Is My Phylactery Showing?

I've been reading Orthodoxy since the beginning of Lent. I'll admit to being a bit lazy about my reading given the other things competing for my time right now (such as all that moving stuff I've been whining about for the past month).

Anyway, I've enjoyed Chesterton's reminiscence of his intellectual process from agnosticism to the Catholic Faith. I've mentioned previously that I find his style to be a tad circuitous. He tends to write around his subjects, which is pretty typical of 19th century British prose. Being paid by the column inch certainly had its impact on Dickens, so it's not surprising to see ripples in GKC's work. I prefer Waugh's directness, but GKC mental meanderings have their own pleasure.

A tragic accident this weekend took the lives of most of a local family this last weekend. You can read about the accident here.

Norberto Sanchez, the father of five children and the husband of the mother killed in the accident is now faced with a cost of bringing back the bodies of his family.

Most of the donation channels are local businesses, but if you would like to reach out and help this man in this difficult time, you can call Grace Arroyo at +1-208-890-3975.

So what does one do when he's taken too much time off of blogging and devolved in the TTLB ecosystem to try to regain some semblance of evolutionary complexity?*

He takes a quiz! Apparently I'm not as weird as tony at Catholic Pillowfight, who's ever so much weirder than Julie D. Being a Happy Catholic, Julie should be quite weird. But given that she's apparently as weird as I am, I guess I shouldn't be pointing fingers.

I'm coming clean. My Lenten journey has not been as dry as it should be. I've been holding to the prescribed fasts and abstinence (as well as my regular fast every Friday), and I've given up chocolate and alcohol (although I give myself a break on Sunday and have a couple of glasses of wine). Prayer life is doing okay. My Lenten readings haven't been as voluminous—still working my way through Chesterton's Orthodoxy. More on that later.

The move really sort of started me off on the wrong foot.

I always have to roll my eyes when I here about a church that tries so hard to separate early Christianity from the Catholic Church. American Papist notes a case in point from Kyle Potter's blog.

I have a lot of non-Catholic Christian friends, and I find that none of them exhibit some of the extreme anti-Catholic sentiment that I encounter on the Web. I did have one student way back when I was an agnostic who occasionally directed an anti-Catholic jab at me.

Not too surprising. I'm guessing that Spaten Optimator wasn't available on the quiz.

Yikes! It's been weeks since I've posted. The family is in our new home, along with the stepdaughters' menagerie (two dogs, two cats, three fire-belly toads, one tree frog, and a paralyzed beta, as well as one visiting rubber boa). The new house needs some work, but it's nice to be a homeowner again.

I mentioned a story that was floating around St. Blogs a few weeks ago about a local priest who wrote a reader's editorial in the local paper favoring gay marriage.

This is our last night in our rental. Tomorrow night, we'll be in our new home. Lot's o' work ahead. Naturally, the network goes up first.

See you on Monday. Or maybe tomorow night.

Dom Bettinelli posted an entry about one of our local priests who, I'm sad to say, wrote an editorial in the local paper supporting gay marriage.

This comes just on the heels of some incidents in mass yesterday that I simply can't ignore. So, what am I going to do about it?

I'm gonna write my ordinary,

gonna write him at the diocese.

It's a pious little letter

I’m hopin’ that he’s hearin’ my pleas.

Roll Over Mahoney, I’ve got a novena to pray.

Albert's son is awaiting surgery for congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation. Please pray for his family and Matthew in this difficult time.