Random thoughts about that encyclical and other stuff now the headache has finally let up

• It must have been awful for Catholics when Pope Libirious  went bad. It must have been even worse for people under Popes Virgilius, Honorius and John XXII (22). It must have been sickening for a decent person watching Pope Alexander flaunt his mistress and children.  We were chosen out of all eternity to live at this time and life is not always peaches and pretzels. Take up your cross and follow Christ on the Via Dolorosa.
  
  
  

• Now, about the new encyclical. My inclination is pretty close to Chris Jackson,  but the trouble is too many people will try to rub their heads and stomachs counterclockwise at the same time while jumping on one foot if they think that's what a pope wants them to do. I see most of the Environmentalist movement as a cruel Sovietesque system that wants me to live like a 6th century peasant while the elite live happily ever after. This makes me nervous, irritated and in a mood to fight.  I'd rather see the whole secular system fall to pieces than live the way the enviros want.Beyond the subject of the latest encyclical,  we need to remember that not every single word that comes from the Holy Father's lips or from his computer is infallible.  If the pope is speaking about the deposit of Faith and says something like, "I, Pope Jones, successor of Peter, say to you.....that the Eucharist is Christ," then I'm his Huckleberry but if he says, "All good Catholics have to eat cilantro,"  then I'm free to ignore it. When the Holy Father writes that the world increasingly looks like a pile a filth and he is not talking about parts of India  and Nigeria where people squat in the streets to defecate  or parts of the Philippines  but means the West with it's sanitation plants and indoor plumbing I'm raising an eyebrow.
  
  
  
  
  
• In your charity please pray for the parishioners of the Church of the Loaves and Fishes in Tabgha, Israel. Their church which honors one of Our Lord's most spectacular miracles was attacked with arson and vandalism. Many people in the US who call themselves Christian are greeting their story and the stories of Christians all over the Middle East with embarrassed silence.
  
   

• On the home front, things are better and worse. My uncle's health has improved enough to leave the critical care floor and return to a regular room in the nursing home. Life at work, stinks. It just plain stinks. When my uncles's health settles down and gets off the wild roller coaster it's been on and when my migraines settle down (it's always bad the season's change and especially when it's thunderstorm season in Virginia) I'm going to start a new job campaign.