Trump pushes hard for midterms: Three major rallies in 25 hours – Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama; Trump refuses to stiff Oklahomans waiting for him – with Air Force One grounded due to bad weather, POTUS opts for ‘the Beast’; France set ablaze, riots continue – ‘Pray for France!’; In a world of search engines and AI tools, Pope Leo says ‘the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists to safeguard our humanity’; C.S. Lewis turning in his grave – How far will Netflix go to revise its production of Narnia to avoid ‘Islamophobic’ label; Our Lady of Fatima Alert: Today is the First Saturday of October; Catholics celebrate 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi’s engagement with Sister Death; and more —
Trump Rushes to Oklahoma Campaign Event at Nearly 100 MPH After Weather Foils Flight Plans
Trump posted on Truth Social that ‘the Beast’ [Trump’s armored limousine also called Cadillac One] was going ‘faster than it has ever gone before’ while rejecting advice to postpone the event.
President Donald Trump rode at nearly 100 mph in his motorcade to make it from a Republican campaign event in Texas to another one in Oklahoma on Thursday as the weather prevented air travel.
With 33 days to go until the November midterm elections, Trump hopped on the campaign trail in support of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running against Democrat state Rep. James Talarico for incumbent Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) seat.
After urging Texans to elect Paxton at a rally in Denton, Texas, Trump was scheduled to speak at another event in Durant, Oklahoma, to campaign for fellow Republicans Mike Mazzei for Oklahoma governor and Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) for U.S. Senate.
The issue arose after a “major weather delay,” with the president writing on Truth Social that he would be driving, instead of flying, up to Oklahoma from Texas. …
After arriving nearly two hours behind schedule due to the weather delay, Trump told the crowd, “Just 33 days from now the people from Oklahoma are going to defeat the radical left Democrats once again.”
Read more at Breitbart
Clip of Trump Rally in Texas
Watch @nicksortor
Clip of Trump Rally in Oklahoma
Watch @EricLDaugh
Clip of Trump Rally in Alabama
Watch @nicksortor
French firefighter ablaze while rioters watch
‘Look at them, this crowd of young people in France. They either set a firefighter on fire, or he caught on fire trying to extinguish a fire they set. And they just sit there filming, not trying to help him, nothing. Scenes like this are playing out all over France this week.’ – Rod Dreher
See @CatholicVote; watch also “‘This is what happens when you import the Third World’ @CatholicVote; read ‘France Is Burning’ at Rod Dreher’s Diary
Pope Leo: The Church needs artists
Especially in “the age of search engines,” the Church stands in need of artists,” who can aid pastors in making the Gospel “accessible and understandable,” Pope Leo told artists on Friday, in an address to participants in a meeting on “The Art of Possibility: Weaving Together,” promoted by the Dicastery for Culture and Education.
Art can become “a form of cultural and spiritual regeneration,” Pope Leo XIV said on Friday, when it “resists homogenization, slows the gaze, and compels us to pause before that which refuses to be consumed.”
The Holy Father offered a reflection on the relationship between the Church and art in an address to participants in an encounter promoted by the Dicastery for Culture and Education entitled, “The Art of Possibility: Weaving Together.”
After thanking members of the Dicastery for their work on the Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Pope Leo highlighted the motto for this year’s Vatican exhibit, “The Ear is the Eye of the Soul.” Indeed, he said, “art acts like an antenna, picking up the great questions of the human heart … and making them audible, visible, and shareable.”
Invoking St Augustine’s “immortal testament to the restlessness of the human heart in search of truth,” Pope Leo said that “art, when authentic, is animated by this restlessness.” This, he explained, is why, for the Church, art is never “a mere accessory,” but instead “a fundamental place of listening—a space where one allows oneself to be instructed about humanity’s aspirations and wounds, its thirst for beauty, justice, and peace, and its search for meaning.”
In an age of search engines, he said, “the great danger is no longer just censorship, but homogenization; not merely imposed silence, but the noise that makes listening impossible.”
Read more at the Vatican News; read full text of Pope Leo’s address called ‘The Art of Possibility: Weaving Together’ at The Holy See
Kudos for Pope Leo on X
‘Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.’ — Pope Leo XIV
See @thewaronbeauty; see @sitsio
Netflix Won’t Be Faithfully Adapting the Last ‘Narnia’ Book Any Time Soon: The Islamic-Seeming Villains Stage a Religious Takeover – Sound Familiar?
After an entire spring and summer of what could charitably called “Odysseymaxxing” — offering hot takes on a movie nobody had really seen from a director who definitely made what could be called some curious decisions in casting and interpreting ancient literature — I was not looking forward to a September of culture clashes over the Netflix “Narnia” remakes.
But, alas, here we are. Because yes, they do seem to be going in a woke direction; yes, this does seem like just the cultural trainwreck some had predicted; and yes, there’s a reason we should be concerned. …
Specifically, if Netflix were to be true to C.S. Lewis’ vision regarding the whole of the “Chronicles of Narnia” series, it could never adapt the last book. Or, if it did so faithfully, the service would be banned in a wide swath of the world, specifically that swath which worships a god you can’t even draw or else you’d better get yourself the Salman Rushdie security special.
So, if you’ve been paying attention to social media culture wars over the past 48-72 hours, you’ve probably heard that Meryl Streep is going to be voicing Aslan, the lion in the “Narnia” universe, in director Greta Gerwig’s adaptation. …
[And] I’m going to argue that Netflix couldn’t actually do the the original source material, if it plans to go all the way — because if it did, it would be called “Islamophobic.”
Read more at the Gateway Pundit
Not just for kids: Post on CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia
See @OldeWorldOrder
Today is the First Saturday of the Month
See @FrGenteroyJr
Today is the 800th Anniversary of the Blessed Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi
See @FriarMario
800 YEARS AFTER ST. FRANCIS’ DEATH, FRANCISCANS TO MARK HIS ‘TRANSITUS’ — SO WHAT IS IT?
Each year on Oct. 3, the followers of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) — friars; nuns; laypeople — mark the globally popular saint’s own journey from life to death, his “Transitus” as it is known in Latin, through special community commemorations.
But what meaning does the Transitus hold — especially on this 800th anniversary of St. Francis’ death, and during the Jubilee Year of St. Francis proclaimed by Pope Leo XIV — if you aren’t a Franciscan?
“I think the answer is self-evident. We are all going to die,” Father Joseph Mary Elder, director of vocations and communications for the Capuchin Franciscans of the Province of St. Conrad, in Denver, told OSV News.
“The Transitus is the celebration of the passing of St. Francis of Assisi from earthly life to heavenly glory,” he explained. “It is not so much the passing of St. Francis — everyone dies after all — but the manner in which St. Francis of Assisi died. St. Francis embraced death in much the same way he had learned to live his life: with a radical and total fearlessness.”
Read more at Our Sunday Visitor
St. Francis and Sister Death
This year, the Church celebrates the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi. While Pope Leo XIV proclaimed the entire year a jubilee in Francis’s honor, we approach a high point of celebration with his feast day on October 4. In his humility, St. Francis may appreciate that the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time supersedes the liturgical celebration of his feast day on the 800-year mark, with the Church’s weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection superseding the saint’s death. But Franciscans around the world will still commemorate the death of their spiritual father, beginning the evening of October 3 (the anniversary of his death) with a memorial service called the Transitus—the “passing over” of Francis from this life to the next. This time in the Jubilee year is an apt moment to pause and note the remarkable death of this even more remarkable saint.
The early biographer Thomas of Celano reports that at the hour of his death, Francis encouraged his brothers to read the Gospel story of Christ’s washing the feet of his disciples, to recite Psalm 142 (Francis’s favorite), and to sing “The Canticle of the Creatures,” which Francis had composed in pieces at the end of his life. The service of the Transitus involves these elements and recollections from Francis’s life as well as his final words, reported in the biography composed by St. Bonaventure: “I have done what was mine to do; may Christ teach you what is yours.” But St. Francis was still in the midst of his final task: that of dying well.
We see this most poignantly with the addition on his deathbed of a final verse to his “Canticle of Creatures.” After praising God through Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Sister Water, Brother Fire and Sister Mother Earth, and through peacemaking, Francis turns to face death …
Read more at Word on Fire
