At prayer and random thoughts

• Last night I ate something that fought back and I was sick from 3 AM to about 5 AM. I normally do a light cleaning on Saturdays and save the deep clean for once a month but as soon as I stopped feeling shaky I had to get out the Hexol and get to work. Saint Zita and Martha, patronesses of housekeepers pray for us...
  
  
  
  
• This sister belongs to the Holy Child nuns who are at my old elementary school now.

• Rocky got off work early yesterday and we stopped by our parish to pray because big dogs in the corporate office have lost their minds...again and it makes life difficult for the managers.  We walked in and the Spanish baptism class was just breaking up. They looked at us like we were invading their space.  I am highly sensitive to non verbal cues and I could almost feel the unfriendly stares. Rocky is not sensitive that way but he felt it too and was mightily pissed. That was just a tiny illustration of what goes on at many suburban parishes. The Spanish speakers are uncomfortable when Americans are present.  The Americans won't even set foot in the church until the Spanish parishioners leave or if they do accidentally go in while the Spanish speakers are there, they get this crazy look on their faces and flee. Perhaps it comes from the Vatican II mindset of "my Mass" and nobody else is part of this parish or perhaps it's what I believe to be the poisonous fruit of the US decision to split Catholics up based on ethnicity. Catholic means universal. There is no slave or free, no Jew nor Greek in the church. We are all supposed to be Catholic. aren't we? It's not supposed to be about us anyway. It's supposed to be about Him.
  
  
• My Aunt Evangeline died. She was 83 and my late father's eldest sibling. She had ten children and  was a comforting angel to many people her her town. She was like the Valiant Woman of the Old Testament. When she was young she had masses of long black hair and when  I was five I thought she looked just like Loretta Lynn. May she rest in peace.
  
  
• Up until the 19th century we had debtor's prison. In England the whole family could go to jail with the debtor. The family could come and go as they pleased but the debtor was not at liberty until he served his time or the debt was paid. A lot of people, Charles Dickens being one thought this was terrible. Dickens himself had to leave school at 12 years old to help support the family. Today we don't do this sort of thing. When you commit a crime you go to jail or prison and your kid either goes to relatives, foster care, orphanage or a group home. Our bishops want illegal aliens to have their families with them while waiting in detention and while doing and saying nothing to politicians who are public sinners, are actually proposing the threat of  "canonical penalties" to Catholics who administer our immigration laws. Are they seriously going excommunicate someone who calls the police after noticing that there are ten people in their  neighbor's shed who arrived in a truck during the night and  who will disappear in a few days like the last bunch did?  Are they really going to excommunicate every Catholic man and woman who works for the border patrol and ICE?  Yes they make a lot of money from immigration (go to  USAspending.gov  and put "U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops"  in the search box) and I see that they're going to fight to keep it but this proposal is insane and will drive people from the Church.