This Should Be an Interesting Meeting

Pope Benedict XVI, President Bush To Meet At White House

WASHINGTON, D.C. (USCCB)—Pope Benedict XVI will visit the White House, April 16, as part of his visit to Washington and New York.

This is the second visit of a pope to the White House. Pope John Paul II visited President and Mrs. Carter at the White House in October 1979 on the final leg of a six-city United States tour. Pope Benedict will visit President and Mrs. Bush on April 16, the pope's birthday and the first full day of his six-day visit to the United States.

The White House announced that the pope and president will continue discussions they began during President Bush's June 2007 visit to the Vatican, when they discussed their shared commitment to "the importance of faith and reason in reaching common goals." These goals, said the White House, include "advancing peace throughout the Middle East and other troubled regions, promoting inter-faith understanding, and strengthening human rights and freedom, especially religious liberty, around the world."

Pope Benedict XVI will be greeted by President and Mrs. Bush at the South Portico. The president and pope will deliver prepared remarks on the South Lawn and then enter the White House for a private meeting in the Oval Office.

In 1979, Pope John Paul II was greeted by President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter at the North Portico. The pope and president made a few brief "informal" remarks, then proceeded indoors to the Blue Room for a welcome reception held in the manner reserved for visiting heads of state. Following the reception, Pope John Paul and President Carter adjourned to the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room for private meetings.

Historical notes from President Carter indicate that he and the pope discussed international affairs, in particular, situations then underway in the Middle East, Philippines, South Korea, China, and Europe.

I'm sure the Holy Father and W. will have some good discussion about a number of topics of common interest. I'd really be interested in hearing if their discussion extends to personal spiritual matters. You never know -- Tony Blair recently converted to the Church. And, as you might know, W.'s sister-in-law is reportedly a devout Catholic. She's likely been availing herself of some pretty powerful intercessors on the president's behalf. In fact, I seem to recall -- why, yes, here it is -- a picture of Bush with then-Supreme Court nominee John Roberts that shows (though its hard to see here) an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the table between them.

You know, Ronald Reagan, though not a Catholic, was reportedly tight with JPII. I'll bet they were -- they were two giants of the 20th century and collaborated in bringing down one of the greatest evils of the century. I'm sure defeating Communism gave them ample opportunity to take each other's measure and form the basis for a relationship of mutual respect and friendship. I'm sure it was not often JPII encountered a man of similar stature to himself.

Reagan was also very fond of Mother Teresa. She visited Ron and Nancy after the assassination attempt on Reagan. According to Dinesh D'Souza's biography of Reagan, entitled "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader", the assassination attempt "infused Reagan with a sense of mortality and mission." ... The late Mother Teresa, who visited the White House that June, told Reagan, "you have suffered the passion of the cross and received grace. There is a purpose to this. Because of your suffering and pain you will now understand the suffering and pain of the world. This has happened to you at this time because your country and the world need you." Reagan was speechless. Nancy Reagan wept."

See What Love Can Do

Despite what movies, tv and just about every cultural information says, they don't have a clue what real love is. Meet some folks who do.

Couple, married 83 years, share their secret
Minnesota duo’s longevity earns them a place in ‘Guinness World Records’
By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 12:52 p.m. CT, Mon., March. 17, 2008

The year was 1925. Calvin Coolidge was president, Adolf Hitler released the first part of his book, “Mein Kampf,” Charlie Chaplin’s big movie was “The Gold Rush,” flappers were singing and dancing to “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “I’m Sitting on Top of the World,” the Scopes Trial played out in Tennessee, the first television images were broadcast, Al Capone ruled the streets of Chicago, flagpole sitters were all the rage, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were the newest recording artists, the price of a first-class stamp hit 2 cents.

And in Hugo, Minn., an 18-year-old man named Clarence Vail married his 16-year-old sweetheart, Mayme. They had met in the eighth grade, and marriages at such young ages were more the norm than the exception back then. Unremarkable at the time, that union, now 83 years old and still as strong as ever, has finally claimed a place among the historic events of the year.

NBC’s Kevin Tibbles reported for TODAY on Monday that Clarence and Mayme Vail are going into “Guinness World Records” for being married longer than any other living couple on earth.

They don’t have a magic formula to explain the success of their marriage. They just took seriously what they said to each other when they stood at the altar.

“You take your vows, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer,” Mayme said. “I guess you just stick to it, come what may.”

They say they haven’t had an argument since 1946, something that Mayme attributes to the fact that her husband, who is 101, is the strong, silent type who isn’t given to argument. “That’s why we got along so well,” joked the 99-year-old Mayme. “He never spoke out of turn. I didn’t give him a chance.”

The 1920s were in full roar when they were married and moved into their first home — a one-room house. They survived the Great Depression and World War II, raising six children along the way. But their biggest challenge came in 1948, when Clarence was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

‘Look to the future’
According to “The Catholic Spirit,” the newspaper of the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Mayme promised that if her husband survived, she would attend Mass every day for the rest of her life.

She kept it up for nearly 60 years, until the couple moved into a retirement home within the last year. Now, she’s down to two Masses a week, but she still says the rosary regularly — another daily ritual for nearly her entire life. She offered few secrets to long life and a long marriage, other than to say they never smoke or drank — both seemed a waste of money.

Their faith told them to stay faithful through thick and thin, and they did that. It also told them to be fruitful and multiply, and they did that, too.

Their six children — three have been married for 50 years or longer — begat 39 grandchildren, who begat 101 great-grandchildren, who have so far begotten 40 great-great-grandchildren. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 186 descendants.

One of those great-great-grandchildren, David, has been married for two years to Christine. He was asked if he was shooting for the record.

“Two down, 81 to go,” he said. “Yes, yes, absolutely we’re working on it. Look to the future — no matter how old you are.”

Clarence and Mayme are still doing just that. He’s slowed down considerably and spends much of his time napping, but Mayme, who looks a decade or more younger than her age, continues to make quilts as she has all her life. And she takes care of her husband.

Just as she vowed to do 83 years ago.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

Nice to Know There's Still Some
Sanity Left in the Midwest

Despite the best efforts of the uber-liberal Chicago Tribune, there's still some folks left in the Chicago area who not only haven't become environmental wackos, they've even managed to retain their sense of humor.

Here's some comments to the story gushing about preparing for Earth Hour from the Trib's website:

I'm gonna turn on all of my lights to celebrate earth day. I set all of my timers to go ON at 7:30 PM and then OFF at 9:30 PM. I don't usually run all yard, porch and flood lights at one time because everything running at once makes the wheel in the meter spin like a hopped up gyroscope. My house will probably been able to be seen from satellites as it will be one of the bright spots in northern Illinois.

What are we gonna celebrate next?

I'm already ready for July 4th with my red, white and blue Christmas light strings.
__________________________________________________________

for my end of the celebration, I'm going to turn on all of my lights. To boot, I'm going to make a further financial sacrifice and let my two cars run in the driveway all day. Then while that's happening, I'm going to burn the large pile of dead brush out in my back yard.
___________________________________________________________

Bet the gangbangers can't wait until Daley does this nonsense in Chicago. The unarmed citizenry will be sitting ducks and in the dark, they can't ID the bad guys.
___________________________________________________________

Should we all just give up on progress and live like freaking Quakers?
Life is good. We feel guilty for living longer than at any time in history.
____________________________________________________________

Move to North Korea. Satellite photos show an almost entirely dark country. They certainly have a progressive green leader!

Moonbattery Nails It

My favorite "new" blog is Moonbattery. I just love their wit and sarcasm in tweaking noxious liberals and bloviating PC types. Here's their take on this worthless, feel-good, Earth Hour idea:

Idiot Hour

It's not often that I advise people to visit Google, a company that uses its immense power to close off traffic to sites not conforming to its leftist ideology. But you really have to check out its home page today:

Don't you just love trying to read white type on a black screen?

The idea is that Google has "turned the lights out" for Earth Hour, an event that entails moonbats pretending they have attained their dream of dragging humanity back to the Dark Ages.

A still more precious dream to militant moonbats is total conformity. We are to turn our lights off from 8:00 to 9:00 this evening per our local time zones, not because anyone who doesn't live in a padded room thinks it will improve the weather, but to demonstrate our obeisance to envirokooks' antihuman ideology.

This is why all reasonable people are called upon to turn on every light in their house during Earth Hour. Any hardship this imposes upon the polar bears will be more than made up for by all the energy Google is saving with their sanctimonious black screen.

Actually, Google admits that the black screen saves no energy at all. But it does cause eye strain. So long as we suffer for Gaia, that's the important thing.

Moonbats turned the lights off on Syndey Harbor Bridge. The planet is safe now.

By the way, here's an indication of how I'll be showing my solidarity with Earth Hour tonight :-)

Global Warming -- The Perfect Storm of Political Correctness, Worthless "Feel Good" Gestures, and Liberal Nuttiness

Got this e-mail at work this week:

To All Corporate Personnel/Corp/xxxx@xxxx
Subject Lights out on March 29 at corporate offices

This Saturday, March 29, the parking lot lights at our corporate offices in xxxx will be turned off from 8 to 9 p.m. We're voluntarily doing this in conjunction with the city of Chicago, along with hundreds of other companies and millions of people for Earth Hour, a global movement to conserve energy. We’ll also turn off the exterior signs, including readerboards, at our Chicago city stores.

Isn't that nice. Let's waste untold hours of time and resources to participate in a meaningless gesture to show solidarity in the fight against the myth of global warming. In the meantime, let's try to ignore the fact that, even though it's the end of March, it 20 degrees and we've had several inches of snow this month!

After getting this e-mail, I couldn't resist. I forwarded it to our exec in charge of energy management with this comment:

From: Richard Ryan
Sent: 03/28/2008 09:18 AM CDT
To: xxxx xxxx
Subject: Fw: Lights out on March 29 at corporate offices

I can't help but wonder how much energy could really be saved if people would quit wasting time, effort and resources on worthless gestures like this.

Just a thought. ;-)

Regards,
Richard Ryan

Richard F. Ryan
Senior Attorney
Law Department

I don't think they'll be adding me to our corporate "Earth Hour" liason team any time soon. :-)

Check Out 'Fitna' at this Site
Oops, guess not.

Clicking on the link http://www.fitnathemovie.com/ produces this message of undaunted courage in the face of violent threats for exposing the lies about the "Religion of Peace":

	This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy. Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation. For more information about Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy visit the following URL: http://www.networksolutions.com/legal/aup.jsp Hosted by Network Solutions.

"Religion of Peace" Yeah, Sure, Right.

Anti-Islamic Film Taken Offline Following Threats

LiveLeak.com said it removed the film Fitna from its servers after serious threats to its employees.

By Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek
March 28, 2008
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000505

Fitna, an anti-Islamic film made by Dutch politician Geert Wilders that equates Islam with violence, debuted on Thursday at Web site LiveLeak.com, only to be taken down a day later following threats to LiveLeak's staff.

LiveLeak on Friday afternoon issued a statement explaining its decision: "Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill-informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, LiveLeak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.

"This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people, from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realized LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.

"Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one another's culture. We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high."

Initial efforts to detail the film proved less successful. Network Solutions on Saturday suspended the Web site where Wilders had been planning to premiere the film, citing complaints about the then unseen film's content.

During the day that the film was available, it prompted widespread condemnation. On Friday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decried Fitna as hate speech.

"I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders' offensively anti-Islamic film," said Ban in a statement. "There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here. I acknowledge the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film, and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it. Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility."

Ban said that the real fault line is not between Muslim and Western nations but a minority of extremists eager to stir strife.

The Organization of The Islamic Conference also denounced the film as blasphemy. OIC Secretary General Prof Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said, "The film is a deliberate act of discrimination against Muslims, incitement for hatred and an act defamation of religions which is solely intended to incite and provoke unrest and intolerance among people of different religious beliefs and to jeopardize world peace and stability."

In the day that Fitna played, it was viewed over 420,000 times. More than 280 comments were posted on LiveLeak.com. And many chose to reply through countervideos, which are still online.

The word "fitna" in Arabic means strife or conflict within a group.

The film may also generate a lawsuit. The BBC reports that Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, known for his cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban, plans to sue Wilders for using his cartoon in the film without permission.

Berkeley: Home of the Moonbats

He's Not Laughing

Oregon man's property ransacked after Craigslist hoax
10:29 AM PDT on Monday, March 24, 2008
Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, Ore. -- A pair of hoax ads on Craigslist cost an Oregon man much of what he owned.

The ads popped up Saturday afternoon, saying the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County sheriff's Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan.

But Robert Salisbury had no plans to leave. The independent contractor was at Emigrant Lake when he got a call from a woman who had stopped by his house to claim his horse.

On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.

"I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back," Salisbury said. "They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did."

The driver sped away after rebuking Salisbury. On his way home he spotted other cars filled with his belongings.

Once home he was greeted by close to 30 people rummaging through his barn and front porch.

The trespassers, armed with printouts of the ad, tried to brush him off. "They honestly thought that because it appeared on the Internet it was true," Salisbury said. "It boggles the mind."

Jacksonville police and Jackson County sheriff's deputies arrived but by then several cars packed with Salisbury's property had fled.

He turned some license plate numbers over to police.

Michelle Easley had seen the ad that claimed Salisbury's horse had been declared abandoned by the sheriff's department and was free to a good home.

"I can't stand to see a horse suffer so I drove out there and got her," Easley said. "The horse didn't look abandoned. She is in good shape for being 32 years old."

But it looked odd, so she left a note on Salisbury's door explaining the ad. She then decided to call to make sure the ad was legitimate when the second similar ad appeared.

"I feel bad because I was a part of it," Easley said. "It felt right to call the police."

Fagan praised Easley's honestly but said prosecution was likely for anybody caught with Salisbury's property.

Items can be returned with no questions asked, Fagan said.

Detectives have contacted Craigslist's legal team to try to trace the ad.

Meanwhile, Salisbury could not even relax on his porch swing.

Someone took it.

"The reality differs from the cartoon."

Liberals are already generating their spin and preparing their template in an attempt to paint Bush as responsible for our current economic woes by casting him as Herbert Hoover and Democrats as F.D.R. and the 'New Deal'. The problem with this scenario is the current effort is just as much of a lie as the previous one. F.D.R. was not our nation's Great Depression savior, to the contrary -- his 'New Deal' policies were significantly responsible for exacerbating and dragging out the effects of the Great Depression.

Historian Amity Shlaes has a great piece in the New York Sun today refuting the liberals revisionist histories.

Ghosts of 1929

BY AMITY SHLAES
March 21, 2008
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/73421

No question, Bear Stearns Cos. evokes the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it. Politicians are already making analogies to Herbert Hoover, the demon of that period, and Franklin Roosevelt, the angel.

On March 16, Senator Schumer of New York said on television: "We're in the most serious economic problem we've been in a very long time — much worse than 2001. The president's hands-off attitude is reminiscent of Herbert Hoover in 1929 and 1930."

Within 24 hours, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat of Illinois, was weighing in with his own 1930s comparison. Roosevelt had pulled a country out of Depression and united it; President Bush was doing the opposite, he said.

You get the picture: Mr. Bush is like Hoover, the do-nothing. Democrats are like Roosevelt, the activist.

It's worthwhile to go back to that Depression period to see what people actually did or didn't do and who resembles whom. The reality differs from the cartoon.

Come October 1929, and the first big drops in the Dow, President Hoover pleaded for market confidence. "We are undoubtedly in a plane of prosperity, and we wish to hang on to prosperity," he told the New York Times.

On March 14, Mr. Bush made a similar pitch before the Economic Club of New York: "We're a resilient economy, and I believe that the ingenuity and resolve of the American people is what helps us deal with these issues." So far, so Hoover-ish.

To help homeowners and homebuilders, Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corp. Together that agency and the states poured billions of dollars into helping troubled banks and farm mortgage associations. Here, too, Mr. Bush, with his FHA Secure and other mortgage projects, recalls Hoover.

Yet Hoover made other moves — he was more of an activist than the stereotypes about him allow — and they resemble Bush policies not at all.

Hoover was a mining engineer, and to him the most real wealth was wealth in the ground — copper, gold, coal.

He distrusted financial markets as ephemeral. When Wall Street crashed, he blamed the messenger. Specifically, he spent the early 1930s chastising short-sellers.

"Bear raids," he scolded, were "not contributing to the recovery of the United States." The president sought new restrictions on short-selling, pressuring officials from the New York Stock Exchange to the Chicago Board of Trade to curtail the practice. This meddling caused more uncertainty.

Who is doing such pressuring these days? Not Mr. Bush, but that Hoovermonger, Mr. Schumer. Mr. Schumer used the Bear Stearns collapse to call for "a greater degree of regulation" in the industry that is relevant this time, investment banking.

Hoover knew free trade was beneficial. But his party, the Grand Old Party, was the tariff party. So in spite of himself, he signed a big new tariff, the Smoot-Hawley act, triggering retaliation from U.S. trading partners.

For many decades now, Democrats have contrasted Hoover's concession to protectionists unfavorably with free-trade legislation written by Roosevelt and his globalization guru, Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

Today it is the Democrats who are doing wrong, and they know better. Candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both internationalists by temperament, yet they seem to be in a race to see who can repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement first.

Mr. Bush, by contrast, was channeling Hull when he called a plan to reject a new trade accord with Colombia "a terrible signal."

Finally, there was Hoover's tax policy. Today every fool, right or left, knows that imposing a tax increase in an economic downturn is like kicking a wounded man in the stomach.

Yet in the dark days of 1932, with unemployment at 20%, Hoover perversely signed an increase that reversed the multiple cuts by his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge.

Hoover more than doubled rates at the bottom of the tax schedule. He also increased the top marginal tax rate to 63% from 25%. The effect was predictable. That tax error has haunted economists ever since.

Yet today it is not Republicans but Democrats who are preparing to replicate it. Senator Obama has suggested a payroll tax increase and an income tax increase; together they would just about offset all the breaks created by President Bush. Senator Clinton is scarcely different. Who's Hoover now?

All the Hoover-izing has obscured a disturbing resemblance — that of Bush to Roosevelt on currency. FDR knew that the dollar needed reflating, but monetary policy wasn't his area, so he was at a loss for a method.

At one point, he even tried to turn himself into a one-man reflation machine, buying commodities — each morning at a different price — in the hopes of moving the greenback.

His uncertainty kept the market down in the fall of 1934. You don't hear Democrats these days racing to claim the currency component of the Roosevelt legacy.

Mr. Bush, too, is no dollar expert. He has bumbled his way to trouble on money. The one risible line in his presentation last week was "we believe in a strong dollar." You can't say that after all the drops in the currency that President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson have allowed.

So the 1930s have plenty to tell us, yes. But the real challenge isn't deciding who resembles Hoover. The challenge is for both parties to figure out how to avoid a whole era of mistakes.

Miss Shlaes, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a columnist for Bloomberg News.

What a Way to Go
(lifted from a cbs tv affiliate website)


Legendary dancer Isadora Duncan died on Sept. 14, 1927, in Nice, France. She was riding in an automobile when her long silk scarf became entangled in a wheel. She was dragged out of the car and onto the cobblestone street, and was strangled before the chauffeur could stop.









Playwright Tennessee Williams was using nose spray in his New York City hotel room in 1983, when the bottle cap accidentally fell into his mouth. He choked to death.











1977's "Complete Book of Running" is widely credited with starting the running craze that swept America, and with establishing author and runner Jim Fixx as one of the nation's foremost experts on fitness. He died of a heart attack in 1984 -- while running.









At an after-work party in 1993, Canadian attorney Garry Hoy was showing a group of visiting law students how unbreakable the windows were in the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower (center). He threw himself against one and it held. He did it again, and it gave way. Hoy plunged 24 stories to his death.








Environmentalist Timothy Treadwell loved grizzly bears so much that he lived with them in Alaska during 13 consecutive summers. In 2003, one of them killed and then partially consumed him, and also killed his girlfriend. Treadwell was the posthumous subject of the documentary film "Grizzy Man."








In 2005, a 28-year-old Korean, Lee Seung Seop, collapsed and died after playing the video game Starcraft for nearly 50 hours at an Internet cafe.

He Is Risen!

Easter Song

Hail, thou festive, ever venerable day! whereon hell is conquered and heaven is won by Christ.

Lo! our earth is in her spring, bearing thus her witness that, with her Lord, she has all her gifts restored.

For now the woods with their leaves and the meadows with their flowers, pay homage to Jesus' triumph over the gloomy tomb.

Light, firmament, fields and sea, give justly praise to the God that defeats the laws of death, and rises above the stars.

The crucified God now reigns over all things; and every creature to its Creator tells a prayer.

O Jesus! Saviour of the world! Loving Creator and Redeemer! Only ­begotten Son of God the Father!

Seeing the human race was sunk in misery deep, thou wast made Man, that thou mightest rescue man.

Nor wouldst thou be content to be born; but being born in the flesh, in the same wouldst thou suffer death.

Thou, the author of life and of all creation, wast buried in the tomb, treading the path of death, to give us salvation.

The gloomful bonds of hell were broken; the abyss shook with fear, as the light shone upon its brink.

The brightness of Christ put darkness to flight, and made to fall the thick veils of everlasting night.

But redeem thy promise, I beseech thee, merciful King! This is the third day; arise, my buried Jesus!

Tis not meet that thy Body lie in the lowly tomb, or that a sepulchral stone should keep imprisoned the ransom of the world.

Throw off thy shrouds, I pray thee! Leave thy winding sheet in the tomb. Thou art our all; and all else, without thee, is nothing.

Set free the spirits that are shackled in limbo's prison. Raise up all fallen things.

Show us once more thy face, that all ages may see the light! Bring back the day which fled when thou didst die.

But thou hast done all this O loving conqueror, by returning to our world: death lies defeated, and its rights are gone.

The greedy monster, whose huge throat had swallowed all mankind, is now thy prey, O God!

The savage beast now trembling vomits forth the victims he had made, and the lamb tears the sheep from the jaw of the wolf.

O King divine! lo! here a bright ray of thy triumph -- the souls made pure by the holy font.

The white-robed troop comes from the limpid waters; and the old iniquity is cleansed in the new stream.

The white garments symbolize unspotted souls, and the Shepherd rejoices in his snow-like flock.

Hail, thou festive, ever venerable day! whereon hell is conquered and heaven is won by Christ.

St. Venantius Fortunatus

This item digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org

Never Surrender, Never Forget

Not Aging Well

There's a band from the 80s/90s, Simply Red, who have some good tunes. Their front man is a fellow named Mick Hucknall. You might recognize him from that time period.

Now, I don't know anything about this fellow, but I can tell you that due to genetics or poor lifestyle choices, he's not aging gracefully. :-)

An Abundance of Graces

Have you noticed the seeming plethora of intensely devout, totally orthodox, new religious orders that seem to be springing up? I hope so. Here's a few. They are all deserving of our support -- both spiritual and material.

Institute of Christ the King
http://www.institute-christ-king.org/
I came across this order when I was looking for a Mass in Green Bay, WI. I was there on business and it was a Holy Day of Obligation. Including the drive to and from the church, I figured I'd be gone about an hour. The Mass alone was an hour and forty-five minutes! -- but it was awesome. My co-workers were a little put out but I didn't care.

Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter
http://www.fssp.com/main/index.htm
I was on vacation in Florida last month and we went to a Mass held by a priest of this order. We got mixed up on the time and got there an hour early -- just in time to catch the second half of the "Kumbaya" Mass that preceded it (at the same church no less). The contrast between the Kumbaya Mass and the Tridentine Mass was striking -- to say the least!

Miles Christi
http://www.mileschristi.org/
This relatively new order is dedicated to the "sanctification of the laity". One of the primary ways they do this is through Ignatian silent retreats. I've attended a couple and they are life-changing experiences. Don't go on one if you aren't interested in improving your spiritual life!

Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek
http://www.clearcreekmonks.org/
These monks haven't exactly started a new order -- they are Benedictines who go back a ways. :-) However, these Benedictines are affiliated with the great monastery, Fontgombault, in France. They've established a new monastery in rural Oklahoma and an awesome Catholic community is sprouting up around them. Well worth a visit if you happen to be in the Tulsa area.

Canons Regular of St. John Cantius
http://www.canons-regular.org/
Dedicated to the "restortation of the sacred", the Canons are based here in Chicago and are doing a great job reversing some of the insanity that has gone on in the Church -- especially here in Chicago -- over the last couple of decades. Their focus is on beautiful and reverent liturgies. Based on the Masses I've been to, they are batting .1000. :-) (Full disclosure: At the request of Cardinal George, the Cantians have "taken over" my parish. What a blessing!!)

Poor Clare Nuns of Perpetual Adoration
http://www.olamshrine.com/
I'm not choosing favorites, but I would be hard pressed to disagree with anyone who said that I saved the 'best' for last. If you are anywhere near northern Alabama, you have got to go to Hanceville and check out the shrine that fronts the convent Mother Angelica built here. We stopped here on the way back from Florida last month and this place Blew. Me. Away. Moreover, the Poor Clares are bursting at the seams. The lady in the bookstore at the shrine told us that they turn away 200-300 girls each year because they can't accommodate them all! And the shrine itself -- difficult to put into words, it can only be experienced. It's like making a wrong turn and suddenly finding yourself in Assisi. Check this place out if at all possible.

Overlawyered

There's a great blog about lawyers and our legal system called 'Overlawyered'. Here is a recent choice item culled from their site.

Danbury student suing after being awakened by teacher

Posted Mar. 13, 2008
5:41 AM

Danbury (AP) _ Danbury officials have been notified they are being sued by a student who was awakened in class by a teacher who made a loud noise.

Documents filed with the Town Clerk, a prelude to a lawsuit, claim that a sleeping student suffered hearing damage when his teacher woke him up by slamming her hand down on the boy's desk. in December.

Attorney Alan Barry says 15-year-old Vinicios Robacher suffered pain and "very severe injuries to his left eardrum" when teacher Melissa Nadeau abruptly slammed the palm of her hand on his desk on Dec. 4.

A city official says the matter has been referred to Danbury's insurance carrier.

Didja Hear About ...

... the new Algore presentation on global warming?

Don't worry. These folks say you didn't miss much.

Think You've Got Issues?

This lady seriously needs some professional help.

Cabin Fever

Memo to Algore -- can we have some more global warming?

I am thoroughly sick of winter -- and I think everyone else around here feels the same. Even snowmen are losing it -- this one couldn't take it any more and ended it all. What a tragedy.