The War on Terror, or on Islam?

When I first heard the news that there had been a massive shooting at Fort Hood, my first response was horror, a prayer for the victims, and a gnawing concern that this was going to turn out to be another terrorist attack.  Mentally, I squashed that last thought, even after I heard the shooter’s obviously [...]

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Abortion and Wormwood

I do not read the book of Revelation often.  Except for the overarching, “This world will end, God wins,” it is a notoriously difficult book to interpret.  In a discussion the other night, part of it came up:
The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and [...]

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Unity with Who?

I love my Church.  I enjoy reading papal encyclicals, studying the Bible, listening to prayerful music (everything from a capella chant to modern rock).  I’m far from perfect, but I am trying to follow Christ.
I am considerably less fond of my local parish.  I get tired of fighting over whether I or the lousy Religious [...]

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Where do parental rights end?

Well, the latest fleeing-parent-and-child saga is over.  If you didn’t see it, there was a teenager from Minnesota who fled with his mom to avoid cancer chemotherapy.  The mom and child returned voluntarily, charges were dropped, and the parents now say that they agree that their son needs chemo.
Apparently, the mom joined some church that doesn’t believe [...]

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7 Quick Takes Friday (March 6)

1.  Long overdue, here is a great video my youngest child’s godfather forwarded to us.  I loved the background music (it’s Matt Maher, “Isaiah 61″, available from www.spiritandsong.com for $0.99).

2.  It was 68 degrees (very briefly) last Friday.  It snowed all day Monday (exceedingly weird for us; we rarely get snow, and [...]

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Christmas carol #1

Sitting through the tambourines at the end of mass (our usual Advent song, “Rise Up, Jerusalem,” involves tambourines… which I guess is slightly better than the bongo drums our previous parish used for, “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning”), I started thinking of all the really great Advent and Christmas music out there (none of which, [...]

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Protest is a form of education

Over the last several months, I have learned that if I write a pro-life post that mentions protesting and/or political action as part of the process, someone will write me a comment to insist that we should really just pray and work quietly at the local crisis pregnancy center.  Several years ago, after sending around [...]

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Look to the stars

My apologies to my regular readers; I have been remiss in blogging lately.  I have not been too thrilled about the state of the world after the election, and I have been, frankly, cocooning.  As in burying myself in gardening and house cleaning type chores, with some early Christmas decorating thrown in on the excuse [...]

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What are we aiming for?

I read several things the other night that really made me wonder: what are we aiming for?
One was a submission to a weekly digest of Catholic blog posts.  In it, the author bemoaned the difficulites of standing up to the parish hierarchy when they “drew a line in the sand” over… something.  Apparently, she didn’t [...]

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Who, me? *smirk*

I loved this article from Lifenews.com.  Sure, we’ll take your money, because the law requires it, but we’re going to do something with that money that you’d hate.
Sort of reminds me of something I read in a book about Tudor women.  Under the laws at that time, women did not own any property if they were married; [...]

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