GOIN' TO THE CHAPEL

I'm leaving today to travel to north-central Nebraska for my wife's littlest brother's wedding. He and Nicole are finally tying the knot. Both are the babies of the family (he the youngest of six, she the youngest of 10) and it will be a big affair I'm sure.

I had a lot I wanted to get posted before leaving but the week has been busier than expected. See y'all when I get back late Sunday.

Peace.

BUT I WANTED TO BE FALSTAFF

Take the Shakespeare Character Test

Romeo
You scored 0 evilness, 54 romance, 36 tragic, and 36 comic!

The classic romantic, Romeo is in love with being in love, and switches quickly from Roseline to Juliet. Romeo is comic in the beginning, but turns tragic when this starcrossed lover takes his life for love.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 0% on evilness
You scored higher than 86% on romance
You scored higher than 20% on tragic
You scored higher than 13% on comic

THE EMBER DAYS OF SEPTEMBER

From CatholicCulture.org:

Since man is both a spiritual and physical being, the Church provides for the needs of man in his everyday life. The Church's liturgy and feasts in many areas reflect the four seasons of the year (spring, summer, fall and winter). The months of August, September, October and November are part of the harvest season, and as Christians we recall God's constant protection over his people and give thanksgiving for the year's harvest.

The September Ember Days were particularly focused on the end of the harvest season and thanksgiving to God for the season. Ember Days were three days (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) set aside by the Church for prayer, fasting and almsgiving at the beginning of each of the four seasons of the year. The ember days fell after December 13, the feast of St. Lucy (winter), after the First Sunday of Lent (spring), after Pentecost Sunday (summer), and after September 14 , the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (fall). These weeks are known as the quattor tempora, the "four seasons."

Since the late 5th century, the Ember Days were also the preferred dates for ordination of priests. So during these times the Church had a threefold focus: (1) sanctifying each new season by turning to God through prayer, fasting and almsgiving; (2) giving thanks to God for the various harvests of each season; and (3) praying for the newly ordained and for future vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

Since the reorganization of the Roman calendar in 1969 after the Second Vatican Council, Ember Days are still retained in principle, but how and when they are to be observed is at the discretion of each country's Episcopal Conference. There is no longer set Mass readings for the Ember Days.

Another harvest feast is September 29, the Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. Before the revision of the calendar, this used to be only the feast of St. Michael. In many countries this day was referred to as "Michaelmas" and is celebrated with traditional foods and customs.

CH-CH-CHANGES

I've been meaning to post this link from USA Today that ran about a week ago that shows an interactive map with the demographic shifts occuring within the US Catholic Church. Interesting to look at.

6 DAYS IN NEW ORLEANS

As captured by a man who was there with his camera. Amazing, and also shows the distortions that the media portrayed easily by documenting a bigger picture that they chose to ignore.

To view, go here.

[H/T The Anchoress]

MOVE ON, ALREADY

Byron York writes of an attempted Move On rally in front of the White House on Thursday. Around 200 people showed up and it didn't go quite as well as they'd hoped. But in particular the courage shown by one particular woman struck me. No matter what side of the aisle you are on, in a situation such as this to have the inner peace and ability to stare down the face of such hatred and simply continue what you think is right is a rare quality today. I'd love to shake her hand. And, if the roles had been reversed and she was at a pro-Bush rally and was the dissenting voice with such calm and peace, I'd still want to shake her hand. Would that more of us were able to handle ourselves in this manner and turn off the vitriol that masks itself as debate these days.

After their brief remarks, it was time for the crowd to picket the White House. About 200 in all, they gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue and began shouting "SHAME ON BUSH! SHAME ON BUSH! SHAME ON BUSH!"

All except one. At the back of the crowd, there was a woman who didn't have one of the big pre-printed MoveOn signs. Instead, she had a simple 8 1/2 x 11 piece of white paper on which she had written "SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT." She chanted the words by herself as the crowd yelled "SHAME ON BUSH!" As she did, one of the MoveOn protesters, a woman, approached her.

"Why are you doing this?" the woman asked.

"Support our president," the Bush supporter said.

"Why are you doing this?" the woman asked again, raising her voice.

"Support our president," the Bush supporter said, refusing to respond.

"Can we talk about it?" the MoveOn woman asked. "Can you tell me why you have that sign up?"

"Support our president," the Bush supporter said.

"I'll tell you why I'm here," the MoveOn woman said. Then she suddenly began to scream at the top of her lungs. "BABIES DIED OF DEHYDRATION IN MY COUNTRY! BABIES!"

"Support our president," the Bush woman said.

"Supporting the president is great, but supporting the people and the Constitution is more important!" the MoveOn woman said. "THE CONSTITUTION AND THE BABIES ARE DYING! IT'S MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY PRESIDENT, AND YOU KNOW THAT IN YOUR HEART!"

"Support our president," the Bush woman said. And then she turned away and added, "I have a right to say what I think."

Indeed you are, dear lady.

WHICH SAINT ARE YOU?

You are Joan of Arc!

You don't really want to hurt anyone, but if they attack your friends or your country and no-one else will stand up to fight them, you head into the battle. Beware though, conviction tends to get you killed.

738 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 2389 times.
31% of people had this result.

Take the quiz yourself.

WHAT WAS EXPOSED BY KATRINA

Robert Tracinski writes of what lies beneath:

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them—this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

The welfare state—and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages—is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

LESSONS LEARNED

From Varifrank: 10 Things I Learned From Hurricane Katrina.

Would that all of us could learn such lessons.

CALL NO MAN FATHER

Is the biblical passage (Matthew 23:9) always bandied about by Protestants when they want to stick it in a Catholic's ear. But not so fast my friend, as Lee Corso says. Protestants have a history of doing the same thing. Karl Keating introduces some research done by David L. Holmes, who teaches in the religious studies department at the College of William & Mary.

Holmes was prompted to write by the then-new intrusion of female priests into the Episcopal Church. How should such women be titled? For many years the male clergy in the high-church wing of that denomination commonly had used the title "Father." Holmes quotes writers who argued that the appropriate title for newly-ordained female priests should be "Mother," to keep the usage in parallel.

He backs up this suggestion by noting that until the nineteenth century it was common for Protestant clergy, whether male or female, to use titles that nowadays are pretty much restricted to Catholics. We use "Father" when referring to priests and "Mother" when referring to heads of women's religious orders. It turns out that Protestants used to do much the same.

Holmes noted that in the early years of our country, "Father" was a term of respect given to older men, including clergy. "Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, and German Reformed commonly addressed older ministers as 'Father' well into the nineteenth century."

The title also was given to younger ministers who "served as spiritual fathers." "Herman Melville, for example, based his character Father Mapple--the whaleman-chaplain in 'Moby Dick'--on Father Edward Thompson Taylor, the Methodist pastor of Boston's Seamen's Bethel."

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was known not only as "Mr. Wesley" but also as "Father Wesley," and "the Shakers called their matriarch 'Mother' and their male leaders 'Father.'"

Mary Baker Eddy, the foundress of the Christian Science Church, was known as "Mother Eddy." Likewise for the foundress of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Ellen Gould White, who was called "Mother White."

Read Keating's e-letter and Holmes's research.

KATRINA, KARL ROVE, OPUS DEI & JOHN ROBERTS

They're all in on it. Isn't it obvious?

MaxedOutMama shines a light on the tin-foil hat brigade and their darkest fears coming true.

THE HISTORIAN

Two months ago I had purchased first-time novelist Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian but wanted to get through at least the first three Narnia books before I turned to reading it. After finishing The Horse and His Boy and before starting Prince Caspian I thought the time was right. And was it ever.

I've read the first 100+ pages and so far this is a wonderful book. The best I can do is paste the Amazon.com review in this email, and let you all decided for yourselves. I picked it up at Wal-Mart, but Barnes & Noble had many copies of it as well. It's long at 656 pages, which means more delight as far as I'm concerned. From Amazon.com:

If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor" and reads thusly:

Trinity College, Oxford

My dear and unfortunate successor:

It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself—because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands. But my regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend, because only by someone who needs such vile information will this letter someday be read. If you are not my successor in some other sense, you will soon be my heir—and I feel sorrow at bequeathing to another human being my own, perhaps unbelievable, experience of evil. Why I myself inherited it I don’t know, but I hope to discover that fact, eventually—perhaps in the course of writing to you or perhaps in the course of further events.

When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.

As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.

Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words.

"For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth."

I read those words within the first night in fact, and was reminded of why I love history so much and grieve when it is distorted by revisionists with some sort of inane political (or otherwise) agenda. History, no matter how we sugarcoat it or make attempts to alter it, is real. It is in fact one "science" that IS real…more than most. Because it did happen, the beautiful…the sublime…but also the horrible. The horrors of history are what keep me awake and are scarier to all of us than anything conjured by Stephen King or by Hollywood. Because more than any other thing on earth, history is something we cannot escape. It is in our collective mirror whether we choose to gaze upon it or not.

HAS ANYONE SEEN...

... An American Housewife lately? She's been offline for two weeks now and I miss her posts.

ITS PLACE KNOWS IT NO MORE

And finally tonight, one more on the topic of Katrina and Psalm 103. Especially poignant I think. From the Rev. Raymond de Souza. Please read the whole article, as it touches on so many things that are important and vital for us to consider in the wake of what we have witnessed this past 10 days.

Of Katrina it has been said that her destruction was of biblical proportions. Since the devastation hit a week ago, it is a biblical verse that has seemed to put some proportion around what happened on the Gulf Coast — perhaps it was used at this past Sunday's services. Psalm 103: As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.

The psalms are the prayer book of the Jewish people, giving poetic expression to the various conquests and calamities that have marked their chosen-ness in history. And it is that line about the sheer fragility of man and all his works that so suits this past week — for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.

Indeed, the wind passed over New Orleans, and Biloxi, and Gulfport, and its place knows it no more. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour put it pithily on the first morning after: "[The buildings] are not severely damaged; they're simply not there."

How fragile and transitory it all is. The wind blows and the place no longer even remembers what was there. It is simply, utterly, totally, gone.

De Souza then goes on to point out that while the monuments we build to ourselves and to our greatness are not supposed to be the things that endure. They are not the important items that we are to leave to subsequent generations that come after us. I have learned the same principle in my research of my family history. I've reflected upon it many a sunny, windswept day while standing in yet another prairie cemetery overlooking the simple markers of the lives that came before me.

The desire to leave a mark — if only a tombstone — is natural enough, so that the place remembers those who passed there. Over centuries, the place knows no more those who passed by, and thoughtful souls have always regarded the long march of time as the ultimate undoing of all human ambition.

The wind that blows over centuries is barely perceptible. The wind of the hurricane does its devastating work overnight, and in the morning the reality pondered by philosophers becomes the wreckage of the lives of the ordinary man in the street. Except there is no longer any street. The place knows it no more.

The most important things man builds are not buildings, or boats, or even houses and causeways and levees. There is another labour, in which the architects are the theologians and scholars, the seekers and dreamers, the poets and composers, and the builders are the parents and teachers and coaches and clergy. It is the work of the heart, the education of souls, the construction of character. [emphasis mine]

It is that labour which is supposed to endure. When the winds blow, the house built on the solid rock of virtue is not swept away like the house built on the shifting sands of selfishness.

Yet that labour too took a beating in the days after Katrina. The stories of looting, beatings and gunplay were literally demoralizing, even as the physical destruction was devastating. Were the hurricane winds sufficient to blow away basic decency and civility? Were the simple tenets of morality among the things that the place knows no more?

That buildings are fragile in the face of the storm is not a surprise. But is our civilization so fragile as to put women at risk of being raped amid the fetid squalor of the shelters? What lurks in the heart of a man who would rape a hungry, desperate woman in her hour of need? Does our culture produce men of such little virtue that the winds of destruction flatten also the most basic rules of morality? Perhaps, in the tumult and turmoil, one might understand, if not excuse, the looters who took the televisions and furniture. But the rapists? In due course, perhaps New Orleans will be rebuilt. But what kind of rebuilding project can restore the heart of a man who took the hurricane as an opportunity to let loose depravity and violence?

Over the weekend the too-fragile levees that protect New Orleans were already being repaired. Years from now, we shall likely forget how fragile indeed are the things that man builds. But we shall be haunted for some time by the other news from the whirlwind, that more fragile still was our culture, our civilization, our common humanity.

We are not meant to be simply the stones we leave behind in some windswept field. We are more than that...more than the base depravity that we witnessed in New Orleans last week. We cannot forget that. For if we do, we are doomed to be nothing more than a weathered marble rock...forgotten under the skies.

THE LITANY OF BLOG HUMILITY

From the Curt Jester comes the following reminder to me that I blog moreso for my own conversation with myself than for popularity or being recognized.

The Litany of Blog Humility

From the desire of my blog being read
Deliver me dear Jesus
From the desire of my blog being praised
Deliver me dear Jesus
From the fear of my blog being despised
Deliver me dear Jesus
From the fear of my blog being forgotten
Deliver me dear Jesus
From the fear of no page views
Deliver me dear Jesus
That other blogs may be loved more than mine
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it
That Nihil Obstat may find all my grammatical and spelling errors
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it
That Google may never list my blog
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it
That comments always be negative and abusive
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it
That my commenting system always say "commenting temporarily unavailable"
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it
That Mark Shea may notice every blog but mine
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it
That others may be pithier than I, provided that I may become as pithy as I should
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it

AMERICANS & SUBMISSION

Sometimes my best writing is done spur-of-the-moment. Sometimes not. But in this instance I think I was on to something, and perhaps should take the time to expand upon it. This was a reply to a very good Catholic friend of mine from Michigan. We were discussing Dan Brown and The DaVinci Code. She wrote the line in boldface, and my reply follows:

Being a Catholic is hard - being a good one anyway, lots of rules, lots of morals, etc.

Bingo! That is EXACTLY why the Catholic Church is under constant relentless attack by so many people. To have to submit ourselves to rules or guidelines of any sort is offensive to so many...and I think this especially true forAmericans. We have taken the rights and freedoms won in 1781 to dizzying heights. Submission has become an un-American concept. By rejecting submission, we end up with:

• Higher and easier divorce rates (no submission to spouse, oaths, etc.)
• Higher abortion rates (no submission to parenthood or personhood of the new life)
• Low church attendance (no submission worship or adoration of God)
• High crime/murder rates (no submission to Ten Commandments)
• Corruption, unethical business practices, exploitation of cheap labor, cheating...even cheating in sports...it all stems from this.
  

And who is the largest group with a moral voice who champions submission to God and His laws? Catholics. Precisely why that moral voice was damaged and attacked so viciously when the priest scandals broke. The fact that liberal Catholics opening the door to feminists and homosexuals in seminaries which led to these scandals doesn't matter to anti-Catholics. That would be self-defeating. No...attack the result...not the cause. Which they did in spades.

It's easier to see "gray" area everywhere and not live our lives by black and white definitions. It's hilarious to me how we are ridiculed as easily-lead simple-minded sheep because we don't see all the "nuances" involved in things, yet our way of life is rejected because it IS in fact "too hard to live up to."

Kind of a disconnect there somewhere, isn't there?

Sometimes I think on my feet pretty good. Other times? Not so much. Am I perfect and able to adhere to this all of the time? Flatly and plainly "No." But isn't it better to have a standard in life that we are aspiring to?

WORDS STILL MEAN THINGS

Allow me to quote one of my new favorite authors, the late Flannery O'Connor.

"One of the effects of modern Liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feelings instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention."

I have written before about one of my pet peeves, that being people saying that they are "more spiritual than religious." Indeed, we discussed it at our prayer group last night. The best I can come up with is that these people are looking for something...in fact KNOW something bigger than themselves is out there, but simply cannot bring themselves to submit to any sort of religion (which comes from the Latin word religare, "to bind," and refers to the bond between man and God, by the way), or have it known by their social circles that they have. Pride, especially the American version of Pride, is a nasty ugly thing.

The Aug. 29 - Sept. 5, 2005 issue of Newsweek has a number of articles on spirituality and religions, including the cover article, "In Search of the Spiritual." The bottom line, once you cut through all of the anecdotes and admiring talk of how "diverse" Americans are when it comes to believing (and believing nearly anything), is the insistence that "spirituality" is more popular than "religion."

Ignatius Insight sums it up thusly:

There is much that can said about what this means, but I'll keep it short. First, the terms "religious" and "spiritual" have been so corrupted, sullied, and otherwise distorted that they've lost nearly all of their traditional meaning. In post-modern lingo, such as Newsweek seems to be using, the two words can be defined roughly as follows:

• religion, religious: organized worship of a mean, male God who makes unrealistic moral demands, hates women, and hopes to send 99% of the world to hell. Created by old, white men in order to dominate women, oppress Third World countries, and make Republicans rich.

• spiritual, spirituality: refers to openminded, loving people who seek direct and intimate contact with the Divine (She, He, It, Whatever) without being weighed down by dogma, ritual, leaders, structure, commandments, rules, beliefs, or rigid Western notions of reality, truth, logic, or religion.

THE BLAME GAME, ETC.

Time is short tonight, but there are a few items regarding Katrina and it's aftermath that I wanted to be sure and get posted here for you.

Hootsbuddy has an insightful post on the blame game being waged by those on both sides of the fence, and calls for a halt to it all.

Meanwhile, this CNN poll shows that the public isn't blaming the whipping boy of the left, President Bush. Did he respond too slow? Yes. Did he purposely kill people by causing the hurricane and then not responding with superhuman powers? Ummm....get real.

For those still wanting to place blame somewhere (ANYWHERE) Lone Prairie writes that there isn't always a reason for why these things happen. Along the way she also points out the extreme lengths people with an agenda will go to in order to score political points:

It is because America is so uncivilized that the civilians have formed numerous websites to offer their homes to refugees. It is because America is so uncivilized that a record amount of money - surpassing even the tsunami donations - was raised in just under a week. It is because America is so uncivilized and lawless that the rest of this massively huge country continues to function and go about their business with heavy hearts and open wallets. Talk about your neanderthal societies. Are the looters, the catastrophe, and disaster in one city a mirror for all Americans, then?

No. Perhaps a slight revelation into true fallen human nature, but not something unique to Americans. Unfortunately, these events have become an excuse for tall poppy syndrome from anyone who needs an excuse to hate America, hate an opposing political party, or are in need of ammunition for the next election, golf junket or their own 15 minutes of personal gain. Unbiased concepts are eschewed in favor of cherry picking facts to support the blame game. After all, the blame game is needed to fill the columns in the newspapers, fill the blogs, and fill the air time on TV and radio.

Indeed. Already over $500 million has been donated or pledged domestically. Americans are once again opening their homes, their hearts, and their wallets. Thank you. Those of you criticizing us from overseas should take a look in the mirror. And then keep your silliness to yourself. We don't have time for your inane blathering...we've got work to do.

Lost in all the blame are wonderful stories of heroism and the overcoming of odds. Witness this account from yesterday where seven children, the oldest of whom was SIX(!), made their way to safety and were eventually reunited with their families. Bring a kleenex...it's ok. And continue praying for those not yet found or reunited.

THE YOUNG AND THE ORTHODOX

I love articles like this one from Newsweek in which the media "discovers" young orthodox people. I'm sure it flummoxes them to no end, but living where I see this every day I know that this is real. Young people ARE looking for more than cafeteria Catholicism.

For decades, America's 67 million Roman Catholics have had a reputation as a wayward flock. While evangelical Protestants built megachurches and rose in membership, Catholics migrated toward a less dogmatic form of faith. Some of the transformation has been formal, such as the 1965 Vatican II reforms that ended Latin mass. But much has been informal, as "cafeteria Catholics" have played pick-and-choose, rejecting some church rituals (such as confession) or teachings (on subjects like birth control). But now, as the generation raised under the more orthodox Pope John Paul II comes of age, some young Catholics are searching for a more rigorous form of faith. They're reviving old rituals and hewing to strict doctrine. Franciscan University, with 2,300 students in the old steel town of Steubenville, Ohio, is a haven for these faithful. This is one of the few colleges in America where a "Hail Mary" isn't just a last-minute football play.

ENOUGH ALREADY

It took less than 24 hours for partisan hacks to lay the blame for Katrina, its cause and effect, at the feet of President George W. Bush. Perhaps nothing that has happened out of all of this has been as disheartening as the way we as a nation cannot wait to skewer our own while a tragedy is still unfolding before our eyes. I don't care if it was President Clinton, Carter, Reagan, whomever; to blame one man because he happens to be the President-who-does-not-belong-to-my-political-party is assenine, juvenile, and displays us at our worst: placing blame and pointing fingers while people are dying in order to score political points.

Anyhow, Ben Stein summed up the deity-obsessed that is the secular left in this country nicely in this article which asks the finger-pointers to get off the president's back. For a group of people that want to eliminate a higher power, they sure are convinced that GWB is omnipotent, omnipresent, and able to manipulate everything from the weather to local governments and their inability to protect their own citizens.

Why is it that the snipers who shot at emergency rescuers trying to save people in hospitals and shelters are never mentioned except in passing, and Mr. Bush, who is turning over heaven and earth to rescue the victims of the storm, is endlessly vilified?

What church does Rev. Al Sharpton belong to that believes in passing blame and singling out people by race for opprobrium and hate?

What special abilities does the media have for deciding how much blame goes to the federal government as opposed to the city government of New Orleans for the aftereffects of Katrina?

If able-bodied people refuse to obey a mandatory evacuation order for a city, have they not assumed the risk that ill effects will happen to them?When the city government simply ignores its own sick and hospitalized and elderly people in its evacuation order, is Mr. Bush to blame for that?

Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush's fault, or have we reverted to a belief in a sort of witchcraft where we credit a mortal man with the ability to create terrifying storms and every other kind of ill wind?

Where did the idea come from that salvation comes from hatred and criticism and mockery instead of love and co-operation?

DRY SPELL

Forgive my being absent for the better part of a week. I am collecting my wits and will attempt to write later today. I've never had a spell like this where nothing feels right and I am at such a loss as to how to put my thoughts down on "paper" or screen. Not Columbine, not 9/11...not even the Beslan tragedy which reached its sad first anniversary yesterday.

Stay tuned...and thank you for your patience.