Humor

Albertus Minimus notes a show in England called Demolition which is the opposite of a preservation society where people nominate buildings that should be destroyed. He then ponders a Catholic equivalent and asks readers to send in suggestions and pictures if possible. I bet you could easily sell tickets to watch an implosion of the L.A. Cathedral. You could even raise money for a new church by auctioning of opportunities to plant the necessary RDX charges. You auction off each charge and possibly front row seats.

This would be my entry.

Notwithstanding the tight shot of the tight T-shirt on the well-endowed woman in the clips shown to critics, the docu-soap "God or the Girl" treated the four young men trying to decide whether to enter the priesthood with the utmost respect, said executive producer Darryl Silver of the project for A&E — the network of "Dog the Bounty Hunter," "Criss Angel Mindfreak," "Dallas SWAT" and "Rollergirls."

As filmmakers, they wanted to take advantage of the controversy in which the Catholic Church has mired itself, Mark Wolper, the reality series’ other exec producer, told The TV Column after the Q&A session at Winter TV Press Tour 2006. During the Q&A, he’d told the Reporters Who Cover Television that "we completely shifted 180 degrees as a result of what we learned from these gentlemen and how much respect grew in us for their decision, for them as men and for the struggle they were going through."

What they learned from these gentlemen, he told The TV Column, is that these guys could not be manipulated to do things, as participants on other reality series can. So "God or the Girl" is more of a straight documentary, said Wolper, who executive produces the Penn & Teller show on Showtime as well as TV movies such as CBS’s holiday flick "Snow Wonder" starring Mary Tyler Moore and TNT’s remake of Stephen King’s "Salem’s Lot" starring Rob Lowe. [Source][Via Amy Welborn]

Well I am glad it is a strait documentary. Maybe the recent document has had an effect by keeping them from producing "God or the Boy."

Since today is the 14th day of Christmas (at least in the United States) and the Feast of the Epiphany, here is my reaction to a news story three years ago

A Church of England bishop has attacked “sentimental” Christmas card portrayals of the Nativity, saying that Jesus’s family were asylum seekers and the three Wise Men were part of an assassination plot.

The Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Keith Sutton, said the shepherds were not the lovable characters depicted in Nativity plays but were on “the fringes of society” and that, for most people, Christmas was a chore.
[Full Delusion]

Did Herod the Great contract out a hit to three foreigners for plausible deniability? How did this assassination go awry? Did King Herod say “Go and murder him” and they thought he said “Gold and myrrh to him”?, frankly that makes sense.

After reading this story that Pat Robertson’s continual health is God’s punishment on us.

Not that I seriously wish him any ill other than wanting to chase him off with about 700 clubs, but what a maroon.

Have you ever started a novena but lost track of what day you were on or accidentally skipped days? Have you ever intended to start a novena for a specific feast day and then only to remember about it five or six days before the start of the feast? If so then we have the perfect device for you.

Yes the eNovena has everything you would want and more! Never again miss preparing for a major feast day or to haphazardly complete a novena. Check out these features!

The eNovena contains hundreds of popular novenas to use right away. You simply use the scroll keys to read through and pray your novena. The LCD screen is easy to read and you can increase the size of the text to suit your needs.

A complete liturgical calendar helps you to select the days of your choice. You simply select the days you want and the eNovena will remind you when to start the novena nine days before and on each subsequent day.

Once you select a day the eNovena will give you a list of appropriate novenas. You can choose one from the suggestion or choose from all novenas available.

You can connect the eNovena to a computer via a USB cable to download new feasts so that your liturgical calendar will always be up-to-date. Additionally you can import any novenas that have been formatted in our special novena import format called TOF (Tongues of Fire). TOF is extremely simple since it only uses apostrophes (related to the Apostles) as delimiters in a plain text format and is plug n’ pray for all operating systems.

Now you would think that just with these features that eNovena was already packed with features, but wait there’s more!

For those who are vision impaired you can choose an audible mode where a state of the art voice synthesizer will broadcast the novena for you to hear. Our system called Pentecast will read the novena in any language that you can understand.

To remind you of when to start your novena and to remind you of each subsequent day the eNovena comes with an alarm system. At first only light sounding chimes gently remind you to pray your novena. If ignored over the day the alarms get increasingly louder. You won’t believe how we have managed to pack a train whistle into such a small case – but we have! If even these are ignored the device will start calling your cell phone in case you are not in listening range of the eNovena. Our special guilt mode won’t let you put off the novena once you have assigned it to yourself. If all attempts to get you to pray your novena the eNovena will call and upload your name to our main website where a list of people who have failed to complete their novena are listed.

Once you have started using the eNovena you won’t know how you got along with out it. Now we can’t guarantee that your special intentions will be answered in a way you want when praying your novenas. See the user’s manual for discerning God’s will and praying for what is best for you or the object of your special intention. So whether you pray in an upper room or a living room you can now use the same technique first used by the Apostles and disciples to prepare yourself in nine days of prayer. So why wait? Get started now with your own eNovena!

In the latest issue of This Rock magazine the editor talks about the beauty of truth and she also mentioned a move away from stock art.

"For example we wanted a photo of a large family to go with Mark Lowery’s article in this issue. A search for "family" on numerous sites returned photos of or two perfectly groomed parents with one or two children. A search for "large family" yielded the addition of a golden retriever."

So I guess photo searches can now be used in divination of the attitudes of many Americans. Though I must admit to having the same attitude once myself where two children was considered filling your quota.

By the way the redesign of This Rock magazine is excellent and they have added more columns on Church History, Scripture, and a new department "Up a notch" to take apologists up a level.

Mark Shea in response to a reader responding to a story on European women turning to Islam in-part said.

Islam is a man-made religion that, because it cobbled together a great deal of two revealed religions into a great civilization, has had a long run.

I guess it is too late to sue Mohammed for plagiarism. Maybe if the Walt Disney company helps to push copyright laws back another millennia we can get a restraining order for copyright infringement.

Catholic Church Conservation does find the wackiest liturgical photos.

Personally I prefer Holy Papa Bear.