The Pope In the Czech Republic Continued.

All right, I'm going to try to compile links of Pope Benedict's visit to the Czech Republic. They won't be in any particular order and quite possibly of only interest to myself, but I'm going to do it anyway and will be updated throughout the next day or so.

Over at Whispers in the Loggia, Rocco posts the pope's impromptu speech to the youth of the Czech Republic and neighboring lands.

Benedict's Reality Czech. A bit with video at National Catholic Register.

John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter has been providing great coverage of this trip as well. He already put a list together at his blog, so I don't have to. Heh.

And for fun, this piece about a Spider Crawling on the pope, is quite amusing.

I Believe In One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church;

Fun little web page with interesting information. My friend and I call churches that splintered off from the Catholic church (I suppose with the exception of the Orthodox) Man-Made Churches. Reading this list, you'll see why.

Who Started Your Church?

Beyond it's overall message, the site has useful information about the Catholic Church as well.

Mapping the Faith of the Nation

I thought this was interesting. Today Boston.com ran article about the geographical make up of the people in this country in it's Articles of Faith section mapping the nation by religion. It's based on a recent Gallup poll and probably has a few surprises.

Posted by Michael Paulson August 7, 2009 01:13 PM

For those of us who love maps, Gallup today has put out a nifty set illustrating the differential religious makeup of the American states. The maps are based on new data -- survey research conducted earlier this year -- but there's no big news here: the Northeast is the most Catholic region, the South the most Protestant, Utah the most Mormon and New York the most Jewish. And the Pacific Northwest and northern New England have the biggest percentages of non-religious folks. Here is Gallup's analysis of what it calls a "remarkable pattern of religious dispersion in the U.S.,'' with an interesting unanswered question about Vermont:

"A good deal of the religious dispersion across the states is explainable by historical immigration patterns -- particularly the impact of the large waves of European Catholics and Jews who came through ports of entry in the Middle Atlantic states in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The geographic concentration of Mormons in and around Utah reflects the cross-country migration of that group in the mid-1800s from Illinois and other Eastern states to their new home. The fact that certain states like Oregon and Vermont consist disproportionately of residents with no religious identity is more difficult to explain, with hypotheses focusing on the particular and idiosyncratic cultures of those states and/or the migration of certain types of Americans to those states over the decades."

Here's the map about Catholicism:

And Protestantism:

Judaism:

Mormonism:

And, finally, a map showing states by percentage of non-religious people:

_______________________________________
After reading articles and seeing maps like this, I always like to point out that Catholicism has thrived in NM for over 400 years. ;)

In honor of World Communications Day on May 24th, there's Pope2You

Too tired to blog these days. Will post something soon.

Sense of Wonder

I just found a blog that I want to read now... but I have way too much to do. There is a post here by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes (the woman who wrote Women Who Run With the Wolves . I guess she blogs at the National Catholic Reporter.) I was doing some story research for my newest story idea. Like I really need to be working on another story idea and I found a piece she wrote about Our Lady's journey into Santa Fe, "They Tried to Stop Her at the Border." It's about the journey of the new statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe that was commissioned for Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish here in Santa Fe. I wrote about the statue here. There are links that will take you to the offical site there too.

For the Immaculate Conception, Dr. Estes also wrote a piece about Our Lady that touched me deeply and I posted it here, orginally spotted at Fr. Austin Murphy's blog, Jesus Goes to Disneyworld.

But in the name of story research I'm going to read The Pope and La Curandera now.

Piecing Guernica Together

Still awake. Still restless. Avoiding going to bed, though I really should. Nothing on TV. The muses are ignoring me completely. I've turned off the special: "Jesus the Man" on the National Geographic channel. I also missed the repeat of the PBS special "Jerusalem" and what I caught of that the other night was interesting.

However, I have decided that I"m going (to try) to avoid all things having to do with religion and Catholicism for a while, except for the day to day things I do offline. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this week. I'm not sure which Good Friday service I'll attend. I might flip a coin between my parish where the Confirmation students will present the Passion of Our Lord, or the Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe will perform it at Our Lady of Guadalupe. Both will be quite moving I'm sure.

Anyway, this post is actually supposed to be about Guernica, the famous painting by Pablo Picasso. I've always been fascinated by the painting. I could probably write a story based upon the images and characters in the story. Someday, I will write something set in that era.



The BBC posted an interesting article online about Picasso's famous anti-war painting. It speculates the hidden meanings in the painting. I wonder if the writer has been reading Dan Brown or maybe he, himself, will find a scandalous plot and write it about this painting.

What else? I did go to Mass today. It would be really nice to go more often during the week, but it's often hard for me to make it to daily Mass. I really should go to bed as last night was a bad one. I couldn't sleep and I'm extra sleepy tonight. I'll try to do some spiritual reading before I go to bed. Tomorrow, it's the dogs to the vet, catch up at the office and the gym. Really. Just watch... I'll make a whiny post about it all tomorrow.

While reading through the 1000+ posts on my Google reader I saw this post at Feminine Genius, a Catholic blog with a strong feminine pov, about St. Margaret who is believed to be the first martyr under Queen Elizabeth's reign. Sadly, I don't know much about the persecution of Catholics during Queen Elizabeth's rule on the English throne. Though growing up a Catholic, the Black Legend was constantly thrown in my face so to speak.

It's actually quite timely as Pope Benedict declared this upcoming year, year of the Priest, to see a story about a saint who protected and sheltered priests in a time of persecution is timely.

Here's her story at the patron saints website.

Image taken from patron saints index.

Hell, Purgatory and Peace

Busted Halo and Father Jim Martin present a mixed media production and guide to the afterlife. What the Hell is Purgatory? Wait for the joke at the end.

Am wiped out following a rather long, weird day. I attended a Peace Vigil at my parish tonight and want to write something up about it. I will say this I was the youngest one there. We were asked to introduce ourselves and offer one thought about peace. I said my name and said I'm still young enough and idealistic enough to believe peace is possible. I did feel like a lot of these people were big in the peace movement of the 60's/70s. A time I really can't remember. ;-)

Thomas Merton Alert

Ok, so on Facebook where I don't have Jesus friended, but I do have the Thomas Merton Facebook club friended. Today I got a heads up for this Lent and Holy Week Resource by Thomas Merton from Ave Maria Press. I picked up a nice book for Advent and Christmas with reflections from St. Francis. Sadly, I put it down after Christmas day, which is also the time I started getting lax with praying as well.

I may try to order before Lent. I think it would be nice.

State of Maria

Oh jeez you know the world is falling apart when you see reference to "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen referred to by someone on you tube as the "Shrek Song". Oy...

Deacon Greg Kandra at the Deacon's bench posted this version of the song, which is lovely. It beats the Rufus Wainwright version (aka, the Shrek Song) of the song any day. But I still prefer Jeff Buckley's rendition.



In other news, I'm bored to no end. Yesterday it snowed between 5-7 inches. The roads were passable but it took a while for the cleanup to get done. Today there were slushy. The ground is warm so nothing is really sticking. The black ice path in front of my house has been pretty much prevented with this go round as I swept it and scattered ice melt.

In the morning I promised that I'd help organize all the gifts we collected at my parish for the needy for Christmas. This year we collected over 300 gifts, but apparently, in year's past we've collected gifts stacked up through out the gathering space in the church. It really touched my heart to see the generosity of the people in my parish. When my neighbor complains about how Catholics don't do anything to help the needy in the community, I'll add this to my list of things to show her otherwise. I helped deliver them to two agencies and then pretty much came home and watched it snow. Today, between my stomach feeling so-so and the weather I pretty much stayed in my casita. I glanced at some pretty scary blogs out there and I think I understand the whole idle time is the devil's workshop or whatever the saying is. Tomrorow, I'll start my work week. I have a meeting in the morning and Thursday is a board meeting and breakfast. I need to write a report for that.

Meanwhile, fictionwise, I'm going to try to write something pretty, but so far I've come to a dry spell with my writing. The NANO challenge was uninspiring as I didn't come up with anything worthwhile or useable. I should have written the vampire spoof I was thinking about. I mean, how much fun would it be to make fun off all the vampire mythos out there? Maybe it's been done, but it was what I should written instead of taking two characters on my fictional family tree to try to write their story.

I've almost finished watching the 2nd season of "Supernatural" and am loving it.

I also have to start thinking about baking. Bischochitos, wedding/crumb cookies, maybe even some chocolate truffles.

Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe.

Words for thought today. Father Austin Murphy at Jesus Goes to Disney World , just posted an article by Clarissa Pinkola Estes about Our Lady. It's a good article, worth the read. Estes definitely looks at Mary in ways that I see her. I don't see her as a demure, wallflower at all. She couldn't be. Rather, she was a strong woman. When she said be it done to me, she gave everything of herself to God, she consented to bring his Son into the world, to be mother to our Savior, who would save us all. For all that she experienced, lived and witnessed, she had to be strong.

Here it is as he's posted it at his blog.

My grandmother said that if you listened to stories about Mother Maria for nine weeks straight without interruption ... or if you said the rosary for nine days straight without your mind wandering once ... or if you walked to one of Mama Marushka’s shrines in the woods for nine nights in a row -- nine being the number of months Blessed Mother carried the living Christo before giving birth to the Light of the world -- that if you would do any of these, that Blessed Mother would appear to you and answer any question you might have about how to live on earth fully ensouled.

But my grandmother also said there was a shortcut. Need. That any human being needing comfort, vision, guidance or strength was heard by the Immaculate Heart ... and thus, Blessed Mother would immediately arrive with veils flying ... to place us under her mantle for protection, to give us that one thing the world longs for so: the warmth of the mother’s compassionate touch.
I know you and I have seen many statutes of Our Lady, lovingly made, erasing all her Semitic features or her Asiatic, Inuit, Nahua, Polynesian, tribal European, Celtic, African, indigenous ones.

I don’t believe this was meant as a racial preference. Perhaps in the beginning, “whitening,” as in ancient alchemical poetics, was merely an attempt to show that whiteness and purity are often associated in much “Western” imagination.
So white-skinned. Blonde-haired, and our Mary Maria, Mir-yam, Guadalupe, over the eons became spoken about in more and more hushed tones too:
She’s pure, you know. Demure.

As they say, so content, so gentle, so quiet, so passive, so submissive.
Yet, I must say No. I say instead: Fire.

I know, and I hope with deepest love that you do too, know the Mary, Maria, Mir-yam, Guadalupe of wilder heart, of long journeys with a blurred map, of night fires at the far encampment. Our Lady who, when all the apostles ran away ... she stayed. Blessed Mother, she who is renowned as the one able to wear the flaming, exploding fire lakes of the Sun.

No demure little cabbage, that woman. No paltry, well-behaved carbon dot. No follower of worldly orders. Quite the contrary. Our exemplar.

I’ve a little white porcelain Mary that some good soul hand-painted carefully in a factory of thousands of porcelain Marys on a conveyor belt ... tiny gold curlicues on the selvage of her mantle. And lovely.

But the Mother I carry with me everywhere is the woods-woman La Nuestra Señora, Guadalupe, she whose green mantle is fashioned of moss from the north side of trees ... and star shards caught in her wild silver hair ... and her gown is soft, coarse woven cloth with the thorns and flowers of wild roses caught in it, and she has dirty hands from growing things earthy, and from her day and night work alongside her hard-working sons and daughters, their children, their elders, all.

La Guadalupe is no symmetrical thing with palms equally outstretched and frozen, but she is ever in motion. If there is emotion, she is there. If there is commotion, she is there. If there is elation, she is there. Impatience, she is there. Fatigue: She is there. Fear, unrest, sorrow, beauty, inspiration: She is there.
And she is demure in a sense, yes, but different from those who would fade her essence into an anemia: Yes, she is demure as in demurring to be contained and made small.

And she is calm, yes, but not without will to rise again and again. Instead, yes, she is calm as the mighty ocean is calm as it moves in enormous troughs and pinnacles, its huge waves like a heartbeat: easy, intentional, muscular.
And she is pure, yes, but not as in never going dark, never having doubt, never taking a wrong turn for a time, but rather pure, yes, as a gemstone is cut into a hundred sparkling facets ... that kind of pure, meaning gem-cut by travail, adventure and challenge -- and yet fully without a streak of dead glass in any facet. By the cutting, by means of the emery cloth and the finest polish ... instead of deadened, and despite all: still pure-fire bright.

Were I asked how one just coming to truly be with Our Lady might think about our Maria, Nuestra Madre Grande, I’d say, Think of her not in the ways you’ve been told/ sold. But, rather, seek her with your own eyes without blinders and heart without shutters. Look low instead of high. Look right under your nose. The exotic locale is not necessary. She is found in a shard of glass, in a broken curb, in a hurt heart, and in any soul knowing or unknowing, yet crazy in love with the divine mysteries ... and not quite so in love with mundane challenges. Yet, she is there. Everywhere. Do not accept vacuous, vapid words or images of her. Untie the Strong Woman. She’s been waiting for your special touch.
I often think of Guadalupe, Blessed Mother, with regard to an illustrated novel by Jonathan Swift that carried a picture of Gulliver, the traveler, pinioned to the ground. Gulliver had become a quasi-prisoner of the Lilliputians, a tiny people only 6 inches high. They critiqued Gulliver, among other things, for being in several ways “too big.” So, they tied him crisscross over all his limbs, and took him down with ropes then wrapped around brass nails and driven into pallet and ground.

The tiny Lilliputians stood on Gulliver’s chest and felt they had tied down the leviathan, the behemoth. But Gulliver just simply sat up ... and all his bonds burst, and all the tiny Lilliputians fell off, tumbling into the grass.
The giant lumbered off with the trivial rope-strings trailing behind. The Lilliputians shook their heads -- as usual -- trying to make sense of the Gulliver figure that was, in form, similar to themselves in body ... but in an entirely other way, so very unlike themselves.

I think many can understand this push to pare down the numinous, the unfamiliar, the unknown. What is truly divine mystery can be overwhelming at first. Yet it would seem in a culture that likes to minimize true magnitude of talents, for instance ... and to magnify the minimus, “the little man,” that is, the flimsiness or meanness or not well- formed qualities of matters ... that it is not only our calling, but our troth, our sacred promise given from the very first moment we ever saw the soul be assaulted in anyone, by anyone ... to untie the Strong Woman now. And forever.

Way too often, the only relationship we’ve been taught/told/offered to have with Blessed Mother ... is either none, through silence about her rich bloodline with us ... or else one in which we must agree to bind her down into a small and handle-able form ... diminishing her, by making her be the quiescent “good girl” ... in phony opposition to having another woman, The Magdalene, be the less quiescent “bad girl.” These are distortions of both women’s origins and gifts. Untie them both, then.

I have listened to some few theologians talking about Our Lady as though she is an appendage to a group of historical facts. Neither is she, as some charge, a superstition. She is not an obedient building made of cement, marble or bricks. She is not to be used as a length of holy wire to bind us all into docility, severing the other hundreds of traits given by God for being beautifully and reasonably human. She is not meant as a fence, but as a gate.
Who Protects Whom? An Ironic Story

I remember a New York Times book reviewer scorning an author who had urged readers to ask Blessed Mother for guidance. I have never come closer to getting on an airplane immediately, flying to New York, pouncing on that so-called critic’s crate-for-a-desk, and calling for a plague of frogs to take over her entire everything -- including, as the old fairy tale “One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes” told, that whenever the criticizer would speak from that day forward, lizards and toads and snakes would drop from their lips.
Ai! I was almost more horrified by my own horrible reaction than by the critic’s crummy take on supplication and Blessed Mother. Almost. Yet, I’d understood Guadalupe to say into my heart at that moment, something like this: “All are mine whether they know me or not, practice a devotion or not.” And that too, that oceanic generosity of the Mother -- so unusual in a culture that uses war and death terms for most everything -- that turned most of my ire into better understanding of the attitude I must try to take. For knowledge, for peace, for mercy. And this too, I believe, suddenly being inspired to strive to do/ be grace, not just receive it, that kind of sometimes startling intelligence, can occur when the Strong Woman is untied.

I feel I was called to the priesthood as a little child. A priesthood that perhaps does not exist for me in this world, and that was/is to take her and her works and through her that of her precious Child into the world. So I take mi Guadalupe to various gatherings, retreats and churches, some of which are, but some of which are not Roman, and who are kind enough to ask me to give the sermon or make space for me to heal and bless others with my hands during that set-aside time in a temple or temenos.

I tell about her world, her life, her daughters and sons, and always there is at least one someone who says, “We don’t believe in her.” Or, “How can you believe in her?” And I say I do not believe in her. I know her. Face to face, skin to skin. Mi madre. She is my mother."

This is the Guadalupe I think you know of, or sense, or want to know, or are very close to for years now; one who is joy-centric and sorrow-mending, one who is present in every way. And in so understanding that pull to the Holy Woman, we do untie the Strong Woman.

I pray strength into your hands and heart ... and inspiration and daring -- and fire -- to lift the Great Woman away from whichever Lilliputians have tied her down into more manageable form ... on any of the pathways you travel. No matter which dissertation or diminution she has been tied down by, she, greater than any Gulliver by far ... the moment we ask for her, see her, converse with her, love her … she gracefully rises up, pins flying in all directions.
With much love, some levity, and certainly deep longing, together, let us all sit up too, let us make all the pins fly too ... untying ourselves as we untie the Strong Woman.

May it be deeply so for you.
May it be so for me, also.
May it be so for all of us, ever. --Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Just a quick post. While tomorrow is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and while I plan to be at Mass tomorrow, in this part of the country, (and other parts as well and Mexico) people await December 12, to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe. Rocco at Whispers in the Loggia covers it all.

I think we're a bit more subdued in our celebrations here, though I'm sure Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish will have a big event to commemorate the day. Mine is doing a novena and will have a Mass on Friday.

So glad it's just wheat and water.

I'm still giggling about my dream about the priest handing our bagel slices as Communion at Mass. I think I'm even more amused that I yelled at him for doing it in the dream. I still wonder about the state of my unconscious mind sometimes. I think I do my best writing when I'm sleeping.

Anyway, way back when, the Carmelite nuns here in town used to bake all our communion bread, but from what I understand they don't do that anymore. Their numbers are dwindling and they just can't. So I know for my parish, our bread is ordered. I wonder if we get them at the place in the video below? And the bread that the priest breaks tastes better than the little round hosts. Though... paraphrasing one of the guy's in the video says, it's not the taste that counts.

Watch. Enjoy. This video is really fascinating. First seen at Deacon's Bench who saw it someplace else.




Now... I shall go watch TV. I have the first of the two Stargate SG1 series ending movies and I feel like getting lost in SciFi fantasy for a while.

With all the uproar about female altar servers, (I'm following a post at the Deacon's Bench) can you imagine what would happen if the Swiss Guard actually allowed women to serve?

Just a little snark for the day.


h/t to Clerical Whispers for the article. That blog is like my guilty pleasure. I can't imagine how Father has time to compile all the news he posts. I'm glad he does. He posts everything-- good, bad, sad-- and I read it all. Well, at least skim it. ;-)

Oh Come Let Us Adore Him...

I'm compiling some links for this post. First off, over here is a beautiful page of Creches from All over the world. Deacon Greg over at The Deacon's Bench posted a news story about a Czech nativity set being reassembled in Dayton Ohio. I'm sort of a Czechphile-- it's kind of a long story-- which I don't need to go into now. Needless to say, I surfed around the site (link posted in the original article and here) and got lost in looking at the different Nativity sets. I find them all so incredibly fascinating.

Also at the site, there's an article about the tradition of Native American nativities in New Mexico. I've yearned to have one. When I used to go to Indian Market, I'd look longingly at the sets, but couldn't then and still can't afford one. There are pictures there and as well as in the main page of International Creches.

My mom's current nacimiento. I wish I had better picture.

My mom had an old set that her aunt bought bit by bit. I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. She's long since put it away, but perhaps I should pull it out of the box this year.

I have two nativity sets of my own. One I got last year for Christmas. It's a Spanish Colonial set, though it's a mass-produced piece by a re-known NM artist, rather than an original. I can't even fathom what it would cost to own an original Charlie Carillo. Mine is the set on the right. My other set, which I haven't put up in years, is a Costco special. I had to color the Virgin Mary's hair from blond to brown with a sharpie marker. It's generic, but the figures are pretty enough. I used dress it up with lights, cedar branches when I put it up. I'm thinking of digging it out, unless I get my mom's old one, which looks a bit like the Fontanini sets.

Hee... a google image search lead me to a Little People nativity set. And not to be outdone, but Catholic Supply of St. Louis has a variety of Nativities, from the classic, tasteful ones, to the downright awful ones. I'm easily amused you know.

Tradition has it that St. Francis put up the first creche.
I think the nativity is a probably the most visible reminder of what the season should be about. Granted, we know that's not how it actually was, but it's still a wonderful image, isn't it? The madness that has become of the Christmas season is a disgusting display of greed, selfishness and a complete and utter lack of respect toward one's fellow man, woman or child.

He Was A Community Organizer, You Know...

Live Journal is down. So much for the transition going smoothly. It figures when all is said and done, it goes down unexpectedly when all is supposed to be well and good. I posted this there, I think, can't see if it actually posted.

Well, Father James Martin, SJ, is one of my favorite Contemporary Catholic writers. Apparently he speculated how Jesus might do on a job interview with the Obama Transition team. It's here at belief.net. You don't even have to be Catholic or religious to enjoy the humor of it all.

My cousin actually applied for a job in the administration. She was a paid staffer for the campaign. We all got a laugh at the questionnaire. Even I couldn't answer it perfectly and I'm almost a saint. ;-)

I'm tired today... so I'll just link to this story at America's blog In All Things about the rise of Anti-Catholicism. Maybe I'm spoiled or just pretty damn lucky because growing up here and when I grew up I never experienced any anti-Catholicism. Sure, I had former Catholics try to convert me to their new found religions, but I don't recall them ever saying anything that was anti-Catholic. Maybe I'm living in my own little world where everything is sunshine and roses and I never noticed it. Nah, I don't think it existed here growing up.

Although, I do remember every fall, on the night of the Burning of Zozobra, a group of Bible believing Christians would pass out flyers saying how we were participating in a pagan ritual, that if we didn't repent or proclaim Jesus to be our Savior we'd all be doomed. There wasn't anything that was anti-Catholic about this particular protest, and there really wasn't anything particularly Catholic about burning this puppet, also known as Old Man Gloom. I mean, historically, the Catholics in Spain have burned effigies for many reasons, but I don't believe those were what inspired Will Schuster, the artist who created Zozobra, to burn this puppet. I also haven't been in years, so I don't even know if they come out and protest.

The only place where I've experienced or seen blatant Anti-Catholicism is on the Internet. It doesn't take long to find it. I usually stumble upon something anti-Catholic at least once a day. I'm also tired of seeing google ads on Catholic blogs and websites with links to the crazies at the most holy family site.

A Bit About the Bishops

Over at Whispers in the Loggia Rocco has compiled the list of Bishops who have spoken up regarding the election, declaring that abortion is the most pressing issues of them all. Mine is on the list and issued a pastoral letter a few weeks back regarding the election and issues facing Catholics in my archdiocese this year. In every homily he's ever preached where I've been in the pews, he's preached a very pro-life, strongly anti-abortion message. I respect him for that. He speaks on the issue close to home, to his flock where the message needs to be heard, and not in National Catholic Media circles like others, but I suspect he probably feels just as strongly as the bishops we hear quoted every day.

I think the Church can speak about politics, but it must do so carefully. I think in some places, the line has been crossed and it reflects badly upon all people of faith especially Catholics. An evangelical church just a half-hour north of here, openly endorsed Republican candidates because of pro-life issues. Of course, people were outraged and offended. While the pastor thought it was important to strike up a dialog, he went about it in the wrong way and now risks losing his church's tax exempt status. Here, the Catholic church treads carefully over politics, but yet, we know how the archbishop feels about these issues all the same.

While we, as Catholics, are all different, we do have very strong and similar core values. We need to talk about those things. The bishops should be the ones to lead by example. They should not tell us directly how to vote, but should guide us faithfully and rationally.

That being said, they are human, they are fallible and they make mistakes too.

Also we need to consider all life issues when we go to the voting booth. Sadly, we haven't had a major party candidate, probably ever, who speaks to all life issues, so we are faced with making difficult decisions when we vote. I've been seeing in other blogs about Catholics feeling homeless when it comes to political parties and I think that is a true reflection of the world we live in right now. I'd like to think in my lifetime we will see such a candidate running for a major office and actually getting elected. I'd like to think this country and the world would be a better place because of it.

In other news, my neighbor passed out the link to the Catholic Vote video to her email list-- probably her prayer list or something-- because I was on her list. I wrote back and told her that I'd seen it and corrected her that it wasn't made by the Church but by a group of Catholics. She got a very scathing email back from someone who found it totally offensive and elitist. I so love hearing that word these days. It makes me want to quote Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride:

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. "

Nonetheless, I thought it was an interesting reaction because I thought for the most part the video was pretty good. I don't agree that same-sex marriage is going to be the downfall to modern society, but that's just me. I do lean to the left on most issues you know. The other issues it featured are crucial and important to think about every day, not just around election day. My friend is stumped and not quite sure what to make of the reaction. I guess I am too.

Then again, maybe I watched a wholly different video than this woman. Maybe I saw something totally different in the very same video, but if I didn't find it offensive, then maybe there is something wrong with me.

While Googling I find some of the most interesting things, usually after searching for one thing but finding something else. I just found this site, Holy Cards for Your Inspiration. It's a lovely blog with lots of Catholic imagery. However, it wasn't what I was looking for.

Articles and Links I *Always* Lose

This is probably going to be one of those posts I make for my own good. I'm always losing things and though I bookmark things, sometimes I lose them or forget why I bookmarked them in the first place. Mostly, I think this index of sorts will be just a list of things I found useful to my writing, or just of general interest.

This was an article written about young seminarians published in the New York Times Magazine in 1999.
"Why A Priest" now linked from the author's website.

An Atheist Goes Undercover to Join the Mad Flock of Pastor Hagee. (via alternet) Saw this today but haven't had a chance to finish reading it.


Just saw this at the Deacon's Bench, it's about reporters and religion. I've wanted to go back to writing for the newspaper-- I'm wondering if I should/could take on a religion beat?

An opinion from a visitor to Santa Fe about La Conquistadora that I am not quite sure I'll counter yet. I definitely don't agree with what she wrote.