*There's an interesting thread on raising children on Rorate Caeli. Some of it's good. Some of it made me grimace. Parenting is hard and everybody makes mistakes. The trick is to not make the kind of mistakes that will have your kid sitting in a psychiatrist's office 30 years from now.
*It's Rocky's 49th birthday. It is absolutely amazing to me to think that we've spent more years together than we did with our parents. Rocky is the kindest of men. He's always been my number one champion. No matter what, forever and ever, I know Rocky is on my side and has my best interests at heart. He is good to my mother and gentle and patient with my uncle who has dementia. On top of that, he's still the best looking man in the room no matter where we go. St. Martha, Rocky's patron saint, pray for him.
*One of the worst things a Catholic can do is be miserable all the time. Even when you're right nobody can endure being exposed to dark-as-night levels of despair day in and day out. I've said it before and I'll say it again: The pope is going to do whatever he's going to do. Bishops and priests can let us down and they do but the biggest troublemaker of all is fellow laymen and women.
* Speaking of laymen, who decides who gets to be a public apologist?
* Do we have to keep doing WYD? If it's so great, where are all the vocations? Someone give me a concrete number of priests who said they answered Our Lord's call because of their experiences at a World Youth Day. I've heard anecdotes that Fr. So and So was inspired at a WYD or that Sr. So and So became a nun because of her weekend away but anecdotes aren't trustworthy. I also know very nice and college educated people who swear that they heard of a Black woman who named her twins Lemonjello and Orangejello. I've heard that story far too many times and every single person who's told it to me over the years swears that the twins were only recently born. Anecdotes, tall tales, wishing thinking, lies. I want to see some hard facts and figures.
*I was visiting my uncle in the nursing home yesterday and one of his neighbors mentioned to my mother than nobody from the local parish has been there with Communion or to lead the Rosary in weeks. The local Protestant churches manage to have volunteers who come every Sunday and even during the week to see about the sick and the elderly but the Catholic residents don't want to attend a Protestant service and have had nothing. That's disgusting and it infuriates me.
Every busybody wants to be on the parish counsel or a Eucharistic Minister (in Church only, no sick calls please) but nobody wants to do the unpleasant stuff. I'm not asking for volunteers to give my uncle a bath, that's what I'm for but I wish I saw Catholic men and women in the nursing homes singing or running a Bingo game or just sitting and talking with a poor soul who hasn't had a visitor in over a month. The ladies from the AME church of the street from my uncle's nursing home come and sit. They bring treats, knitted items and they sing. I often see a Primitive Baptist (no that's not a pejorative, it's the name of the denomination), Deaconess and her teenaged grandson who come to visit. The Jehovah's Witness men and women somehow find time to listen, pat a hand and pray over an old gray head. Where the heck are my Catholic people?
*Forget Twilight. THIS is a love story.
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