MISSION STATEMENT ... To celebrate where it's deserved! ... To take the Michael out of institutions and individuals where it's deserved! ...
Recently I had occasion to prepare my gravestone epitaph:
GENE...
Educator, Novelist,
Humanitarian and Humorist
- TO KNOW HIM WAS TO LOVE HIM -
Rest in Peace
....... But while I am still walking the earth do not hesitate to contact me at:
bobbyslingshot8@gmail.com
Monday, 23 February 2026
Have you seen the miraculous image of Our Lady of Las Lajas?
The image that appeared on a rock in Colombia bears a striking resemblance to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and continues to baffle scientists.
Catholics are familiar with Our Lady of Guadalupe and how she miraculously appeared on St. Juan Diego's tilma in such a unique way as to evangelize the native people in Mexico and the surrounding region.
What many do not know is that she reportedly appeared on a separate occasion in Colombia in 1754. Instead of appearing on a piece of cloth, the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared in a cave.
Remarkable appearance
Lacy at Catholic Icing briefly relates the story of the apparition:
As the legend goes, in 1754, an indigenous woman named Maria Meneses de Quiñones was traveling along the river with her daughter, Rosa, who was deaf and unable to speak ... the two were caught in a strong storm, and sought refuge among the lajas [sandstone ledges] of the area, which provided some cave-like shelter. To Maria’s astonishment, she heard her daughter speak for the first time in her life: “There is a woman here with a boy in her arms!” Rosa pointed to a silhouette of a woman and child above the lajas, made visible by the lightning of the storm.
The image resembles Our Lady of Guadalupe in many ways, as she is wearing a similar mantle that has patterns which echo the tilma. She is holding the child Jesus in her arms while St. Francis and St. Dominic kneel in humble supplication.
Public Domain
She is also depicted as a "Mestiza," a woman of mixed Spanish and Indigenous descent, similar to how Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego.
One of the most amazing parts of the story is that the image that appeared on the rock was somehow imprinted on it, according to some accounts. Fr. Donald Calloway explains the scientific studies that have been done in an article for Catholic Exchange:
Geologists have since bored core samples from several places in the rock and discovered that there is no paint, dye, or pigment on the surface of the rock. The colors of the mysterious image are the colors of the rock itself and extend several feet deep inside the rock! The only man-made aspects of the miraculous image are the crowns above the heads of Jesus and Mary that were later added by local devotees.
A large shrine has since been constructed over the cave, and pilgrims can see for themselves the miraculous image.
While it may not be well-known outside of Colombia, it remains one of the many marvels of the Virgin Mary's reported appearances.
Fleeting amusement might be found in observing how international elites will account for their conflicting commitments if transgendered athletes compete in the Rio Olympics next month – i.e. men competing in women’s events, as has already happened in localized competitions. But there is no real consolation in realizing that people do not easily renounce their illusions. It’s still better to seek consolation in the love of wisdom.
I’ve been making my way through a collection of writings by the late Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989), mainly from the early 1970s, available now in English for the first time in a compilation entitled The Crisis of Modernity. It is not an elementary book, not one that I, at any rate, glide through, but it’s studded with gems that orient the reader towards the sources of our current predicament.
Some of his themes are familiar and the direness of our situation isn’t a new revelation. But his depth and originality are helpful, not because his assessment of the Western soul is rosy, but because it rings true. He regards tottering modern society – variously termed: affluent, permissive, or technocratic – in bleak terms. It is “necessarily mendacious,” and like Marxism itself, presupposes rather than results in atheism.
What emerges, perhaps above all, is that our current crisis is fundamentally metaphysical in nature. Modernity is a grand project of negation: the very order of being – as classically understood – has been shunned for theories that emphasize right praxis in time; history has become the lens through which things are assigned value. Fulfillment “lies in front of us, not above us,” and whoever speaks of eternal metaphysical truths is branded a reactionary.
With a defining air of superiority to what came before, modernity necessarily entails a radical break with the past – which Del Noce stresses is viewed, baselessly, as irretrievable. There can be no going back to the old way of thinking because it has been surpassed. But going back to what, specifically? To the supernatural, to religious transcendence: this means that “the religious event of the Incarnation stops being regarded as the decisive turning point of historical existence,” as Sergio Cotta, one of his Italian contemporaries, put it.
He regards the “eclipse of authority” characteristic of our age as the greatest reversal ever to have befallen humanity. Authority, at root, means to make something grow, but today it’s understood mainly as a form of repression – indeed as something that impedes growth. The wholesale spurning of authority has only ushered in a mad dash for power – a dreadful substitution.
Augusto Del Noce
Ultimately, it can be boiled down to “the disappearance of the idea of the Father.” This in turn is closely linked to the repudiation of tradition, of handing down (tradere) what matters most – not any old regional custom, but “the order of eternal and metaphysical values” – to the next generation.
We moderns are allowed only one source of real knowledge – science – and so the void caused by the ban on metaphysics has been filled with a scientism. Del Noce asserts that such scientism is based upon hatred for religious transcendence. Intrinsically totalitarian, scientism is “an unproven radical negation of traditional values” and so must rely upon subjugating the will of its adversaries (since it cannot prevail by reason), and upon confining them in “moral ghettos.”
And scientism’s “point of arrival,” he explains at length, is none other than the sexual revolution. To cut a long story short, here’s how you know if you are on the wrong side of history: it’s no longer a question of class warfare (bourgeoisie versus proletariat) but whether or not you are prepared to wage war upon sexual “repression.” History is the judge, Marx once said, and the proletariat its executioner. That role has now shifted to progressives urging the “repressed of the world” to unite.
The social institution most culpable of transmitting repressive morality is, of course, the traditional monogamous family, and as Del Noce notices, “sexual liberation is not desired per se, but rather as a tool to break down the family.”
The obstacle to universal happiness, which allegedly is now within reach, is not a matter of class but of character. From this vantage point, it seems reasonable that those holding the wrong values should be isolated and ostracized. And this high-stakes radicalism would advance – as del Noce foresaw, with some flair, in 1972:
The remaining believers in a transcendent authority of values will be marginalized and reduced to second-class citizens. They will be imprisoned, ultimately, in “moral” concentration camps. But nobody can seriously think that moral punishments will be less severe than physical punishments. At the end of the process lies the spiritual version of genocide.
A century ago both Mussolini and Gramsci spoke of “socialism as the ‘religion destined to kill Christianity’.” But it later became apparent that total revolution could only be achieved if Marxist revolution became sexual revolution. Or as the Surrealists recognized: “the decisive battle against Christianity could be fought only at the level of the sexual revolution.” Emphasis in the original.) In sum, the ”erotic offensive” amounts to a “campaign of de-Christianization.”
Del Noce wouldn’t be shocked with the onset of the transgender phenomenon and the current mania for “self identifying” as something other – anything other (gender, race, species) – than what one is. It’s all part of what he saw as the secularization of Gnosticism (rather than of Christianity), whereby it is the self that creates, and freedom consists of negating “the given.” Add a touch of the Hegelian “elimination of the Divine image” and voila: you get the quest for liberation through the disintegration of every form of order, what he called the “great refusal” of 1968.
Given his diagnosis, it comes as no surprise that he doesn’t put much stock in political solutions to the real dangers we are facing. The remedy lies in restoring classical metaphysics, and yes, he says it, a “religious reawakening.”
If the Church of England is serious about its commitment to pay reparations in atonement for past wrongs, there is an obvious community it should attend to: British and Irish Catholics. After all, the Anglican Church was founded precisely to suppress and replace the Catholic Church, first in England and later in Ireland.
While the Church of England has widely publicised its regret over past links to the slave trade, Anglican leaders have not mentioned the Catholic community. In an acute piece of analysis for this publication, Joseph Shaw raised the question of the moral seriousness of the reparations debate – it is hard to take seriously if the Church of England does not consider its obligations to right the wrongs perpetrated against Catholics. Without ignoring Shaw’s rebuttal of those arguing for reparations for links to slavery, based on the Church of England’s own reasoning the most obvious case for reparations is to the Catholic faithful.
The Church of England’s present reparations debate relates to its study of Queen Anne’s Bounty, a fund established in 1704 to aid poor Anglican clergy. A 2022 report found that the bounty was supported in part through investments in transatlantic chattel slavery. That report was commissioned (an interim report states) “to know its past better in order to understand its present”. It took place within a broader context of a reckoning with Britain’s past involvement in the slave trade. Responding to the report, the Church of England pledged to repair the damage wrought by slavery, which it argued continues to have a negative impact on the life outcomes of people of colour.
When the report was released in 2022, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, issued an apology for the Church’s links to “this abominable trade”, which took men, women and children “created in God’s image and stripped them of their dignity and freedom”.
“The fact that some within the Church actively supported and profited from it is a source of shame,” Welby continued. “It is only by facing this painful reality that we can take steps towards genuine healing and reconciliation – the path that Jesus Christ calls us to walk. This is a moment for lament, repentance and restorative action. I pray for those affected by this news and hope that we may work together to discern a new way forward.”
Facing up to the evils of one’s past can only be commended. As an Irish Catholic, the legacy of religious persecution is still embedded in our national life, and our forebears were also “stripped of their dignity and freedom”. I only wish the Church of England would take a hard look at the history of its institution in relation to the persecution of Catholics and religious minorities. Imagine if the Church of England were to investigate the degree to which not only “some within it”, but the whole institution, “actively supported and profited” from the persecution of Catholics. The results would be hard to contain in a single report.
The 2022 report on slavery does not mention that the bounty is itself derived from funds intended for the Pope, but which were diverted by King Henry VIII to finance the Crown instead. Prior to King Henry’s intervention, newly appointed bishops, clergy, abbots, etc, paid a tenth of their first year’s earnings directly to the Pope after being appointed. While King Henry initially halted the collection of such payments, Thomas Cromwell obtained an Act of Parliament to restore the payments, this time to the Crown and ultimately for the benefit of the established Church.
This is but one example of how the Church of England benefited massively from the confiscation of Catholic property and wealth. In a manner far more direct than its links to the slave trade, its own wealth and power were built on the persecution of the Catholic community. The legacy of the Church of England’s actions – or those actions carried out by the Crown on its behalf – has been one of great suffering and hardship for Catholics in many ways. Across Ireland and the British Isles, Catholics were outlawed from practising their Faith on pain of death: they were barred from taking up public office unless they converted, had property confiscated and saw beautiful churches and religious artefacts – which they had scrimped and saved to fund – destroyed or seized.
To this day, many old beautiful churches and cathedrals still in use by the Churches of England and Ireland were forcibly confiscated from Catholics. One of the most egregious examples is surely Dublin, Ireland’s capital. It was only in 2025, when St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral was elevated by Pope Leo XIV, that for the first time since the Reformation Dublin Catholics had a cathedral in which to worship. In all that time, the Church of Ireland has made use of not one but two former Catholic cathedrals, St Patrick’s and Christ Church. Catholics hoped in vain for many centuries to see these returned to the long-beleaguered community.
In facing this “painful reality”, as Welby put it, imagine if the Church of England took steps towards “genuine healing and reconciliation” with Catholics. What would that look like? As we move towards the 200th anniversary of Catholic Emancipation in Great Britain and Ireland, there could hardly be a better time for the Church of England to take a cold, hard look at itself.
The desired result here, for Catholics at least, is not the establishment of a reparations fund, but the healing of a divide within Christendom. If the Church of England were serious about reparations, then it should seek to repair the greatest evil perpetuated by its institution: the lamentable division in the Body of Christ. Only when Catholics are able to welcome the Church of England back into the fold could they call themselves satisfied – this would be a true and just reparation.
