Sarah Palin

I was incredibly excited to hear that Senator McCain picked Governor Palin to be his running mate. I was happy for several reasons, she has executive experience (mayor and governor), she is pro-life (Ridge would not have been acceptable) and overall her resume is fabulous.

I am disappointed in myself in that I gave up on the 2008 campaign when McCain was picked. I still have some doubts about him but he is proving to be a very savvy campaigner. Thank goodness others did not give up so easily, like the folks at Palin for VP. We can thank them for getting the job done.

If you agree with me, go make a contribution to the McCain/Palin campaign.

By the way, the Hillary supporters are still ticked off at Obama. Just google "pumas for palin". Woo hoo!

PUMA stands for "Party Unity My A**"

TLM Reminder! Today - St Adelaide's in Peabody

The Mass will be at 2 pm. I don't know if it's high or low but I hope to see you there!

Knights of Columbus Donates $1 million to Defend Marriage in California

Good on them!

Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to protect marriage, has announced that it has received a $1 million contribution from the Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic family fraternal service organization.

In a press release, spokesman for the Knights of Columbus, Patrick Korten said that the donation from the Knights "is both an indication of how important we believe this referendum to be, and an encouragement to other groups and individuals of all faiths to lend their support as well."

"From the day the organization was founded 126 years ago, strengthening and protecting the family has always been central to the mission of the Knights of Columbus. Preserving marriage as the indispensable institution in which children are conceived, born and raised to adulthood by a loving father and mother is vital to a healthy society. It is also the most favorable environment in which to protect the rights and best interests of children. We are proud to join the Catholic bishops and priests of California, and so many other people of good will, in this effort on which so much depends.

Source

More lolcat

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Personal Prayer Request please

Friday was my husband's last day at his job. My job ends in two weeks. I'd appreciate any prayers you can say for us. I trust that God will take care of us (as always)!

Thanks!

The Isolation of Teenagers

Over the past year or so, I've been able to watch several teenagers close-up in social situations. It's pretty ugly. I feel depressed for them although it wouldn't surprise me if they themselves didn't feel depressed but pushed the feeling down, covering it with complaints of tiredness and boredom.

They have hundreds of ways to communicate with one another, cell phones, IM, texting, Facebook, etc but so much of it is superficial. Text messages can only be 160 characters. They are learning to speak in soundbites, expressing incomplete thoughts. So their knowledge of one another is very shallow.

Beneath the surface of their lives is a pool of anger. If someone says something to them and it is perceived as something negative, they strike back in kind. They don't learn to trust one another. Resentment towards the other person builds and another friendship/relationship falls by the wayside. This just reinforces their isolation, that they are not understood, they are not loved.

Even if they have pets, they don't interactive with the pet. They may not even like to acknowledge that the pet has a name.

If they connect with someone long enough to get physically intimate, i.e. hook-ups, they discover another way to enable bad feelings to arise because they haven't gotten to know one another emotionally. The girl learns that her feelings aren't reciprocated so her heart hardens a little bit more. The boy learns either that he can use another person or, like the girl, feelings arise in him that he wasn't expecting and which he doesn't want. He quickly ends the relationship and thus his heart hardens too.

It's worse if the couple goes all the way sexually. They don't have the maturity to know how to discuss their feelings and they are not financially ready to make a commitment to one another, i.e. marriage and so stress arises and because they don't have the skills to resolve it, the relationship ends and their hearts are hardened.

Where did this come from? The family, I'm sad to say...

They weren't taught in the home to respect others, to look for the good in others, to put someone else first. While the hard skills; working hard in school, doing chores around the house, are important, the soft skills are just as critical to leading a happy life.

Please pray for them. If they continue down this path into adulthood, it doesn't bode well for the next generation either.

We need to show more sympathy for these people...

• They travel miles in the heat.
• They risk their lives crossing a border.
• They don't get paid enough wages.
• They do jobs that others won't do or are afraid to do.
• They live in crowded conditions among a people who speak a different language.
• They rarely see their families and they face adversity all day every day...

I'm not talking about illegal aliens, I'm talking about our troops!



H/T Moe Lauzier Source

My Blogroll...

is terribly out-of-date but I was asked by Jackie of Catholic Mom of 10 to add her blog to my blogroll.

So, Jackie, you're there! Thanks for asking. Now I need to figure out who else to add/delete.

Thank you Jimmy Akin!

We're Catholic! We don't need to use the Bible to justify all our beliefs...

Not all questions can be answered in a way that offers Bible verses as evidence. In fact, not all questions can be answered at all. There are many things we human simply don't know the answer to, because God hasn't told them to us, and there are also many things in life that have answers that don't involve the Bible at all, like how to solve the quadratic equation or where to find the gas station with the cheapest gas or how to make chop suey.

I think it is important to point these things out when dealing with the "Where is that in the Bible?" mentality.

It is also important to point out that, even when dealing with questions that do involve theology, we are Catholics and therefore do not need to provide answers within the confines of sola Scriptura.

As Catholics, we draw information from and our theology is shaped by not only Scripture but also Tradition, the formulations of the Magisterium, philosophy, human nature (i.e., natural law) reasoning, etc.

From Jimmy's blog entry, Prayer for the Dead

Wonderful response

to the question, "Why did God create us?

from commenter Abigail...

Love is creative.

Why do married people have kids?

(I don't know if you have kids yourself. If you don't, I'm sure you can think of someone among your family and friends that does have a little one that they dote upon.)

My husband and I are complete in our relationship with each other. If God had given us the cross of infertility (or the real-life situation we faced where all our kids could have inherited a fatal disease) --we would be left spooning each other Jello alone in the nursing home.

When I faced that possibility head on, I was okay with that.

I didn't earnestly desire children with my husband because I needed someone to control, or someone to adore me, or someone to make me look good.

The desire for children which I never abstractly wanted as a young woman, sort of came over me during this flood of amazing feelings I had for my spouse.

He felt the same way about me.

Now we've got 3 little ones who all share his funny toes and my curly hair, and yet each have an individual spirit which is entirely their own.

Love delights in company. Love reaches out and expands itself.

God's love for each member of humanity is so fantastic we can only glimpse it inside the human heart. The desire for children, no matter how terribly perverted or buried in modern culture, is one of the basic laws written on the human heart. You'll find parental love across all lands and all cultures. It's proof that we all have the same imprint of One Creator.