33 Benedicts

I can't find the article on their website, but we made the print version of the National Catholic Register. By we, of course I mean our son Benedict got his picture along with 31 other little boys and Pope Benedict XVI. It is on the front page of the Culture of Life section.

Sweet!

Young minds

Listening to "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers and my daughter pondered how the video generation would interpret the lyrics "If your gonna play the game boy, ya got to learn to play it right."

Probably would wonder how an old fogey would even know how to play their game.

Searching for answers, coming up with laws

Dom at Bettnet has a couple of related posts recently well worth noting,  Can't Legislate Common Sense  and Every problem, a crisis.  His response to the Boston city council trying to legislate against every stupid act that ends in tragedy got me to thinking.  Specifically,

The only solution to this tragedy and others like it does not come written on a ticket or a summons. It is simple common sense and that’s not something you can legislate.

Unfortunately, people don’t want to hear that. They want to be told that the Columbine and Virginia Tech killers could have been stopped with more gun control laws. They want to be told that wildfires and earthquakes and plane crashes could be prevented with more regulation and red tape. What they don’t want to be told is that sometimes bad things happen in a fallen world and sometimes those bad things happen because a nice kid with a life full of opportunity does something stupid

Every time I hear the excuse or complaint that God wouldn't allow that or why is there evil in the world, I consider the same thing.  

What is so hard to understand about personal responsibility?

I do stupid thing, I get lazy, trying to do my seatbelt after I started onto the street and wham, a cop drives by.  Suddenly I am looking at $140 fine.  I could rant and rave about the draconian laws in this goofy state, the cops paying more attention to the money making seatbelt infraction rather than dangerous drivers and blame anybody but me.  But even if they are true, where did the responsibility lie and who failed?  I did, I knew the law (disagreed with it, but I knew it) and didn't comply.

Same with evil.  Same with tragedy.  Did I do anything to prevent it?  The article doesn't talk about the death or quote anybody involved.  I assume the parties involved are horrified and deeply affected.  But how many times do we hear someone close to the situation ask why nobody did anything?  Why is this allowed?  Well, the solution begins with number 1.  The person asking the question. 

It ties right into his second post. 

This is an entirely predictable reaction. Politicians—on both sides of the aisle—have trained us to believe that every problem in society is a crisis and every crisis requires a drastic solution and those drastic solutions can only be devised through arcane legislation passed by those very politicians (who helpfully include earmarked spending for government contractors in their districts) who are so necessary to fixing anything and so brave to stand up and call a molehill, a mountain.

Seatbelts, car-seats for kids into their teens, "Caution, this package of peanuts may contain nuts" ....  We have all seen them, ludicrous laws aimed to protect every idiot in the ever growing nanny state.  Well, for every idiotic law, there will be an idiot willing to ignore it or even flaunt it.  I did.  When I was younger I couldn't stand the political push behind the seatbelt propaganda.  As a grade-schooler, I recognized it for what it was, manipulating statistics to change behavior.  I rebelled.  I wouldn't wear my seatbelt just because I didn't want to be told how to live.  I realize that seatbelts do save lives, but they aren't divine intervention.

So what is it that "people don't want to hear" or what is it about "the fallen world" that scares people into running to the government for help? 

I would wager that many of them don't have faith.  I could be wrong, but the worry mongers strike me as people that encounter death and have no answers.  Suddenly the veil is pulled back, a glimpse of mortality reveals the meaninglessness of a materialistic life.  Quickly they recover and re-cover that glimpse.  Then "rationally" they move on to look for a solution to tragedy. 

Perhaps sometimes tragedy is just that.  Tragedy. 

Mourn, learn and don't repeat.  But as band-aids don't fix mortal wounds, more laws aren't going to fix every tragedy.

Egads!

My brother is famous.

If I was a writers guild member on strike, I would be very afraid.

Overdue and under duress

I am writing this using the beta of Windows Live Writer, so bear with me if it comes out looking funny.  But it is much overdue.

Here in North Idaho, we have an annual Catholic men's retreat.  Usually very inspiring, spiritually uplifting and even when the retreat master is less than wonderful, three Masses and confession more that makes it worthwhile.  And then there is the evening festivities involving great Catholic male conversation and usually libations.

Sad to say, this year was different.  I actually came home spiritually depressed.  In a much worse mood than I when I left.  It really bothered me to be struggling spiritually after what many describe as a weekend to recharge the spiritual batteries.  I felt like I had gone away and someone had left the the lights on.  My battery was drained.  So what was the problem?

Well, first off; I didn't have the usual suspects there with me.   Plenty of men I knew and I had good conversations with many, but none of the core group was there.  None of my fellow Maccabeen warriors. But as I said, there was plenty of men, 83 I think, there and how can one not enjoy spiritual conversations with fellow Catholic men?

The first talk on Friday was inspiring and got me fired up.  So even though the retreat master wasn't great as the weekend went on, it wasn't an issue of a poor topic, poor presentation or general malaise on my part.

The problem was much deeper than all this.  I was the victim of a bigger scam.  Many on St. Blog's have been offended with their priest dressing up as a clown for Mass.  I (tongue in cheek here) witnessed a clown dressed up as a priest. 

Anyone familiar with this site know about issues I take with poor liturgy.  The Mass does not belong to any one person, even the priest and therefore should not be treated as private property.  No inventing stuff, no changing the script to suit personal tastes or omitting certain prayers.  There are options that are offered.  But inventing your own Mass is forbidden. 

Anyway, this priest could give a great homily.  He believes in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  And in many ways he would pass as a rock solid priest.  But as I try to lighten up on the liturgical policing role, for my own good I can overlook many things.  But what completely ruined the weekend for me was doing what he knew was wrong, commenting on it during Mass and acting like it was a joke.  If Catholics truly believe that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, would we really treat the Mass (where Jesus comes TO us, in OUR place, in OUR time) as a stand-up comedy routine?

Anymore Catholics will hardly notice a deviation from the script.  There are four options for the opening prayer, and not too many of us have all four memorized.  But to add his own, then comment how he felt it wouldn't be a big deal to add a fifth, drag that into a comment about him bringing a fifth (of spirits) elsewhere and then joking how he hoped no one would turn him into the bishop.  Many complaints have been heard about the monotony or repetition in  Mass, but this was about the only repeated line I remember from the weekend, about not being turned into the bishop.  Perhaps he was begging for someone to do just that.

The best thing I can take away from this weekend is a new appreciation for how mundane and ordinary our Sunday Mass at our church is.  Hardly perfect, poor music, bad hymns and questionable homilies from the deacons; but at least they don't joke about how bad they are.  And for that I am very thankful. 

I have come to a compromise with anyone who likes the liturgical goofiness.  I won't whine and complain about the little stuff anymore if you promise not to flaunt it.  It is so juvenile and could ruin a perfectly good weekend.

The panel effect

I came across this tidbit while reading about Micheal Vick's legal issues. As an aside, I have had my doubts about his ability as a QB ever since he was drafted. San Diego traded the first pick to Atlanta and spent their pick on RB Tomlinson and their second pick on QB Drew Brees. Last year these two lead their respective teams (Brees with the Saints) to the conference championship games. And both are classy guys from all accounts.

But that isn't my gist here. This author is contending on the race issue, that whites will have already convicted the bum and that blacks will claim he was framed no matter what the evidence. In a sense, we are all just bigots. In some generalities, he makes a point.

Like most African-Americans, I have seen my share of hatred, but one of the more stunning incidents was not being called a name or being subjected to a double standard. It occurred in the presence of an extremely kind white woman.

While participating in a wonderful series of multi-ethnic panel discussions several years ago called "Conversations on Race," a highly educated, middle-aged white woman began talking about her love of dogs. I remarked I've owned dogs my entire life and could not imagine living without one.

She replied: "I didn't know black people owned dogs."

I responded: "What do you think we do? Eat them?"

She apologized, but the moment was not lost on every black person in the room. If such an intelligent woman who had spent a large chunk of her life around black people could form such a crude thought, what do other whites, less educated, less exposed to a multicultural environment, think?

Thus we have the results of academia and multi-ethnic panel discussions. In many ways, the people speaking at these events are the biggest racists around. They focus on what divides and continue to infect the old wound. Like the child told to "vent his anger", their focus on themselves and what was wrong allows for little healing and progress.

True progress will be made when panel discussions are history and we realize people are different, but that doesn't make them bad or scary. Just different, but human, that's all.

Another brilliantly useless program

Some times I just wonder how much oxygen could be saved if the "inventors" of these sort of "inventions" would just stop breathing. Install an application that must constantly run, use CPU time, memory and bandwidth so the user can track how much CO2 you have saved.

How else would they know how good to feel about themselves.

CO2 Saver

# Save energy when your computer is idle - Reduce electricity usage;
# Reduce harmful CO2 and other emissions;
# Lower your electric and cooling bills;
# See how much you've saved!

Nevermind this function is already easily accessed through the control panel. The bottom line here appears to be another way to route users through the little used Snap.com search engine. Perhaps if they just turned off all their servers, plenty of electricity would be saved.

Everybody loves my water buffalo

Sorry, this little bit of trivia reminded me of the Veggie Tales song about Water Buffaloes.

...Mine is fast, your's is slow...

Guess having that song stuck in my head is better than the headache I got trying to follow the structure of this actual sentence.

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs.

I think I will have to see if my 6th grader can figure it out.