This Is the Way We Live Now and Other Random Thoughts

• So, I decided to go back to college. I'm taking all the classes online so at least I won't be sitting in a classroom heckling the professor for teaching garbage. Fortunately, I was awarded enough credits from previous coursework and experience to skip three classes and I'll be able to get to the core material sooner.
  
• Okay....so I will not be going to Canada on vacation now and if I were a pet animal breeder I definitely would not sell to anyone with a Canadian address. There are some tiresome people who only think that America has a problem with depravity. Oh please! The entire West is sick.
  
  
  
• What happened in Orlando is going to keep on happening. This is the way we live now.  It may be one man sawing off one woman's head or it may be many people slaughtered at a time but it will be. Our leaders will lower flags, give speeches and attend memorials but that is all they are going to do and we the people are just going to light some votive candles, buy teddy bears and flowers, sing sappy songs and privately hope that the next time the wolf comes we won't be on the edge of the herd.
  
  
  
• Once upon a time in America there was a Jewish kid whose father abandoned the family. His mother made a mistake that many women in her position still make today. She leaned on her son and made her boy the man of the house. A teen aged boy can make a lot of money via crime and so he did. The rent was paid and the younger kids were fed. Later he moved up the ranks and became a big time gangster. At the height of his criminal career and infamy he was shot. On his death bed he asked for a priest. He was Baptized, confessed his sins and best he could and died. If Dutch Schultz could repent in the last seconds of his earthly life and be saved then surely some of the dead in Orlando had time to make an act of Contrition. 

• In a way, Pope Francis might be the best thing that happened to the Church in many decades.  He's actually caused people from my generation to realize that not single every word from the pope's lips is  infallible and that his every action is not necessarily holy. If you are uneasy or even frantic about the pope go and buy yourself a Baltimore or Pius X catechism, a copy of the Catholic encyclopedia and a few old books such as the Imitation of Christ, anything written by the great saints and  the collected writings of the early Church Fathers and start studying. A lot of us never progressed spiritually beyond where we were at Confirmation. It's time to grow up and face the storm.