Lessons Learned in 2008

December 31, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog

I wish I had thought to write about this, but Elizabeth Foss has already done it, and more gracefully, insightfully, and interestingly than I could have. She’s coming at this from the perspective of a wife and mother, so her insights should be particularly relevant to you ladies, but I still found a lot there for my own personal reflection as a man. This is worth sharing with your network of friends and followers.

Lessons Learned

Funny, Yes, But Also (Sometimes) True

December 30, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog

10 Municipal Bankruptcies in Coming Next Year?

December 30, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog

From the “how bad will it get?” file, comes this recent story from Bloomberg.com about the likelihood of a slew of cities and counties, especially in my home state of California (we’re expats living in Ohio now), going belly up. It’s already happened (e.g., Vallejo & Orange County), and what I worry about is the potential domino effect that can bring a lot of other things crashing down when a cascade of bankruptcies picks up momentum.


The accountant who predicted the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy says as many as 10 insolvencies will roil the $2.7 trillion U.S. market for state, county and city debt next year as public finances worsen amid calls for federal aid to state and local governments. . . . ” (read more)

The Pornification of Our Generation

December 30, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog

My compliments  to Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report for articulately verbalizing something my wife and I have groused about for a long time:


So I took the kids out to the mall to shop for Mom two days before Christmas. I want them to know that Christmas is not just about receiving but giving as well. 


“Now let me ask a weird hypothetical. If I showed up at the Mall wearing only briefs and say my wife showed up in a minuscule bra and panties we’d likely be dragged from the premises and arrested. And rightly so, especially if you’ve seen me in briefs. But no matter what, it’s bad, right? So why is it OK for some of these stores to have huge window displays of essentially naked people. I mean, are these store owners out of their minds. Walking by Abercrombie or Victoria’s Secret is essentially a walking tour of porn for children. Hey kids step on up and peer inside the sick twisted mind of adulthood where we view others as vessels of flesh waiting to be boarded and devoured.  . . .” (read more)

Yet Another Reason Why I Love Technology

December 30, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog


“Lectures in Dominican History,” given in to Dominican seminarians the 1980s by Father John Hinnebusch, O.P., are now available in a complete collection at i-Tunes. Check it out! (Because, for some reason, there is no permalink embedded on the blog I’m sending you to, be sure to scroll down to the post titled “Dominican History Podcast” to access the stuff I’m talking about.


A Lesson in Joy: The Death of a Young Catholic Wife and Mother

December 30, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog

Although I never met Emilie Lemmons, a writer for The Catholic Spirit newspaper (Archdiocese of St. Paul and Mineapolis), I saw her work regularly, and I was shocked and saddened to learn of her death on Christmas Eve from lung cancer. She was just 40.


One of her final columns was a wrenchingly honest account of her struggle to find true joy in the midst of her painful trek toward her own Calvary. . . .

“On a recent Sunday morning at Mass, I was glancing at the program and saw an invitation to participate in the Advent liturgy with “a joyous heart, mind and spirit.


Immediately, I became angry. How on earth can a person with stage 4 cancer that is progressively getting worse feel joyous, I thought. My resentment seethed, and I sat like a hard stone all through Mass.

When the intentions mentioned those who are ill, I identified myself immediately and felt like such an outsider — just like the homeless people and other people on the fringes with whom I was lumped in the same intention. I felt miles away from normal, and it was hard to accept.

I’ve been like this for a few weeks now, ever since I was hospitalized for a week in November for a pulmonary embolism and fluid build-up in my lungs, ever since a CT scan found even more tumors growing there.

It’s hard to cope when I’m so angry, depressed and hopeless — yet somehow it feels fitting in this dark season of Advent.

In these weeks, we watch and wait, lighting candles that progressively light the way to Christmas Day. In my own life, when I feel so plunged in darkness, I watch and wait as I contemplate what those candles might illuminate. . . .

Sometimes I see myself in the description of people who fight toward a specific outcome and are “haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment.” It’s the mother in me. I rage against the possibility that I might die and leave my children motherless, my husband a widower. Even though the medical odds are against me, and my rational mind knows I could die, it is hard for me to accept death as an outcome.

What if I just let go of that? What if I trust that even if I die tomorrow or next month or next year, things will somehow work out? What if I allow myself to put the outcome in God’s hands and just live intensely in the present, absorbing and em bracing life as it happens? It’s not indifference or admitting defeat; it’s seeing the bigger picture. . . . (read more)


Emilie’s blog was “Lemmondrops,” where she wrote “sweet and sour stories of life, love, and little ones.”

As a father, I can only imagine her sadness and sorrow at knowing she would soon have to let go of her little ones, say goodbye to her beloved husband, and pass alone through the portal of death into the life beyond. Surely, her emotional sufferings were purgative, and her writings toward the end reveal how much she desired to trust in God and draw as close to Him as possible. Let’s all remember her husband and children in our prayers. May the Lord bring them joy in the midst of their suffering. And may perpetual light shine upon Emilie, and may God grant her eternal rest and peace and joy in heaven.

Here’s What the Pope Really Said About Rainforests

December 29, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog

The California Catholic webiste carries this interesting article, another example of how some media seem to intentionally distort papal statements with the apparent goal of stirring up even more opposition.  

“A gay-bashing tirade?”

Both mainstream and homosexual media around the world launched into a full-court and often vicious attack on Pope Benedict XVI following his Dec. 22 Christmas address to the Roman Curia. The furor began after the Holy Father said that protecting humankind from self-destruction was as important to Catholics as protecting the tropical rainforests. Although the pope nowhere used the word “homosexuality” in his discourse, homosexuals and others seized on a portion of his description of the Catholic understanding of the created natural order in which he described the “sacrament of creation” as “matrimony – which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman.”

Various media called Benedict XVI’s address to the Curia a “gay-bashing tirade,” a “homophobic attack,” an “anti-gay message,” and a “toxic Christmas message.” In the interest of clarity and justice, California Catholic Daily has excerpted the portion of the Holy Father’s speech that prompted the widespread outrage (it was only a brief part of an address that covered many other topics). We leave it to our readers to decide whether there was any legitimate justification for the attacks on Pope Benedict XVI.

Relevant excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI’s Dec. 22 address to the Roman Curia:

“First of all, there is the affirmation that comes to us from the start of the story of Creation, which tells of the Creator Spirit that moved over the waters, created the world and continuously renews it.

Faith in the Creator Spirit is an essential element of the Christian Creed. The fact that matter has a mathematical structure, is full of spirit (energy), is the foundation of the modern science of nature.

Only because matter is structured intelligently, our mind is able to interpret it and actively remodel it. The fact that this intelligent structure comes from the same Creator Spirit that also gave us our spirit, implies a task and a responsibility.

The ultimate basis of our responsibility towards the earth is our faith in creation. The earth is not simply a property that we can exploit according to our interests and desires. It is a gift of the Creator who designed its intrinsic order, and through this, has given us the orientative indications to follow as administrators of his Creation.

The fact that the earth, the cosmos, mirror the Creator Spirit also means that their rational structure — which beyond their mathematical structure, become almost palpable through experimentation – carries in itself an ethical orientation.

The Spirit that shaped them is more than mathematics — it is Goodness itself, which, through the language of creation, shows us the road to correct living.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man’s self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God’s work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term ‘gender’ effectively results in man’s self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition. . . . (read more)



Here's What the Pope Really Said About Rainforests

December 29, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog

The California Catholic webiste carries this interesting article, another example of how some media seem to intentionally distort papal statements with the apparent goal of stirring up even more opposition.  

“A gay-bashing tirade?”

Both mainstream and homosexual media around the world launched into a full-court and often vicious attack on Pope Benedict XVI following his Dec. 22 Christmas address to the Roman Curia. The furor began after the Holy Father said that protecting humankind from self-destruction was as important to Catholics as protecting the tropical rainforests. Although the pope nowhere used the word “homosexuality” in his discourse, homosexuals and others seized on a portion of his description of the Catholic understanding of the created natural order in which he described the “sacrament of creation” as “matrimony – which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman.”

Various media called Benedict XVI’s address to the Curia a “gay-bashing tirade,” a “homophobic attack,” an “anti-gay message,” and a “toxic Christmas message.” In the interest of clarity and justice, California Catholic Daily has excerpted the portion of the Holy Father’s speech that prompted the widespread outrage (it was only a brief part of an address that covered many other topics). We leave it to our readers to decide whether there was any legitimate justification for the attacks on Pope Benedict XVI.

Relevant excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI’s Dec. 22 address to the Roman Curia:

“First of all, there is the affirmation that comes to us from the start of the story of Creation, which tells of the Creator Spirit that moved over the waters, created the world and continuously renews it.

Faith in the Creator Spirit is an essential element of the Christian Creed. The fact that matter has a mathematical structure, is full of spirit (energy), is the foundation of the modern science of nature.

Only because matter is structured intelligently, our mind is able to interpret it and actively remodel it. The fact that this intelligent structure comes from the same Creator Spirit that also gave us our spirit, implies a task and a responsibility.

The ultimate basis of our responsibility towards the earth is our faith in creation. The earth is not simply a property that we can exploit according to our interests and desires. It is a gift of the Creator who designed its intrinsic order, and through this, has given us the orientative indications to follow as administrators of his Creation.

The fact that the earth, the cosmos, mirror the Creator Spirit also means that their rational structure — which beyond their mathematical structure, become almost palpable through experimentation – carries in itself an ethical orientation.

The Spirit that shaped them is more than mathematics — it is Goodness itself, which, through the language of creation, shows us the road to correct living.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man’s self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God’s work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term ‘gender’ effectively results in man’s self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition. . . . (read more)



A Tweet For All Catholics

December 28, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog


There’s a Catholic group on Twitter. I joined. Go check it out and sign up, and you can tweet at me thusly.

The 5 Stages of Twitter

December 28, 2008 by  
Filed under Patrick's Blog


Honestly, I haven’t been a member of this dang, crazy, wonderful thing called Twitter for more than a month, but I think I am now somewhere between stages 4 and 5, and I definitely recognize all the preceding stages. 


So . . . if you want to “follow” me on Twitter, my name there is patrickmadrid

F-O-L-L-O-W-M-E.

Oh, and check out my earlier post on the Twitter Phenomenon.

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