see firsthand the vicious beating their team will take from BC.

I suspect that, after next weekend, they will have to rename their wonderful blog Scene of the Heinie Whomping.

"For Boston, For Boston..."

But I have heard that some people log onto this site, and see no links at all, and never have. It happens to me occasionally when I log in from another computer. But most of the time the links are right there on the right. And it is quite a long list of links, too.

So for those who can't see them, try a upgraded version of Internet Explorer.

To whom the Lord appeared and explained the Sacred Heart devotion back in the 17th century.

The Twelve Promises of Jesus to Saint Margaret Mary for those devoted to His Sacred Heart:
I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life.
I will establish peace in their families.
I will console them in all their troubles.
They shall find in My Heart an assured refuge during life and especially at the hour of their .
I will pour abundant blessings on all their undertakings.
Sinners shall find in My Heart the source of an infinite ocean of mercy.
Tepid souls shall become fervent.
Fervent souls shall speedily rise to great perfection.
I will bless the homes where an image of My Heart shall be exposed and honored.
I will give to priests the power of touching the most hardened hearts.
Those who propagate this devotion shall have their names written in My Heart, never to be effaced.
The all-powerful love of My Heart will grant to all those who shall receive Communion on the First Friday of nine consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they shall not die under my displeasure, nor without receiving their Sacraments; My heart shall be their assured refuge at that last hour.