NY State Says: "Get Vaccinated or Get Fired"

Hmmmm…

What do you suppose the reaction would have been to these kids playing overtly Christian tunes?

What's wrong with this picture?

Dear Elliot . . .

Pray for Your Brothers and Sisters in the Philippines

There’s more in-depth information (and more pictures) regarding this catastrophic flooding at the Catholic Seeking blog.

Catholic Grocery Store Owner Under Attack for Displaying Crucifix

Discouraged by Your Failures? Watch This

The price you've got to pray…

My earliest memories of prayer are wonderful.

Mom would sit on the edge of my bed and lead me through—if memory serves—an Our Father, a Hail Mary, a Glory Be, and a prayer for vocations (I’ve often wondered if that vocations prayer was my Dublin-born godmother’s idea, since she always wanted me to be the first Irish pope…the fact that I’m second generation American notwithstanding).

When I eventually left home to venture the two blocks uphill to grade school, my prayer experiences got a little less rosy.

You know what I mean. Any Catholic school kid who ever went to confession can remember slogging through a handful of Hail Marys and Our Fathers as if they were a cold pile of mashed potatoes Mom was forcing you to eat.

“Hey, what happened to Joey? I haven’t seen him around.”

“He’s doing ten to twenty.”

“Years?”

“Worse. Hail Marys.”

How can I say such a thing about the Hail Mary? Easy.

Hand a rosary to your average cradle Catholic who has grown up being told, essentially, “You’ve been bad. Now, you have to say prayers.” and see how excited he gets. He doesn’t see the rosary as a beautiful meditation. He sees it as five consecutive sentences of ten prayers each (not to mention the between-decades stuff).

Who ever came up with the idea of prayer as punishment? Granted, it takes some serious thought to figure out constructive penances for grade school kids, but setting up our most beloved traditional prayers as a price to be paid just doesn’t seem right.

Reinforcing it for the rest of our lives doesn’t seem right, either, especially when adults are capable of much more in the way of sacrifice.

Here’s something the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about penance, “It can consist of prayer, an offering, works of mercy, service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sacrifices, and above all the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear” (CCC 1460).

Not to sound all revisionist like the Jesus Seminar, but I just can’t bring myself to believe that the Our Father was intended as a cross to bear. There are a good number of options listed there, yet we still go to confession only to be rapped spiritually over the knuckles with prayer most of the time. In addition to ruining perfectly good prayers, it lets us off the hook much too easily.

Of course, maybe we—and even some well meaning souls who taught us—have all missed the point of those prayers. Maybe we should look at them less as old, cold mashed potatoes and more as a way to wallow in the presence of the Father we’ve just renewed our relationship with.

After all, the Catechism also says, “Prayer is the life of the new heart” (CCC 2697).

"Tisk, Tisk, Tosca"

It was a dark, but wiggly, night…

It’s been something of an odd twenty-four hours, at Chez Moore. My brother-in-law, his wife and two kids arrived for a visit yesterday and promptly took ill.

Before you get the wrong idea, I do not normally have this effect on my in-laws.

My nephew was sick the day before they arrived but had, quote, “a miraculous recovery,” inspiring enough parental confidence to make the trip.

Last night went well, as did this morning…but as the day progressed, things changed.

At this writing, my niece is in bed doing her best impression of a damp rag, my brother-in-law has requested a stool and sequestered himself in a bathroom, my sister-in-law is stumbling about weakly as her strength seeps back, and my little nephew is happy as a clam, oblivious to the fact that he has inoculated those who love him most with something icky.

I suppose my son can look forward to a day off from school sometime this week, courtesy of his cousins—albeit an uncomfortable one. Let’s just hope it doesn’t hit him and my wife on the same day.

If it hits ME, well…I’ll probably be quite a crybaby about it, giving my wife those annoying glances that say, MY family never brings a pox upon our house.

But of course, God always brings greater good out of bad situations. Sitting here tonight, we watched one of my nephews favorite DVDs, featuring The Wiggles—one of the most welcome contributions of all time to the world of children’s entertainment.

That DVD took me back to many wonderful hours of hanging out with my son back in the day, enjoying The Wiggles on video, playing their songs for him on my guitar, singing along with their recordings in the car, and even catching them live from first row seats.

We even waited for them like groupies near their tour bus to meet them after the show. For the record, they are VERY nice guys.

One of the most impressive things about our pre-school days as a Wiggles family was a video called “Wiggly, Wiggly Christmas,” which contains a song called “Unto Us this Holy Night.” It’s a great song and was accompanied by a traditional Nativity pageant.

That’s right…in this world of watered down “holiday” celebrations, The Wiggles came from Australia to remind America that Christmas is at heart, a birthday party for a baby named Jesus.

A brief look on the web will tell you that at least one of The Wiggles is a devout Catholic, which makes me happy. Whether any of the others are or not, they have not only stood up for The Birthday Boy, but they have done marvelous things for children…and for parents who have had the pleasure of joining their kids in a wonderful, wiggly, relationship-deepening experience.

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