GAH...

But I don't like universal health care, USCCB.

*sigh*

I Promise

I will blog about the New Orleans Tea Party Memorial Day Picnic as soon as I can. This whole 8:00 - 5:00 job thing needs to be integrated in my college-schedule-oriented mind.

I hate time management! 

Um...

DUH.

It's the Weekend!

Never have I appreciated weekends more...

Check out this hilarious blog. It's enjoyment.

On Abortion and Racism

My mother likes Tea Parties (yes, with capitals). She considers herself a Patriot launching the next American Revolution - and she is doing it with the help of the New Orleans Tea Party. I am sure you have heard of the Tea Party people before, so I won't go into details about Glenn Beck, 912 Project, the Constitution, or any of that stuff.

So this Memorial Day, my mother's Tea Party is organizing a patriotic picnic, complete was a tribute to the Vets at 2:00. Guess who gets their own little booth at the picnic? And guess what it's going to be about?

I am running the booth about Abortion, covering topics ranging from racism to 14th Amendment. I just finished putting together my pamphlet (of which I hope to have 300 copies of by Sunday) about Planned Parenthood's connections with racism.

You can view the document here, but I do think you need an Adobe account. I am working on uploading the file into Blogger, but I am really not a computer savvy person.

I should be finished with the Constitutional pamphlets by tomorrow and will also provide links for those.

Wish me luck, this is a lot of work (hence the lack of blog posts recently).

I Really Don't Like Barack Obama

There is really nothing more to this post.

He just really gets on my nerves.

Pictured: The President and I (but with more love)

Update: This also annoys me.

On Patience

Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Seven Virtues - Patience

There is no greater example of "do what I say, not what I do" than the relationship between patience and myself.

Let's just say we get along as well as I get along with my ex-boyfriend (which is not at all).

Recently, I have been straining myself to the very edge to keep from losing my patience at a new job I started at a law firm. Without going into too many details, my job consists of fielding phone calls for a class action lawsuit. When I first accepted the job, I was thinking to myself, "dude, I get to be Erin Brockovich - sans premarital sex and early 90s apparel." 

I soon learned why she was such a hero in the world of lawyers: class action lawsuits suck, not because its long and potentially worthless, but because when you deal with a lot of people in a lawsuit, a lot of them turn out to be difficult.

And by difficult I mean unable to understand the following on their own:

_____________________ (Print Name Here)

Oh, and it only gets better when some people yell at you - you, the person trying to win them $5,000 or more -  because you can't tell them when they moved to Dallas (information that has nothing to do with the lawsuit at hand). Those were my favorite phone calls.

Can you understand why the virtue of patience has become so relevant to my life now? It's more than just waiting in a very long line in the grocery store when the snowball stand closes at 6:00 and it's already 5:56. No, no. Patience has a lot to do with compassion - at least when it comes to practicing patience with people. In fact, I think patience is just compassion's pseudonym. Without being able to feel for another's situation or problem, it would be impossible to practice patience with them. Without empathy or compassion, in fact without charity, patience would be completely lost. Charity (love) is inherently tied with this virtue - which shouldn't be a shock to anyone that learned about Catholic theology through the phrase "God is Love" (aka all of my fellow post V-II peeps out there). 

And it takes a lot of grace to use those important virtues when answering phone calls for a law firm, let me just tell you that. 

I'm not one to push for the canonization for any lawyer, but that Erin Brockovich - she was a saint.

Who Is That Guy?

I couldn't tell it was supposed to be Jesus, could you?

Oh and yeah, it's real.

A Photographic Collection of Pope Benedict's Trip to the Holy Land (so far)

Because he is zee Pope!

Je veux un mantilla, s'il vous plait

L'orthodoxie! La beaute!

The Conspiracy Channel

I have a love/hate relationship with  the History Channel. 

Today, it was about 1hr 56min. of hate and 4 mins. of love because that's how it long it took them to say something nice about the Catholic Church in their special on Angels & Demons.

The hypothesis (if I may call it that) of the 2hr special states, "the Catholic Church and the scientific world are at war." Already I am less than a happy camper. My immediate reaction was,

"Where are they getting this? Has anyone from the History Channel actually studied history, specifically the story of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Medieval Synthesis? Anyone? Come on!!"

It being the History Channel, I was sure the answer was no -

 - at least for the first hour and fifty-six minutes of the program. 

Finally, a Catholic priest was given the chance to correct a few points and reference the work of one of my favorite saints, Saint Thomas Aquinas. The "Dumb Ox," as he was lovingly called by his classmates, articulated what came to be known as the Medieval Synthesis. Specifically, he stated that both faith and reason came as gifts from God and could not be contradictory. In fact, human reason is a form of revelation that comes from God. If one could not reconcile a principle of faith and a valid, logical conclusion, then one is simply not looking hard enough or one has not looked at the right question or angle. 

It is this concept that has become so utterly lost on modern society and a source of great pain for my former history professor, Father Borbridge S.J. Frankly, it's becoming one of my major pet peeves in addition to ridiculous juxtaposition:

That is a monstrance. That is the Hadron Collider.

Yeah...they went there. 

Happy Mother's Day

Honoring our Mother in Heaven

Since the beginning of the month of May, I have been going to the May Crownings of the various churches I attend - one in Alabama and one in Louisiana.

On May 3rd, to celebrate the close of CCD, the children from all the grades came together to honor Mary at my parish in Alabama.

St. Ignatius Parish

Mobile, Alabama

Unfortunately, it being CCD, few children showed up for the final class time and the ones that did forgot about the May Crowning. Some did come with their families and brought flowers from their gardens, which was very nice. I was disappointed that they didn't play my favorite Mary song, Bring Flowers of the Rarest, and opted for some weird "modern and charismatic" song. Ick. I never liked guitars.

Coming home from college and moving back into my New Orleans home, I was really glad that my home parish saved the Crowning for Mother's Day - which I thought was very appropriate. The cantor had laryngitis and so, once again, I was without my favorite hymn. *sigh*

But the altar was very nice.

St. Anthony Mission/St. Joseph Parish

Gretna, Louisiana

I think I enjoy the inside Crownings more, especially because they occurred within the context of a Mass.

Archbishop Burke is a Beast

Even FoxNews noticed it.

Oh, and the 57% a Catholics that support Barack Obama's work so far are making the rest of us look bad. That needs to be stopped.

A Small Apology

Things have been coming to a close at SHC. Studying  and packing and unpacking and organizing and reorganizing have eaten my days. I have a few events that I would like to write about, including:

Rock for Life

My Brother's Confirmation

Things I Learned my First Year at a Jesuit College

Speaking at a Constitution Rally

Setting up a Nice Shrine in my Bedroom

and possibly other things that I know I took pictures of and will post...

May Magnificat

May is Mary's Month, the school I teach at will be having May Crowning this Sunday, May 3rd. Here is a poem by a Jesuit who likes alliteration.

May Magnificat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

MAY is Mary’s month, and I

Muse at that and wonder why:

Her feasts follow reason,

Dated due to season—


Candlemas, Lady Day;

But the Lady Month, May,

Why fasten that upon her,

With a feasting in her honour?


Is it only its being brighter

Than the most are must delight her?

Is it opportunest

And flowers finds soonest?


Ask of her, the mighty mother:

Her reply puts this other

Question: What is Spring?—

Growth in every thing—


Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,

Grass and greenworld all together;

Star-eyed strawberry-breasted

Throstle above her nested


Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin

Forms and warms the life within;

And bird and blossom swell

In sod or sheath or shell.


All things rising, all things sizing

Mary sees, sympathising

With that world of good,

Nature’s motherhood.


Their magnifying of each its kind

With delight calls to mind

How she did in her stored

Magnify the Lord.


Well but there was more than this:

Spring’s universal bliss

Much, had much to say

To offering Mary May.


When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple

Bloom lights the orchard-apple

And thicket and thorp are merry

With silver-surfèd cherry


And azuring-over greybell makes

Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes

And magic cuckoocall

Caps, clears, and clinches all—


This ecstasy all through mothering earth

Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth

To remember and exultation

In God who was her salvation.