Random thoughts...from a wild week

• I stopped reading a number of blogs last year but found beautiful, uplifting ones like Filling My Prayer Closet,   and the Monks of Norica I learned so much from reading  Philothea on Phire.  and I'm fascinated by Orwell's Picnic. 
  
  
  
• A number of people are highly critical of young Adam Shaw's comments about the Pope's economic ideas. Well, I think he should've been more polite but dang he is allowed to have an opinion. Don't cast the young man out of the Church because he's curt. He's not spoken heresy or blasphemed. In fact, I can  think of at least five bishops, three nuns and two politicians who have said far worse things and are Catholics in good standing.
  
• How cold has it been in Virginia this week? So cold my nose bled on Monday and Tuesday.  The environmentalists have it mostly wrong. Man is a poor little thing before the power of nature.
  
  
• I had a blah meal with a side of food poisoning at one of our favorite restaurants yesterday. At one point I could barley lift my head. All I could do was pray, "Oh God help me."  And  Our Father did just that. After a remarkably short time I came to myself and  felt strong enough to get up and totter back to bed. I was soaked in sweat but the cramps and dizziness went away for good.  Best of all, Rocky didn't even wake up.
  
• Have you ever noticed that the some of the very people who can't stand their fellow Catholics will just about crawl on their knees to be nice to an animist, Buddist, Muslim, Protestant or athiest?
  
  
• I was reading John Zmirak's ideas on fixing Catholic marriage and I can't say that this essay particularly impressed me.  He  thinks all engaged couples who want to marry in the Church  ought to take a course in NFP. Well first off NFP is NOT Catholic doctrine.  You are not not bound to do it on pain of being a bad Catholic. Secondly, forcing engaged couples to spend money on marriage instruction is a great money maker for parishes but it doesn't make a marrage divorce proof. My brother-in-law did everything by the book before his wedding. His marriage lasted for 20 years before his wife decided to recapture her youth and pulled a Dodsworth. 
  
  
  
•  Sometimes it's more interesting to consider the  things that get ignored in Catholic blog land than the topics everybody harps on. Last month one of the Rorate Caeli blog team wrote a post appealing for unity and a truce among conservative and traditional leaning Catholics. The reaction was...silence.