- I took two weeks of vacation for Christmas and I don't know why I've never done it before. This was truly restorative. Yesterday Rocky and I went to Southern Maryland and looked for birds. We stayed on the easy paths and didn't go on any long trails so we only saw 12 species. We also visited the Port Tobacco Carmelite convent.
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| The historic convent and chapel. The nuns live in the modern cloister. Occasionally we see the extern sister or hear the nuns praying behind the grate in the chapel. |
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| Nativity scene at the convent chapel |
- This afternoon to my astonishment my favorite political and social commentator spoke about the pope. He's not Catholic. In fact, he's a Baptist but he had a bit of respect for the pope in general and was shocked to see him yell at a woman and slap her hands. Another person who only does political commentary and is at best, a nominal Christian as far as I can tell wrote about how disgusted he was upon seeing the video.
A non Catholic relative asked me if I saw the video and she was both surprised and disapproving about it. I've been trying to get this relative to convert for years....... I'm back at square one. - I'd heard about the South American seminarian pipeline but it wasn't until this vacation that I had time to spend a few hours reading about it. If the new priest at your parish came from Colombia, is a young man under 50 and went to certain seminaries on the East Coast you might want to find a new parish or keep an eagle eye on your son.
- Some people are disappointed by Abby Johnson because she came out on the side of a hospital that wants to remove life support from a sick baby. I can only say that it is a bad idea to canonize someone before they're dead. Abby doesn't make her money from abortions anymore. That's great but it doesn't mean she's now the voice of wisdom on every subject, nor does it mean she's a saint.
- 42 million babies died from abortion in 2019.
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| St. Franis de Sales, Benedict, Maryland |
- On Saturday we went to the most beautiful Mass I've been to in a very time at St. Francis de Sales.