Bella

What a great movie. What a beautiful movie. It's not overly sentimental and it has terrific acting. I love the flower references, when you know the quote by Blessed Mother Teresa "How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers." I'm sure the screenwriter knows of this great quote.

Another quote from the movie is: "Women always love flowers." In other words it is extremely unnatural for women to kill their own babies in their wombs.

Here is another quote from Mother Teresa I thought of during the movie. "The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved." Tammy Blanchard's character lives this out especially when she gets fired for being late for work after she finds out she is pregnant and the father is never seen in the movie.

All it takes is Eduardo Verastegui's character to show some kindness, concern, warmth and the sense Tammy's poverty evaporates.

If the people making this movie were not thinking of Mother Teresa, well here are some more:

On helping others:
"It is a kingly act to assist the fallen."

Another on the poverty of being unwanted, unloved:
"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."

This movie is so worth seeing. It is heart warming and very down to Earth.

Rwanda - The Question of Evil

Rwanda is the best case to study how Satan operates in this world. Rwanda was not ruled by an insane maniac leader (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot to name a few). Rwanda was and is very Christian. In so many ways, the people of Rwanda are like any of us. But to wrap one's mind around the genocide that happened and the world's lack of action is incomprehensible. I don't see how this could be anything but a bit of hell breaking out. I see Satan's hands in this without a doubt.

The key is how Satan was able to sway so many people. The Hutu people all say they were swept up into something bigger than themselves. The killers and the killed or injured all were neighbors, friends, coworkers, fellow parishioners. Were the people living in the state of mortal sin? I would say yes. How is that different from the US? I don't think there is a difference. Is there more? Probably. Drugs are a door opener for demonic influence. So is practicing witchcraft.

This is why Rwanda is a excellent case to see how Satan works. I think Satan is more powerful than ever in his ability to do things and I think in the US we are as susceptible to his work. It really would not be a stretch for something similar to happen here. I also see a snese of desperation. Satan does not know the end time but he's not an idiot and obviously the end is getting nearer. Normally Satan works by boiling us by turning up the heat slowly, appealing to our acedia and self-absorption. Rwanda is a rupture in this tactic and to me shows desperation. So Satan seems to think the end is getting very close. There were killings in Rwanda in the decades up to the 1994 genocide - rehearsal killings. Rwanda could be the rehearsal genocide for the world. It certainly gives us a window to the future to what could happen.

The whole of the 20th century certainly has been horrendous in scales never known starting with WWI and things like machine guns and mustard gas and ending the century in Rwanda with machetes. Who knew machetes, machine guns, and gas would be more deadly than nuclear bombs?

It is the state of the soul that should be the focal point, not the specific weapon. That's why Christianity in the fullness in truth is far superior than secular humanism.

Obama - Yo Mama

To show us how not pro-abortion he is, Barack waited a whole extra day to lift the ban on federal funding for international groups that promote or perform abortions, reversing a policy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

I think it was quite Clintonesque to also not lift the ban yesterday on the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. Speaking of Clinton, Bill initially lifted this same ban within days of his taking office in 1993, a ban initially created by Ronald Reagan in 1984. So much for Barack being like Reagan, as if.....

So it is a game like pong. And more babies die each day around the world. Satan smiles and says, "Barack, you the man!"

Where Sin Abounds, Grace Abounds

I was a poorly formed Catholic. I went to CCD in the early 70s - blah! Boring! I went to a Catholic high school from the fall of 1975 and I graduated the day after Mount St. Helen blew up in 1980. We were taught fluff. I'm not in a minority by any stretch of the imagination. I spent from my late teens until my wife and I were married in 1992 mostly out of the church. And even after our wedding it was a struggle.

I explained this to a dear friend, a very holy priest. He said sometimes our fervor is like a slightly wet match. You strike the match and it sparks a little, but you keep striking it and eventually it catches fire.

So the soggy matches in this country helped to bring about what we have today. Problem is they don't know they are soggy.

I was thinking about the people I know who went to Washington DC for today. I did not. I worked. I talked to people and not a single person seemed to be aware of anything happening in Washington DC. Now contrast that to the Super Bowl that will occur a week from this Sunday. What is really worth getting "amped" about? What is more important?

Knowing the difference is a gift from God. For me, to get that gift was nothing less than having God hitting me upside the head with a 2 X 4. This got my attention. Many years ago somebody talked about a very dangerous prayer. It's very simple but very powerful and really it can be scary. "God change me, whatever the cost."

"Be not afraid", Pope John Paul II would repeatedly say. In regards to what I mentioned above, what would our church and what would our world be like today, had Karol Wojtyla not been elected pope in 1978? I don't believe I would be where I am now.

The First Black President - Barack Obama

Today on CNN people were saying Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has been realized. I thought, this is a big step toward the dream but we still have a long way to go. This is a concrete step toward the dream. It would be a huge step if Barack was not so pro-abortion.

Barack made a name for himself when the senate voted on the partial birth abortion ban. Barack voted against the ban and had some choice words to say. At the time I thought he was just that evil, until he announced his candidacy for the presidential office. It was a very big stepping stone for him. A very big opportunity.

Did Barack win? Did we win?

Doubt

This is a good movie. It does not slam the Catholic Church. The acting is superb. Most movies rely on action or jokes to carry it along and if there happens to be good acting it's icing on the cake. The movie Doubt is great acting. Set in 1964, a year I remember well, at age 2 ... just the setting was worth seeing.

A very good friend of mine (I'll call him Tom) went to see the movie first. I went to see it so that he would have somebody to talk to about the movie. The movie does not definitively tell you one way or the other what actually happened. Tom and I both came to different conclusions. We even had different ideas of what the doubt was.

Go see the movie. Watch for all the symbols - the lights, the windows, the wind. It's terrific.

We Are at War

'The clergy have rationalized religion. They have destroyed its mystical basis. But they do not succeed in attracting modern men. In their half-empty churches they vainly preach a weak morality.' Alexis Carrel from his book Man the Unknown

And to paraphrase another quote I ran across at some time from a source I have forgotten but the statement is profound, pithy - 'we know more about things lesser than ourselves and less about things greater than ourselves'. Sounds like Einstein.

Thanks to modernity, the study of Moral Theology has become laughable. Virtues are for nitwits.

When I was younger I would have cringed at the idea of studying Moral Theology. Long story, short - I'm making up for lost ground. I was the nitwit when John Paul II said, "Be not afraid." I should say with God's grace, God's mercy, God's help, I'm finding real meaning in this simple but powerful statement. Did you know in Revelation 21:8 it lists cowards first for the second death. In Greek the most important are listed first. So cowards are listed before the unfaithful, the depraved and even murderers and more.

When is the last time you heard a homily or sermon on cowards or courage or perseverance? You are disqualified if you have listened to Father John Corapi recently.

Saint of the Day

St. Malachy (1094 - 1148) - wow I have a calendar that seems to have names of some very obscure saints. The other name for today is St. Macrina the elder (d. 340). I have a two volume set of books of names of saints that does not list either saint on this calendar. It does have a short quip for St. Macrina the younger who lived fro 330 - 379.

Gameshow - Who Wants to be a Saint. A wise old friend of mine years ago said it would be interesting if we had something that measured the amount of suffering a person had actually gone through. It would be a way of verifying how authenticate one's life story was.

I know the answer to this now. You may know the measure of one's suffering by the capacity one has to love, unless one's suffering leads one into despair.

Someone else had said that no situation (I plug in no one's life) is ever totally hopeless. There is always hope. I've held onto this (sometimes for dear life) and it has played out to be true in my life. I pray that it does so in others, like mine, especially those who need it most.

But back to the question - who wants to be a saint? Really.