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  [Commentary] Pachamama is a Demon: Testimony from a Protestant 'Missionary'
Posted by: Stone - 01-05-2022, 07:57 AM - Forum: General Commentary - No Replies

Pachamama is a Demon: Testimony from a [Protestant] 'Missionary'
Taken from here


As many of you know, I was raised a protestant. I love the many good men and women who helped me learn to love the Lord Jesus Christ, a love that has now found fulfillment in His Catholic Church.

But these are disturbing days. In particular, I refer to the blessing, and welcoming of a pagan idol—a demon—by Pope Francis into the Vatican, and St. Peter’s Basilica itself in October, 2019 as part of the Amazon Synod. Many better and holier men than me have written about this scandalous event. I refer chiefly to Archbishop Viganò, whose August 2018 Testimony exposed to an unprecedented degree the amount of corruption and perversion currently at work in the Church, and at the behest of many of Her most powerful prelates, including Pope Francis himself. “The abomination of idolatrous rites has entered the sanctuary of God,” he said in a November 2019 interview on the Pachamama scandal. In March of 2020, he called on Pope Francis to “convert” (repent) for this sacrilegious act. Likewise, Catholic theologian Douglas Farrow has written two compelling pieces on the Amazon Synod, The Amazon Synod Is a Sign of the Times, and Reading the Signs of the Times. Cardinal Raymond Burke has said that “diabolical forces” entered St. Peter’s Basilica through the idolatrous Pachamama event. Finally, 100+ Catholic theologians, priests, and laymen signed a Protest Against Pope Francis’s Sacrilegious Acts in response to the Pachamama fiasco.

In short, this very disturbing event has been commented on by far greater men than me, and it is to them I primarily refer you.

So why do I write this blog post today? Because of a recent, again disturbing encounter with a Catholic Bishop over Twitter. I won’t mention his name, but in our interaction, he claimed that Pachamama was just a “cultural symbol.” Addressing him with the respect due to him as “Your Excellency,” I protested that his statement simply wasn’t true. I suggested he check out standard encyclopedic reference sources to see that this was so. I included a link to the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on “Pachamama,” which simply says “Andean deity.” When I informed the Bishop about this, he merely said, “Happy Holy Week.” That’s it.

In the same encyclopedia’s entry on “Nature Worship,” Pachamama is described as the “Andean earth-mother figure…worshiped by the Peruvians.” In the entry on “Bolivia,” we find this line: “Some characteristics of pantheistic pre-Columbian religion have survived in the Indian communities of the Altiplano, especially the worship of Pachamama, the goddess of the Earth.” [Emphasis added] In an entry on “Inca religion,” we read that “Earth was called Pachamama (Paca Mama), or Earth Mother.” Encyclopedia.com contains these words in its entry on Pachamama: “Pachamama, the earth mother goddess of the Incas. Pachamama was an agricultural deity worshiped with regard to fertility and the protection of the crops…”

In short, it is quite clear that Pachamama is no mere “cultural symbol.” She is an earth goddess, a pagan idol, the “Mother Earth” worshiped by pre-Christian pagans. As the Psalmist reminds us (Ps. 96:5), “For all the gods of the peoples are idols.” Some translations put “demons” for “idols.” No one had stronger words about such demons than St. Paul (1 Cor. 10:20-22):  No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?



[Image: image-asset.jpeg?format=750w]


The pagan altar at the foot of the cross. While you cannot see it clearly in this picture, my friend said that the altar had the name “Pachamama” clearly written on it (provided by my friend).

[Image: Pentagram%2C+Pachamama.jpg?format=500w]


Satanic pentagram near the Pachamama altar at the foot of a cross; the burn marks on the ground in the background are from other pagan altars and rituals (provided by my friend).


Throughout this debacle, I kept having a vague memory about having heard about this “Pachamama” before. Then I remembered that when I was in my early 20’s (still a protestant), I had a dear friend who had been on multiple missionary trips to South America. On most of those trips, he frequently encountered syncretistic Catholic-pagan sites and practices, some even having to do with Pachamama. The stories he relayed to me were disturbing.

I recently asked this protestant friend to write a “testimony” about some of his encounters with Pachamama on his missionary trips, given recent events, and particularly the claims by some Catholic Bishops that Pachamama is a mere “cultural symbol.” Not only does his account refute that notion, but it testifies to a very disturbing acquiescence in this pagan cult by at least some of the Catholic Church in South America.

Additionally, this friend spoke of multiple masonic symbols placed around these altar areas, as well as on top of Catholic Churches. Locals, he said, would tell them, and point out the many places where “There is a good deal of pagan religion down here that is mixed with Catholicism, and masonic symbolism.”

Suffice it to say, the idea that Pachamama is just a “cultural symbol” is asinine. It is false, and don’t let any Prince of the Church who should know better, as a shepherd of the flock, tell you otherwise. I pray for them every single day on my Rosary, because they will be held to account, and I want them in Heaven.

He shall remain anonymous, but my friend has agreed to share his “Testimony Against Pachamama” with the world.



Quote:
Testimony Against Pachamama

In July 2007, I made my first trip to the high country in Huancayo, Peru. I was part of a small team of short-term missionaries sent to give encouragement to full time missionaries, local church leaders and the body of Christ. The trip was full of wonderful experiences and some that were a bit frightening.

We traveled to a hill outside Huancayo. On the hill sits Cruz de la Paz, which means the Cross of Peace. This is a large cross that overlooks the city of Huancayo. It is a place of pilgrimage for faithful, but also a gathering place for pagan worship. An altar of cement sits beneath the cross. Inscriptions and graffiti had been placed on the cross which identified it as an altar to Pachamama and other pagan deities. Locals know this is a Catholic place, but it is also a place where sacrifices are made to pagan deities, especially Pachamama and her child/husband, Inti. Surrounding the altar and cross were many stone altars erected by hand. Fires had burned around and near these smaller altars. You could see multiple Satanic and masonic symbols in the area. Directly behind the large cross to the right, situated below the hill, is a small town called Cullpa Alta. Fires were burning in the town, and smoke could be seen rising from the town.

We asked the locals among us what was happening. They said the city was celebrating El Dia de Santiago. They said it is a festival that appears to be Catholic but is anything but. They described a scene in which Catholic celebrations were mixed with pagan Incan rituals. They described a week of city-wide orgies and celebrations in and outside the church. The festival is an amalgamation of Catholic and pagan rituals. The rituals celebrate the fertility goddess Pachamama. One local literally said, “Nine months from now, another group of bastard children will be born because everyone is encouraged to have as much *** as possible with as many people as possible. Children will be born without fathers.” We pressed for more details and the locals said the Church (Catholic Church) does nothing. They say nothing. It is allowed, and it even happens within the walls of the church. We were shocked to hear this, but all indications and observations gave reason to believe this was true.


Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

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  Emmanuel Macron denounced France's 5 million unvaccinated as "non-citizens"
Posted by: Stone - 01-05-2022, 07:37 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - Replies (2)

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  Fr. Ambrose Astor on Covid Vaccines: On the Considerations of Conscience, Prudence, and Charity
Posted by: Stone - 01-04-2022, 12:21 PM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Spiritual] - No Replies

Fr. Ambrose Astor on Covid Vaccines: On the Considerations of Conscience, Prudence, and Charity
Three Articles


Fr. Hewko recently (Second Sunday of Advent 2021) mentions the first two of these articles by Fr. Ambrose Astor with praise [aside from Fr. Astor's references to the New Conciliar Catechism and Saint JPII].


Fr. Ambrose Astor (pseudonym) has written a third article, especially for priests, concerning the "charity" of getting vaccinated. A member of gloria.tv has organized these three articles into PDF format. They have been gratefully 'borrowed' and can be found here: 


Conscience and Vaccines

Prudence and Vaccines

[Latest] Charity and Vaccines


There is also a LifeSiteNews article by the same priest: Is it true that COVID-19 vaccines are created using organs of aborted infants?

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  All New Cars Sold in EU to Be Fitted With Data Recording ‘Black Box’
Posted by: Stone - 01-03-2022, 11:11 AM - Forum: Socialism & Communism - No Replies

All New Cars Sold in EU to Be Fitted With Data Recording ‘Black Box’
Will be accessible by law enforcement.

[Image: 030122cars1.jpg]

Summit News | 3 January, 2022

Starting this summer, all new cars sold in the EU will by law contain a ‘black box’ accessible by authorities that records driving data.

From July 6, 2022, all car manufacturers will be forced to fit new models with a system that keeps track of technical data.

The data recorded will include “the vehicle’s speed, braking, steering wheel angle, its incline on the road, and whether the vehicle’s various safety systems were in operation, starting with seatbelts.”

“The new system will coincide with the introduction of Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) systems, which will warn drivers when they breach the speed limit,” reports Reclaim the Net. “However, the ISA systems should not prevent the driver from actually breaking the speed limit.”

The system, which will be accessible to law enforcement but not insurance companies, will also be able to catalogue the exact type of vehicle and send the information to manufacturers after an accident.

Authorities claim the data will be “anonymized,” meaning the information can’t be used to identify the owner of the vehicle, although only the incredibly naive would plausibly believe that.

For decades, government have been pushing for all cars to be fitted with black boxes that track location data.

The ultimate dystopian scenario involves giving police the power to utilize similar technology to completely disable the functioning of a vehicle if the driver is deemed to have committed an infraction.

This doesn’t need to be a criminal offense, if the pursuit of social credit score schemes continues to become more invasive, it would eventually be used as a form of punishment for everything from unpaid utility bills to offensive comments posted on social media.

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  FDA grants emergency authorization for 'boosters' for 12-15 year olds
Posted by: Stone - 01-03-2022, 10:59 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies



https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-an...19-vaccine

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  Remember, all of this is for your safety: Dutch use attack dogs against lockdown protestors
Posted by: Stone - 01-03-2022, 09:53 AM - Forum: Global News - No Replies

Dutch Police Use Attack Dogs Against Anti-Lockdown Protesters

ZH | JAN 03, 2022

Amid the Omicron Covid variant spread, and despite an emerging consensus that this latest variant is not very severe in terms of individual impact and hospitalizations, lockdowns are returning to much of Europe, but so are fierce protests.

Remember, all of this is for your "safety"...


Chaotic and disturbing scenes are coming out of Sunday's large anti-restriction protests near the National Museum in Amsterdam. The protest had been declared illegal by authorities, but a huge crowd showed up anyway, and that's when police in riot gear attempted to disperse thousands.

Among many scenes of people being beaten with police batons, dogs were also unleashed on the demonstrators, including in the above video which shows a man being mauled by a police dog who wouldn't let go of his arm - even as he was prone on the ground at one point. It's unclear if the officers were wanting the dog to release after clearly injuring the man, or if they wanted the animal to continue biting him.

Just before the police unleashed violent tactics on the crowd, the anti-lockdown protesters surrounded the anti-riot force and their vans, presumably there to make mass arrests.


"The Netherlands went into a sudden lockdown on December 19, with the government ordering the closure of all but essential stores, as well as restaurants, hairdressers, gyms, museums and other public places until at least January 14," CNN writes of the new controversial lockdown. "Public gatherings of more than two people are prohibited under the current set of restrictions."

The protest looked to be at least in the tens of thousands, and possibly bigger:


Clearly citizens in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe are furious over this climate of the 'never-ending pandemic' and corresponding lockdowns which governments seem to now impose with ease.

Angry crowds go after riot control police in The Netherlands this weekend:


But many are saying "enough!" and it's becoming harder and harder to remove the liberties of the populace in the name of "protecting" people from the virus - a virus which we were told would dissipate once the vaccine is available.




But instead we still have these scenes of police cracking skulls as people simply stand up for their rights amid authorities' attempts to control all aspects of life in the name of "safety" amid the persisting pandemic.

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  Dr. Abramson Interview: Behind the scenes role of Big Pharma
Posted by: Stone - 01-02-2022, 09:26 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

Dr. John Abramson, A Harvard Medical School Lecturer & National Drug Litigation Expert...

Shares What Goes On Behind The Scenes With Big Pharma...

[Warning: Rogan is known for occasionally using bad language.]


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  COVID, Ivermectin, And 'Mass Formation Psychosis': Dr. Robert Malone Gives Blistering Interview
Posted by: Stone - 01-02-2022, 09:22 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

COVID, Ivermectin, And 'Mass Formation Psychosis': Dr. Robert Malone Gives Blistering Interview To Joe Rogan
[Warning: Joe Rogan is known for occasionally using bad language.]


ZH | JAN 01, 2022

mRNA inventor Dr. Robert Malone gave a fascinating interview to Joe Rogan which aired on New Year's Eve.

If you've got three hours to spare, we recommend you watch the entire thing (cliffs notes here): [Video no longer available]

Malone, an expert in mRNA vaccine technologies who trained at UC Davis, UCSD and the Salk Institute, was suspended by Twitter with no explanation on Thursday. It appears he's preparing to sue, as Alex Berenson is currently doing.







The suspension came after Malone was vilified by a hit piece in The Atlantic which was funded by Facebook and Johnson & Johnson.

Quote:"Three days before this thing came out, the journalist - he previously publishes on 'woke' issues on the topic of higher education. He's clearly hired. And they explicitly say the article was funded by the Robert Boyd Johnson foundation and the Zuckerberg-Chan initiative.

...

He was totally obsessed. 'Robert, why are you saying these things? You must have some financial incentive. There must be some reason you're doing this' - and I told him repeatedly, 'because it's the right thing to do.'

I think I'm the only one who has been involved deeply in the development of this tech, that doesn't have a financial stake in it. For me, the reason is, because what's happening is not right. It's destroying my profession. It's destroying the practice of medicine worldwide ... I'm a vaccinologist. I spent 30 years developing vaccines. A stupid amount of education learning how to do it, and what the rules are. And for me, I'm personally offended watching my discipline get destroyed for no good reason at all except, apparently, financial incentives, and - I dunno - political ass-covering?"
-Robert Malone


Quote:"Our government is out of control on this," Malone continues. "And they are lawless. They completely disregard bioethics. They completely disregard the federal common-rule. They have broken all the rules that I know of, that I've been trained for years and years and years. These mandates of an experimental vaccines are explicitly illegal. They are explicitly inconsistent with the Nuremberg code. They are explicitly inconsistent with the Belmont report. They are flat out illegal, and they don't care."


Malone then explained to Rogan how the Uttar Pradesh province in India crushed Covid with early treatment that included ivermectin, however he claims that the Biden administration met with Modi and a 'decision was made not to disclose the contents of the treatment.'


They then went deeper into the topic of ivermectin and early interventions in general. According to Malone, "There are good modeling studies, that show a half a million excess deaths have happened in the US, through the intentional blockade of early COVID treatment by the US Government."



Malone and Rogan then got into some heavy science behind Covid - with Malone explaining how people with natural Covid immunity are at higher risk of adverse events from the vaccine.

"There is a number of things here that are not supported by the science."




They then discussed the case of a 14-year-old girl who was injured by the vaccine, yet the incident was reported as a stomach ache.

Quote:"This young woman who was listed as having a stomach ache, when in fact what she had was a seizure. And she's now wheelchair-bound with a nasal-gastric tube. One of 1,000 subjects."


Towards the end of the interview, Malone gets even deeper - suggesting that people are living through a mass formation psychosis - drawing parallels to 1920s and 1930s Germany, where "they had a highly intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad."





And Twitter doesn't think Malone's voice deserves to be heard.

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  Prayers in Honor of the Most Holy Name of Jesus
Posted by: Stone - 01-02-2022, 09:07 AM - Forum: In Honor of Our Lord - Replies (1)

Litany of the Most Holy Name of Jesus
The Litany of the Most Holy Name of Jesus is one of the three main litanies in honor of our Lord, the other two being, the Litany of the Sacred Heart and the Litany of the Precious Blood.

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginal...f=1&nofb=1]


Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy. Jesus, hear us.
Jesus, graciously hear us.

God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.
God, the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.

Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Splendor of the Father, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Brightness of eternal Light, have mercy on us.
Jesus, King of Glory, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Sun of Justice, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Son of the Virgin Mary, have mercy on us.
Jesus, most amiable, have mercy on us.
Jesus, most admirable, have mercy on us.
Jesus, the mighty God, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Father of the world to come, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Angel of great counsel, have mercy on us.
Jesus, most powerful, have mercy on us.
Jesus, most patient, have mercy on us.
Jesus, most obedient, have mercy on us.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Lover of Chastity, have mercy on us.
Jesus, our Lover, have mercy on us.
Jesus, God of Peace, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Author of Life, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Model of Virtues, have mercy on us.
Jesus, zealous for souls, have mercy on us.
Jesus, our God, have mercy on us.
Jesus, our Refuge, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Father of the Poor, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Treasure of the Faithful, have mercy on us.
Jesus, good Shepherd, have mercy on us.
Jesus, true Light, have mercy on us.
Jesus, eternal Wisdom, have mercy on us.
Jesus, infinite Goodness, have mercy on us.
Jesus, our Way and our Life, have mercy on us.
Jesus, joy of the Angels, have mercy on us.
Jesus, King of the Patriarchs, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Master of the Apostles, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Teacher of the Evangelists, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Strength of Martyrs, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Light of Confessors, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Purity of Virgins, have mercy on us.
Jesus, Crown of all Saints, have mercy on us.

Be merciful, spare us, O Jesus!
Be merciful, graciously hear us, O Jesus!

From all evil, deliver us, O Jesus.
From all sin, etc.
From Thy wrath,
From the snares of the devil,
From the spirit of fornication,
From everlasting death,
From the neglect of Thine inspirations,

Through the mystery of Thy holy Incarnation, deliver us, O Jesus.
Through Thine Nativity, etc.
Through Thy Infancy,
Through Thy most Divine Life,
Through your Labors,
Through Thine Agony and Passion,
Through Thine Cross and Dereliction,
Through Thine Sufferings,
Through Thy Death and Burial,
Through Thine Resurrection,
Through Thine Ascension,
Through Thine Institution of the Most Holy Eucharist,
Through Thy Joys,
Through Thy Glory,

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, spare us, O Jesus!
Lamb of God, Who takeest away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Jesus!
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, O Jesus!

Jesus, hear us.
Jesus, graciously hear us.

Let Us Pray.
O Lord Jesus Christ, Thou has said, "Ask and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:" mercifully attend to our supplications, and grant us the grace of Thy divine charity, that we may ever love Thee with our whole heart, and with all our words and deeds, and may never cease from praising Thee.

Make us, O Lord, to have a perpetual fear and love of Thy Holy Name, for Thou doth never fails to govern those whom Thou solidly establishest in Thy love. Thou, Who livest and reignest forever and ever. R. Amen.

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  Commentary: How to Prepare for Catastrophe
Posted by: Stone - 01-02-2022, 09:01 AM - Forum: General Commentary - No Replies

How to Prepare for Catastrophe
Written By Ryan Grant
January 8, 2012

Many people today are worried, justifiably, about major devastating events that could seriously alter our way of life. Yet, intertwined with those legitimate fears are vehicles that may or may not be legitimate, which do little more than stoke fear or evoke a collective sense of worry, unsubstantiated by the facts. It goes without saying that the current course of the economy, our involvement in foreign wars, and unemployment has many people worrying about where their next paycheck may come from or what will happen in the future. Coupled with these, however, are worries about 2012, the rapture, or Nibiru (or who knows what else), all of which are not based on any rational criterion. These vehicles for emotional knee-jerk reaction are symptomatic of the question, what happens if everything changes tomorrow? In this mindset, we can see the plight of those who are not prepared, which, needless to say are most of us. How can I prepare for sudden dramatic changes to our civilization which may leave me or my family without the means to support ourselves?

In the first place, we should turn to why 2012, or Nibiru, is not a rational criterion for preparing for the future. The fact is the hysteria generated over 2012 is little different from Y2K, or even fears at the turn of the millennium in the Middle Ages. Our Lord wisely said “You shall know neither the day nor the hour…,” and this is an important element in the unfolding of revelation until the death of the last Apostle. The Catholic Church ... would not be so rash as to come out and make predictions about the end of the world. Christ, who in fact knew the very day and the hour, but was not allowed to reveal it in his human nature on earth, would not say it. How can His followers claim to be higher than He and predict the date? We have seen in the last century churches try to forecast the end of the world, fail and disband or, as we saw last year, predict the date of the supposed “rapture.” [note]This is not the proper place to debate the false theology of the Rapture embraced by some Evangelical Christians, but to put it briefly it is a misreading of 2 Thessalonians where Paul speaks of us being taken up (raps in Latin meaning to take), combined with the ancient heresy of chiliasm resurrected in the 19th century. It believes Christ will bring everyone to Jerusalem to be Jews for a thousand years according to the Old Testament economy, which is totally at odds with what Jesus said in the Synoptics and the Pauline accounts of the Last Supper, where He now offers a "New and Everlasting Covenant."[/note]

Again, we see it in non-Christian thought popularized by the secular media and thus appropriated by many Christians, of the date of 2012. This date was the end of the Mayan calendar, reconciled with ours, but it doesn't particularly mean anything other than the mathematical base of the calendar, and anything added to that is mere speculation. It may be that the ancient Mayans had some insight, either by God or by demons, to see things getting really bad in 2012 (as geopolitically they may very well become), or it may be nothing at all, a mere calculation of math. Either way, speculation about it is mere hysteria. On the other hand, what the various popular worries of this or that date, this or that event, evince in the common culture is an unsettling worry. We are not prepared. This is a legitimate concern and the subject at hand. If bad things happen, am I prepared to survive for six weeks or six months without the grocery store, without the Internet, and without local water, sewage, and trash service? Without electricity? Without heat? These questions do not depend on the “rapture,” the 12th Imam, 2012 or United Nations blue hat soldiers rolling into your community. They are simply a question of natural prudence. The question we should be asking is: do I have enough food to last extended periods of time? Do I have the means of cooking without electricity? Do I have anything I can offer in trade to someone who might have these things?

This is not media hysteria or some supermarket tabloid talking about the planets aligning, but the very real possibility that something will happen in the world that will compromise our ability to obtain the goods necessary for our survival. Our economic situation should make this abundantly clear. For example, in spite of the abundant resources of the United States, at least 40% of our food production comes from outside of the United States. Why is that? Corn is subsidized by the government in order to keep the prices artificially low so that corn related products, which show up in virtually everything you see in the average mainline grocery store, from high fructose corn syrup to chemicals, lowers the cost of production of these same things. So the majority of our fields grow corn. The production of ethanol for fuel, which is highly inefficient since it takes more energy to produce ethanol than what we get out of it, reduces the volume of land used to grow wheat, fruit and vegetables. What this means functionally for you, is that you have less chance of obtaining food in your area. So where does your food come from?

A majority of Americans depend on an expensive system of 18-wheelers (or "big rigs" depending on what part of the country you are from) trucking food from one port to another, from one ConAgra facility to a production plant. Food is shipped to east Beijing and back via boat to a harbor where another 18-wheeler picks up the trailer and brings it to your local grocery store. In other instances, the distribution of oranges require trucks to transport Florida oranges to California, and from California to Florida, so those states can manage their trade balances better. If the Iranians close the Gulf of Hormuz and diesel fuel goes up $8 or $9 a gallon, or if for another reason trucks stop rolling, you will not find food at your local grocery store. If gas should rise to $8 or $9 a gallon, could you really manage? The “glory days” of the 1950s are long gone. Gas for 18 cents a gallon is history. The only reason we pay $3 a gallon instead of $7, like our neighbors to the north, or $12 in many parts of Europe, is that oil is priced in American dollars. Suppose the sufficient counter-balance to American hegemony is established in oil-producing regions such as Saudi Arabia and Eurasia, another very real possibility, which would allow world economies to function without the dollar as the reserve currency.

In the early 20th century there were approximately 30,000 facilities butchering meat, located near farmers, whereas today there are only 11 massive ones. If the trucks stop rolling, will you be able to buy meat at the store? Even rural areas where you can find independent farmers that raise livestock and have them butchered could scarcely keep up with the overwhelming demand. If you live in a highly urban area and have no means of heating your home naturally (as with a wood stove) or lighting your home without electricity, things can get pretty hairy pretty quick. If electricity is no longer being supplied, lighting (among other things) will become a serious issue. Most people, if they are honest, will say they are not prepared for these possibilities.

Some propose the answer is to own silver and gold. I'm not opposed to this. Both by their historic connection to the monetary system and their universal value, silver and gold can serve as assets. However, the bare bones facts are that, in the face of massive economic collapse, if you can’t eat, drink, or smoke it, it is useless. Someone who may have a surplus of this or that thing, will not accept gold and silver if what he really needs is food to feed his children. Americans trusted in the system during catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina and they were failed by it at both the state and federal levels. [note]We see this in the disaster of poor response by Louisiana and FEMA in the wake of Katrina.[/note] Citizens of Louisiana had no food that could help them weather the crisis nor the means of taking care of themselves for even a brief period of time. So what is to be done? Thus, prudence would dictate true preparedness, as in Aesop’s old fable of the Grasshopper and the Ants (Read this here). If the trucks stop rolling, and your store shelves are empty like in Soviet Russia, what are you going to do?

Basic preparedness would suggest at least six months of food and a seed vault. In the former, you need to have at things that could be cooked over an open fire if electricity failed; wheat, rice, quinoa, oatmeal, canned foods (preferably organic and non-BPA plastic lined), vegetables and fruits, and high protein legumes like beans and lentils. Dried meat would also be wise, and this can be prepared easily without the need to buy beef jerky, although jerky serves as a good protein source. Water is also something that is necessary to have on hand. Store water in old jugs, Carlo-Rossi wine jugs (which is preferable since glass does not leech chemicals into the water), or your old juice and water bottles. The seed vault is what you want to use to plant gardens in the event things do not get better. While using your stores you can set up gardens to yield vegetables and berries. What you don't use should be canned to preserve for the following winter.

Do you need that morning cup of coffee? Do you have a deal worked out with some overnight shipper to get coffee beans flown in from Colombia? Granted, this is more of a luxury item, but, if you really want it, it would be good to buy coffee beans in bulk to retain their properties better while stored and roast them yourself. This process is not difficult. Look into purchasing coffee makers that do not require electricity, such as a Bialetti. Get a hand crank coffee grinder. Then purchase nitrogen packed coffee as it will retain its freshness so long as the tin does not corrupt. Do you have a way to stay warm? Blankets, warm clothes, wood stoves, or at least the means to start a controlled campfire are essential. What about lighting? Do you have a propane lamp? What about extra propane canisters to light them? Candles are good, but generally these are novelty items in America. Unless you have beeswax candles and followers to preserve the wax and burn it for the longest possible time, you will not get much out of them. For that matter how will you start a fire, whether for cooking, heat or light? Large boxes of matches are still relatively inexpensive, and there are many emergency fire starters that would be handy to have around.

Have you thought about toilet paper? From an early age, like the insatiably curious Elephant of Kipling's Just So Stories, I was always curious about how people did things before we had electricity and appliances, especially natural things like going to the bathroom. Fortunately there are books, rather than crocodiles to teach the lesson. How did peoples who did not have sewage, plumbing and toilet paper get along? As it turns out Roman soldiers carried a sponge with their normal military kit, the sole purpose of which was to wash themselves when going to the latrine. Toilet paper is a late medieval invention, inspired by knowledge that rice paper was being used in China (NB this does not sound like a happy alternative to certain necessary things). At that it did not come into common use until the late 19th century. Do you have areas of your property which could be set up as latrines, away from your sources of water? Hygiene can be a serious issue.

What about your teeth? That toothpaste tube you depend on from your local grocery store's health and beauty section indeed comes in handy. Do you have enough to last your family for six months? Do you know that with Hydrogen Peroxide and baking soda you can create a useful cleaning agent for your teeth and maintain your dental hygiene for some time? Baking soda and peroxide is not too expensive to pick up every time you go to the store, and these are non-perishable. Otherwise start stocking up on that fluoride free toothpaste. For that matter do you have enough soap to last you through extended periods? Even the Celts and Germans of classical times, considered barbarians by the Greeks and Romans, used soap developed from animal fats. The accumulation of dirt, dead cells and sweat over a long period of time can become serious with respect to contracting various diseases. Do you have enough soap, or know how to make it yourself, to last you? Do you have sufficient first aid supplies? What about cleaning your laundry? You might consider converting that old kiddie-pool into a washing tub, pronto. In all of these things, these are not the marks of some millennial suicide cult, or the popular image fostered in us by the media of militias made of up odd people fearing black helicopters and UN soldiers in their neighborhoods (which, as far as I can tell is a gross caricature at best), but of the natural prudence human beings once had and, at least in American culture, have lost due to our over-reliance on technology. In the past people stored up for hard times because it was a reality. The experience of the depression shows us that rural America, scorned by the urban elite, managed, whereas stockbrokers faced with ruin jumped from windows.

The practical solution does not require that you go out and spend your life's savings on survival foods. If you are going to purchase "kits" and the like, be sure to do your research. Be aware of the foods your family eats and what you will need over a long period. More importantly, many people say, food is perishable. They can't sit on it forever. What if there isn’t a crisis and I have all this food stored up? You can use these types of goods in your normal cooking and replenish them as needed. It is like the philosophy of emptying your wallet of the last few dollars to keep your gas tank full rather than keeping it just above empty. If something happens to you at least you have a full tank, whereas in the latter case you have an empty tank. Should things get tight, you will have an asset for barter and trade worth infinitely more than random stocks from Wal-Mart or Microsoft, which will be worth nothing if the stock market goes belly up. You can eat food. I'm not so sure on the digestible nature of stocks. This goes far beyond issues of Distributism, Socialism and Capitalism. Rather, it points to the very nature of survival, of reaping and storing into barns to be prepared for later—which was (and in many parts of the world still is) a natural function of families—rather than blind trusting in Big Business or Big Government. We need only look at Soviet Russia.[note]See Dimitri Orlov's analysis on the fall of the Soviet Union and the US here, and here.[/note]

Most Russians, whether good, bad or otherwise, knew the government would not provide for them (if from nothing other than experience) and had the best reserves they could procure in spite of the system. When Communism collapsed, they had the means to continue and establish a parallel economy. You can invest in gold and silver all you want, but in the end, you can neither eat them nor drink them, and are dependent upon the hope that some economy will develop where trade in these assets will become a reality, which may or may not be the case. In any case you can depend upon “bare necessities.” You can most certainly eat, use and trade the things I mentioned above. We are probably not looking at the end of the world, and even if we were that would not address what I'm talking about here. We may, on the other hand, be looking at radical changes in our civilization, and even if that turns out not to be the case, at least we will have been prepared, and what we will be prepared with will be useful in securing our future.

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  Abortion Leading Global Cause of Death in 2021 with 43 Million Killed
Posted by: Stone - 01-02-2022, 08:44 AM - Forum: Abortion - No Replies

Abortion Leading Global Cause of Death in 2021 with 43 Million Killed

Breitbart | 31 Dec 20210

Abortion was the leading cause of death globally in 2021, with nearly 43 million unborn babies killed in the womb, according to data provided by Worldometer.

As of noon on December 31, 2021, there were 42.6 million abortions performed in the course of the year, Worldometer revealed, while 8.2 million people died from cancer, 5 million from smoking, 1.7 million of HIV/AIDS, 1.3 million from traffic fatalities, and 1 million from suicide.

Totaling all the deaths in the world from causes other than abortion reveals a figure of 58.7 million, meaning that abortions accounted for just over 42 percent of all human deaths in 2021.

By comparison, worldwide deaths from coronavirus in 2021 totaled around 3.5 million, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Worldometer — voted one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA) — keeps a running tally through the year of major world statistics, including population, births, deaths, automobiles produced, books published, and CO2 emissions.

It also registers the total number of abortions performed worldwide, based on the latest statistics on abortions published by the World Health Organization (WHO).

[Image: Abortions-2021.jpg]

Globally, there were more deaths from abortion in 2021 than all deaths from cancer, malaria, HIV/AIDS, smoking, alcohol, and traffic accidents combined, according to Worldometer statistics.

The startling number of deaths from abortion, in fact, has led certain observers to call abortion “the social justice cause of our time,” since the sheer magnitude of the problem completely overshadows other human rights issues.

On December 28, Christians around the world celebrated the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating the slaughter of all male children in Israel under the age of two by order of King Herod in an effort to kill the newborn Christ child. Pope Francis has compared Herod’s massacre of the Innocents to the modern practice of killing babies through abortion.

The 49th annual March for Life in the United States will take place in Washington, D.C., on January 21, 2022, with the theme “Equality Begins in the Womb.”

“The pro-life movement recognizes the immense responsibility this nation bears to restore equal rights to its most defenseless citizens in the womb,” March for Life president Jeanne Mancini said at a press conference in October.

The stated purpose of the march is to end abortion by “uniting, educating, and mobilizing pro-life people in the public square.”

The annual march commemorates the infamous January 22, 1973, Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade which, together with the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, nullifed 50 state laws and made abortion legal and available on demand throughout the United States.

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  Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: Please pray for Karen VanderPutten
Posted by: Stone - 01-01-2022, 02:43 PM - Forum: Appeals for Prayer - No Replies

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginal...f=1&nofb=1]

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescat in pace. Amen.


In your charity, please pray for the soul of Karen (Bobka) VanderPutten who passed away on December 29th from cancer at age 60.

A few words from her obituary:

Quote:Karen (Bobka) VanderPutten, 60, passed to her reward, surrounded by her family on Thursday, December 29, 2021 shortly after praying the Rosary and Litany to St. Joseph.

Karen offered her long, intense suffering during her illness for you all and no one was left out, she included the whole world, from the poor lost sinners who had no one to pray for them, to the suffering Church throughout the world.  She hid her pain behind her smile so only the closest to her knew the magnitude of her suffering. Please pray for her.


May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.  Amen.


✠ ✠ ✠


The De Profundis  - Psalm 129

Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice.
Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.
If Thou, O Lord, shalt mark our iniquities: O Lord, who can abide it?
For with Thee there is mercy: and by reason of Thy law I have waited on Thee, O Lord.
My soul hath waited on His word: my soul hath hoped in the Lord.
From the morning watch even unto night: let Israel hope in the Lord.
For with the Lord there is mercy: and with Him is plenteous redemption.
And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

Eternal rest grant unto her O Lord And let perpetual light shine upon her.

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  A Happy and Holy New Year to you all!
Posted by: Stone - 01-01-2022, 10:08 AM - Forum: The Catacombs: News - Replies (3)

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginal...f=1&nofb=1]


The Catacombs would like to wish you all a Happy and Holy New Year!


"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre

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  Commentary: How to Eat Like a Hobbit
Posted by: Stone - 12-31-2021, 10:34 AM - Forum: Health - No Replies

How to Eat Like A Hobbit
Written By Robert Hutchinson

[Image: Capture.png]

If there is one area of life most people can change in order to return to the Shire, in a metaphorical if not literal sense, it’s their eating habits. You can live in a 20-storey high-rise in Manhattan or Paris and still adopt a Hobbit lifestyle when it comes to eating. That’s because Hobbits are different from most of the enslaved subjects of Mordor not only in what they eat ... but also in how and why they eat it. 

Hobbits, along with most of the free peoples of Middle-earth, eat pure, naturally grown, mostly wild foods from their own gardens or nearby fields: lush berries, fresh bread, cheese, cold meats, mushrooms (lots of those!), wine and beer. They eat frequently, usually in groups and often accompanied by poetry readings and songs. Hobbits are not vegetarians but they have a varied diet of whole, local foods, including Nimcelen, the hobbit version of potato salad; Soroname, a warm soup filled with pasta, meat, tomatoes, beans and onions; and Lembas, Elvish waybread. They drink wine and, when they can get it, such invigorating liquors as Ent-draughts and Mirror, the life-giving and energizing elixir of the Elves.[note]Those interested in preparing Hobbit foods themselves should consult Emerald Took’s Regional Cooking from Middle-earth: Recipes of the Third Age (Trafford Publishing, 2003).[/note] 

Food has a spiritual as well as a biological purpose for them. As even cursory readers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings know, Hobbits like to eat well and often. They also take their time. “And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them),” Tolkien notes in the famous “Prologue” to The Fellowship of the Ring. Indeed, foods of all types feature prominently in the long saga of The Lord of the Rings. The entire epic begins with a magnificent feast for Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party. As many commentators have pointed out, there is more eating than fighting in The Lord of the Rings, despite the gore of Hollywood’s over-amped CGI film versions. 

After what Tolkien calls “a very pleasant feast” at Bilbo’s birthday and going-away party—“rich, abundant, varied and prolonged”—Tolkien goes on to describe Frodo’s meal with Gildor Inglorion and the High Elves and another magnificent dinner at the Prancing Pony in Bree. The Elves describe their travelling food as “poor fare,” and yet Pippin recalls the food as “bread, surpassing the savour of a fair white loaf to one who is starving; and fruits sweet as wild berries and richer than the tended fruits of gardens” and a cup “that was filled with a fragrant draught, cool as a clear fountain, golden as a summer afternoon.” The fellowship leaves the Elves to share a few meals with the strange, primeval creature known as Tom Bombadill—including such delights as “yellow cream and honey-come, and white bread, and butter; milk, cheese, and green herbs and ripe berries gathered”—and then head for the small village of Bree. There, at the inn known as The Prancing Pony, they gather their strength for their quest, and Tolkien describes the food in detail:

Quote:They were washed and in the middle of good deep mugs of beer when Mr. Butterbur and Nob came in again. In a twinkling, the table was laid. There was hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, new loaves, slabs of butter, and half a ripe cheese: good plain food, as good as the Shire could show, and homelike enough to dispel the last of Sam’s misgivings (already much relieved by the excellence of the beer).

In Tolkien’s vision, the growing, preparation and enjoyment of food take up most of the hobbits’ time—and serve a much higher purpose than the mere utilitarian re-fueling of Mordor’s orcs or modern society. The meals of the hobbits and the elves have social, even spiritual, purposes, helping to cement the bonds of friendship and strengthen the soul for hardships to come. In this, Tolkien is echoing an ancient spiritual tradition that extends back through his own Catholic faith, and the Anglo-Catholicism of his friends at Oxford, all the way through the Jewish and Christian testaments. ... To put it simply: What and how we eat matters ... and there is a vast chasm existing between the nourishing, fresh, locally grown food eaten in the Shire (and in most traditional societies)... and the manufactured, pre-packaged, artificial “food products” consumed by the harried worker-bees of consumer society.


The Shift to Industrial Mass Production of Food

Ironically enough, the growing and eating of food also provides a startling case study in just how radically different is the social and economic vision that informed Tolkien’s formative years—the Third Way de-centralized economics of G.K. Chesterton and his circle—and the dominant economic paradigm of our own world, the literal fusion of Big Government and Big Business in the modern corporate state. That’s because at the heart of Distributist or Third Way thought is a belief in radical de-centralization, diversity and local control—particularly when it comes to the production of food. 

In contrast, the very essence of modern industrial food production is centralization, lack of diversity and national or corporate control. In the early 20th century, there were approximately 6.4 million farms in the United States producing food for a population of 76 million people. By the year 2008, that number had fallen to just 2.2 million producing food for 300 million in the U.S. and for tens of millions more abroad. Even those statistics don’t tell the real story of consolidation and monopolization, however. That’s because most of the “independent” farms that still exist are really controlled by a handful of agricultural conglomerates—aided and abetted by Big Government regulators, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Big Business and Big Government work together to create regulations supposedly for the public’s benefit but really designed to put small competitors out of business. As a result, by some estimates just four companies now produce 90% of the food consumed in the United States: Cargill, Tyson Foods, General Mills and Kraft.

The success of global agribusiness is well-known. In some ways, it’s a triumph of modern science and technology. Beginning in the 1920s, large agricultural conglomerates began applying the techniques of the Industrial Revolution to the growing and marketing of food. In place of diverse crops and animals grown in a variety of places, the big companies began a program of standardization, mechanization and centralized control. Efficiency became the prime directive. In place of small family farms dotted across the landscape, a handful of enormous factory farms were created that produce assembly line “food products.” The goal was to produce vast amounts of standardized foods at extremely low prices ... and the big conglomerates, with the help of government subsidy programs and regulations tailor-made for big companies, succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Thus, the twin forces of globalization and industrialization have created an enormous and inter-dependent multinational food industry that has resulted in supermarkets, at least in prosperous First World countries, being stuffed full of seemingly limitless amounts of pre-packaged “ready to eat” foods. 

A typical North American or European family is a virtual United Nations of food consumption, eating “beef products” produced in Argentina, coffee grown in vast plantations in Columbia, wheat grown in Nebraska, and strawberries from Turkey. But as many food analysts have pointed out, the diversity that appears on store shelves is really an illusion carefully designed to mask an ugly truth: mass standardization. While there may be dozens and dozens of different “brands” of cereal on the shelves, mostly owned by the same one or two corporations, the underlying reality is that what’s inside the boxes is virtually identical. The negative health consequences of this relatively monotonous diet of pre-processed food products are only recently becoming apparent to average people.


The Health Consequences of Industrial Food

In recent years, ordinary consumers and health researchers have come to realize that this centralized industrial food production comes at an enormous cost in human health. The “virtual foods” we see on store shelves are mass-produced, chemically enhanced synthetic products like the “fake butter” on movie popcorn, that look like real food but have all the nutritional value of chewable plastic:

1. High-yield, genetically modified (GMO) fruits and vegetables grown in depleted soils drenched in pesticides, picked weeks early and filled with chemical dyes and preservatives so they arrive in stores looking “fresh”.

2. Corn- and animal-fed industrial meat products filled with potentially dangerous synthetic antibiotics (such as Zeranol, Trenbolone, and Melengestrol)[note]http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/hormones.[/note] and growth hormones—BANNED, for health reasons, from the European Union.[note]http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/general/hormones_meat.htm.[/note]

3. Dairy products, from milk to ice cream, produced from cows given a genetically engineered hormone called rBGH to increase milk production.

4. Refined carbohydrates designed for maximum shelf life rather than nutritional content.

5. Laboratory-created “fat substitutes” that were designed to pass through the human body undigested.

6. Synthetic “instant” fast food products pumped full of chemical preservatives, partially hydrogenated oils and High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HGCS) to increase hunger and encourage increased consumption.

... and on and on. The result is a tragic paradox: Despite record levels of obesity and despite gobbling fistfuls of chemical vitamins, millions of people in the industrialized west suffer from real nutritional deficiencies without even knowing it. 

Medical researchers first suspected that people living in modern industrialized societies may suffer from unknown but potentially dangerous nutritional deficiencies when they began looking at two sets of facts:

1. The unexplained explosion in the rate of certain ailments since 1920, when modern industrial food manufacturing began in earnest; and,

2. The extremely low rates of these same chronic health problems among traditional peoples who don’t eat from tin cans or plastic boxes.

The first set of facts has been known for decades. Beginning about 1920, about the time when industrialized farming and the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides by crop dusters became common, the death rate from heart problems in the U.S. more than doubled [note]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zULJExxrW54/SgpFHc2NURI/AAAAAAAAAec/rx0al9r5J30/s1600-h/Colpo+CHD.jpg.[/note] and the death rate from cancer nearly tripled.[note]http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922292.html.[/note] 

At the same time, Americans also became afflicted with dozens of other ailments almost unknown to their grandparents and great-grandparents, including numerous food allergies, autoimmune ailments, joint problems, chronic breathing difficulties, migraine headaches, sexual infirmities, and the list goes on and on. The truth is: Thanks to improvements in medicine (antibiotics) and public hygiene (sewer systems), Americans today live longer than their pioneer ancestors but are sicklier, weaker, and prone to health problems that didn’t even exist in 1900.

A second set of facts is even more alarming. Traditional societies that remain isolated from modern industrialized farming remain remarkably healthy, virtually free of the chronic health problems that plague modern North Americans and Europeans. “On my arrival in Gabon, in 1913, I was astonished to encounter no cases of cancer,” wrote the medical missionary Dr. Albert Schweitzer, of his decades spent among African nations. “I saw none among the natives two hundred miles from the coast.”[note]http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-8b.shtml.[/note] 

Nor was Schweitzer alone in his observations. When anthropologists, medical missionaries and others visited isolated groups all across the world, they were struck by the same fact: a remarkable absence of chronic disease! As the nutrition writer Michael Pollan writes in his magisterial expose of the food industry, In Defense of Food, these early researchers found “little to no heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, hypertension, or stroke; no appendicitis, diverticulitis, malformed dental arches, or tooth decay; no varicose veins, ulcers or hemorrhoids. ”The typical response to this has been that “primitive” peoples simply didn’t live long enough to get such “western” ailments as cancer and heart disease. But we now know that this is not true. A recent study of longevity among the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies [note]http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf.[/note]—such as the Yanomami in the Amazon rainforest or the Kung people in Africa—found most traditional peoples live almost as long as their western counterparts, despite their utter lack of modern medical care.[note]Without access to any modern medicine, the Yanomami live, on average, to about 75 years of age, mostly in very good health.[/note] 

What’s more, when doctors examine the older members of hunter gatherer peoples, they find that they are largely free of the diseases that plague modern Americans. What Pollan and other nutrition researchers now believe is that the recent explosion of chronic health problems in developed societies is due almost entirely to the nutritional deficiencies of modern industrial food production. To put it simply: Modern industrialized farming and mass-production meat factories have traded quantity for quality. For convenience and shelf life, the giant food companies inadvertently strip out the vital plant nutrients that keep you strong and healthy—and, in their place, pump in synthetic sweeteners, chemical preservatives and other additives. This makes abundant “food” that can last almost indefinitely on store shelves, but which lacks almost all of the vital nutrients you need for health, healing and longevity. 

Pollan and other food researchers claim, therefore, that it almost doesn’t matter what your specific diet is—the fish-oriented diet of Greenland, the Mediterranean diet of Greece, the rice diet of Japan—you will be far healthier eating that way than eating the processed foods of modern developed countries. How the food is produced turns out to be far more important, in terms of its effect on your health, than what you eat! Put another way, you’d be better off eating organic whale blubber every day than you would eating frozen pizzas. Increasingly, medical researchers are agreeing with this assessment. Research now links poor or inadequate nutrition to four of the top 10 causes of death in the developed world: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes.[note]http://www.cortlandtforum.com/5-nutritional-deficiencies-and-how-to-correct-them/article/121111/.[/note] Research done by the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion found that a staggering 74% of Americans suffer from inadequate nutrient intake.[note]http://www.cortlandtforum.com/5-nutritional-deficiencies-and-how-to-correct-them/article/121111/.[/note] Another study found that only 41% of the U.S. population gets enough phytonutrients from vegetables and only 24% get enough from fruits [note]http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/phytonutrients-faq?page=4.[/note] —and of some vital phytonutrients, such as the vision-supporting nutrients found in yellow vegetables like squash, they get almost none. In other words, the harried citizens in modern industrial democracies have access to vast amounts of what looks like food yet are suffering from nutritional deficiencies that are seriously undermining their health and even shortening their lives.


The Political and Economic Costs

As you might expect, the early Distributists, writing in the 1920s when large industrial farms were just being created, foresaw this development clearly. They advocated a return to family owned farms (not necessarily small) for financial, spiritual, political and health reasons. An early Distributist manifesto was even entitled Flee to the Fields. They maintained that a decentralized system of food co-ops and farmers’ markets, seen in Europe for generations, was the best way to ensure the security of food production and quality. In this, they were a voice crying in the wilderness, dismissed as “anti-modern” and old-fashioned. Distributist thinkers such as G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc believed that modern political parties of the Left and Right were essentially different sides of the same coin: Marxists and Fascists, Democrats and Republicans, Labour and Conservative, all believe in big factories, standardization, uniformity, centralized control and mass production. They just quibble over who should be in charge, government bureaucrats or corporate executives. 

Stalin and Mao created vast industrial farms every bit as large and uniform as those of ConAgra and Tyson Foods. Distribustists, in contrast, have been the only serious movement to question the orthodoxy of the modern corporate state, to insist on decentralization over centralization, local over national control, diversity over uniformity, smaller over bigger. In this, Distributists are quite in harmony with the growing local and organic food movement, a movement that is embraced by people across the political spectrum. While many people associate local and “slow food” efforts to be pre-eminently left-wing and hippie-like ideals, many conservative and libertarian-minded folks also embrace the same ideals. One reason for this is because there is a growing awareness among ordinary people that large-scale industrial farming, controlled by a handful of agribusiness monopolies, comes with a startling number of hidden economic as well as political costs. 

Many organic and small farmer organizations even question whether, when all these hidden costs are taken into account, large factory farms are really as efficient and productive as they claim to be. “Many of the costs of industrial agriculture have been hidden and ignored in short-term calculations of profit and productivity, as practices have been developed with a narrow focus on increased production,” says the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a special report issued in 2008. “The research establishment that underpins modern industrial agriculture has until recently paid little heed to the unintended and long-term consequences of these systems (emphasis added).” The UCS is calling for a fundamental re-thinking of the modern system of food production. “A new awareness of the costs is beginning to suggest that the benefits [of industrial farming] are not as great as they formerly appeared. ”One obvious hidden cost of industrial agriculture cited by the UCS is the high energy requirements of transportation—not just of the foods themselves (transporting oranges from New Zealand to the USA, for example) but of the myriad products that go into industrial food production itself. For example, the corn and soybeans that is used as feed for most industrial livestock—in place of the ordinary grass used by organic ranchers—must be transported from gigantic farms to the ranches. The petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides used to growth that wheat must, in turn, be transported to the farms, often over long distances. Then there is the energy costs used in industrial farming itself: the enormous combines and harvesters. In addition to transportation, there are refrigeration costs: again, all from limited energy sources. Finally, that’s not counting the indirect costs of damage to the environment or to other food-producing systems, including,
  • “damage to fisheries from oxygen-depleting microorganisms fed by fertilizer runoff...”
  • “the cleanup of surface and groundwater polluted with... waste...”
  • “the increased health risks borne by agricultural workers, farmers, and rural communities exposed to pesticides and antibiotic resistant bacteria.”
It’s little wonder that the USC concludes that “the full costs of industrial agriculture... call into question the efficiency of this approach to food production.” [note]http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/impacts_industrial_agriculture/costs-and-benefits-of.html.[/note]

Of greater concern to Tolkien and the early Third Way thinkers, however, were the political costs of industrialized, large-scale, centrally planned food production. When hundreds of millions of people are utterly dependent upon just a handful of large multinational corporations for their very survival—or, for that matter, a centrally controlled State—it gives new meaning to Belloc’s term for the modern citizen: servile. For both Tolkien and Belloc, industrialism brings with it a radical dependence that undermines society and encourages a subtle despotism—particularly when it concerns food production. When the agents of Mordor take over the Shire in The Lord of the Rings, this is precisely what happens. As Matthew Akers describes it in the St. Austin Review:

Quote:This environmental destruction [of industrialization] has also destroyed the indigenous culture of the hobbits. They have become industrial serfs rather than agricultural freemen. Now, the hobbits depend upon the industrial work they perform at the new mill for their livelihood rather than enjoying the fruits of their agricultural labor. They also crouch in fear before the big government that has taken over the Shire, for this new government controls the mill, the hobbits’ source of livelihood. Once the hobbits are severed from nature, they are severed from their very essence: they are no longer free and fun-loving. Instead, they have become industrial slaves, both to their masters at the mill and to their bureaucratic masters in government.

Tolkien and the distributists did not believe everyone should be family farmers. In the Shire, as in the Middle Ages, there were tradesmen, repair men, merchants and lawyers. Tolkien himself was a university professor, Chesterton a newspaperman. Yet they did believe that the “means of production” should be de-centralized, controlled by the many and not by the few. This is in stark contrast to the aims of both Big Government liberals and Big Business conservatives who seek to ensure that the means of production, in this case food production, are controlled by the few. Big Business does this through its relentless quest for monopoly; Big Government does this through myriad regulations that drive smaller companies and farms out of business. 

“Loathing Capitalism, however, Chesterton loathed Socialism more,” writes the Catholic philosopher Michael Novak of G.K. Chesterton, one of Distributism’s chief theoreticians. “He took his stand on two values which Capitalism claimed to stand upon but, he thought, destroyed: private property and personal self-determination.” [note] G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 5 (San Francisco : Ignatius Press, 1987), 20.[/note] Chesterton was one of the few thinkers to see clearly that both Big Business and Big Government want the same thing—total control— and that this is not in the best interests of the average person. This is especially true, we are now discovering, when it comes to the production of food.


The Fox Guarding the Hen House

One of the most troubling aspects of the corporate state’s control over food production is the way in which Big Business operatives infiltrate and control the very government agencies that are supposed to be regulating them. For example, many of the top officials of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—charged with protecting the health of American food consumers—are themselves former employees of, or paid consultants to, the large multinational agribusinesses. Talk about the fox guarding the hen-house! For example, former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner Lester Crawford was actually convicted for lying about his financial ties to companies the FDA regulates (Pepsico). Clarence Thomas, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice who wrote the opinion that the Monsanto Corporation could legally patent its genetically modified seeds, was once a corporate lawyer in the pesticide and agriculture division of, yes, Monsanto.


Practical Steps

There are a number of practical steps you can take to begin eating more like a Hobbit and, thereby, contributing to both your personal health and your political liberation. Here are a few.

1. Go organic. Whenever possible, begin buying organic food, especially when it comes to meat and dairy products. Organic products are more expensive so every family and individual has to adjust their purchases for their own economic situation. Many people believe that, for health reasons, switching to organic, free-range meats and dairy is more important than organic vegetables because of the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in meat and dairy.

2. Buy local only. Almost every town and city in North America and Europe hosts farmer’s markets where the few remaining family and small farms come to sell locally grown produce. There are now also hundreds of websites where you can quickly and easily identify stores in your area that sell locally grown produce.

3. Eat in season. This is the hardest step of all to take. That’s because globalization means that consumers in prosperous nations have gotten used to eating whatever they want, whenever they want it, regardless of the season. But again, convenience comes at a high cost: the fruits you buy in January are picked unripe and artificially ripened with ethylene gas or calcium carbide (yum, yum!). Buying foods in season, however, has the effect of encouraging a far more diverse diet than would otherwise be the case: apricots in April, cherries in May, blueberries and raspberries in June.

4. Start your own garden. One reason to start your own garden is because it sensitizes you to what you’re missing by eating only mass-produced industrial food. Anyone who has ever tasted a homegrown heirloom tomato grown on the vine has trouble going back to the tasteless, “pre-ripened,” dyed-red globules sold in most supermarkets. Even if you only have a few green pepper plants sprouting on your balcony in your high-rise apartment, it is a vivid reminder of the Shire and why you should go out of your way to find “Hobbit-grown” foods whenever you can.

5. Join the Urban Chicken movement. Thousands of families in urban and suburban settings have set up small chicken coops in their back yards, sometimes disguised as children’s playhouses. The fun of growing chickens is heightened by getting dozens of “farm fresh,” organically produced, nutritious eggs.

6. Eat less meat. Hobbits are not vegetarians and neither are most human beings. Yet their favourite foods are grown in the wild, particularly mushrooms. Many people are finding that a return to the so-called “paleolithic diet,” the diet of our hunter-gather ancestors, can result in surprising health benefits and even weight loss. This is a diet made up primarily of fruits and vegetables with occasional lean meat dishes.

7. Lobby for labeling. The industrial food lobby, aided by most national governments, has fought tooth and nail against food labelling requirements. The Big Food lobby has been especially fierce in its opposition to labels for Genetically Modified (GM) foods since so many consumer food products today now contain genetically altered plants, such as corn. It is also opposed to mandatory labelling for products that contain growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and so on. That’s because the food industry does not want consumers “voting with their pocketbooks” and choosing organic foods that do not contain these chemical additives.

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  What We Can Learn from the Guilds
Posted by: Stone - 12-31-2021, 09:47 AM - Forum: General Commentary - Replies (1)

What We Can Learn from the Guilds
Written By Russell Sparkes [slightly adapted]

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The global credit collapse, and the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, has discredited the universal application of market solutions to social problems, and its associated syndrome of ‘globalisation’. There seems to be a clear need for a replacement philosophy in a variety of areas, not just in economics and politics, but also in the voluntary sector.

However, the experience of the last twenty years also indicates that the simple alternative of even more large-scale government intervention does not work either. Firstly, it is simply not feasible. The economic crisis has left government budgets in huge deficit in virtually all developed economies; the future will see less, not more, public spending. Secondly, the UK evidence of the past ten years indicates that it does not work; the government has invested massive amounts in the health service and in education, but it is not certainly not self-evident that standards in either of these has increased.

Finally, there seems a growing feeling that government intervention leads to a kind of ‘systemic monoculture’ where the only thing that matters is meeting the government’s latest set of standards; and the underlying values of a creating a liberal education or of a caring environment are thrown out of the window. A good example of the latter might be the way hospitals have sold off their gardens to turn into profit-making car-parks; all the evidence suggests that the presence of a garden has significant positive therapeutic value, yet that is neglected in the current system.

So where do we go from here? I want to suggest that one answer may lie in a revival of mutual self-help groups, inspired by spiritual values, which we might call by their old medieval name of ‘guilds’. Of course I am not suggesting an exact return to the medieval guilds, any more than I am advocating that people should go around talking Chaucerian English. However, I do argue that the guilds provide a model answer to two major problems of modern economic and social life. The first of these is the rapid shift in the labour market from life-time employment for most people to a world of self-employment and temporary contracts. The second, partly as a consequence of the former, is the reduction in the safety net provided by the welfare state and corporate health and pension provision.


What Were the Guilds?

Although for some people the word ‘guild’ may be seen as signifying a kind of proto-trade union, nothing could be further from the truth. Trades unions grew up as a mass movement, an essentially negative phenomenon in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In contrast, the guilds were an association of freemen, of craftsmen working together to sustain each other, and through apprenticeship and training to ensure the quality of what they produced. Generally speaking, they were groups of craftsmen in medieval England and elsewhere who submitted themselves to a system of mutual aid, but also of mutual discipline. They were not communes; each workshop was led by a Master who worked for his own profit. The nearest modern analogy would be the farmers of Denmark and the Netherlands, who own their own land and take the profit of it, but who market their produce through great co-operatives.

The guilds sprang up all across Europe when trade revived alongside the growth of towns towards the end of the eleventh century. In Germany they were called Zuenfte, in Italy Arte, in France corps de meters, and in England guilds or ‘gilds’, which comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning to pay. However, there was relatively little that was distinctive about English guilds compared to those in the rest of Europe. There were also two types: wealthy merchant guilds, who were relatively small in number but great in wealth and importance, and craft guilds organised of workmen who worked with their own hands and which were overwhelmingly the most numerous.

In circumstances where supreme political power was lacking and where the merchant guilds derived great wealth from trade in luxury goods they could become a corrupt oligarchy embroiled in battles for political control. This was most true in Italy and the Low Countries in cities such as Florence, Genoa, Bruges and Ghent. In England this was only true of London, and here I will concentrate upon the craft guilds as they existed in England and Wales in their heyday of the late Middle Ages, from 1350-1500.

It is worth briefly noting the background to the period. Economic life in Western Europe had collapsed along with the Roman Empire around AD 400. For roughly seven centuries a greatly reduced population lived on the basis of subsistence farming, with trade and the circulation of coins virtually ceasing. (Inevitably there is academic dispute about how severe the collapse was, with the French historian Pirenne arguing that what he called ‘le grand commerce’ or long-distance trade of luxury goods continued after the fall of Rome. However, there is overwhelming evidence that the mass production of well-made standard goods ended in Europe when the Empire fell, and it only began to recover around the year 1100.)[note]See B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation, Oxford University Press, 2005. Also G.A.H. Hodgett, A Social and Economic History of Medieval Europe (Methuen: London, 1972).[/note]

Although trade had revived it was very local; the absence of decent roads meant that very few goods were transported over any distance. The combination of weak government and poor roads meant that each local community was to a very large extent self-sufficient. I mentioned that people are looking at alternatives to globalisation and ‘free markets’, and guilds certainly provide a good example of a functioning localised economy in practice.


The Spiritual Role of the Guilds

When modern historians discuss the guilds they tend to focus on their economic function, and they often use phrases such as ‘monopolising trade’, which suggest that their prime objective was to maximise profits. Nothing can be further from the truth, and the use of the word ‘monopolise’ is really a glaring anachronism. The prime objective of the guilds was religious, based as it was upon a desire to sanctify their work, and to bring honor to themselves within the community as a religious brotherhood. This is why they regulated trade; it was done to protect consumers and prevent one tradesman dragging down standards, although it also had the effect of leading to the best pay and working conditions for the ordinary working man for five centuries! As a French scholar wrote 90 years ago:

Quote:Historians are almost unanimous in holding that, taking into consideration that less was spent on food, rent, and furniture, and above all on intellectual needs, it was easier for a workman’s family to make both ends meet in those days than it is now ... it is not too much to say that, materially the position of the journeyman was at least equal, if not superior, to that of the workman of today. It was also better morally. He sometimes assisted in the drawing up and execution of the laws of the community; he was his master’s companion in ideas, beliefs, education, tastes. Above all, there was the possibility of rising one day to the same social level... [in the case of] the lesser guilds where the workshop remained small, intimate, and homely. [However], directly we go on to study the great commercial and industrial guilds profound inequalities appear.[note]G. Renard, Guilds in the Middle Ages (G.Bell: London, 1919).[/note]

When the anarchy and violence of the Dark Ages began to end around the first millennium, the only thing that had just managed to hold civilisation together was the Catholic Church. Indeed, many future great cities were founded during this period as adjuncts to religious centres. Tribal chiefs who wanted to become effective kings needed the organizing skills that were only to be found in the Catholic clergy. At the same time it is a remarkable fact that while the barbarian tribes who overran the Roman Empire were all pagans, by the millennium they had all become deeply Christian societies, even in Scandinavian countries which had no Christian history.

The medieval guilds can only really be understood against this background. In essence they were religious brotherhoods which had a variety of interlocking functions: spiritual, economic, social, and even political. It is worth stressing again that the world of late medieval Europe was alien to us in two ways; it was explicitly based on Christian principles, and it was intrinsically local. As the great medieval historian Christopher Dawson observed:

Quote:One of the most remarkable features of medieval guild life was the way in which it combined secular and religious activities in the same social complex. The guild chantry, the provision of prayers and masses for dead brethren, and the performance of pageants and mystery plays on the great feasts were no less the function of the guild than the common banquet, the regulation of work and wages, the giving of assistance to fellow-guild members in sickness or misfortune.[note]C.H. Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (Sheed & Ward : London, 1950).[/note]

Indeed, as the German historian Troeltsch wrote about a hundred years ago, the medieval town with its guild system exemplified Catholic Social Teaching in action:

Quote:The medieval city was a pattern of Christian society as we find it in Thomist theory... with its cathedrals and its intensive church life, its religious confraternities and guilds, its care for the spiritual and material welfare of its inhabitants, and its educational charitable institutions (it appears) as the highest point of the medieval spirit.[note]E. Troelscht, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (1912).[/note]

A modern historian has come to a similar conclusion:

Quote:To the extent that medieval man theorized about his society he regarded it not as a Gesellschaft or association like a firm, but as a Gemeinschaft or community like a family: as an organism with the Pope as the head, the warriors as the arms and the peasants as the feet.... The economy of medieval Europe in general, leaving aside a few highly unusual areas, was an agrarian peasant economy which was characterized by a high degree of self-sufficiency within each community.[note]Hodgett, op cit.[/note]

Each guild was at the same time a legal entity in the life of the town, and also as a religious brotherhood or fraternity. Generally speaking the membership of the two bodies was identical, although in certain cases external membership of the brotherhood were allowed. Every guild was therefore a local group based at a particular church and usually devoted to a particular saint linked with the trade, for example: St Vincent of the vine growers, St Fiacre of the gardeners, St Blaise of the masons, etc. Every fraternity had its appointed church in which candles were kept burning, and it celebrated an annual festival or prairie on the guild’s patron saint’s day. As the anonymous Yarmouth chronicler wrote in about 1350:

Quote:If the bond of love and friendship is laudable among mere rational men, then how much more is that which is between Christians who are tied by the strongest bonds of faith and religion; but above all by those Christians who form one fraternity bound and linked together by a solemn oath.[note]Quoted in C.H. Dawson, Medieval Religion (Sheed & Ward: London, 1935).[/note]

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of late medieval Christianity was its obsession with death, and with the inevitable judgement to follow on the souls of the departed. This of course was reflected in the spiritual role of the guilds, one of the important of which was to found chantries to pray for the souls of dead members. As one historian writes:

Quote:The support of chaplain to celebrate for the souls of former guild members and for the welfare of those still living makes it clear that the fraternities can be regarded as a kind of collective chantry, supported in some cases by men who could not afford to endow one on their own account. Behind such foundations was the fundamental outlook of those who established them, the belief that life on earth was but a passing phase of existence, that man’s true destiny was eternity, and that the sacraments which were necessary for salvation could be administered by the priest alone.[note]J.F. Thomson, The Transformation of Medieval England 1370-1529 (Longman : London, 1983).[/note]

Indeed, the common aim of all guilds was to arrange prayers in their guild church, particularly for the souls of deceased members. There is a recurring theme of keeping lights burning at regular masses for the souls of dead members. For example, the guild of St Stephen of St Stephen’s church in London funded a permanent chaplain, provided 5 candles for the mass of a departed brother, and brought home his body if he died within 20 miles. Eamon Duffy writes about England on the eve of the Reformation in his superb book The Stripping of the Altars:

Quote:With some variations all medieval guilds were modeled along the (same) lines—the maintenance of lights before images and the Blessed Sacrament, the procurement of attendance, and prayers, of the whole guild at funerals of deceased members, and finally the exercise of sociability and charity at a communal feast associated with the saint’s day.[note]E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (Yale University Press, 1994).[/note]


Economic Significance

I have noted that the guilds had a number of interlocking aims: spiritual, economic, and social. Having discussed their spiritual objectives I will now look at their economic function, which was to protect the welfare and honour of the craft via regulation of production and sale. As one expert notes:

Quote:With regard to production, the guilds prided themselves on giving an official guarantee to the consumer. Hence the many articles contained in the statutes in which they boast of their good faith, or make a mark of emphasizing the honesty of their trade dealings; hence the complicated regulations for the prevention of bad work; hence the minute instructions prescribing the number of vats into which the Florentine dyer was to dip his materials and the quality and quantity of the colouring matters he was to employ.... The guild prided itself on letting nothing leave its shops but finished products, perfect of their kind; it examined and stamped every article, and further required that it should bear a special trade mark stating where it was made and its just price.[note]Renard, op cit.[/note]

No one could become a member of a guild without serving a long apprenticeship, normally seven years. Indeed, another old word for guild was ‘mystery’ in recognition of the hard work required to master a craft! Only the members of the guilds (the Masters) had a say in the running of it. Each Master was assisted by journeymen (a skilled worker paid by the day, from the French ‘journee’) and by apprentices. No Master was allowed to employ more than a certain number of apprentices or journeymen, and to ensure that trade was fair there were restrictions on production. For example, it was forbidden to work by artificial light. In Norwich at the beginning of the sixteenth century for example there were some 80 craft guilds, which was typical for major cities outside London. They fell into certain natural groups such as: food (bakers, brewers etc); textiles and clothiers; wood-workers, metal workers and leather workers; and distributive trades. Their essential role has been described thus:

Quote:Their most potent economic function was to control entry into the craft or ‘mystery’, thereby preserving a local monopoly and by the enforcement of apprenticeship, maintaining both the standards of the work and the level of wages. Full membership of the guilds then became a formal path to the “freedom” of the town and thus the right to carry on business there.[note]D.C Coleman, The Economy of England 1450-1750 (Oxford University Press : London and Oxford, 1977).[/note]

In modern city life local worthies are sometime honoured by being granted ‘the freedom of the city’. Few people probably ever think that this dates back to the guilds and the very practical right, which had to be earned, of being free to trade in a particular town. It is important to stress that the guilds did not exist in isolation; they were part of a clearly defined political and social order. Indeed, they played a crucial role in the development of representative local government in medieval Europe. They were closely association with the town corporation and therefore played a key role in the development of the independence of towns from feudal authority. As such, Dawson claimed that they facilitated the birth of democracy in England.[note]Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, op cit.[/note]

The modern world is based upon the abundance of goods and services. In such a situation controlling production is normally done with the aim of making excess or “monopoly” profits. In contrast medieval life was based on want, and on the constant likelihood of starvation. Drought, plague, or war could, and often did, lead to hunger and famine. In such a background of scarcity, the guilds not only maintained standards of quality but insisted that goods should be freely and fairly available, so that craftsmen should not extort undue prices from their customers.

In many cases the guilds enforced the sale of goods only in public markets, so that less aware buyers could not have their ignorance abused. The system was meant to be fair to both buyers and sellers, and most historians agree that it was. The practice of forestalling, of buying goods before they were brought to market, was prohibited, as was regrating, buying things in a market and selling them again for a higher price. Engrossing, the idea of buying up goods with a view to restrict supply and force up price was particularly despised. The system was meant to be fair to both buyers and sellers, quite unlike the rapacious tax collectors of Ancient Rome. The historian Tawney captured well the medieval world-view:

Loans are made largely for consumption, not for production. The farmer whose harvest fails or whose beasts die, or the artisan who loses money, must have credit, seed corn, cattle, raw materials, and his distress is the money-lender's opportunity. Naturally, there is a passionate popular sentiment against the engrosser who holds a town to ransom, the monopolist who brings the livings of many into the hands of one, the money-lender who takes advantage of his neighbors' necessities to get a lien on their land and foreclose.[note]R.H. Tawny, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (John Murray : London, 1964).[/note]

On the other hand, while most people lived a life little above subsistence, this did not mean starvation. Indeed, foreigners commented how well fed the English people were, although for the poor this probably meant a basic diet of bread, cheese and milk, with meat reserved for Sundays and feast days. On the other hand, trade flourished within localities. In England and Wales there were some 700 market towns where a weekly market was held, which meant that virtually everybody could walk to market, do their business, and walk home, all within a day’s work.

To sum up, economically the guilds were a key part of the medieval objective that commercial life should be an integrated expression of the Church's teaching. There was a code of mercantile ethics decreeing that craftsmen should make their goods honestly and well, that sellers should give good weight and be satisfied with reasonable profits. Let me quote from one of my favourite works of G.K. Chesterton, Chaucer. In it Chesterton examines two wealthy and respectable citizens making that famous pilgrimage towards Canterbury. They are a Doctor and a Dyer, the latter a master chemist and supplier of pigments. As Chesterton put it:

Quote:The Doctor, in short, still exists as a roughly recognizable figure. The Dyer has totally disappeared.... The reason why the Doctor is recognizable, and the Dyer is unrecognizable, is perfectly simple. It is that the Doctors not only were, but still are, organized on the idea of a Medieval Guild.... The British Medical Council, which is the council of a Guild ... does what a Guild was supposed to do. It keeps the doctors going; it keeps the doctors alive, and it does prevent one popular quack from eating all his brethren out of house and home. It sets limit to competition; it prevents monopoly.[note]G.K Chesterton, Chaucer (Faber & Faber : London, 1932).[/note]


Charitable Objectives

Another most important aspect of the guilds was the way they promoted works of charity in a poor society where the poor would otherwise have starved. This ranged from direct alms-giving to the running of hospitals and schools, as well as self-help between guild members, such as establishing the first ever pension scheme to help the aged or infirm who could no longer work. As the French guild expert Renard noted, there was a genuine attempt to integrate the ideals of brotherhood into their economic role, with the ties of unity strengthened at regular intervals by guild feasts and banquets:

Quote:The merchant or craftsman found in his craft guild security in times of trouble, monetary help in times of poverty, and medical assistance in case of illness. At Florence the carpenters and masons had their own hospital. When a member died, shops were shut, every one attended his funeral, and masses were said for his soul.[note]Renard, op cit.[/note]

He goes on:

Quote:Apart from the obligatory assistance at certain offices and at the funerals of its members, the fraternity owned a chest, that is to say a fund maintained out of the subscriptions and voluntary devotions of the members, as well as the fines which they incurred. Of these funds, collected from various sources, part was given to the poor, to the hospitals, and to the expenses of worship. Thus at the Rennes the fraternity of bakers ordained that in every batch of bread one loaf of fair size should be set apart, called the tourteau-Dieu, which brings to mind the portion for God or the poor.[note]Renard, op cit.[/note]

In modern English the phrase ‘bakers dozen’ is still used for the number thirteen. However, I doubt if few if any people who use it realise that it goes back to the medieval guild custom of baking a batch of 12 loaves for the customer, with one extra to be given to the poor. Sadly, the wealth they accumulated attracted the attention of a greedy and self-willed king. In the words of Jack Scarisbrick's The Reformation and the English People:

Quote:When the royal commissioners went out in 1546, and again in 1548 to survey the colleges, chantries, obit land, guilds and fraternities which the crown was about to seize, they were interested in institutions with permanent endowments of land and property—that was what the government was after.[note] J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Wiley Blackwell; 2nd edition, London, 1985).[/note]

This ‘landgrab’ ushered in the most severe hardship for the poor. A flourishing network of local hospitals, schools, and almsgiving was abolished. Henry VIII pledged to use the money to refound such institutions on a ‘purer basis’, but totally failed to do so. It is a striking fact that fifty years after the Reformation, the term ‘poor law’ appears. After fifty years of using whips, branding tools and amputation to try and control the poor, Elizabeth I finally gave up and in 1601 passed the first Poor Law in English history. This seems an obvious consequence of the Reformation, but it is one which is seldom mentioned by historians. Rather like the State's absorption of local hospitals and friendly societies in 1945, local initiatives which worked had been abolished by force. The State was then forced to set up large cumbersome attempts at great expense to itself.

While almsgiving was a major social function of the guilds, perhaps their most distinctive feature was that of a ‘mutual self help group’, and this is the point I really want to stress today as important for the future of the voluntary sector. We should always remember that life remained intensely local during the Middle Ages, and that very often secular and religious motives were intertwined. For example, poor roads and robbers made travel highly dangerous, so it was natural for travelers, like Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims, to travel in groups under the protection of a patron saint.

Many of them had social as well as religious functions, the most important providing support members who had accidentally fallen into poverty. The most common rate of benefit was 7d per week.[note]Thomson, op cit.[/note] Indeed, the guild chest or fraternal treasury had a close resemblance to modern friendly societies, as there was not only help when somebody was unable to work, but a pension for the infirm, and they also supplied dowries to the poor girls of the fraternity, an important consideration at that time.[note] Renard, op cit.[/note]

As such groups they enabled the ordinary workmen to receive payment in case of sickness or old age, something swept away with the guilds and not re-appearing until Lloyd George’s Pension Act of 1908! Indeed, the earliest known example of a pension scheme comes from the Guild of St. James Garlickhythe in 1375:

Quote:If any of the forsaid brotherhood falls into such mischief that he hath nought for old age or be able to help himself, and have dwelled as the brotherhood for 8 years and have done thereto all duties within the time, every week after he shall have of this common box 13 pence for the term of his life or he be recovered of his mischief.


Modern Lessons from the Guilds

I believe the guild model may be of use in the modern world. Firstly in the economic sphere, where in developed countries small business are the main engines of job creation. The guilds provide one answer to the problem of how small independent businesses may efficiently use the complex equipment and access scarce capital they need, as well how they can market themselves in an increasingly suspicious world. (Mutual guarantee schemes for small businesses exist and have been very successful in Italy.) Note however that the aim is not the classic trade union one of combining together to extort higher wages. Rather it is to enable the self-employed to guarantee quality, to efficiently use finance and equipment, and lastly as a self-help mechanism. Finally, mutual guarantee schemes also enable small businesses to access economically and share capital, something that is increasingly scarce in our credit-crash world.

I think that mutual self-help groups can also provide an answer to another problem: the increasing failure, both morally and financially, of the welfare systems set up in the U.S. and Europe after the War. In the context of a rapidly aging population, unfunded State pensions schemes may be described as financial pyramids, something quite illegal in the private sector. At the same time, company final-salary pension schemes, which guaranteed workers a secure retirement, are increasingly being closed. There is a wealth of evidence that less and less of the funds spent on welfare actually goes to the deserving poor, and more and more is used up in an ever-increasing bureaucracy. The complexity of much welfare law tends to discourage the honest applicant to the benefit of the professional scrounger. Finally, as the MP Frank Field has bravely stated, the system encourages moral hazard—with a rising proportion of the population happy to rely solely on the State.

There is much furious thought going on about how to reform welfare and pensions. Self-help groups, in contrast, offer the advantages of economies of scale with the detailed knowledge which deters moral hazard. Most of today's insurance companies and building societies started life in the nineteenth century as friendly societies, groups of poor men who joined together to buy a house or insure their lives at a much better rate than the companies of the day offered them. When you see ‘permanent’ on the side of a building society, it is a reflection of those days. Many building societies were ‘temporary’ i.e. when the last of its original members had bought his house, the society was wound up.

It seems to me that modern technology allows people to form self-help groups and buy their pension or healthcare insurance in bulk, bypassing the insurance companies and their like. A self-help group will work best if its members have an interest or some area of activity in common, so that they feel ties of loyalty to each other and have a forum where they can meet. This is called the essential ‘common bond’ of credit unions. A ‘guild’ of workers such as writers or computer consultants has members with similar needs, and is a perfect vehicle for a self-help group. The common bond of faith is of course normally the best that there is.

One of the fastest growing areas in finance is so-called ‘microfinance’, where seed capital is introduced into poor communities, and which has been highly commended by the World Bank for its role in reducing poverty and helping growth. The lenders get good rates of return, while the borrowers pay far less than they would to money-lenders. The system only works because a ‘common bond’ among the local community prevents significant defaults, and in fact it is really a credit union by another name. Credit unions never really took off in the UK, partly because of the relative insignificance of the Catholic Church in the UK in the 19th century. Yet in many parts of the world the Catholic Church played a major role in alleviating poverty with priests and laymen devoting their time and expertise to setting up credit unions; this was true in much of Europe and Ireland, and it was true for example in Canada and Australia.

We should also not forget that many hospitals and educational centres around the world are run by the Church, and the example of the guilds shows us an old model of how this can work in the future. To take but one example, the Antigonish Movement was set up in the 1920s in Canada’s Eastern coastal provinces by a group of priests. It blended adult education, co-operatives, microfinance and rural community development to help small, resource-based communities. The well-known Mondragon co-operative and bank in Northern Spain is another good example of Catholic Social Teaching in practice. The key point is this help is local, and it is centre around giving time and expertise, rather than simply handing out welfare cheques. The example of micro-finance proves beyond doubt that it works in getting very poor people out of poverty.

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