A Little Useless Information

FAMOUS CAT OWNERS

Samuel Johnson - Hodge
Edward Lear - Foss
The Kennedys - Tom Kitten
Charles de Gaulle - Gris Gris
Cardinal Richelieu - Perruque
The Simpsons - Snowball II
John Lennon - elvis
Churchill - Margate, Jock
Alice (in Wonderland) - Dinah
Mark Twain - Beelzebub
T.S. Eliot - George Pushdragon
Nicholas I - Vashka

Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott

Inexplicably not included, Happy Catholic - Truffles. (Next week, of course, will be famous dog owners.)

Hannah and the SAT

Remember when I said Hannah was going to take the SAT after no additional studying and without freaking out or even worrying? We now have results.

She got 1980 overall (2400 is the highest on the new SAT) and 8 out of 12 possible on the essay. According to her guidance counselor both scores are considerably above the US averages so far ... woohoo!

Howl's Moving Castle

The trailer for the latest anime by the "Walt Disney of Japan," Hayao Miyazaki can be found at Ain't It Cool. Just scroll to the bottom of the column under the movie poster to find the links. It looks like a cross between Spirited Away and Kiki's Delivery Service to me.

Chicken Sauté with Vinegar

Yes it sounds odd but it pleased everybody in the house, including our famously picky eater! Head over to Glad Gastronome to give it a try.

POPE BENEDICT XVI

Cardinal Ratzinger elected ... could I be any happier? NO! PRAISE GOD!!!

UPDATE: My friend, Maroy, made a couple of great points...

Don't you just love the international spectrum of the crowd and that Benedict XVI made a point to address his brothers and sisters in more than the usual 2 languages?? I was moved that he entrusted himself to OUR prayers immediately. I never appreciated that I personally could be of that much assistance to the Pope!

I guess they're dancing in heaven! Maybe The Chicken Dance, in honor of Benedict's German heritage??;-)

I might have to look into the history of the Chicken Dance ...

ALSO, Alicia makes a good point about The Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club ... it has been overrun and their server has crashed.

Habemus Papam!

The bells are ringing ... now we just have to wait and see who it is ... this is like Christmas morning!!! The suspense is killing me!!!!

That means the vote had a 2/3 majority in 5 or less votes ... what a strong message for whoever this is ...

Dueling Haikus

Monkey is famous for delicate, spur of the moment haiku so "dueling frida kahlo haikus" seem natural. Just a taste to get you started, although for the full flavor you must go to the site and see the photos [the julie mentioned is not me].

frida kahlo and haikus go together like manchego and quince paste, so, this was bound to happen. my friend julie submitted the first haiku with the appropriate picture -



I don't believe you
I will not look behind me
There is no monkey


i could not help but be inspired and pen the following haiku -

how silly you are
frida is not behind me
no, i will not look.

Waiting on the Holy Spirit

There is a puzzled attitude among many in St. Blog's Parish about all the media attention to the papal election. Each person behind a blog has ideas about who they think would be right for the next pope, but there is also a kind of serenity and faith: that the Holy Spirit is in charge and that a great Pope could be elected, or a mediocre one, or even bad Pope. Believing Catholics take as a matter of dogma and doctrine that "The gates of Hell will not prevail" against the Church, and that the Holy Spirit will somehow prevent the Pope and the Church from falling into error.

Of course many among the faithful are offering prayer, sacrifice, fasting, and/or mortification for the intention that the electors will listen more to the Holy Spirit than to the temper of the times.

Alicia Huntly, Spero News

That's exactly it ... and that is how my friends all feel. At a prayer meeting on Saturday practically every person had a different way of saying it but the common prayer was for the Holy Spirit to have His way with the cardinals on who would be the perfect good shepherd to next lead our Church.

Faith in the World

The Christian should not leave his faith aside in any circumstance. Non-sectarianism. Neutrality. Old myths that always try to seem new. Have you ever stopped to think how absurd it is to leave one's Catholicism aside on entering a university, a professional association, a cultural society, or parliament, like a man leaving his hat at the door? (St. Escriva, The Way). This attitude is equivalent to saying -- in politics, in business, in leisure or in entertainment, when I am with my friends, when it comes to choosing a school for my children -- that here in this situation God has nothing whatever to do with it; in these affairs my Christian faith must not exert any influence, for none of this comes from God or is ordained to God.

Nevertheless, the faith casts light on the whole of existence. Everything is ordained to God. But this ordination must respect the particular nature of each thing. It is not a matter of turning the world into one big sacristy, or homes into convents, or the economy into a benevolent institution. Without naive simplifications, the faith should inform a Christian's thought and action, because he should never in any circumstance, in any moment of the day cease to be a Christian and to behave and think as such.

In Conversation with God: Lent and Eastertide

The Final Day of Mourning

The last moments of Pope John Paul II as reported in the Times.

Some of the crowd then broke into applause for the life of the Pope; others sobbed uncontrollably at his passing.

As the end approached, history's best travelled and third longest serving pontiff had urged his followers not to cry for him by dictating a message to his secretary.

"I am happy and you should be happy too," he said. "Do not weep. Let us pray together with joy."

His last moments were described early today by Father Jarek Cielecki, director of Vatican Service News, a Catholic TV channel. "The Holy Father died looking towards the window as he prayed, and that shows that in some way he was conscious," Cielecki said.

"A short while before dying, the Pope raised his right hand in a clear, although simply hinted at, gesture of blessing, as if he became aware of the crowd of faithful present in St Peter's Square, who in those moments were following the reciting of the Rosary," he added.

"Just after the prayer ended, the Pope made a huge effort and pronounced the word 'Amen'. A moment later, he died."

Contemplating Christ with Mary

Mary, model of contemplation

10. The contemplation of Christ has an incomparable model in Mary. In a unique way the face of the Son belongs to Mary. It was in her womb that Christ was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance which points to an even greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary. The eyes of her heart already turned to him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the months that followed she began to sense his presence and to picture his features. When at last she gave birth to him in Bethlehem, her eyes were able to gaze tenderly on the face of her Son, as she “wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger” (Lk2:7).

Thereafter Mary's gaze, ever filled with adoration and wonder, would never leave him. At times it would be a questioning look, as in the episode of the finding in the Temple: “Son, why have you treated us so?” (Lk 2:48); it would always be a penetrating gaze, one capable of deeply understanding Jesus, even to the point of perceiving his hidden feelings and anticipating his decisions, as at Cana (cf. Jn 2:5). At other times it would be a look of sorrow, especially beneath the Cross, where her vision would still be that of a mother giving birth, for Mary not only shared the passion and death of her Son, she also received the new son given to her in the beloved disciple (cf. Jn 19:26-27). On the morning of Easter hers would be a gaze radiant with the joy of the Resurrection, and finally, on the day of Pentecost, a gaze afire with the outpouring of the Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14).

Mary's memories

11. Mary lived with her eyes fixed on Christ, treasuring his every word: “She kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51). The memories of Jesus, impressed upon her heart, were always with her, leading her to reflect on the various moments of her life at her Son's side. In a way those memories were to be the “rosary” which she recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life.

Even now, amid the joyful songs of the heavenly Jerusalem, the reasons for her thanksgiving and praise remain unchanged. They inspire her maternal concern for the pilgrim Church, in which she continues to relate her personal account of the Gospel. Mary constantly sets before the faithful the “mysteries” of her Son, with the desire that the contemplation of those mysteries will release all their saving power. In the recitation of the Rosary, the Christian community enters into contact with the memories and the contemplative gaze of Mary.

The Rosary, a contemplative prayer

12. The Rosary, precisely because it starts with Mary's own experience, is an exquisitely contemplative prayer. Without this contemplative dimension, it would lose its meaning, as Pope Paul VI clearly pointed out: “Without contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul, and its recitation runs the risk of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas, in violation of the admonition of Christ: 'In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard for their many words' (Mt 6:7). By its nature the recitation of the Rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace, helping the individual to meditate on the mysteries of the Lord's life as seen through the eyes of her who was closest to the Lord. In this way the unfathomable riches of these mysteries are disclosed”.

It is worth pausing to consider this profound insight of Paul VI, in order to bring out certain aspects of the Rosary which show that it is really a form of Christocentric contemplation.

Apostolic Letter
Rosarium Virginis Mariae
of the Supreme Pontiff
John Paul II to the Bishops, Clergy
and Faithful
on the Most Holy Rosary

My Review of Millions

You can find it here at Spero News, the new weekly virtual newspaper. While you're there take some time and look around. I think they have a week's worth of good reading ... at least I know that I'm going to be reading practically everything I saw there.

Freedom

Freedom consists not in doing what we like,
but in having the right to do what we ought.

John Paul II

Our Nine Days of Mourning

As we go through these days of mourning, I will put my favorite links about Pope John Paul II here and move it to each day as we go along.

• Papa Familias has the Papal Carnival up with many wonderful contributions from people with their memories of our pope.
  
• Nancy at Flying Stars is inspired by the pope to proclaim her Catholic identity in public.
• Mark Steyn about why progressives never understood the Pope.

  The root of the Pope's thinking - that there are eternal truths no one can change even if one wanted to - is completely incomprehensible to the progressivist mindset. There are no absolute truths, everything's in play, and by "consensus" all we're really arguing is the rate of concession to the inevitable: abortion's here to stay, gay marriage will be here any day now, in a year or two it'll be something else - it's all gonna happen anyway, man, so why be the last squaresville daddy-o on the block?
  
  We live in a present-tense culture where novelty is its own virtue: the Guardian, for example, has already been touting the Nigerian Francis Arinze as "candidate for first black pope". This would be news to Pope St Victor, an African and pontiff from 189 to 199. Among his legacies: the celebration of Easter on a Sunday.

• The Curt Jester's meditation on John Paul II's two names and the way he reflected those apostles.
• Mama T remembers being in Rome and telling the pope she loved him.
  
• Mary at Ever New gives us yet another gem (how does she do it every time?) in comparing the Church to the ocean and reminding us of why we must not fret about who is chosen to sit in the chair of Peter.
• Peggy Noonan takes us back vividly to Pope John Paul II's visit to communist Poland and reminds us exactly why he was great and the work he did for Christ.

  Why, the pope asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Perhaps it was because of how Poland had suffered for centuries, and through the 20th century had become "the land of a particularly responsible witness" to God. The people of Poland, he suggested, had been chosen for a great role, to understand, humbly but surely, that they were the repository of a special "witness of His cross and His resurrection." He asked then if the people of Poland accepted the obligations of such a role in history.
  
  The crowd responded with thunder.
  
  "We want God!" they shouted, together. "We want God!"
  
  What a moment in modern history: We want God. From the mouths of modern men and women living in a modern atheistic dictatorship.
  
  The pope was speaking on the Vigil of Pentecost, that moment in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit came down to Christ's apostles, who had been hiding in fear after his crucifixion, filling them with courage and joy. John Paul picked up this theme. What was the greatest of the works of God? Man. Who redeemed man? Christ. Therefore, he declared, "Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude. . . . The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man! Without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland." Those who oppose Christ, he said, still live within the Christian context of history.
  
  Christ, the pope declared, was not only the past of Poland--he was "the future . . . our Polish future."
  
  The massed crowd thundered its response. "We want God!" it roared.

• George Wiegel has a piece in Newsweek with a more personal look at the Pope. Again we see the "serious sweet tooth" mentioned. My kinda guy. Via Get Religion.
• Dinka has a tribute to the pope. I especially like her commentary about how being Catholic is to be be separated from society, even though one is right in the middle of it.
• Mark Windsor features photos from Poland showing the people remembering the pope and links to a site that has many more.
• TSO's reflections on seeing the body of a shepherd being carried by his people.
  
• Abba Pater, a slideshow by Dom at Bettnet. A touching tribute.
• Via TSO
  

  As you know, the two Marian events/devotions to which John Paul was most committed, and most identified, were the Divine Mercy, and Fatima. The Church's celebration of the feast of Divine Mercy began at sundown today, the First Saturday (cf. Our Lady of Fatima's request) of April. Because he died after sundown in Rome but before midnight, he passed on the one sliver of time in the entire year -- maybe even in years, given that Easter is not on a fixed date -- when both Fatima and Divine Mercy intersect.
  

  From Dallas News writer Rod Dreher
  

• Santificarnos shares a joke that the Pope was said to enjoy. I like the idea of the pope laughing at this one.
• John B. at The Catholic Packer Fan has a thorough, easy-to-understand timeline of events to come. And he has a comment that I agree wholeheartedly with which is why I'm not wasting my time worrying about anyone's "picks" on the next pope.
• Mark Shea quotes Tolkein for the best I've seen so far at how our pope's homecoming to Heaven must have felt.
• Tremendous Trifles has an original poem for Our Holy Father.
• Ignatius Insight Scoop has a really thorough list of reactions and wonderful links to the Vatican pages. If you look at nothing else from the Vatican, be sure to see this page which shows John Paul II's pontificate. You click on each cross going up the hill to show all the accomplishments during that time period. Really amazing.

UPDATE: Some great tribute links are showing up in the comments boxes. Be sure to check them out.

Congratulations to ...

... Julie M. and Jaymen.

The Family

Lauren and her parents meet Pope John Paul II

The husband ought not to seek only his own interests, but also those of his wife; and she, those of her husband. Parents should look after the interests of their children, and these in turn look after the interests of their parents. The family is the only community in which man "is loved for himself," for what he "is" and not for what he "has" ... Respect for this fundamental norm explains as the apostle hiimself teaches, why nothing should be done out of a spirit of rivalry or for vainglory, but rather through humility, because of love. And this love, which is opened up to others, makes members of the family true servants of "the domestic church," where all desire the good and the happiness of each one; where each and every one gives life to this love with an urgent search for that good and that happiness.

Pope John Paul II
Homily of the Mass for families
Found in "In Conversation with God: Lent and Eastertide"

Clean Your Screen for Free Now

Go here.

(Be sure to try the ringtones too. If my phone could use them I surely would have #1.) Via Jimmy Akin.

Alternative News Network to be Launched April 11

SPERO NEWS LAUNCHES APRIL 11
ALTERNATIVE NETWORK FOR NEWS, COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS

Madrid, Spain/Houston, Texas /April 11/ -- Communication in today’s world requires openness and a new approach with respect to media. Spero News is that new approach.

Initially in English, and soon expanding into Spanish, Spero News is a bi-lingual weekly electronic magazine and community spanning the globe providing premium content submitted from its nearly 100 collaborators. Spero News aims to enhance society by creating a premier, alternative network for readers seeking quality news, information and interaction through the Internet by providing news, commentary, and analysis that encourages citizen participation. In that respect, Spero News is a unique experience towards creating a constructive dialogue between media and readers with the aim of promoting a correctly informed and discerning public opinion as reflected in Judeo-Christian values. By melding journalists, citizen journalists and sector professionals, Spero News also guarantees that its news is by the people and for the people.

Read the rest at Santificarnos. This is the network in which I'll have some columns appearing as will several others from St. Blog's.

A Little Useless Information

MISS AMERICA HAIR COLOR

The Miss America title has been awarded (with some breaks) since 1921,
when it was presented to Margaret Gorman. The statics of winners' hair color
might disprove the oft quoted claim that "gentlemen prefer blondes."

From 1921 - 2003
Brunettes - 70%
Blondes - 24%
Redheads - 6%

Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott

The Right to Life

For man, the right to life is the fundamental right. And yet, a part of contemporary culture has wanted to deny that right, turning it into an "uncomfortable" right, one that has to be defended. But there is no other right that so closely affects the very existence of the person! The right to life means the right to be born and then continue to live until one's natural end: "As long as I live, I have the right to live." ...

It is necessary to recognize that, in this context, we are witnessing true human tragedies. Often the woman is the victim of male selfishness, in the sense that the man, who has contributed to the conception of the new life, does not want to be burdened with it and leaves the responsibility to the woman, as if it were "her fault" alone. So precisely when the woman most needs the man's support, he proves to be a cynical egoist, capable of exploiting her affection or weakness, yet stubbornly resistant to any sense of responsibility for his own action...

Therefore, in firmly rejecting "pro choice" it is necessary to become courageously "pro woman," promoting a choice that is truly in favor of women. It is precisely the woman, in fact, who pays the highest price, not only for her motherhood, but even more for its destruction, for the suppression of the life of the child who has been conceived. The only honest stance, in these cases, is that of radical solidarity with the woman. It is not right to leave her alone.

Pope John Paul II
Crossing the Threshold of Hope