Blessed Salt. Don't Be Home Without It

Blessed salt is a sacramental in the Catholic Church.  It is treated much the same way that holy water is.  I like to tell people that it reminds the devil who is really the boss over our lives...and that it isn't him!

The first time I heard of blessed salt, I rolled my eyes and probably said something to myself about superstitious practices. It was definitely not something I'd been exposed to.

I had had the mixed fortune of spending three of my high-school years taught by a rather liberal order of nuns.  As a child, my family attended a very 'hip' and fully Vatican II-impacted  (and beyond, I later learned) parish.   I didn't learn to pray the rosary until I was an adult, and never did learn to recite the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Popular piety was just so much ancient history.

I was already beginning my impromptu crash course in authentic liturgy when I heard about blessed salt.  It just seemed weird.

But the Holy Spirit tends not to just let these things go.  More and more I heard about people keeping blessed salt at home and using it to 'chase' apparent evil from their homes.  At the same time, I was becoming more immersed in volunteer work at our parish.  Smokey (the Devil) often doesn't take kindly to others working to teach the Catholic faith.

At this point, our family was living in military housing.  It was old.  My father came to visit.  He complained one morning that the overhead light in the bedroom he slept in had switched on in the middle of the night.  I thought I'd noticed the hall light doing the same thing...or maybe I just forgot to turn it off?

It got worse.  Electrical outlets stopped working intermittently.  The electrical breakers never seemed to trip, but I was getting really tired of having to reset the clocks because of the power shutting off.  I was particularly bothered when my bedside light wasn't working.  I prayed before bed, and not having a light made it hard to follow my Liturgy of the Hours.

I asked the housing office to send an electrician, which they did.  He replaced the light switch in the bedroom, but could find no other reason for the electrical trouble.  Everything was fine for a couple of days, then the outlets started cutting out again.  My aggravation was palpable.

In my parish work, I had become good friends with our priest.  One day I mustered up the courage to ask him about blessed salt.  His eyebrows shot up when I asked, and he said "You're the second person in twenty-four hours who has asked me about this."  He invited me to bring in some salt to be blessed.  He looked up the blessing.  It is no longer common thing.  Father told me simply to 'use it in faith' and I would not be acting superstitiously.

In the meantime, I had called again about our electrical troubles.  Again a frustrated electrician replaced a token receptacle, and again, the electric trouble began within a couple of days.

Armed with my blessed salt, I decided to bless our home.  I waited until no one else was home, and feeling a bit silly, I walked around the house sprinkling salt.

Much to my amazement, as I had not yet made the connection, the electrical trouble stopped dead after I sprinkled the salt.  To make it even more astounding, I discovered the the electrical circuit that had been plague with the problems was the same circuit which powered the computer.  The computer had never turned off.

Since that time, the only hint of trouble we ever had was a flicker in the electricity.  Not enough to reset the clocks.  When this happened, I said the Saint Michael Prayer and it stopped for good.

I am a firm believer in blessed salt to keep a home (or office or wherever) free of evil.  I do not use it a lot, but sprinkling it in a home where tensions are high, or where sin is entrenched seems like a powerful way to remind evil who is boss in that area.  The 1962 Missal has prayers for blessing salt, water and a great many other very common things such as food, animal feed, crops and machinery!

We need to be aware of the presence of evil and our susceptibility to it, particularly if we are working for God in whatever capacity.  We can become targets.  In a way, this is a good thing, as it means we are doing something good.  It can make life stressful and can affect those around us.  We need to re-discover the resources our Church has for us and use them.

Don't Leave it to the Experts

My husband and I were talking this afternoon about doing stuff.  He's recently earned his commercial trucking licence and is meeting a different group of people than his office and computer-related work generally exposes him to.

These people do stuff.  One fellow created a fairly complicated machine completely on his own.  He designed it, welded what needed welding and cut what needed cutting.

I mentioned how, not so long ago, people where we live were not encouraged to take up trades.  The powers-that-were seemed to think that only university educations were really worth having.  Things have not changed much.  Of course this has left us a legacy of highly educated unemployed, while highly-paid trades jobs go unfilled for lack of qualified workers.

My husband and I were both in the university stream.  He says he wishes he was more fearless.  I laughed a little at this because of the two of us, I think I would qualify more as the fearful one.  At any rate, I am not good at getting my hands dirty.

We should really know better.

I think it started early.  About the time women stopped being able to deliver babies without "medical" intervention.  Doctors became the experts in birth and child-rearing.  Suddenly, mother no longer knew what was best.

On it went.  We became convinced that healthy baby milk came from cans and bottles.  Scientifically designed food came from a store.

Entertainment came from radios and televisions and movie theatres.  People stopped going to dances and having sing-alongs around the parlour piano.  Education came from school...and only from school.  My mother was told not to help me read at home (I was starting to do it on my own), because she'd do it incorrectly.  When I first proposed home-schooling as an educational option to my college-aged peers, the skepticism was palpable.

We have become a society of one-trick ponies.  And if you are of the urban, college and university crowd, you could starve to death if someone turned off the power grid.

I've seen evidence of that.  When neighbours found out we were taking walks along a path and picking berries, they expressed concern that we might poison ourselves.  When power was lost a few years back for the period of a couple of days, huge insurance claims were placed for food lost from deep-freezers.  That was odd because the cause of the power outage was an ice-storm.  It was wintertime.  Ice...winter...and people didn't figure out how to keep their food from thawing.  It's happened again this winter, too.

In the time that this has all come about, religious observance shrank to be a Sunday-only occurrence for a great many people, if it happened at all.  Devotions to practices like the rosary shrank too.  Why pray at home when the expert will guide us on Sunday?

We have lost integrity.  Many places have lost the right to raise food...even vegetables.

The latest (November, 2013) issue of Catholic Insight magazine has an article on raising rabbits.  For food.  I can imagine the letters they'll get.  I would love to have chickens, but they're not permitted where I live...in a city.  We could probably get away with rabbits though.  Hmmm.

People need to understand the necessity of being able to care for their own needs.  I am no exception to this. Grow vegetables.  Demand the right to have a hen (they don't crow like roosters do...and they're much smaller and less dangerous that the ubiquitous dogs) or two for eggs.  Learn how to work a drill, a saw and a screwdriver.

Do math.  Sing, even badly.  Dance.  Cook.

Pray.  I don't think you CAN pray badly.  Do it often.  We lay-people cannot give homilies or confect sacraments, but we can pray without supervision.  And we should.

Happy Epiphany.  May the light which the wise men followed be one which we, too, can follow.

This is taken from Zenit:

Population Control and the Elephant in the Room

Slowing Population Growth Will Have Grave Consequences, Warns Pro-Life Expert

By Joseph Meaney

ROME, November 28, 2013 (Zenit.org) - I am amazed at the sheer audacity and persistence of the population control crowd.
Since the 1960s, they have given a single answer to every major social issue encountered. Hunger? Population control. Poverty? Population control. Racial/Religious conflicts? Population control. Communism? Population control. Women’s rights? Population control. Ecological problems? Population control. And on and on. How could powerful leaders and nations be duped by such an asinine proposal?
As the old proverb goes, “Be careful of what you wish for, you might get it!” After decades of unrelenting contraception, sterilization, and abortion at the cost of billions and billions of dollars — and several billion lives killed and prevented from coming into being — world population growth has slowed so much that its peak and decline is in sight. The United Nations’ estimated world fertility rate is currently 2.36 children per woman, the result of constant declines since 1965. Global estimates, however, mask a wide diversity of regional and local realities. Europe as a whole averages a total fertility rate (TFR) of only 1.6 children per woman while Africa remains dynamic with 4.5 on average.
Among 224 sovereign states and dependent territories, 112 have TFRs below 2.1, including two out of the three most populous nations in the world: China (1.55) and the USA (2.06). The most recent economic recession actually pushed the U.S. TFR down to below 1.9. The 2.1 TFR statistic is widely used as a proxy for the minimum fertility rate needed to prevent population decline absent immigration/emigration, hence the phrase replacement fertility. This is only true, however, for countries with extremely low mortality due to peaceful conditions and advanced health care systems. The poorest nations of the world can require 3 children per woman just to stave off depopulation. This explains why world population growth is slowing dramatically with a world fertility rate at 2.36 and dropping.
The other major factor putting the brakes on population growth is the slowing ofincreases in life-expectancy. People living longer on average than ever in history and the post World War II Baby Boom contributed much of the population surge of the latter half of the 20th century. Population expert Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt often uses a simple phrase to describe the world demographic situation: “Population did not boom because people suddenly started breeding like rabbits, but rather because they stopped dying like flies.” As societies have started aging, in some countries dramatically, mortality rates are inexorably catching up. Working populations in industrialized nations are graying in what has been called the Silver Tsunami, reflecting the fact that Japan is the most geriatric society in the world. Look at the economic performance over the last couple of decades of the once world leader Japan. It is not a pretty picture.
There is an elephant in the room that is hardly talked about. As the Baby Boom generation begins to retire expecting pension and social program payments in the golden years, the younger generation entering the workforce is not going to be up to the task of earning those funds. The post-1973 and Roe v. Wade U.S. generation has had well over a million children aborted out of it every year. One must add to this those never born due to sterilization and contraception. All the while the population demagogues have shouted their encouragement from the rooftops and successfully garnered funds to spread the “blessings” of population control worldwide.
Paul Ehrlich, who wrote The Population Bomb in the 1960s, is 81 years old now. Both he and Lester Brown, 79, of the Worldwatch Institute, will probably not be around much longer to taste the bitter fruits from the hysteria they promoted. Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, will certainly be with us for a while yet. This multinational “non-profit” rakes in over a billion dollars a year in the USA alone. A shocking 45% of that money comes from government entities, and therefore out of the pockets of the American tax payer. They are the largest abortion providing institution in the United States and should be called to account for their active role in the worldwide artificially created population disaster that is looming.
It is a truism that birthrates have the turning radius of a battleship, not a go-kart as Jonathan Last said in his recent book What to Expect When No One is Expecting. There is an incredible urgency to promote pro-child and pro-family measures and to stop those who are feverishly digging us ever deeper into this birth-dearth hole. Pro-lifers can say this quite altruistically since it mainly is the liberal segment of the U.S. population and in other rich countries that is aborting and contracepting itself into oblivion.
Feminists, at least those who truly prioritize defending women, should also enter the fight against population control. Innumerable human rights violations, mainly committed against women, have gone on for decades with coerced abortions, sterilization, and contraception as a sad fact of life in many places, most notoriously in Communist China. Population control policies and new sex determination technologies have fueled the worldwide sex selection abortion crisis. Millions of baby girls have been aborted simply because their parents found out they were female.
The world is indeed in a sorry state, but it will only get worse until the elephant in the room of missing and wounded people is acknowledged and addressed.
---
Joseph Meaney is the international coordination director at Human Life International. This article is published by kind permission of HLI's Truth and Charity Forum.

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Our youngest child is wonderful.  He is nine, but is not 'normal' for his age.

He is just about to finish grade two.  He has an Individual Education Plan (IEP) which means some or all of his work is modified so he can do it.

We have four other children, all adults now.  They're a smart, talented bunch and are now making their ways into the adult stream of things.  Our little man will be charting a different path, it seems.

It is a hard thing to know when to push and went to leave things alone with him.  In some ways he seems non-exceptional.  He's known for a long time that we don't always understand what he's saying.  He has for years been able to compensate for our lack of initial understanding.  He has figured out many ways to get us to understand him.

Interestingly, now that he's in school and getting lots of help, we have more episodes of frustration on his part.  I can't say whether it's because he is being trained away from his natural methods of compensation, or if it's because he's trying things that are more complex and just hasn't got all the bugs worked out.

I think every parent has some anxieties about the futures of their children.  Having a child with a handicap multiplies and intensifies the anxieties.  Will communication difficulties prevent him from telling us things we should know?  Will his friendly nature lead him into unfriendly situations?  But really...don't other "normal" kids have these issues too?

Almost a year ago, our "stick-handler" (who is actually known as a coordinator of services) told us that we needed to start thinking about how Aaron will be cared for when he's an adult.  My first thought was that I just wanted him to get into grade two!  But of course the stick-handler is correct.  With other children, it is assumed that at some point they will be on their own.  With our youngest, we cannot assume that he will be able to reach this level.  Will he live with a sibling?  A group home?  Might he be able to live alone?

There was another mother, a very long time ago now, who had a very unusual Son.  I wonder if I might call on her for some advice?  She has some powerful connections!

Our son has a fascination with Bible stories.  It is because of his interest that I now know the Old Testament as well as I do (albeit in very simple language!).  I am actually beginning to know the chronology of the Hebrew Scriptures.  And I am seeing it with the simplicity of a child.  The Old Testament has more than its share of adventures and destruction in it, which suits our little man just fine.  He is definitely a "crash 'em up" sort of kid.  I only hope that he sees Scripture as more than make-believe.  On some level I am sure that he does.

Our little fellow has already received his First Communion.  He was with, or even a little ahead, of his age peers.  I was nervous about all this.  As a catechist who tries hard to follow Church teaching at all time, I did not want things made easier for our son just because of his handicap.  Although I was fairly certain he understood (as well as anyone CAN understand) the Eucharist, I was worried about his First Reconciliation, which I was not willing to allow him to skip.  I shouldn't have worried about our son's speech impairment.  Our priest, who did not have English as his first language, took the unusual step of asking me to come to our son's confession...to "translate" if need be.  That was the only time we needed to do this.

Now, since our son received his First Communion, it seemed like his behaviour deteriorated to the point where I was ready to have him stop receiving.  A priest counselled me otherwise.  As long as Our Lord is in fact being consumed (and we make sure that He is!) that God can apparently account for the foibles of little boys.  In a way this is comforting to me, as it makes our son normal for just a bit!  So we just watch.

Days are busy and fly by so fast.  So often I wonder if I've prayed enough.  It is not just our disabled son who needs prayer, but all of our children.  Frequently.  Constantly.

But no guilt, right?  I smile as I write that.  No one ever prays enough for anyone, I'm sure.

Our disabled children are a gift.  We need to understand that.  We need to humble ourselves, relax ourselves enough to receive, even if we do not always feel, the gift.  Just as parents are to help their children reach sanctity, so do our children help us.

Talking with other Catholic parents of variously intellectually disabled children it is so wonderful to see the effect an unusual child has on the family.  Parents who are accustomed to communicating with bright children are suddenly stumped.  This child CANNOT understand in the the way our other children understand.  It is a whole different game plan.  The parents cannot rely on the pat responses to situation.  If a standard-issue child needs something repeated 47 times to allow them to learn, a disabled child may need to have the same thing repeated 147 times...or it just might be beyond them.  And we must learn patience.  If we cannot master patience in ourselves, we must be humble enough to ask for help.

Children are all precious.  Children outside the usual are even more precious because of their vulnerability. They are the hot-house orchids among the roses.  God, give us what we need to tend them well. 

Pope Francis has been pope for what, four months now?

Another Canadian blogger referred to him as "confounding".  That word perfectly describes my feelings toward the Pope, too.

Pope Francis becoming fodder for blogs and homilies.  His style is so markedly different from that of Pope Emeritus Benedict XIV that comparisons are nearly impossible to avoid.  Those comparisons also occurred between Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II.

It distresses me that so many see the papacies of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis as an either/or situation.

They are two different men with two different backgrounds and styles.  We could add Pope JPII in there and make it three.

All of the popes I recollect (and that number is growing!) have been different in styles and all, perhaps excepting John Paul I have weathered some sort of critical situation.  All have managed to seriously annoy some quarter of the population, Catholic or otherwise.

We must either trust that the Holy Spirit knows what it's doing or we don't.

Pope Francis is the Pope.  So was Benedict.  They will or have done fantastic things and have or will probably commit some very human screw-ups.

We have a very limited part of the "Big Picture" available to us, due to our ages, backgrounds, linguistic limitations and prejudices of some sort or another.

I really think we need to remember that when we make comments about what this or that pope said or did. We must also remember how selective the media can be.  Pictures of Pope Francis doing this or that treat the situations as something novel.  Frequently all that is novel is that Pope Francis is doing them, but what is implied is that Pope Francis is doing something that Pope Benedict did not, such as hugging a handicapped person.

We must remember to be charitable and to remember that there are many things we do not know about what is going on with any Pope, and within the spiritual realm in which they spend so much of their time and energy.

We must be humble as they are humble.

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

First, allow me to apologize for the long absence I have taken from writing anything myself.  Life called.
I have been working for the past year and a half at a dry cleaner's, which left me little time or energy for writing.

Now, I must elbow my way past my husband, who has made himself quite at home on my computer.  I also notice that the format for blogger has changed somewhat, so we will see how this all turns out.

Today is the Solemnity of Corpus Christi...The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.  Today we celebrate the gift that God has made to us in the Eucharist...the Body and Blood of Christ.

The gospel reading was the story of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes.  This story appears in all four of the gospels, which might just be a clue to its importance.  That the story of this miracle of Jesus' is read for Corpus Christi points to its being a "type" of the Eucharist.  This means that the story prefigures the actual gift of the Eucharist to us.  It's a sign.

For my last year of high-school, I had moved back to an area with low population of Catholics relative to its population of evangelical Protestants.  Having spent the previous three years in a Catholic school, this proved a shock to the system.  One weekend I spent at a Protestant youth retreat.  I remember someone questioning me about Catholic belief that Christ is fully present, Body and Blood, in the Eucharistic host.  She said "You must think He has an awfully big body!".  With no thought of my own, I blurted out "Loaves and fishes."  Both of the girls I was talking with became pensive.  I thought to myself "What a dumb thing for me to say!" Years later, I understood that what I had said was not dumb at all.  By multiplying the loaves and fishes for the gathered crowd, Jesus foreshadowed what He would do for us with His own Body and Blood.

The reflection on the gospel we heard today brought out another thought regarding miracles in general.  We were reminded that a lot of work, human work, was associated with the miracle performed by Jesus.  The apostles found the boy with the loaves and fish.  Then the throng of more than 5000 people was divided into groups of 50.  Jesus performed the miracle.  We are not told just how many actually noticed what was happening.  The food was distributed.  After the people ate, the leftovers were collected.

How many noticed the miracle?  With all the work we do in our lives, do we notice the miracles which God still performs for us?

To draw the reflection back to today's solemnity, I think we can point directly to the Most Holy Eucharist.  Do we realize what a miracle it is?  That little papery looking host is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus.

Do we notice this miracle?

Christmas Myths, and the Slaughter of the Innocents

Merry Christmas.  Here, I am reposting a couple of links to some of Jimmy Akins' work.  Interesting reading!

Did the Slaughter of the Innocents happen?

7 Top Myths about Christmas

Saint Agnes' Fountain

In case you ever wondered about the fountain made famous by Good King Wenceslaus (who was actually a duke, but anyway...), here you go.

And Merry Christmas.

Why Praise and Worship Music is Praise, But Not Worship

Father puts into words some of the many thoughts I've had on this issue over the years...

Why Praise and Worship Music is Praise, But Not Worship

Book Review: How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

For both the dedicated Catholic and the sceptic, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization supplies much food for thought regarding the role Catholicism has played in western history. It should be in every library.

Dr. Woods has covered many subject headings including Morality, Science, Art and Law and provides well documented examples of the Church's contributions, often foundational contributions, to each one.  He also meets head on the discussion of the idea that the Church was responsible for the "Dark Ages".  And who says they were dark?  There is a concise and fair review of the "Galileo affair" which I think most would find interesting.

I found the book affirming and often surprising.  I do not think anyone would be able to walk away from this book and still believe that the Church was anti-science or anti-reason.  This book is an antidote to much of what we have been taught in schools and exposed to in the media.

The many footnotes are arranged at the end of the book, so that they are not distracting.  The off-white colour of the paper makes the book easy on the eyes.  There is a section which included photographs relevant to the subjects.

The one shortcoming of  this book, if it is to be used for serious research, is the index.  I wanted to find something that I'd read in the book about an experiment in flight in the 11th century, and I ended up having to go through the book page by page to find the reference, as the only index entry was the name of the obscure monk who managed to glide 600 feet.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone involved in RCIA, either as a catechist or a cathecumen.  I think the parent or catechist involved in preparation for Confirmation classes would also find this book very helpful in responding to young sceptics.

I wrote this review of How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization for the free Catholic Book review program, created by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods, your source for Baptism Gifts and Oplatki Christmas Wafers. Tiber River is the first Catholic book review site, started in 2000 to help you make informed decisions about Catholic book purchases. I receive free product samples as compensation for writing reviews for Tiber River.

I found this article on the historicity of the Septuagint was very enlightening.

http://catholicdefense.blogspot.ca/2012/03/did-greek-old-testament-include.html

Christmas Cookies; Revised Translation

Thank you WI Catholic, for THIS.

  I howled.

More on Liturgy

A thoughtful piece on liturgical rules, and Gaudete Sunday.

Jorge's Lesson in Love and Humility

From Vox Nova

Black Family spreads the Message in Ontario

This talented family is helping to get the life-giving message of the Gospels to people in Ontario.  This is very good news!

Catholic Kitsch

I love being Catholic

Some Friday Fun

http://youtu.be/m57m0XiRgBA

But seriously, how do you get to film a music video in a church?  Bah!

As the World Turns

My eldest daughter has been in THE big city, the centre of the universe, for a year now.  She already had a Bachelor of Arts in English but decided she wanted to be a chef.

So to Toronto. 

She finished her year of chef training which, although well promoted, was disappointing.  She persevered.  She is now working three jobs (two in her field) and barely covers her rent on a room.  Well, it IS Toronto...

At one job, she gives as little notice as she reasonably can that she wants a few days off to come see us.  If she gives more notice, she will not be scheduled to work in the time leading up to her departure.  She knows she won't be scheduled for a week or more after she gets back, either.

Another job she was hired for was supposed to be full-time days.  Although she didn't mind the job, it was not full-time.  She was sent to another location of the same business with the promise of more hours.  She did not like this position as well, as it took her away from food preparation.  And it wasn't full-time either.

The third job is intermittent, and again, doesn't actually have her doing food prep.

Now, one job is not scheduling her (no explanation) and the other didn't pay her for her last pay period.  The cheque was written incorrectly and instead of re-issuing the cheque, they said they add it to her next cheque which should have arrived today, but hasn't.

How is a person supposed to keep body and soul together in an expensive place if he doesn't even know if he'll be given what he's entitled to?

And how is a young person supposed to get a start in life if when he or she gives it the best they've got, they get nothing?

Our daughter has opted to come home and try life from here for a while.  She's already applied to several positions in our area.

Scripture tells us that a worker is worth his wage.

Would that all saw it that way.

Collective Guilt??

I read this today on Fr. MacRae's blog and it got me thinking in a few directions.

Fr. MacRae asks the cost of Fr. Marcel Maciel's transgressions.  This is a good question, but I wonder if he's taken the answer far enough.

What is happening to priests is scary.  Horrifying.  I have been feeling the tensions build over the years among priests I know.  I once went to a priest I knew reasonably well and quite innocently asked "I've heard rumours.  Are they true?"  This was a reference to something I'd heard about his assisting at another parish outside his diocese.  The news had surprised me but I was fairly sure he'd know what I was referring to.  The immediate look on his face, and his "Please do NOT start a conversation like that!" made me realise just how close to the surface are rumours of a far more sinister form.

The base reason behind the rumours is also horrifying.  There are actually people suffering at the hands of priests.  Given that priests are to uphold Christ's teaching, this is reprehensible.  But the facts tell us that the desire to inflict harm is a human problem, not a priestly problem.  It happens everywhere.

But knowing that this abuse has actually happened somewhere in the Church, inflicted by Church clergy affects the faithful in a profound way.  For myself, I often feel like the ground is shifting under me.  I am afraid to express my faith in someone, for fear of my confidence later being shown to be misplaced.  We are called to explain the joy that is within us.  I sometimes feel that it is easier to explain my faith than it is to explain why I maintain it in the company of those teachers who would profane it.

The ready claim of "child pornography" being tossed at any priest reminds me a bit of an advertising ploy that we often fall for...a product being touted as being "free" of something that it never actually contained...implying that other similar products are NOT free of it.  An example:  When cholesterol began to be seen as a bad nutrient for consumption (and I do not claim to believe this), peanut butter was sometimes marketed as "cholesterol free" as if this was a development.  In fact, peanut butter has never contained cholesterol.  No lie was actually told, but the implications for other products were certainly there.

Then there's the hanging questions...as a lactation counsellor, I saw some of the advertising material created by the makers of artificial infant food targeting new mothers.  While giving the government required lip-service to breastfeeding, one video I remember showed a concerned looking mother holding her very young baby.  In the background were quietly spoken questions like "How do I know my baby is getting enough?".  The video never actually answered that particular question, even though it is entirely possible to tell if a naturally fed infant is being fed enough.  But a "formula" manufacturer doesn't necessarily want you to know that.

Hearing a priest defend himself against child pornography charges is a bit like asking the question "So, when did you stop beating your wife?"  No matter how it's answered, it doesn't sound good.

Not only is every priest "guilty" in the eyes of many, but every follower is guilty by association.  This cross will continue to demand a huge toll on followers whose faith is focussed more on an individual than on Christ.  It also has a toll on those who do not understand how language and emotions can be manipulated to create a desired end.

A great many of my parents' generation have left the Church, nominally because of the 'scandals'.  I realize that sometimes this is just an excuse for leaving an institution that no longer suits them.  But this generation would also have been young adults at the turn of Vatican II.  Along with so many things that have changed in that time, the Church has become disposable.  When something is seen as dirty, you throw it out.

In my own generation, we have suffered lack of catechesis, and a sort of 'anything goes' mentality which makes the Church simply an option among many.  So you don't pick the option you don't like.  Who would like the option that may endanger one's children?

For my children, it's second generation catechetical failure.  I've tried to stem the tide, but they're young and they're hearing the news...and we've had a lot of news.  How relevant is something that they KNOW is bad?  After all, mum seems to be the only one telling them otherwise...

The legacy of Fr. Maciel will haunt us for a long time.  Pray for our priests!

The beginning of the End of Medugorje?

So how is the world going to deal with this?