The Time of Your Life
January 4, 2010 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Will The Next War Be Fought Over Water?
January 4, 2010 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
The reason water is such a big deal in Southern California is the opposite of why it’s no big deal here in Ohio. There’s plenty of H2O here in the Buckeye State, plenty of rain, plenty of snow, plenty of water everywhere you go. But Los Angeles? Orange County? Riverside? San Diego? They sit in an arid zone and most all the water consumed there must be brought in from out of the area. It costs big bucks to keep Southern California properly supplied with water, and with upwards of 23 million inhabitants there (about twice the number of people in a region roughly the size of Ohio), can be difficult as well as costly.
The following article on the leftward-tilting NPR website considers that very possibility and raises some disturbing possibilities, wars over water included.
While I’m fairly certain that California will never go to war with Ohio in order to acquire water, even so, California will have a dire problem on its hands (even by California standards of dire problems) if, someday, the well runs dry.
“The lesson of history is that in the tumultuous adjustment that surely lies ahead, those societies that find the most innovative responses to the crisis are most likely to come out as winners, while the others will fall behind. Civilization will be shaped as well by water’s inextricable, deep interdependencies with energy, food, and climate change. More broadly, the freshwater crisis is an early proxy of the twenty-first century’s ultimate challenge of learning how to manage our crowded planet’s resources in both an economically viable and an environmentally sustainable manner. By grasping the lessons of water’s pivotal role on our destiny, we will be better prepared to cope with the crisis about to engulf us all. . . . (continue reading)
Related: “Three Reasons That Violence Could Erupt” over water.
Strange Buildings of the World. Surprisingly, No Modern Catholic Cathedrals Made the List
January 3, 2010 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Most of these edifices are pretty weird. Some are aggressively, stupidly weird. A couple (# 6, for example) are actually rather appealing. And some are reminiscent of certain modern cathedrals that have been inflicted on us built in recent years.
What do you think?
Let St. Philip Neri Help You Start the New Year Off Right
January 3, 2010 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
If you’re looking to deepen your love for God, our Lady and the saints, and your neighbor, this series of admonitions and counsels from the great St. Philip Neri, arranged by month, can help. In addition to your regular reading of Sacred Scripture and other daily devotions, such as praying the rosary, ingesting these spiritual one-a-day vitamins can give your interior life a real boost.
1. WELL! when shall we have a mind to begin to do good?
2. Nulla dies sine linea: Do not let a day pass without doing some good during it.
3. We must not be behind time in doing good; for death will not be behind his time.
4. Happy is the youth, because he has time before him to do good.
5. It is well to choose some one good devotion, and to stick to it, and never to abandon it.
6. He who wishes for anything but Christ, does not know what he wishes; he who asks for anything but Christ, does not know what he is asking; he who works, and not for Christ, does not know what he is doing.
7. Let no one wear a mask, otherwise he will do ill; and if he has one, let him burn it.
8. Spiritual persons ought to be equally ready to experience sweetness and consolation in the things of God, or to suffer and keep their ground in drynesses of spirit and devotion, and for as long as God pleases, without their making any complaint about it.
9. God has no need of men.
10. If God be with us, there is no one else left to fear.
11. He who wishes to be perfectly obeyed, should give but few orders.
12. A man should keep himself down, and not busy himself in mirabilibus super se.
13. Men should often renew their good resolutions, and not lose heart because they are tempted against them.
14. The name of Jesus, pronounced with reverence and affection, has a kind of power to soften the heart.
15. Obedience
is a short cut to perfection.
16. They who really wish to advance in the ways of God, must give themselves up into the hands of their superiors always and in everything; and they who are not living under obedience must subject themselves of their own accord to a learned and discreet confessor, whom they must obey in the place of God, disclosing to him with perfect freedom and simplicity the affairs of their soul, and they should never come to any resolution without his advice.
17. There is nothing which gives greater security to our actions, or more effectually cuts the snares the devil lays for us, than to follow another person’s will, rather than our own, in doing good.
18. Before a man chooses his confessor, he ought to think well about it, and pray about it also; but when he has once chosen, he ought not to change, except for most urgent reasons, but put the utmost confidence in his director.
19. When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last.
20. Let persons in the world sanctify themselves in their own houses, for neither the court, professions, or labour, are any hindrance to the service of God.
21. Obedience is the true holocaust which we sacrifice to God on the altar of our hearts.
22. In order to be really obedient, it is not enough to do what obedience commands, we must do it without reasoning upon it.
23. Our Blessed Lady ought to be our love and our consolation.
24. The good works which we do of our own will, are not so meritorious as those that are done under obedience.
25. The most beautiful prayer we can make, is to say to God, “As Thou knowest and willest, O Lord, so do with me.”
26. When tribulations, infirmities, and contradictions come, we must not run away in a fright, but vanquish them like men.
27. It is not enough to see that God wishes the good we aim at, but that He wishes it through our instrumentality, in our manner and in our time; and we come to discern all this by true obedience.
28. In order to be perfect, we must not only obey and honour our superiors; we must honour our equals and inferiors also.
29. In dealing with our neighbour, we must assume as much pleasantness of manner as we can, and by this affability win him to the way of virtue.
30. A man who leads a common life under obedience, is more to be esteemed than one who does great penance after his own will.
31. To mortify one passion, no matter how small, is a greater help in the spiritual life than many abstinences, fasts, and disciplines.
Go here for St. Philip Neri’s advice for the rest of the year . . .
A look back at 70 years of LIFE
January 3, 2010 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
The history of LIFE Magazine is a long and varied one, with a few stops and starts along the way. Most of us, though, will remember the periodical’s long, main phase as a photo-journal devoted to lavish pictorial spreads. About 25 years ago, I came into possession of a couple dozen of these vintage magazines, mainly from the 1940s and 50s, and pored over them with fascination. So much forgotten history is enshrined in their pages, each picture an open window into the past.
Looking through them again recently brought to mind just how profoundly the world has changed in, say, the 50 years from 1960 (the year I was born) to now. Some of the huge changes in geopolitics, entertainment, technology, sports, music, literature, science, and social mores have been documented, frame by frame, in LIFE. To get a sense of a 70-year arc of transitions that the world has passed through from 1936 to 2007,check out this compendium of all the LIFE overs during that period.
TIME Magazine's 2009 Person of the Year?
December 29, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
A Caller to My Radio Show Asks Why I Kicked Him Off My Facebook Page
December 29, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Some Advice for Catholics Who Want to Study Scripture More Deeply
December 28, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
On my “Open Line” radio show last week (Thursdays from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. ET), I took a call from Ryan in Baton Rouge. He asked for some advice on resources for studying Scripture in a systematic way. Here’s what I told him. Take a listen . . .
Newt Gingrich's Prescription to Fix U.S. Gov: "Replace, not Reform"
December 28, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Leftist Blogs Gleeful Over Attack on Pope Benedict
December 28, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
In view of the widespread orgy of gloating among those who were delighted by the Christmas-Eve attack on the Pope at the start of midnight Mass in Saint Peters, I offer up to the Lord this scriptural prayer of encouragement for the Holy Father, that He would continue to protect and strengthen him in the face of his enemies:
May God “deliver you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil; men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways” (Proverbs 2:12-15).
Conservative columnist Theodore Kettle comments on the shameful display of glee in some circles about the attack on the pope:
The woman, Susanna Maiolo, 25, was actually Swiss-Italian, and while the Pontiff himself came out of the episode unhurt and able to complete his celebration of Midnight Mass, 87-year-old French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray was left with broken bones requiring hip replacement surgery. The comments that soon appeared on blogs known to be critical of the social teachings of the Catholic Church were so harsh that even fellow bloggers of similar ideological bent were outraged. In a Dec. 26 a Daily Kos article entitled “Anti-Catholicism,” a “former Republican” Catholic woman and “forester/biologist” from the Deep South wrote, “I logged onto HuffingtonPost.com and read about the Pope getting knocked over by a mentally disturbed woman. While several people pointed out the Pope’s age and how this could have easily resulted in a broken hip, many more rejoiced in the event.” One blogger’s “attack on Catholicism and Catholics was met with near universal approval within the HuffingtonPost community.”
It was only minutes after Pope Benedict XVI was violently attacked on Christmas Eve by a woman described by authorities as mentally deranged, but leftist blogs lit up with joy over the assault.
The Daily Kos’s “Late Afternoon/Early Evening Open Thread,” for example, featured this posting at 8:10 PM Eastern Time: “Having just about enough of this male dominance bull—t, one bold Italian woman ran up and knocked down the Pope and a Cardinal!”
She added, “I have read numerous, nearly identical comments and posts at Daily Kos.”
A number of HuffPost bloggers were also amazed at the venom of some of the responses, like one woman who observed, “This incident with the Pope has brought lots of Christmas cheer to the HP community. Wow.” . . . (continue reading)
