The Fundamental Question.

There is an article in Life Site News concerning Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent interview with Eleanor Cliff where Pelosi defends her views on abortion and homosexuality as being consistent with Catholic teaching.

It matters not to Pelosi that her Archbishop (and several other Bishops) tell her that her understanding of Catholic teaching is seriously flawed and filled with error. Like far too many people, she believes herself to be a faithful, practicing Catholic while ignoring what the Church has to say on a wide variety of issues.

The list is staggering; from abortion, to gay "marriage" to women in the priesthood, Left leaning Catholics will, on the one hand, tell us of their deep and abiding faith and then regale us with a number of "church errors".

Unfortunately, this cafeteria style Catholicism isn't limited to the Left. The Right can be just as guilty in picking and choosing what to accept or reject. For every liberal Catholic who attempts to justify abortion, there is a conservative attempting to justify capital punishment.
Those otherwise conservative Catholic who do not follow the Church's teaching on artificial contraceptives number in the millions.

It really boils down to one fundamental question.
Is the Catholic Church the one true, Holy and Apostolic Church as founded by Christ? Naturally, if you don't believe it is, then claiming to be a Catholic is an absurdity beyond words. If you do not believe the Catholic Church is Christ's true Church, then calling yourself Catholic is to live a lie.

On the other hand, if you do accept the Church as Christ's Church, it behooves you to take a second look at those areas where you are in disagreement with the Church - be it abortion, birth control, capital punishment or immigration. This includes your views on divorce, or war or women priests.

Many will argue that to do this is to give up our free will and blindly allow someone else to tell us what to think. It would be more accurate to say that the Church gives us the truth and we are free to reject this truth at our own peril.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland.

According to Weather Underground, the normal high temperature for this date, January 04, in Rome Ga. is 51°F. As I write this at 11:30 AM, the temperature is 26°F with the expected high to be 34°F.

Five years today, in 2005, the high was 75°F. If it reaches the expected high the temperature will be 17 degrees below normal and 41 effing degrees lower than the record high.

Ain't global warming wonderful?

Interesting Screenshot.

New Years Day.

I can see countless area where I can stand a bit of improvement.
It would be nearly impossible to list them all; so many things I should resolve to change in the upcoming year.
Naturally, being a better husband and father is high on the list.
I'd like to spend more time writing; not only on this blog, but on more serious work as well.

Rather than go through an entire list of resolutions, I believe it would be more productive to resolve to do one thing which should help take care of all the others.

I want....no, I need to begin this year by pledging to say a Rosary every day; during the evening when I am off from work and home with the family, and early mornings on those days when our work schedules prevent my wife and I from doing the Rosary together.

I can't think of a better plan for the new year.

2009 In Review.

Being the last day of the year, December 31 seems a logical time to review what (if any) progress I've made with this blog in 2009.
This post is number 222 for the year; compared to the 356 posts of 2008, my output is down considerably. The number of visitors from 1/1/09 to 12/31/09 is down by nearly 1000 compared to 1/1/08 to 12/31/08.

Still, the totals for this year look OK.
15,029 unique page views from 141 countries ( with hits from 3712 cities worldwide - 2221 of those being US cities ).

A look at my five most popular posts shows just how disorganized this blog can be from a "content" point of view. Saying the content is "varied" could be a polite way of looking at it.

The fifth most popular post is the first installment of my Kelvin Williams series.
[Kelvin Williams-Part One.] With 195 unique page views from 155 cities it may be fifth overall but it's bounce rate is above and away the best of the group, showing that readers of that post went on to read more posts.

Number four is a post that published in 2007 [Dumaguete City Street Map.] 232 unique page views from 110 cities.

With 262 unique page views from 160 cities, the third most popular post is from Oct. 2008 - Spring-Summer 2009 Fashion Collection. I have the feeling that visitors to that page were expecting something a bit different.

The 2nd most popular post on this blog comes from Nov. 2008. Recess at the Asylum received 577 unique page views from 349 cities.

Far and away the most popular post for Sorry, all the Clever Names are Taken is my Feb. 2008 post on Bernadette Soubirous.

If there's anything to be learned from this, I think it shows that this blog might be more successful if I were to turn this into two blogs instead of one -one blog poking fun of the popular culture,while the other blog deals mainly with the Catholic Church and Her teachings. Trying to do both on one blog isn't working as well as I'd like.

Something's Burning...and I (Don't) Think it's Love.

In an article written last October, Darnel Tanksley wrote this, concerning Obama;
"He is our President, Barack Hussein Obama: The most loved man in the world."

I don't think Mr. Tanksley could say the same thing today......especially not in Afghanistan where rioters recently burned Obama's effigy.

From Google News:
"JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Protesters took to the streets in Afghanistan on Wednesday, burning an effigy of the US president and shouting "death to Obama" to slam civilian deaths during Western military operations.
Hundreds of university students blocked main roads in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangahar province, to protest the alleged deaths of 10 civilians, mostly school children, in a Western military operation on Saturday."

The isn't the first time the Afghans burned an effigy of Barack Obama. Rioters, this past October, burned his effigy in in reaction to rumors that U.S. troops had desecrated the Quran.

It seems a bit odd that "the most loved man in the world" should be so hated in "The Friendliest Country in the World, Possibly the Universe".

Comcast Sucks.

Readers of my blog may recall my two posts from earlier this year concerning Comcast Cable. [Seventeen Days in the Desert. and Slowly, I (re)turn.]
For those unaware of my problems with Comcast, I will give a brief synopsis.
When we moved into our house in June of this year, I contacted Comcast to have our account transferred from our apartment. To make a long story short, Comcast could not run a cable across the street where we live and we were unable to get cable service.

All the equipment was returned and we were told in June that we had no account balance.

Last week, I received a collection notice from an agency claiming that there was a $29.14 balance which we had been notified of many times but had failed to pay.

Bullfeathers.

Not only were we told that there was zero balance, but we have never received any bill from Comcast. I went to the local office and was told it was a transfer fee and I'd have to call 1-800- COMCAST to have them remove the fee.

I called the number and only received more bullfeathers.

When the person on the other end could not/ would not help me, I demanded that she connect me with her supervisor. I guess the supervisor is busy, because I was told she/he would have to call me.

I had been considering going back to Comcast and have them try once again to have me connected, but after this, I decided against that.

I'll be sure to post any updates after I speak with the next Comcast employee.

Oh, yeah. Googling comcast sux and comcast sucks, I discovered the above photo and comcastsucksballs.blogspot.com and comcastsucks.org to name just a few.

Update:
I received a phone call from a Comcast employee calling herself "Evelyn". After hearing my complaint, she assured me that the $29.14 would be removed from collections and I should be receiving a letter from the company soon.
We'll see how that works out.