Are you a tortured genius?

You Are 98% Tortured Genius

You totally fit the profile of a tortured genius. You're uniquely brilliant - and completely misunderstood. Not like you really want anyone to understand you anyway. You're pretty happy being an island.

Are You a Tortured Genius?

"A Chill Wind From Rome...."

The Legal and Catholic Blogspheres are abuzz with discussion of the Supreme Court's recent affirmation of the partial birth abortion ban.

A lot of the discussion is centering around whether the majority (all five of whom happen to be Catholic--Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy) voted based on the law or voted based on religion.

I strongly suspect the majority vote was based more on the justices' theory of Constitutional interpretation much more than it was based on their religion. After all, it's not as if they did anything overly radical--they upheld a law that had been passed by Congress.

Sure, Alito, Roberts and Kennedy were dark horses but anyone who's ever read any opinions authored by Scalia or Thomas had to know how their vote would go. Neither of them sees a Constitutional right to an abortion.

What saddens me is that the discourse focuses on the justices' religion than it does on the state of our society. What kind of society legalizes infanticide? If you don't think it's infanticide, read the description of the procedure from the majority opinion.

Which Twentieth Century Pope Are You?

You are Pope St. Pius X. You'd rather be right than newfangled.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

What is with the media and their Monday morning quarterbacking of the horrible events at Virginia Tech? No one was entirely sure what had gone on and the media were already criticizing university officials for their lockdown and slow notice to students. Have all these journalists forgotten their college days? Now, granted, my college days were in the dark ages (10 years ago) before everyone had cell phones and laptops, but I think this criticizing the Virginia Tech officials for what they did, didn't or shoulda done before the full story is even known is out of line.

My alma mater is roughly the same size and in the same type of setting as Virginia Tech. It took 20+ minutes to walk from one part of campus to the other. I can't imagine the university being able to get notice to all 20,000+ students had some tragedy occurred. As it was, there were riots on Court Street my freshman year, and I was even on Court Street when the events began to occur, but I didn't know there were riots until the next morning when my aunt in McAllen, TX called me and wanted to know why my school was being shown on CNN.

Sure we had campus police and I'm sure they had some kind of evacuation plan, but I'm also sure they never considered having to initialize it. They mostly dealt with underage drunks and thefts. I'm sure they never thought they'd have to deal with a gunman walking into a class building and opening fire. How would you even secure a classroom building?

What happened at Virginia Tech was horrible, but let the officials there deal with what needs to be done and don't armchair quarterback about an unprecedented situation.

Virginia Tech Shooting

Eternal rest, grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

Stupid Files #1

File this under "Sin Makes You Stupid." I don't know what's worse, that my hometown breeds this kind of citizen or that city hall granted his group a permit to march through a predominantly-black area of the city. The same area of the city that was six year ago this month in full riot.

Apparently Cincinnati City Hall also makes you stupid.

Update: Well, apparently the march is temporarily off. Turns out the head of the loccal chapter has a warrant for his arrest. Imagine that.

It's the little things....

That I'm noticing most now that I'm an "official" Catholic. I put official in quotes because I'm starting to think I've always thought Catholic, even during my days as an evangelical, fundamentalist protestant :)

I realized this morning as I was putting on the beautiful, celtic cross my sponsor gave me at the vigil that I would have NEVER worn a cross during my CoC days. It just wasn't done during my days as an anti. I remember hearing screeds against cross-wearing from the pulpit. "If Jesus had been killed by guillotine or electric chair, would you wear that around your neck?"

Now I have the gold, celtic cross from my sponsor and a silver crucifix necklace blessed by my priest. My Scotch-Irish Presbyterian forefathers are probably turning in their graves at that!

Come to think of it, I guess I really shouldn't be surprised that my Scotch-Irish Presbyterian forebears turned Cambellite once they made it to Kentucky, should I?

Easter Vigil

Okay, Kasia. Here it is:

Vigil was wonderful. We had prayers with the pastor in the morning and we were all presented with a cross necklace our pastor blessed. After a mini-retreat we all went home to take naps!

Vigil started at 9pm, but we were there at 8:15 pm. Instead of being gathered around the fire while Fr. J processed out with the servers we waiting until the last possible minute to get outside because it was sooooo cold. We candidates were all dressed warmly, but the catechumens had shorts and t-shirts on underneath their "burlap sacks." We shivered through the blessing and lighting of the Paschal candle (which was at least 6 feet tall.) The pastor had recruited a few of the football players from the local Catholic high school to act as servers and to help with the candle. It took three big guys and a deacon to move it!

After the blessing and lighting of the candle, we all went back inside and the candle was brought in. We all lit our small candles while everyone processed in. Our parish did all nine readings--the first seven were done with only the light from the Paschal candle. When it came time to read the epistle only a few of the sanctuary lights were brought up.

After the readings and the homily, we went out into the gathering space for the baptism as we did the litany of the saints. The baptisms were highly emotional, I don't think there was a dry eye in the place. Our baptisms were done by immersion and if I recal correctly there were 7 of them.

We had almost an entire family come into the church--a mother, her school age son and her toddler daughter. The little girl was done last and as her mother was handing her to Fr. J she cried "nooooo!" Even Fr got a good laugh at that.

While our catechumens and pastor went to go get dried and changed, our parochial vicar led us in the renewal of our baptismal promises. We then went back into the church with lit candles and the choir sang some selections while we waiting for the pastor to come back out.

Then we candidates stood and were received into the church. We were then called by name to come to the front of the church for confirmation (there were about 10 of us.) Then there were three others who were also being confirmed and finally the newly baptised joined us now that they were dry and dressed in their albs.

Fr. J began by confirming the catechumens, then the three who were only being confirmed and finally the candidates. As we walked up to Fr. J, our sponsors handing Fr. H our cards with our confirmation name. I was the last person to be confirmed, by then Fr. J was just grinning from ear to ear.

Then came the big moment--Eucharist. I've been sitting through mass for months and feeling so incredibly sorrowful during the Eucharist because I haven't been able to receive and I've so desperatly wanted to. I have to admit, I was a little teary as I came up to Fr. J to receive the body of Christ.

Afterwards we had a reception in the parish hall for the newly received and the rest of the parishoners.

On a side note--a friend of my family gave me a rosary blessed by Pope John XXIII the next day. It had belonged to a friend of hers who had it blessed when she was married in 1959. How cool is that?

That's the cliffs notes version of Vigil. When I get time I'm going to try to write up something more complete.

Okay, Kasia. Now it's your turn :)

Family--Gotta Love 'em

I just got to spend a wonderful afternoon with my dad's family. I'll spare you the details, but let me just say that they put the 'fun' in dysfunctional.

Holy Week Begins

I have successfully made my first confession and now will spend the next week preparing myself for Easter Vigil. I fully intend to make a post detailing my impressions and thoughts after the Vigil.

For me this is a time of anticipation and sadness. Anticipation that I will finally finish a journey that began almost 10 years ago. Sadness because I seriously doubt I will have any family in attendance. Mom says she'll be there, but I'm not confident enough in that to even bother having the formation office reserve seats.