Why Jesus Had So Many Women Followers

The Shroud of Turin is scheduled to be on public display between April and May of 2010, according to the Catholic News Service. 

It reminds me of the day in my junior year religion class when we discussed the Shroud of Turin. Thinking it was a pretty big deal already, when my religion teacher showed me the image of the inverted 3D Christ taken from the Shroud, I pretty much lost my mind. 

Jesus was kind of a hunk

Hopefully, I will be able to see the actual Shroud. I really really want to do that.

Even Richard Brautigan Gets It...

The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

When you take your pill
it’s like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.

OMG Does This Really Exist!?!?

 "The Truth" by Painter Michael D'Antuono

which will be unveiled on President Obama's 100th Day in Office at NYC's Union Square.

The Liberals are done with being subtle.

UPDATE: Apparently someone knocked some sense into this guy

Why I Need to Stop Reading the News

Scary Things in Red

Nice Things in Blue

There is too much red :/

SAINTS on Sunday

The Five New Saints hanging on the Basilica

Today, Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints!

Rev. Arcangelo Tadini

Nuno Alvares Pereira

Bernardo Tolomei

Gertrude Comensoli

Caterina Volpicelli

It's the Weekend!

A Catholic boy and a Jewish boy were talking and the Catholic boy said, "My priest knows more than your rabbi." The Jewish boy said, "Of course he does, you tell him everything." 

Adoption After Abortion

This man is a nice man.

A Troubling Sign of the Times

If the Chinese Death Bus scared you, then this will scare you even more.

Ever heard of Home Euthanisia Test Kits?

If not, I won't blame you because they were just introduced last May.

If you have, you must have read about it in one of America's leading news magazines, TIME, and you must have been deeply disturbed.

TIME magazine is promoting (promoting!) these home kits that test the deadliness of a specific overdose you would like to inflict upon yourself. And of course, this isn't just being sold to the crippled elderly who have been tormented by horrendous diseases for decades (the people euthanasia sympathists like to point to when trying to convince the masses of their agenda), but these kits are being targetted to troubled youth and the depressed.

Having suffered from depression for about a year now, I have to say that these kits outright offend me. The last thing a depressed teenager needs to here is how disposable their lives are and how easy it is to dispose of it! Are the days of suicide prevention really gone? How can anyone advocate that youth suicide is a positive, a right that should be protected by the government and encouraged through commercially availible death kits? Did Kurt Cobain's death mean nothing to these people?

The only words I have left about this whole euthanasia business (it really is becoming a business) are as follows:

terrifying
scary
disgusting
horrendous
degrading
mean
weird
disrespectful
horrible
sketchy
demoralizing
crazy
sadistic
...
...
...

ooo Bible

Visualizing the Bible

The Gospel of the Poor

Today my college put on an event known as COOL Day - Celebration of Our Learning Day. Instead of taking it as a beach day, like so many others did when classes were cancelled, I decided to attend one of the presentations. There was only one theology one offered, so naturally that's the one I went to.

It was given by a senior theology/philosophy major and centered on the message of Luke's Gospel, particularly Luke 15.

It was only a few weeks ago that I gave a lecture to my 5th graders about the three parables in Luke 15, so I was really interested in what a senior at my college had to say. I took lots of notes.

Seriously.

I basically re-outlined his presentation for him.

After introducing us to the author, a Gentile Christian preaching mostly to the wealthy, the student introduced his thesis on Luke's Gospel. To paraphrase, God is the Seeker and Savior of the lost and marginalized.

Ah, can you tell I go to a Jesuit school?

But I loved it, of course.

This presentation led to me to a key structure present in each parable which led to a higher theological truth when looking at the big picture. Consider the first parable, the parable of the Lost Sheep. The structure follows as such:

1. Jesus insulting the Scribes and Pharisees. (compares them to lowly shepherds)

2. Jesus saving one sheep out of ninety-nine.

3. Point: God seeks the one others find insignificant.

The same structure is present in the parable of the Lost Coin, only this time the one that is lost becomes intensified.

1. Jesus insulting the Scribes and Pharisees. (compares God to a woman)

2. God saving the one lost coin out of ten.

3. Point: God seeks the one others find insignificant and that one is the most important to God.

Finally, this all comes together in the well-known parable of the Prodigal Son.

1. Jesus insulting the Scribes and Pharisees. (A Jewish son disrespects his father like that??)

2. God forgiving BOTH sons that were lost.

3. Point: Our relationship with God is not that of Master and Servant, but that of Father and Child.

From all these parables, the speaker concluded, God is telling us that he does have preferential treatment for the lost and the lowly - namely the sinners, tax collectors, lepers, and the poor. He specifically states that God is overjoyed when one sinner comes back to Him, such as he is not when ninety-nine righteous men do. This is not to say that God does not love the rich and the powerful, but that God reserves special treatment for those without earthly wealth and power.

I thought it was a wonderful presentation - and it wasn't too far away from what I had taught my 5th graders!

I Didn't Feel Like Waiting for Friday

...and I'm sick and wanted a pick-me-up.

A Joke (on a Tuesday!?!):

A Franciscan, a Benedictine, and a Dominican were discussing which Order God loved best. The debate was becoming very, very heated. They each had extremely valid points in their favor, and they decided that there was only one way that they could ever get a definitive answer. They would write a letter to God, and let Him decide which Order was the one He preferred above all others in the world.

A few days after they sent their letter they received a reply on beautiful vellum stationary. It was written in the most majestic script any of them had ever beheld and this is what it read:

My Dear Children,

You are all cherished members of my household, and I love each and every one of you equally. Please stop your petty bickering and get back to the good work that you should be
doing.

Your All Forgiving Father

God SJ

I stole this from The Ironic Catholic

I have a sore throat

I should have made St. Blaise my Saint of the week. :[

I only just bought his medal last week, for goodness sakes.

I'm going to have to have some words with him about his intercession power.

While he is working on that, I'm going to keep taking the magic pills my doctor gave me that act like little St. Blaises every 4-6 hours.

Thank goodness my college is "Celebrating Our Learning" tomorrow by canceling classes. Unfortunately, we are all celebrating our learning by sitting through 80 forums about global warming.

Don't worry, though, they didn't forget to include ONE presentation concerning Theology. Of course it's all about socialism in the Gospel of Luke, but what else can we expect from an American Catholic college these days? 

Saint on Sunday

Saint Mark the Evangelist

Today I Am Obsessed With...

... http://www.catholiceducation.org/

As a teacher of the Catechism, I love any extraordinary information that helps me under the CCC more fully. This website is a shining example of that. 

I really enjoyed reading their article, 12 Claims Every Catholic Should be Able to Answer, mostly because I am in (a Jesuit) college and these claims come up in one form or another every single day. Especially because of the election earlier this year, it was very common for me to run into pro-choice "Catholics" and even some pro-life Catholics who were compelled to vote for Obama because of his false promises of "abortion reduction." I cannot count how many times I was the lone Catholic defending the teachings of the Church, not because I was the only one that believed in them, but because I was the only one able to explain them. 

I would love for more Catholics to understand their faith and be able to defend it. Maybe if there were more of us, less Catholics would fall into sin and heresy because of the "culture of moral  relativity" we live in.

It's the Weekend!

{Catholic Cartoon Blog}

A nice little cartoon about the horrific Georgetown scandal.

Also - a little bit of pro-life hope for the weekend from Oklahoma and Indiana. Hopefully, more bills like this will pass before Obama completely destroys it.

UPDATE:

Georgetown students are just as angry as we are.

“President Obama didn't want any symbols to appear in the photo that might suggest that there's any higher authority than him.”