Max Marie, Franciscan Hermit

2010-09-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

Reclaiming Catholic Identity

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. But I’ve got something on my mind.

One of the absolute worst things to come out of Vatican II was the stripping of our Catholic Identity. The whitewashing of our faith. For almost 2000 years we were a faith of science, of magic and mysticism - of Eucharistic miracles, stigmata, flying friars and visionary nuns. Catholics invented the telescope, posed the Heliocentric Theory and the Big Bang Theory - among other leaps.

Our Protestants cousins rejected the magic and mysticism. "It's all a bunch of hocus pocus," they said. Derived from "en hoc corpus meum" - this is my body. They’re afraid of science. What’s that about?

After 700 years of fighting we made a misguided attempt to lure them back. It didn’t bring them back. But it certainly chased a lot of Catholics away. Most feast days are barely acknowledged, vigils are quite rare and early in the evening. Minimal candles. No more incense. No more Gregorian chant. No more Latin. Today, most Catholics have no idea exactly when transubstantiation happens during mass. In fact, they don’t understand the mass at all. They arrive late just in time to receive the host and then leave. The only point to mass is "get the host."

So much as been lost!

I am pointedly leaving out the "traditionalist movement" because I find the bulk of them use their faith as a means to be cruel. Some of the most informational websites about traditional Catholicism are inhabited by harpies. I am a very Old School Catholic. I refuse to define myself by terms so often used justify bigotry and hate. God is love. Period.

There once was a time when not a one of us would consider going to church in jeans or sipping coffee during prayer time at home. The fall out of this whitewash is that God has become a casual friend. One very few people aspire to know better. One we feel we can treat like a doormat. No need to get dressed up when we visit Him. Shorts and flip flops are fine. No need to show respect for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Chit chat in the sanctuary, talk smack about the priests. Bring cheerios for the kiddies. Dump them all over the pews. It's ok. Be disgusting pigs in the bathroom. It's only the House of God. No matter.

Not long ago a Catholic home could be recognized in an instant. Images of Jesus and Mary decorated the walls. Statues of the saints held special places. Holy water font at the door. We stopped at noon to pray the Angelus and in the evening for the Memorare. Every Catholic home had an altar complete with sanctuary candles blessed at Candlemas - a very specific place to go and pray. Lauds and Vespers, from the Liturgy of the Hours, would be prayed there, as well as the rosary. Your auntie would call because she was going to pray a novena for this or that intension, the entire family would light a fresh sanctuary candle and join in.

The cycle of our Liturgical Year would be celebrated for all to see! Special meals, special decorations, specific colors. Make enough to take some next door. Today most Catholics don’t know what the Liturgical Year is. When it begins, what it entails. How to celebrate the Holy Days. Yes Virginia, there is a Catholic origin to the word "holiday."

Jesus told us it’s not easy to be in this world but not of it. As Catholics we’ve really lost our way. Lost our identity. Many young people have a genuine thirst for the spiritual and they are not finding it in our church. They are lured into Wicca and various occult practices by way of discipline! A special outfit for meeting one’s god or goddess. Decorations for the home to celebrate the "Wheel of the Year." Focus during spells. They would never dream of sipping coffee during candle lit meditations to their gods and goddesses, chanting prayers in lost languages.

I hope I am not offending my Pagan friends out there. I say all of this with the highest of praise for your devotion. And in criticism of Catholics for their lack of it.

The reason Catholic youth loved John Paul II so much is because he called them to this kind of discipline. Pulled out all the stops - telling them the easy way was no way at all. Put on your scapular. Pray your rosary every day. Make a difference. Volunteer at the shelter. Make pilgrimages. Offer up your suffering. At the very least learn your basic prayers in Latin. Pray and pray hard! Be in this world, but not of it. And most of all: Do Not Be Afraid!

Statistically speaking, we are coming around. We are taking great steps, well, backwards. And it’s making us better! Catholics are returning to practices that were essentially cast aside after Vatican II. Celebration of feast days, the chapel veil, kneeling to receive Jesus in the Eucharist directly on the tongue, the scapular, the rosary, the home altar. After ages of decline, third orders are seeing a huge influx of new members. Especially third orders with habits such as the Franciscans of the Immaculate who offer the layman’s habit.

Ladies, if you’re looking for a husband - the chapel veil is a good way to send up a sign. Historically, a white veil means you’re available - a black veil means you are not.

Start now! Bring home a bit of identity. Centuries ago, September 29th, the Feast Day of Saint Michael was one of the biggest Holy Days in the Liturgical Calendar, second to Easter - before St. Francis made Christmas cool. In fact, St. Francis observed a 40 day fast, just like Lent, each year before the Feast Day of St. Michael. It represents the year turning from summer to fall. There are wonderful books out now about seasonal celebrations in the Liturgical Year. Hit the library or a search engine.

Celebrate!

2010-05-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Ember Wednesday

Today is an Ember Wednesday. The word ember is a corruption of Tempora - the proper term being Quatuor Tempora - which means 4 times. They are seasonal celebrations to do penance and give thanks to God for the bounty heaped upon us by His grace. As the beginning of Summer heads our way, the Ember Days of Pentecost are celebrated.

So, I find myself in the middle of two birthday celebrations at my office on a day I should be fasting and doing penance.

How does one handle that?

The Gospel of Matthew - Chapter 6 tells us that when one does things for others to see, one has received his reward. God sees the actions of our hearts and accepts them accordingly.

So I don’t make a fuss. I don’t call any attention to myself or my actions. I accept my cake. Poke it with my fork a bit and say I’m saving it for later, when I have a good cup of coffee to go with it.

2009-05-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's been a very long time since I've posted to this blog. Unity Publishing has requested that I reboot my chastity blog. I'm pretty certain I've deleted it. But, Our Lady of America calls. Who am I to say I'm too busy?

Out of all my readers, I think only my dear Claudia has followed me to MySpace, Facebook and even Twitter. If any of you still check in on this, I've moved to Las Vegas.

2007-09-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Today is a big day in the Franciscan calendar. Today we celebrate St. Francis receiving the Stigmata.

St. Francis of Assisi spent many years trying his best to imitated Christ Jesus and as such, to actually live the Gospel. To this day, Franciscans around the world strive to live the Gospel life.

Francis lived as a poor man, though his family was wealthy. He sometimes wore the clothes of a beggar. But most often, the habit of a penitent. That is a badly patched grey robe with a hood and a rope belt. Even a leather belt was considered "too rich" for Il Poverello – the little poor man.

To him, Christ was: "My God and My All." That is the motto of Franciscans around the world.

Most people believe that St. Francis received the stigmata at the time of his initial conversion. This is not true. It was close to the end of his life.

In the year 1224, two years before his death, Francis traveled to Mt. La Verna to spend 40 days preceding the feast of St. Michael the Archangel in prayer and fasting. Such had been his custom for years. It was at that time that he received the stigmata.

What is the Stigmata? Stigmata are the marks of the Passion. Very often people count each hand and each foot, for four wounds. That's not how they are counted. The "five wounds of the Passion" are as follows: 1) Nails through the hands, 2) Nails through the feet, 3) Spear through the side, 4) Crown of thorns, 5) Scourging at the pillar.

We are most familiar with images of St. Francis having the nail wounds in both hands and both feet. Many reports say St. Francis carried the 5 wounds. Not according to St. Bonaventure. According to St. Bonaventure, he only had three. Not that that's a bad thing. I'd be a whiney baby sitting in a pool of my own tears if I just had ONE!

St. Bonaventure tells the story of St. Francis and the Stigmata: "Francis was raised to God in the ardor of his seraphic love, wholly transformed by sweet compassion into Him, who, of His exceeding charity, was pleased to be crucified for us. On the morning of the feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross, as he was praying in a secret and solitary place on the mountain, Francis beheld a seraph with six wings all afire, descending to him from the heights of heaven. As the seraph flew with great swiftness towards the man of God, there appeared amid the wings the form of one crucified, with his hands and feet stretched out and fixed to the cross. Two wings rose above the head, two were stretched forth in flight, and two veiled the whole body.

"Francis wondered greatly at the appearance of so novel and marvelous a vision. But knowing that the weakness of suffering could nowise be reconciled with the immortality of the seraphic spirit, he understood the vision as a revelation of the Lord and that it was being presented to his eyes by Divine Providence so that the friend of Christ might be transformed into Christ crucified, not through martyrdom of the flesh, but through a spiritual holocaust.

"The vision, disappearing, left behind it a marvelous fire in the heart of Francis, and no less wonderful token impressed on his flesh. For there began immediately to appear in his hands and in his feet something like nails as he had just seen them in the vision of the Crucified. The heads of the nails in the hands and feet were round and black, and the points were somewhat long and bent, as if they had been turned back. On the right side, as if it had been pierced by a lance, was the mark of a red wound, from which blood often flowed and stained his tunic."

The feast of the Exaltation of the Cross was last Friday.

St. Francis tried to hide stigmata for some time. He was unable to keep the wounds secret from the brethren. After his death they were carefully examined, and they were attested by an ecclesiastical decree.

To commemorate the importance of the wounds, Pope Benedict XI instituted a special feast which is celebrated on September 17th, not only by all branches of the Franciscan Order, but throughout the Latin Church.

Many psychologist say that the stigmata is produced through a sort of autohypnosis. An individual spends so much time meditating on the Passion of Christ that they imprint themselves, through the power of their own minds, with the wounds.

Padre Pio, a well known and highly documented stigmatic, laughed at this idea. He told the psychiatrist who suggested this to him that the man should meditate on a bull for several decades to see if he wound end up sprouting horns.

People think that we Christians are so desperate for proof of God that we'll accept any old thing as a miracle. I can tell you with absolute certainty that - in the Catholic Church - any potential miracle is subject to a barrage of tests.

During his lifetime (1818-1912), Dr. Antoine Imbert-Gourbeyre identified over 320 cases of genuine stigmata. There have been plenty of fakers. One of the most well known being Magdalen de la Cruz. She was a Poor Clare who lived in Cordoba, Spain. Many regarded her as a saint. She eventually confessed that her stigmata was false. The work of the devil. She lived the next 14 years in solitude and great piety.

With the "discovery" that the palms of a corpse nailed to a plank couldn't support the body - there came the launch of stigmatics with holes in their wrists. Such as the one played out in the film Stigmata. I actually liked that film quite a bit. Even though the film maker was somewhat clueless...

An even more recent "discovery" was the "oops" we forgot the Romans supported the feet so a corpse can hang indefinitely with nails through the palms.

So. How do Franciscans celebrate this feast day? This Franciscan seems to have a non-stop appetite today. What else does one do on a feast day? FEAST!!

God In The Streets of New York City

2007-06-20T12:53:00.001-07:00

This is fantastic!

2007-03-19T16:42:00.000-07:00

YIPEE! I made it. As of Thursday March 15th I am officially a Franciscan. Boy. Did I just inherit a lot of "inlaws." My first days as a Franciscan have been just delightful. I attended a FABULOUS Divine Mercy conference on Saturday. I am so peaceful and happy I might just levitate!

This photo is of me and one of my Franciscan family members. Another newly professed Franciscan. He's been with me since Inquiry.

2007-01-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

Go Veg for Lent!

Come on. Just try it. I'll help you all I can.

http://www.veg4lent.org/

There are so many reasons to just give it a try. You'll lower your cholesterol. You'll feel better. You'll save the planet. You'll feed the hungry and give water to the thirst.

Think about it. It takes 22 pounds of grain and 5000 gallons of water to produce ONE pound of edible beef. Cows aren't meant to eat all that grain. Their meant to eat grass. So they're loaded up with steroids to help them gain muscle mass while they stand in tiny stalls doing nothing. You don't want all those drugs do you? Since they are kept in doors in tiny stalls they must constantly be hosed down. Creating lagoons of manure that pollute surrounding rivers and streams. Methane gas produced by these lagoons in the US alone is doing more damage to the planet that all cars combined.

Don't be afraid of the veggies. Veggies love you. They want to nourish you! Yum!

Then there is the protein question. Protein is readily available in veggie form. AND it doesn't cause you to lose calcium. Yes, digesting animal protein forces your bones to excrete calcium. Any wonder why there's an epidemic of osteoporosis in the US? Try "wheat meat" also known as Seitan. It's twice the protein and half the calories of beef.

Think about it. That's all I'm asking. Just think about it.

2007-01-12T14:32:00.000-08:00

I read an interesting item today.

I took a brochure on vegan advocacy with me to lunch. It stated that even with all the work of animal rights advocates, the number of animals being killed for food in the U.S. is rising. Currently the number of animals killed each year for food is around 1 and 2/3 the entire population of the earth.

Staggering.

I took a look at abortion statistics. They too seem to be rising, regardless of pro-life efforts. Abortion peaked in 1990. Dropped in 1995 and is now slowly climbing.

Forensic psychologists like Robert Ressler and Brent Turvey have stated that murderers often start out killing and torturing animals. Murder is murder. The two are inextricably linked.

Go to the PETA website. Look at footage of men and women abusing animals in factory farms. Do you really think any of those people consider abortion to be murder? No. They don't. The killing and torture of an animal means nothing to them. Life means nothing to them. How do you think they treat their children? Their spouses?

Stop the violence!

Most Catholics assume vegetarians and vegans are pro-abortion liberals. There are a great many of us who are not. I am an old fashion Catholic. But like Pope John Paul II and many before him, I believe animals are gifts from God. Life is breathed into them the same way it's breathed into us. They are our brothers. We must protect them.

Many Animal Liberationists are pro-choice, which on the surface puts them at odds with pro-lifers. I find it difficult to consider that a person who wouldn't eat an egg because it's chicken murder would end the life of a child. While they may want the choice, they may not choose abortion. Murder is murder.

It is long over due for Pro-lifers and Animal Liberationists to come together. There is room in everyone's heart for children and critters. It doesn't have to be either one or the other.

Let's end the slaughter of innocents.

2006-12-11T12:54:00.001-08:00

Satanic Panic
www.wm3.org

If memory serves, it was in August of 1996 that I received an e-mail from my friend Cheryl in Los Angeles. She said there was an episode of HBO’s “America Undercover” that Friday called “Paradise Lost” and I had to see it. Cheryl is my pal. If she says watch, I watch. I wasn’t expecting what unfolded. Within the first few minutes of the program I found myself deeply disturbed by the way one parent smiled while discussing her son’s murder and mutilation and shocked that anyone could land on death row without a shred of real evidence. I’ve been following this case since.

We tell ourselves we’re too sophisticated for something like the Salem Witch Trials to ever happen again, yet, here it is. Three innocents blamed for an evil that one small town felt could only come from the devil. All three teens were surrounded by either friends or family during the time allotted for their supposed criminal actions, but that doesn’t matter. They went to trial with evidence that was sketchy at best. To the world at large, it would seem their only “real” crime was being a little bit different.

On May 5th, 1993 three 8-year-old boys, Michael Moore, Steve Branch and Christopher Byers, went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. The search was launched in a wooded area known as “Robin Hood Hills,” where the boys often played. The very next day their bodies were found in that same area, beneath about two feet of water. All three boys were tied, wrist to ankle, with their own shoelaces. All three boys had been beaten. One boy died of blood loss due to heavy injuries, which would seem to make him the focus of the attack. The other two boys drown, presumably in that very ditch. The medical examiner didn’t think it important to make certain. Weeks later, very little blood would be found via Luminol test at the site. All that was found should have been attributed to the officers pulling the bodies from the water and resting them on the banks. I’m not a cop. I’m not a criminology student. But I’ve read enough books by Robert Ressler to know you don’t move the bodies, you drain the ditch.

Allow me to draw you a picture of West Memphis, Arkansas based on data from AreaConnect: Population 27,666 (I kid you not.), 42% white, 56% black, the other two percent is a smattering of about everything with .21% American Indian. You’ll understand the relevance of that tiny number later. The median age is 31 and women outnumber the men by 2,000. The crime level in West Memphis is higher than the national average. Theft is their offense of choice, numbering 814 in 2001. There are 29 churches, primarily Baptist with one Catholic. I now understand why it’s called the “bible belt.” My own town has roughly three times as many people but barely twice as many churches, evenly distributed by denomination. Murders? We had one, they had two.

What happens when children are murdered in a small southern town? These simple people, unable to conceive of such a crime, began grasping at any and every straw to make some kind of sense out of this act. Given a police department that was ill equipped and untrained to deal with such a case, you’d point the finger at a local “weirdo,” Damien Echols (18 years old), you’d rope in his best friend, Jason Baldwin (16 years old), and you’d bully a third kid, Jessie Misskelley (17 years old), into “confessing.” Local investigators fumbled along destroying, losing and ignoring much needed evidence.

A juvenile probation officer, who would later be in trouble with the law himself, showed up as West Memphis police worked the scene and launched a rumor that would take the town by storm. He brought up the name of Damien Echols as one likely to perpetrate such an evil. He claimed Damien had spoken with him about starting a cult. Thus the match was struck and the fire of Satanic Panic consumed the town. Rumors flew like a flock of starlings and suddenly everyone had a “Damien story.” I pulled a few gems from the www.wm3.org website: One man claimed that Damien levitated him during a "devil meeting." Another person claimed that they saw Damien wearing "dog entrails like a necktie." Another West Memphis resident stated that human skulls with skin still attached were found in Damien's closet. Another local person stated that they watched Damien kill a dog and eat the heart during a satanic orgy/ritual. Another version of this rumor specifies that he ate the dog's leg. If these people were close enough to have such detail, that is, to know the entrails were from a dog, surely they participated. Why weren’t they on trial? If they didn’t participate then why didn’t they go to authorities with such a story immediately, potentially saving the lives of these children?

One of the earliest and most heinous rumors actually began with a parent of one of the murdered children. John Mark Byers told reporters his child’s testicles were found in a jar of alcohol under Damien’s bed. What kind of parent floats such a rumor? Who in their right mind would want their child remembered this a way? I recommend you view the two documentaries on this case: “Paradise Lost: the Child Murders in the Robin Hood Hills” and “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations” for a better understanding.

On June 3, 1993 these teens were arrested for the murder of the three children. Later they would be convicted. Evidence exists to prove their innocence, however, it has been dismissed because the judge does not understand Forensic Odontology. They’re young men now, having been imprisoned for 13 years. Damien Echols, the supposed “ringleader,” is serving his time on death row.

I don’t know about you, but one month seems awfully fast to me. Especially when, as you’ll see below, much of that time was spent chasing a rumor, rather than actually gathering evidence in an attempt to find the real murderer(s). In the Laci Peterson case, police gathered evidence for 4 months, regardless of the “tremendous pressure” involved, before making an arrest.

Just by skimming a few books on cults at the library I learned cults kill their own. Reality is very unlike the media portrayal of cults cleaning our streets up of the indigent or snatching children off dirt roads. If they need to kill someone, they draw someone in then cut them from family and friends so they will not be missed. If they want a child sacrifice, they impregnate one of their own.

I asked a local cult expert what one might find in a wooded area where cult activities were supposedly performed. He commented that different things would be found with different types of cults. I explained that the accusation was of a satanic cult. I was surprised by his answer. Learn something new every day! Let me summarize what he said:

First you have to classify them in the correct way. Satanism is not devil worship. They don’t go into the woods, they’re too controlling. They keep to themselves. They’re more interested in orgies and the like. Satanism isn’t worshipping satan. They are their own gods.

Different sects of satanism may intermingle with devil worship or demon worship. With devil worship you’d find demonic symbols, rune script or satanic script carved in the area, a burnt out fire area and candle wax but no sacrificial knives.

The expert asked point blank what the question referred to. I told him there were three young men in jail, convicted of the “satanic sacrifice” of three children. He asked on what evidence and all I could tell him was none. Not a shred. He asked what symbols had been carved into the victims. Symbols?

“There would have been demonic symbols carved on the victims.”

Really??!! (I didn’t bother to mention what the prosecution’s “occult specialist” [see below] said in court. I didn’t want him to choke on his lunch.)

Knowing full well he was innocent, trusting in the judicial system, and seeming to enjoying the spotlight, Damien was all too eager to give information about himself quite freely. That information would later be used against him. Damien professed to be a practitioner, or student, of Wicca at that time. He would state emphatically that he was never part of any group. However, the prosecution would use this against him, equating the earth-centered religion to satanism.

I had planned on interviewing a practicing Wiccan for my article. I thought it would be great to get some information from an active source on their beliefs. However, I just haven’t been able to get one to volunteer. With what I know about this particular case, I understand why. None of them would want to end up on death row. The very basic principles of Wicca are “Harm none” which is self-explanatory and The Three Fold Law. That is to say, anything you put out into the universe comes back to you three fold. If you case a love spell, three will be cast upon you. (Whew, let’s hope he’s not ugly!) If you murder three children 9 close to you will be murdered.

The prosecution would call upon Dale Griffis as an expert in the occult. He pointed to Damien’s particular style of dressing in black as evidence of his occult practices. They actually held up a concert t-shirt in court as proof of his cult status. I surveyed 6 ladies in my monthly Bible Study group. Three had black jeans in their closets. All six had black t-shirts, two mentioned specific concert tees. Other “evidence” mentioned in court as proof of Damien’s cult activities were books he read and music he listened to. I asked about those specific writers and bands used against Damien in court and found two of my ladies have also read Stephen King and two had Pink Floyd albums in their CD collections. One young lady mentioned having seen a movie made of a Stephen King novel. She makes a good point. I bet more than 50% of the people in that courtroom had seen “The Shining.”

Much was made of the just the name Damien. He was actually born Michael. His stepfather introduced him to church. Eventually he would join West Memphis’s only Catholic church and be confirmed taking the name of Damien after Fr. Damien of Molokai. But the people of West Memphis had seen “The Omen” one too many times and would insist he took the name under darker pretenses.

Had Damien lived in California, he would have numbered among the hundreds upon thousands of average teenagers. Moody, loved heavy metal music, dressed in black and oozing of teen angst. During the trial, comments were made about his long black hair. People said he dyed it as part of his “cult persona.” Damien is part American Indian. His hair is naturally black, stick straight and at that time he wore it long. He is also rather pale. A physical appearance “Goth” kids around here strive for. But Damien isn’t from around here. He’s from a hick town in the Bible belt.

As I read Mara Leveritt’s interview with Damien from the archives of the Arkansas Times, one thing hit me hard. This kid has both a monastic and ecumenical heart. He seems a lot more like Thomas Merton or Bede Griffiths than Anton LeVey (who, by the way, never advocated human sacrifice by any means). I was also shocked to read in that same interview that the probation officer who launched the “cult campaign” viewed speaking and reading Latin as satanic. Imagine a worst-case scenario. This kid continued on his path to Catholicism and at some point discovers the “Rule of St. Benedict.” He is drawn to monastic life and becomes a Benedictine Oblate, which is a third order or secular monk. He takes the oblate habit, black hooded robes. He learns to chant the psalms, with his intelligence and love of study probably memorizes them in Latin. If these things had come to pass, there wouldn’t have been a trial. There would have been a lynching.

It should be mentioned that Damien named his first born, Azariah. A good sound biblical name. However, the townspeople were apparently ignorant of the Bible and decided it was a demonic name. In the Book of Tobit: Azariah is the name the Archangel Raphael gives, to hide his true identity, when he comes in answer to a man’s prayer. In 1 and 2 Kings, Azariah is the king of Judah (one of the 12 tribes of Israel.) In 2 Chronicles, Azariah is a prophet of God. In Daniel, Azariah is the name of one of the boys who survives the “firey furnace.”

A well known wiccan author recently told me, “Ignorance coupled with power is evil.”

It isn’t bad enough that Damien is on death row with literally no evidence linking him to the crime. We have Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley who really are collateral damage. Simply put, the way to “get” Damien. Reading interviews and watching the documentaries on the case, it’s easy to see why Damien and Jason were best friends. Jason is a happy kid with a ready smile, even in the midst of accusations and small town belligerence. His bright and cheery personality must have alleviated much of Damien’s angst. Jason’s defense attorney claimed it was simply ‘guilt by association.’ Although it’s a true statement, I find it sad that he made it seem as if he actually believed Damien was guilty.

Jessie Misskelley was to be the “tool” police in West Memphis used to “get” Damien. Jessie is another sweet, smiling kid who wants nothing more than to make people happy. A woman he knew who was in trouble with the cops pointed the finger at Jessie as someone who knew something. Police had offered to help her clean things up if she would help them get their man, I mean - teenager. They picked him up on June 3, 1993, for questioning. Jessie didn’t know Damien, and Jessie wasn’t even in town the night of the murders. He was badgered, bullied and shown horrid photos until he coughed up what was thought to be enough material to put Damien behind bars. In a desperate attempt to tell them what they wanted so he could get out and go home, he accidentally implicated himself. After 12 hours in the interrogation room, a very tiny segment of what Jessie said was put to tape as his “confession.”

Much has been made about Jessie’s I.Q. as a reason for his “confession.” However, people falsely confess to crimes all the time. That is one essential reason police don’t tell all the elements of a crime to the media. They need to hold on to enough that if someone confesses the key will be in elements of the crime undisclosed to the media. It is then up to police to research the confession. What is real, and what is bogus. Take the case of Jack the Ripper. Police received hundreds of letters, both mocking and confessing, yet only a one marked “From Hell” would stand out.

Jessie gave police all that he could remember from what he’d read in papers. Some very important details were so blatantly wrong it’s surprising that police would even try to use this so called confession. Jessie would state the children were taken and killed at a time when they were still in school. Jessie would claim the children were tied with brown rope when they were actually tied with their own shoelaces. Police would make excuses for details that didn’t fit, but be adamant about what did. In the end, Jessie refused to allow his bogus confession to be used against Damien and Jason even after being offered a reduced sentence for himself.

Criminal Profiler, Brent Turvey, joined the defense team around 1997. Upon viewing the autopsy and crime scene photos, one thing stood out to him. Human bite marks on one of the victims. He dismissed claims of cult sacrifice and stated that this killing was punitive in nature, aimed at one child specifically. The other two children, seemingly, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dental impressions were taken of Damien, Jason and Jessie. These impressions did not match bite marks on the child’s face thereby showing the teens factually innocent. So why are these kids still in jail? Because the judge doesn’t understand “forensic odontology.”

The devil runs rampant. More and more highly educated people believe. Exorcism and deliverance are on the rise. 10 years ago, the global Catholic Church had 6 active exorcists. As of three years ago, the US alone has over 300. In 2005, the Holy See gave a class in exorcism that proved so popular they had to turn away potential students and schedule a second class. My own local exorcist, a Franciscan monk, has more work than he can handle. He repeatedly sends out requests for prayer.

Deliverance Ministry is one of Protestants most popular at the moment. What is the difference between exorcism and deliverance? Exorcism is a Catholic rite, involving use of the Roman Ritual of Exorcism and done only with the approval of one’s bishop. Exorcism is done only after certain criteria have been established. Everything else, including priests and secular individuals not using the rite, is deliverance. In 1999 the Pope updated the rite, De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam ("Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications"). The rite was first written in 1523 with its last revision being made in 1614. Books on demons, and casting them out, ride the bestseller lists with such titles as “American Exorcism,” “Hostage to the Devil,” and “They Shall Expel Demon.” Even the Vatican’s own official exorcist, Gabriel Amorth has written two books on the subject.

The devil not only makes an appearance to incarcerate the innocent, but his name is also tossed around in attempts to free the guilty. The “I was possessed” plea used by Ronald DeFeo, Jr. and “It wasn’t Scott, it was a satanic cult” defense about to be used in the Laci Peterson case.

In conclusion, I can honestly say the West Memphis Police Department desperately needs a copy of the CSI first season DVD. It sounds like a joke but if they had such an item, three innocent teens would not have spent the last 13 years in prison. The PD’s own medical examiner was in trouble with Rhode Island for selling body parts and their forensic pathologist flubbed in court as to which day he examined the bodies of the three children. He didn’t see the importance of taking core temperatures of the bodies to establish time of death. He would also change his testimony many times.

I would encourage you to go to the West Memphis Three web site and read the information given. Hope is not lost. Rick Walker, who had been incarcerated for 12 years was finally freed due to family, friends and one determined attorney.

May is West Memphis Three Awareness Month. Hence the reposting of this article. Spread the word. Get active! FREE THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE!

2006-12-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

Yum Yummy.

Yesterday I mentioned my new cook book. "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World." I'm having a BLAST with this book.

These are the Simple Agave Cupcakes. I had a bit of trouble because I couldn't find my hand mixer. So you'll see, the top of the cake is dimpled.

When making the frosting, I discovered I was missing an ingredient. Powdered Soy Milk. So I used the same amount of Berry flavored Vega. What a GLORIOUS mistake that turned out to be. While it turned my carmel colored frosting "pond scum green" - it lent a delightful berry flavor!

I figured the cakes topped with green may not be so delightful to look at and might discourage eating them. So once frosted, I pressed them into coconut. They look like snowballs!

These are sugar free. Agave is a diabetic approved sugar substitute. And so YUMMY.

2006-11-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

Friday was my birthday. My office was celebrating Veteran's Day so we had the day off. I woke up around 6am. As is my usual habit, I sat in bed, praying and cuddling my cat.

Then I got up, put on the coffee and toddled off to pray the Liturgy of the Hours while it brewed. There's just something about knowing hundreds of Catholics in my time zone are praying with me that's COOL! Most monasteries, abbeys, convents and cloisters pray Laudes between 6am and 6:30am. Yeah me!

Prayer accomplished, I set off to get my coffee. I flipped on the tube, which was still on channel 44 as I'd managed to catch the tail end of my one and only TV show, "Supernatural" the night before. Low and behold, there's Stephen Baldwin and his lovely wife on some Christian program I've never seen before talking about their conversion.

Whoa...

Now, I'd recently rented a film called "Six: The Mark Unleashed" - check out the link...
http://themoviesix.com/index.htm

Stephen Baldwin was in it. I thought it was a little "out of character" which is funny because isn't that what acting is all about? LOL! I thought he was the flakey Baldwin. I may not agree with his brother Alec's politics, but I certainly appreciate all he does for animal rights. Someone has to stand up for the innocent. It's seemed to me that baby brother was more self-centered.

That was the old Stephen. New Stephen is a changed man. The interview was very short. Only 4 or 5 minutes. I was lucky to have caught that much. He talked about his new book, "The Unusual Suspect," he talked about being on fire for Christ, he talked about extreme sports. What a concept. Extreme Jesus! Sounded a little Fr. Stan Fortuna to me. I had to check it out.

I had breakfast then toddled off to The Door in San Carlos. Here's the funny part. I had planned on taking the train to San Jose and checking out Our Lady of Peace and the shop there. I love Our Lady of Peace. Great church, great religious. GREAT Christian store! But I woke up with a SPLITTING headache. So I just wasn't up to it. After a long shower and a good brekkie, the headache was a bit better. But I still wasn't up for a train ride and a long walk. The Door was easier to get to.

Sadly, The Door has lost a lot of it's verve for me. Their shelves were stocked but it seemed to be a lot of repetition. And no Stephen Baldwin book. Off I went. I figured I'd try two cities down and their Christian book store.

I just missed the bus. It was one of those things where, I was about 3 feet away from the stop but I didn't look up, so the bus blew right on past me. Dag-Nab-It! I figured, it was a lovely day, 20 minutes to the next bus. I'd walk on down one or two stops depending on how long it took. I'd gotten about half way along to the next stop when I noticed a folded bill in a driveway. I figured it would be a dollar, or maybe a 5. I picked it up and it was a $100 bill!

My second WHOA of the day. I was certain it was fake. I looked and look trying to spot a flaw.

I called my best bud on the spot and told her I was taking her to dinner, courtesy of The Almighty. Nothing like an affirmation that you are right where He wants you.

I ended up finding the book at Barnes and Noble. Why don't the Christian stores have it yet? It's GREAT! I plowed through it. Dragged poor Stevie B. around with me everywhere all weekend. To the grocery store. To church. To the mall. Reading and walking.

Highly recommend it. Is your faith a little lack luster? Are you usually pretty high energy? This book is no Juan de la Cruz's "Dark Night of the Soul." This is Extreme Jesus. Baldwin peppers his story with humor and fun.

So few Christians I know really "get it." Get what Christianity is all about. I went to this Pro Life deal on Thursday. Out of 13 people in the room, two of them were complete jerks, and one of those two is the leader for my county. UGH. They pooh-poohed a couple of our legislators who, while doing a lot of good, don't have their same views. They Boo-Hissed the help undocumented immigrants are getting. Would you rather they die in the streets? What is WRONG with people???

Throughout his book good ol Stevie B. pokes fun at himself. Calls himself less than smart. But ya know what? Biblically speaking, God tells all the good stuff to the simple people. The people willing to trust in His will rather than their own knowledge. God bless them! As such, Stevie B. really gets it. Gets what being a Christian is all about.

Best birthday EVER!

2006-10-29T14:51:00.000-08:00

Winchester Mystery House, October 28th Flashlight tour.

One of 13 "spider web" windows in the only room that had a shower.

2006-10-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

Painted just for me.

2006-10-12T18:50:00.000-07:00

2006-10-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've all seen that e-mail pass-around that comes regularly. The one about the grease gathered up in barrels from restaraunts that ends up in your pet food. We'd all like to pretend it isn't true. But the other day I was waiting for my morning bus when Salinas Tallow came by to pick up the barrels of disguarded grease from the Taxi's on my corner.

Do you really want to know why your dog has "hot spots" and other horrible allergies? He was not designed to digest french fry grease.

Each year factory farms produce 3 million tons of tallow and grease, 2 million tons of bone and 300,000 tons of feathers. It's considered trash. But we pet owners pay a small fortune for it in "top quality" pet foods.

In my links section, you'll find a link to "Feline Future." It's a company that produces a supplement to add to raw meat for cats. They have a dog supplement too. Check it out.

I can tell you from experience that using Feline Future in raw meat is far more healthy for pets than store bought kibble. I am coming up on the one year anniversary of losing one of my best friends.

Murphy Patrick O'Brian

Color me biased, but Murp was one of the best cats this world has ever seen. I rescued him from the local pound. So painfully thin with this enormous head. I almost named him Pumkinhead for his resemblance to the horror film monster. But he lucked out and got adopted on St. Paddy's Day. He was with me for the next 12 years. He was around 16 years old when he left me for greener pastures.

Just about two months after the sudden death of his "big" little brother Yoshi...

Murp-o got very sick. It was determined that he had kidney failure. The vet recommended, due to his blood toxicity, that he be immediately put down. Murp was not having any of that. He was his standard trouble-making self, albeit sulky and a lot thinner than normal.

I asked the vet for two weeks. I discovered Feline Future and put Moo on the raw meat diet. His first trip back for a blood panel saw an immediate reduction in his blood toxicity. By the next test he was almost back to normal.

So it works. Don't settle for junk pet foods. I don't mean Friskys either. Iams, Nutro. That expensive stuff you pay for? Junk. Loaded in toxins and things your pet can't digest. Give them the good stuff. They deserve it.

2006-10-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

Another lovely day, courtesy of the Most High.

2006-09-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

Party favors from the wedding.

2006-09-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

Grapes at the winery.

2006-08-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

Such maturity from a professor. All while he points his finger and calls Christians close-minded biggots.

Friday July 28, 2006

Psych Prof Advocates Human/Chimp Hybrids – But only to Offend Christians
By Hilary White

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an op ed piece in the LA Times, David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that reproductive facilities should work towards creating a race of human/chimpanzee hybrids, but, he admits, only because it would offend Christians.

Some geneticists have postulated that their distant evolutionary ancestors may have interbred with those of chimps, and Barash argues that this means there is no moral difference between a human being and a chimpanzee, or indeed, between a human being and a sea sponge.

The psychology professor looks forward to the day when IVF facilities will create human/animal hybrids. He reveals, however, that his motivation is not a pure interest in advancing science, but his hatred for “know-nothing anti-evolutionism,” and “religious fundamentalists,” who hold human life to be sacred.

Barash says he advocates interbreeding humans with animals not because it would be a good idea in itself, but because it would offend believers. “In these dark days of know-nothing anti-evolutionism,” he writes, “with religious fundamentalists occupying the White House, controlling Congress and attempting to distort the teaching of science in our schools, a powerful dose of biological reality would be healthy indeed.”

Barash says that creating animal/human hybrids would effectively quash the belief that “the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine and that we therefore stand outside nature.”

“Should geneticists and developmental biologists succeed once again in joining human and nonhuman animals in a viable organism,” Barash writes, “it would be difficult and perhaps impossible for the special pleaders to maintain the fallacy that Homo sapiens is uniquely disconnected from the rest of life.”

One of the ideological offshoots of Darwinsim is radical environmentalism, advocates of which hold that human beings are a kind of virus threatening the earth’s ecosystems. According to the pure materialist philosophy, the environmental threat is directly the fault of “a bogus ‘faith based’ worldview,” the “Judeo-Christian proclamation of radical discontinuity between people and the rest of ‘creation.’”

Such shrill anti-religious polemics are increasingly being challenged from within the scientific community as bigotry, however, and recent revelations have indicated that Barash’s pure Darwinian faith may be going the way of the dodo.

In a new book, “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, asks scientific skeptics to approach religious belief God with a more open mind. Collins is among a growing movement in the science world that asserts there is no necessary rift between real science and religious belief.

Collins is far from the stereotype religious “know-nothing” presented by anti-religious Darwinists. One of the world’s leading geneticists, he led the international Human Genome Project that mapped the 3.1 billion chemical base pairs in humanity's DNA. He now runs the government research foundation guiding work in the medical applications of this historic international project.

Collins attributed his rejection of the atheistic position to the writings of Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, the early 20th century English professor known and loved around the world for his ironclad logic in explaining Christian doctrines and debunking modern liberal atheism.

At a conference sponsored by the C.S. Lewis Foundation, Collins said, “For a scientist, it's uncomfortable to admit there are questions that your scientific method isn't going to be able to address.”

Collins refutes the Darwinists’ out-of-hand rejection of religion. An article in the Washington Post quotes him saying scientists are “not supposed to decide something is true until [they’ve] looked at the data. And yet I had become an atheist without ever looking at the evidence whether God exists or not."

Collins decries both the anti-religious materialists who dominate his profession, and the Christian reaction that, he says, attempts to ignore hard scientific evidence. Both approaches, he said, are “profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary.”

Read Washington Post article:
God, Under a Microscope
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07...

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Evolution/Creation Debate Now Science vs. Science not Science vs. Religion
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/oct/05100605.html

Over 400 Eminent Scientists Sign “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism”
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jul/05072204.html

Discovery of Complex, Precise DNA Language Points to Intelligent Design of Life
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/may/05052407.html

(c) Copyright: LifeSiteNews.com is a production of Interim Publishing. Permission to republish is granted (with limitation*) but acknowledgement of source is *REQUIRED* (use LifeSiteNews.com).

2006-07-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

DAY OF PRAYER AND PENANCE FOR PEACE IN MIDDLE EAST

VATICAN CITY, JUL 20, 2006 (VIS) - Faced with worsening situation in the Middle East, the Holy See Press Office has been directed to communicate the following:

"The Holy Father is following with great concern the destinies of all the peoples involved and has proclaimed this Sunday, July 23, as a special day of prayer and penance, inviting the pastors and faithful of all the particular Churches, and all believers of the world, to implore from God the precious gift of peace.

"In particular, the Supreme Pontiff hopes that prayers will be raised to the Lord for an immediate cease-fire between the sides, for humanitarian corridors to be opened in order to bring help to the suffering peoples, and for reasonable and responsible negotiations to begin to put an end to objective situations of injustice that exist in that region; as already indicated by Pope Benedict XVI at the Angelus last Sunday, July 16.

"In reality, the Lebanese have the right to see the integrity and sovereignty of their country respected, the Israelis the right to live in peace in their State, and the Palestinians have the right to have their own free and sovereign homeland.

"At this sorrowful moment, His Holiness also makes an appeal to charitable organizations to help all the people struck by this pitiless conflict."

2006-07-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

How do I make this message stand out more? Catholics are slow on the whole environmental thing. It seems, in general, that we've incorrectly assigned environmentalism to our Pagan friends. Which is just plain wrong. God created this planet before he created us. We understand stewardship of our churches. How much more important is stewardship of this planet? Think of it as the catheral He built himself.

Going vegetarian - or just cutting back on the amount of animal product you consume - will help more than cutting back on driving.

I LOVE MY GERMAN SHEPHERD!

Orthodox, Catholics Unite in Conserving Creation

MANAUS, Brazil, JULY 18, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI sent a message
encouraging Christians to collaborate in the protection of the
environment.

The message went to the 6th symposium on "Religion, Science and the
Environment," organized by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople,
Bartholomew I.

The conference is being held in the northern Amazon region of Manaus,
Brazil, on "The Amazon: Source of Life."

Benedict XVI's message expresses his appreciation for the values which
inspire the symposium, maintaining that religion has a decisive role to
play in the protection of the environment.

Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president emeritus of the Pontifical
Councils of Justice and Peace and "Cor Unum," participating in the event,
transmitted the Pope's words.

There are "practical objectives and (the objective) of man's survival
that can and must bring together all people of good will," said the Pope
in his message, which was quoted on Vatican Radio.

Ecumenical collaboration

In the task of protecting creation, the Holy Father makes reference to
the common commitment of Catholics and Orthodox, seen as "an example of
that collaboration" that they must both "seek with constancy to respond
to the call to a common testimony."

"This implies that all Christians must cultivate at the very least
openness of spirit that is dictated by charity and sinks its roots in
faith. In this way they will be able to offer together to the world a
credible testimony of their sense of responsibility for the protection of
Creation."

According to Vatican Radio, Bartholomew I very much appreciated these
words and wished to announce the Pope's visit to Turkey at the end of
November.

The present symposium, which began in Manaus, gives participants the
opportunity to visit traditional communities, get to know the local
reality and meet with specialists who work in the region.

On boat trips on the Amazon river, local representatives have the time
to debate on topics relating to environmental ethics and issues of
importance to Amazonia, such as the loss of biodiversity, deforestation,
the challenges facing indigenous peoples, etc.

It is the sixth of a series of symposiums, held also in ships that
navigated the waters of the Aegean (1995), the Black Sea (1997), the
Adriatic (2002), the Baltic (2003) and the Danube River (1999).

It is organized by the NGO "Religion, Science and the Environment,"
linked to the Orthodox Church, and cosponsored by U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan.

ZE06071809

2006-06-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

I am fascinated by the stigmata. Not surprised so many Franciscans have been given this gift, since we are people of the Crucifixion.

One such stigmatist is Marie Julie Jahenny. She was a Third Order Franciscan. As a stigmatist she is approved by the church. While little is known about her, I believe her "memorial" day is March 4th. However, she's not in my Franciscan supplement to the Liturgy of the Hours.

Marie Julie had the gift of prophecy. I copied this out of a small book about her life.

"During the time of the approach of the punishments announced at La Salette, an unlimited amount of false revelations will arise from hell like a swarm of flies: a last attempt of Satan to choke and destroy the belief in the true revelations by false ones."

This sounds an awful lot like what is going on in Medjugorje. Never in the history of the Catholic Church has there been an apparition that has lasted so long, given so many trite, anti-Catholic and often ridiculous messages. Never has an apparition SPAWNED OTHER SEERS. Multitudes of people go there and come back seeing visions. I have a friend who visited there and now has visions of death. And she thinks it's cool.

35,000 messages in 25 years. More and more seers popping up every day. One of them proved so dangerous she was officially denounced by the Holy See. By the man who is now our pope! And yet people - good Catholic people - still follow her. Many of these false prophets, even one of the original seers - have been busted for criminal activity.

Then why do people blindly follow?

One of the best movies I've ever seen is Kingdom of Heaven - by Ridley Scott. His version of the Leper King - Baldwin IV says something along the lines of: When you stand before God you have to account for your own actions. You won't be able to say 'he told me to do that,' 'she told me to go there.'

How wonderful would our world be if more people understood this!!!

Take an unbiased look at approved apparitions in church history. The Blessed Mother really appears, she tells the seer when and where to return. She is not CONJURED - when ever - and - where ever - these alleged seers (or their progeny) happen to be.

Tell me - does the true Queen of Peace appear on demand? No. She calls US!

2006-06-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

Excellent Article

A HOLY SITE'S 'FLAKE DIMENSION'
by BILL SAMMON

Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina - If anyone wanted to believe in the mysteries of Medjugorje, it was the Rev Philip Pavich.

The American priest turned his life upside down 10 years ago to wrangle an assignment at St James Catholic Church in Medjugorje, where millions of religious pilgrims from around the world have been drawn by reported sightings of Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus.

It was a dream job for Pavich, who had relatives in the former Yugoslavia - the birthplace of his Croatian parents. He began his new assignment with gusto, faithfully preaching the messages that Mary is said to deliver to local visionaries.

But somewhere along the line, Pavich's devotion has turned to disillusionment.

He has begun to see what he calls a 'flake dimension' to the hordes of pilgrims, some of whom go partially blind after starting at the 'miracle of the sun'. He has become uncomfortable with the 'cult leader' status of 'professional visionaries who are living off the profits' of the booming tourist trade, he said. He has even entertained serious reservations about the authenticity of the apparitions, he acknowledged.

In short, Pavich has become self-described 'Doubting Thomas' of Medjugorje.

"I was suckered into this country by my own desire," said Pavich, who worked for 11 years in Israel before securing a transfer to Bosnia. "I believed the apparitions when I came. If anybody wanted it to be true, I did.

"So I preached the messages. I have out tapes and talks and went to a couple of conferences. There are literally hundreds of Medjugorje conferences around the States."

It was at those conferences that Pavich began to realise the magnitude of the multi-million dollar industry that has sprung up around the village of Medjugorje since six youths claim they saw Mary on a rocky hillside in 1981. Some pilgrims who visit Medjugorje return to their home countries and claim to experience visions of their own.

"Medjugorje has spawned 400 visionaries in the United States," said Pavich, a balding, grey-bearded priest in a brown Franciscan robe. "They got 'em in every state. It's a ridiculous, pandemic situation. It's totally out of control.

"I mean, it is a sick visionary world. Canada, the United States, Australia … everybody that has touched Medjugorje has spawned a whole new petri dish of visionaries."

Pavich has grown especially disenchanted with the six original visionaries, most of whom still live in Medjugorje. Two of them said they stopped having daily visions of Mary within a few years of the initial apparitions.

"The other four are active visionaries, so they travel the world," Pavich said. "Ivan (Dragicevic) married a Massachusetts beauty queen - was Miss Massachusetts twice - and basically lives in Boston. He's on a world tour.

"Oh man, they bring home lots of money," Pavich said of the visionaries. "People give unbelievably. It's like a cult. They're like little cult leaders, little cult characters. And they collect, man, bit time.

"They've got second houses; they've got perks," Pavich noted. "They're professional visionaries who are living off the profits."

Pavich complained that people 'just pour' money on Medjugorje visionaries.

Some wealthy Croat tour leader will put down 80,000 bucks, build a house for a visionary, and then she'll sucker her pilgrims into coming by saying "When you come you'll get to stay with a visionary," said Pavich, who noted the beauty of the visionaries' houses. "They're a scandal to a lot of people because they (the visionaries) are in on the take - big time."

There's no denying that the visionaries' well-kept, two-storey homes stand out in this largely peasant country that was ravaged by 3½ years of civil war. One visionary, Jakov Colo, has a stately, salmon-coloured house with a satellite dish and spacious yard.

Asked what he does for a living, Colo joked that he baby-sits his two young children. Pressed for his occupation, the 25 year old said he works at St James Church - a claim denied by Pavich.

"He's a professional visionary," Pavich said. "That's all fluff. They don't work, they never work. They just collect money."

Visionary Marija Pavlovic lives in an even more impressive house, although Pavich acknowledges that Pavlovic is the only visionary to have learned a trade - hairdressing. Pavlovic is considered the most important visionary because she is the one who first heard Mary's call for peace in 1981. She is also the one who reveals a seven-line message from Mary on the 25th day of each month.

"Little children, I am your mother and I desire to reveal to you the God of love and the God of peace," Pavlovic quoted Mary as having said on Christmas day. "I do not desire for you life to be in sadness but that it be realised in joy for eternity, according to the gospel ….."

Pavich used to perpetuate these messages through his sermons at Mass. Now he dismisses "the idea that the mother of God comes and just gives a seven-line message once a month, but has daily encounters with four visionaries".

"In 31 days you got 124 encounters," Pavich said. "Now out of those 124 encounters we get a seven-line message? That don't stack up with me.

"It's too much of a spirit guide mentality; "I will lead you; I will do this. I will do that. Be messengers of my messages."

"I'm trained the other way. I'm not gonna be a missionary of your messages - sorry about that. I'm a missionary of Jesus Christ. I'm sent by him. I'm not sent by some dubious-claim apparition. I'm not an envoy of an unapproved visionary entity."

As a result, Pavich no longer preaches the messages revealed by Pavlovic.

"I have serious reservations about the authenticity of the apparitions," Pavich said. "I could not subscribe in a free-hand way to: 'Yes, I believe this is the mother of God' - although I came her with that idea." Still, Pavich stops short of calling the visionaries liars.

"Oh, I'm not saying that they didn't see something, that they didn't claim to see something," Pavich said. "I'm not saying that they're lying of hallucinating. They are in touch, definitely, with some entity and a powerful energy. Whether it's the mother of God - I'm not ready to say that."

Colo said he is not fazed by sceptics.

"There have always been such kinds of people, especially at the beginning," Colo said. "When I was just 10 years old, it was hard for me when people didn't believe me. But I know I saw something.

"Nobody can force you to believe. We can only pray for all non-believers."

Pavich's boss at St James, the Rev Slavko Barbaric, said he also believes in the visions. But Barbaric, who has written several books on the apparitions, acknowledges that the Vatican is waiting for more evidence before sanctioning Medjugorje as a bona fide pilgrimage site. He added that Pope John Paul personally endorses the site, although 'not officially'.

"That's all anecdotal evidence," said Pavich. "That's all nice wishful thinking. The Pope also personally put the toughest possible bishop in Mostar to be hard on Medjugorje. But you never hear them quote that. You only hear them quote: "Oh, the Pope said he would be in Medjugorje."

"Nice little anecdotal story, based on third-hand information. But he (the Pope) has never put his name to anything. No way. Nothing counts until its got a signature on it. Hearsay doesn't count except for nice, naïve people."

While the Vatican has not condemned Medjugorje, in 1984 it ordered Catholic priests and bishops to stop organising official pilgrimages to the village. It was a clear signal that the Vatican did not consider Medjugorje in the same league as officially holy sites, such as Rome, Lourdes and Fatima.

That same year, local bishops ordered the visionaries to stop meeting inside St James Church, where they had grown accustomed to gathering for their daily apparitions. The visionaries now claim Mary makes her daily apparitions to them wherever they happen to be.

Further doubt was cast on Medjugorje in 1991, when a group of 20 Croatian bishops in the former Yugoslavia issued a report on the apparitions.

"They said on the basis of evidence up to this point, it cannot be established that one is dealing with supernatural apparitions and messages," Pavich explained. "So all we can say is people are permitted to come. We are permitted to give them pastoral care, confession, counsel, prayer guidance."

The report reflected the regional church's long-standing wariness toward Medjugorje.

"The bishops have never been favourable to it because it's not got any church approval in any official sense," Pavich said. "The Croatian hierarchy and bishops are basically cool toward Medjugorje. The basic Catholic press in this country is cool toward Medjugorje …… It's too sticky, too problematic.

"This has no status as a pilgrimage place," Pavich said. "This is private religious tourism, basically. Faith-motivated tourism - or whatever motivates you - some worth, some unworthy."

One of the most intriguing attraction for tourists is the notion that Mary told the children - who ranged in age from 10 to 16 when the visions began - that she would impart to them ten secrets that cannot be revealed to the world until she gives them a sign. The two visionaries who longer see apparitions already know the ten secrets. The remaining four visionaries only know nine.

"They're playing a game," Pavich said. "Now they're on nine secrets for 10 years already. I don't like it. I mean, why don't they bingo out and finish the ten secrets? Because if they did, then the jig is up."

Pavich believes the revelation of the secrets, which some people expect to occur at the close of the millennium, will end the mysteries of Medjugorje. That will bring a halt to the flow of pilgrims causing economic disaster in the village, he added.

"If this thing falls apart, there's gonna be murder around here. They've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate that demands a flow of pilgrims and if they don't come" - Pavich whistles - "I don't wanna be around here."

Medjugorje, more than most Bosnian villages, is filled with immaculate inns and cosy cafes. Silk-linen restaurants served imported lobster. Scores of elaborate souvenir shops sell an astonishing assortment of religious merchandise, including rosaries, statues and paintings. Mary's visage is plastered on everything from candlesticks to key fobs.

"I wonder if the virgin mother of God would approve of all these souvenir shops," muttered a pilgrim from the United States.

"The locals have milked this thing for millions of dollars; therefore, they have a very big vested interest," Pavich said. "For them this is a lifeline, a boomtown, an industry driving the whole thing."

"I think I have a little more objective view. I have no vested interest, no books to sell, nothing to make."

Pavich's disillusionment peaked two years ago. "I decided to quit," said Pavich, who obtained a transfer to Chicago. "I'd had enough. People trashed me for my opposition to this stuff. I was kind of a pariah."

But as he was packing his belongings, a regional church official intervened, telling Pavich about numerous letters and calls the church had received from parishioners who wanted the American priest to stay. Pavich reluctantly agreed to remain a little longer, although he said he will probably leave soon. While other priests have their offices in St James modern rectory, Pavich is relegated to a battered orange trailer in the parking lot.

"So I'm in a sort of second life here," mused Pavich, one of eight priests in St James. I've died and haven't gone home yet. I'm still in the penalty box. I'm ostracised. Sometimes they don't talk to me. So my time is over."

Not exactly. Pavich still performs the various sacraments and is particularly devoted to hearing confessions. During Mass, instead of preaching the messages of Mary, he discusses such topics as the courage of demonstrators in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

And despite his doubts about Medjugorje, he acknowledges that plenty of good is accomplished in the village. Regardless of the validity of the apparitions, millions of Catholics end up praying, fasting and generally growing closer to God, which is a tremendous achievement, Pavich said.

He cited the case of a young Wall Street millionaire who was so moved by Medjugorje that he gave away his fortune to become a priest who enthusiastically embraced a life of 'radical poverty'.

"I know the graces people have received through the sacraments, through confessions and so on," Pavich said. "I also know some of the flaky side that isn't complimentary - like guys who get their retinas burned while looking at the so-called miracle of the sun."

Perhaps because Mary appears only to a small group of select visionaries, some pilgrims seem desperate to witness any kind of supernatural even at Medjugorje. Many have taken to staring directly at the sun, which seems to dance and shimmer as their eyes become locked on.

"This is incredible!" said Kate O'Brien as she stared at the sun while descending Apparition Hill recently. "It's like a vision!"

When it was suggested she might be damaging her retinas, the 20 year old college student from Steubenville, Ohio, kept right on staring at the sun.

"That's a really spooky, sub-cultural spin-off - this craze to see the so-called miracle of the sun," Pavich said. "Ain't no more miracle of the sun than the man on the moon! The sun ain't doing nothing up there. Your eyeball's doing it!"

Pavich tells of one man who stared at the sun for an hour and 45 minutes, only to realise he had burned a permanent 'black spot' in his vision which made it impossible for him to do his job at a computer. Several ophthalmology magazines have warned of the dangers of the practice and specifically cited Medjugorje, Pavich said.

Other pilgrims claim their rosaries turned to gold when they reached the summit of Apparition Hill or nearby Cross Mountain, which Pavich calls 'two great stage props'.

"We get things like that," Pavich said. "Flying lights and bouncing balls and streaks of light flowing through the church. I never saw any of that stuff. I mean, where are these people coming from?

"There is a flake dimension to Medjugorje. There is a freaky, sub-culture aspect that isn't healthy, frankly. I've seen it, man, and I'm hard nosed on it. I've got a bad reputation because I don't put up with nonsense."

2006-06-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

Notice that all but one of the recalled chocolate bars contains "dairy" in its name. The "freddo" is made with dairy milk.

Cadbury recalls over 1 mln chocolate bars
Fri Jun 23, 11:13 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Cadbury Schweppes Plc said on Friday it had recalled over 1 million chocolate bars in the UK and Irish markets in a precautionary move, because they could contain minute traces of salmonella.

"There are minute traces of salmonella, which are significantly below those (levels) which scientific standards say present any hazard," a spokeswoman for the world's biggest confectionery group said.

"There's no connection between our product and anybody becoming ill from it," she added.

The company said it had identified the source of the problem and rectified it and was taking steps to ensure these products are no longer available for sale.

The precautionary recall involves seven products -- 250 gram bars of Dairy Milk Turkish, Dairy Milk Caramel and Dairy Milk Mint; Dairy Milk 8 chunk; 1 kilogram bars of Dairy Milk: Diary Milk Button Easter Eggs (105 grams); and Cadbury Freddo 10p.

"We've been making chocolate for over 100 years, and quality has always come first," UK Managing Director Simon Baldry said in a statement.

"We've taken this precautionary step because our consumers are our highest priority. We apologize for any inconvenience caused," Baldry added.

The company said the decision to recall the chocolate bars had been made in consultation with the Food Standards Agency.

Shares in Cadbury were down 0.5 percent at 519 pence at 1450 GMT.

2006-06-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the smallest thing can really make your year. Sometimes it's good to listen to that little voice in your head. Mine pays off regularly. Last night I was kicking back. Ready to put my jammies on and call it a night. But that voice said - Get up. Go to the store. Now.

I have a friend at work. He wears a Miraculous Medal. The day he started here, he saw my medal and knew I was someone he could count on for prayers. We talk about God and the beauty of prayer every time we bump into each other.

A few days ago he had a line on an apartment. He asked me to pray for him. So I did. Yesterday he told me he got the place. I knew he was starting fresh, so I asked him what he needed and explained that I seemed to be really good at rounding up free furnishings.

"Oh gosh," he said, shuffing his feet. "I need everything."

So last night, at the behest of that voice in my head, I went to Cost Plus. I got lucky. They were having a great sale. I picked up two place settings, some cooking utensils, kitchen towels and a pot scrubber.

I asked the other folks in my office if they'd like to make it from all of us. Since we enjoy this fellow so much. They agreed.

We made this little presentation. He was all undone. Had to go outside to try to breathe. A little while later he came by and told me all his life people have treated him like an animal. Then God turned his life around. No one had ever done such a thing for him. He is still struggling with how to handle it.

It's so easy to see why God loves those who are poor in spirit.

2006-06-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

Medjugorje.

What is it about the place that illicits such strong feelings - both for and against?

I have a friend who is Croatian. As such he has a love for the apparitions. I understand this. When I told him via e-mail that I had been doing some research and wanted to talk with him about it. I asked if we could meet for coffee as there were some things I'd found that might hurt him and shouldn't be said via e-mail. He shot right back calling me judgmental and disparaging.

When I asked him how he could say these things to me without even hearing what I had to say, he apologized. When I asked him to pray for the Franciscans there he called me ignorant.

Spewing accusations is not of God. If he ever wanted to convince me that the apparitions are valid - he totally blew it. He knows me well enough to know I am none of the things he's called me. I do my homework. A year's worth before even attempting dialog about it.

And my attempt at dialog is rebuffed. Viciously. So not of God.

But this is what you find when examining Medjugorje very closely. The surface layer is all fluff and nice. The next layer is dirty. The layer below that, down right vile.

Medjugorje supporters state that Pope John Paul II was in support of them and called the apparitions the completion of Fatima - yet this is an outright lie. What happened to Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness??

Pope John Paul himself called for the removal of one of the stray friars at Medjugorje. Some 40 friars at Medjugorje refuse to be obedient to the pope. Surely if the Blessed Mother was appearing there - she would tell them that this is a great evil. God loves obedience over all things. And yet, the apparitions tell the friars to do as they please. It's all good...

Medjugorje supporters will say their fruits lay claim to validity of the apparitions. But think about it. Wouldn't the devil advocate the "conversion" of a few lost souls to aid in bringing down 40 of God's most faithful? At the risk of sounding very very vain - it has long been said the Franciscans are God's most favorite order. Hence it would seem they are a prime target for the evil one.

2006-06-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

Today from Zenit - about my name saint and the Militia Immaculata.

Militia of the Immaculata
Founded by Maximilian Kolbe

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 15, 2006 (ZENIT.org).- Here is the description of the Militia of the Immaculata which appears in the Directory of International Associations of the Faithful, published by the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

* * *

Official name: Militia of the Immaculata
Acronym: M.I. (Militia Immaculatae)
Established: 1917

History: M.I. was founded in Rome at the International College of the Conventual Franciscans -- which at that time was the "St. Bonaventure" Pontifical Theological Faculty -- by Father Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), a Conventual Franciscan and martyr of charity at Auschwitz who was beatified by Paul VI and canonized by John Paul II.

Established as a pious union on Jan. 2, 1922, by the Vicariate of Rome through Cardinal Basilio Pompilj, M.I. was given special attention and care by the popes in the course of its history.

In a brief issued on Dec. 18, 1926, Pius XI granted it indulgences and privileges, and on April 23, 1927, it was elevated to the rank of a primary pious union with the brief "Die XVIII mensis Decembris."

Under the "altius moderamen" of the minister general of the Order of the Conventual Franciscan Friars Minor, and consistent with the magisterium of the Church, the association grew and spread to different countries.

On Oct. 16, 1997, the Pontifical Council for the Laity decreed the Milizia dell'Immacolata to be an international association of the faithful of pontifical right.

Identity: Father Kolbe presented M.I. as a "global vision of Catholic life in a new form, consisting of the link with Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, universal mediatrix with Jesus."

The association sets out to promote the expansion of the Kingdom of God throughout the world through the work of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, stimulating all to place themselves at her service in her mission as Mother of the Church.

The focus of the spirituality and formation in M.I. is the consecration to Mary, which Father Kolbe intended as "transformation into her": a style of Christian life which achieves the extreme consequences of love.

There are three key ideas: Mary Immaculate, love, and the mission, to provide formation which commits Christians to grow in an existential dimension (the primacy of the vocation to holiness), an ecclesial dimension (love for the Church and bearing witness to the Catholic faith), a missionary vocation (Christian formation of consciences and the New Evangelization), and a cultural dimension (promoting life by serving people in the Franciscan manner of fraternity, joy, simplicity and hospitality).

The specific areas of unity of M.I. are catechesis, town and city missions, religious instruction courses, updating, Marian culture, publishing, radio broadcasting and Informatics.

Organization: By its nature, M.I. is a unitary association. The organization comprises the Young Knights, the Youth Movement, and Adults.

It is structured into three levels:

-- M.I./1 is the movement, with no strict organizational structure where the members mostly act individually and spontaneously, according to the founder's original project;

-- M.I./2 is the movement broken down into groups, whose members work according to the official programs of the movement;

-- M.I./3 is the movement at its highest level, at which the Knights choose to fully and unconditionally give themselves to Mary Immaculate, devoted solely to her cause: in the missionary apostolate, in parish service, alone or in active or contemplative life communities, using all legitimate means. This rank is specific to the City of the Immaculate, the executive centers, and the institutes inspired by Father Kolbe.

A significant presence of the association are those who suffer from sickness, poverty, marginalization and disabilities. They form the M.I. under the Cross. So much suffering, offered as a gesture of consecration to Mary Immaculate, enables the whole association to participate in the mystery of Christ's redemption and renews the missionary effort.

Although legally autonomous, at the pastoral level, all the institutes (secular and religious) inspired by Father Kolbe share the same aims and apostolic commitment: the Franciscan Sisters of the M.I., the Sisters Minor of Mary Immaculata, the Franciscan Sisters of the Militia of the Immaculata, the Franciscan Brothers of the Immaculata, the Missionaries-M.I., the Missionary Sister Crusaders of the Immaculata, the Kolbe Missionary Sisters of the Immaculata, the Kolbe Teaching Missionaries.

Membership: M.I. has more than 3 million members in 48 countries around the world.

Works: M.I. does not have any institutionalized works of its own. When necessary it provides voluntary services to meet specific environmental and social needs: for example, the social recovery of alcoholics and drug addicts, and assisting AIDS sufferers, providing medical and nursing care in poor districts, humanitarian care for young needy mothers,
literacy courses for adults, after-school activities, and parish catechesis.

It systematically conducts evangelization through the Rede Mariana de Radio e Televisao at Santo Andre (Sao Paulo, Brazil), the printing shop and publishing center Jardim da Imaculada at Cidade Ocidental (Brazil), the Mary town training and dissemination center at Libertyville, Illinois.

Publications: Miles Immaculatae, a six-monthly magazine of Marian culture and Kolbian formation. Founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe, specifically for priests and pastoral workers, it is now the official organ of the
International Center.

There are more than 30 periodicals being published to support the apostolate of M.I. in different countries, the majority of which bear the name "Knight of the Immaculata," as an act of homage to the first one founded by Father Kolbe in Poland (Rycerz Niepokalanej) and subsequently in Japan (Seibo no Kishi).

Web site: www.mi-international.org

Headquarters:
Centro Internazionale Milizia dell'lmmacolata
Via San Teodoro, 42/44
00186 Roma -- Italy
Tel. (39) 06.679.3828 -- Fax 06.6994.1017
E-mail: Mlinternational@ofmconv.org

2006-06-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

Saint of the Day

CASTORA GABRIELLI

Memorial: 14 June
Died: 1391
Patronage: difficult marriages, widows

Profile: Castora was a lay woman of the Catholic Curch. She was wife and widow to Santuccio Sanfonerio, a lawyer at Sant'Angelo in Vado, Umbria, Italy. She was also a Franciscan tertiary (SFO). Castora is remembered for the sanctity she brought to her every day work.

2006-06-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

Anti-Catholicism. The last acceptable bigotry.

It would seem that Canada isn't the only place to want limits on Catholicism.

Source URL: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/mar/06032203.html

LifeSiteNews.com
Wednesday March 22, 2006

San Francisco City Government Calls Catholics 'Hateful, Discriminatory, Insulting, Ignorant'
Top Cardinal is "decidedly unqualified", says resolution

By John-Henry Westen

SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In one of the most startling attacks on the Catholic Church coming from a governmental body in the United States in half a century, the governing body of the city of San Francisco - the Board of Supervisors - voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a non-binding resolution blasting the Catholic Church for its opposition to homosexual adoption.

While many city's residents agree with the Church's stand against homosexual adoption, the resolution stated "It is an insult to all San Franciscans when a foreign country, like the Vatican, meddles with and attempts to negatively influence this great city's existing and established customs and traditions, such as the right of same-sex couples to adopt and care for children in need."

The city supervisors levelled an ad hominem attack on former San Francisco Archbishop William Levada, who has been appointed to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), one of the most senior posts in the Church. " Cardinal Levada is a decidedly unqualified representative of his former home city, and of the people of San Francisco and the values they hold dear,'' the resolution stated.

The supervisors also demonstrated their childishness as they attempted another dig at the Cardinal by indicating in the resolution that the CDF was once known as the Office of the Inquisition. "That the Board of Supervisors urges Cardinal William Levada, in his capacity as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican (formerly known as Holy Office of the Inquisition), to withdraw his discriminatory and defamatory directive that Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco stop placing children in need of adoption with homosexual households," reads the resolution.

The resolution attacked the teaching of the Catholic Church that homosexual adoption does "violence" to children since they would be placed in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. The resolution blasted the teaching as "hateful and discriminatory rhetoric (that) is both insulting and callous, and shows a level of insensitivity and ignorance which has seldom been encountered by this Board of Supervisors.''

Demonstrating their own profound ignorance, at least in terms of biological realities, the supervisors contend, "Same-sex couples are just as qualified to be parents as are heterosexual couples."

Concluding, the board urged current San Francisco "Archbishop Neiderauer and the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco to defy all discriminatory directives of Cardinal Levada."

Members of the Board of Supervisors and their contact information follow:
Jake McGoldrick
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=4635
Michela Alioto-Pier
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=22396
Aaron Peskin
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=4637
Fiona Ma
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=12725
Ross Mirkarimi
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=29087
Chris Daly
http://www.sfgov.org/daly
Sean Elsbernd
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=26661
Bevan Dufty
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=12723
Tom Ammiano
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=7251
Sophie Maxwell
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=4641
Gerardo Sandoval
http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=4643

2006-06-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

I just read on another blog that June is Celibacy Awareness Month. I can't find any real declaration of this. Just a bunch of silly folks making up crazy "holidays." Any ideas?

2006-06-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

I am a modest dresser. When I wear skirts they're usually long. I'm pretty well covered.

Our culture sells sex. So all the clothing folks wear these days is tight and revealing. Yet, so many people, both men and women, compliment me on my clothing. Long clothing is slimming. Cropped pants paired with a 3/4 length sleeve top isn't pretty. It just makes you look like you can't work a dryer properly and shrunk your clothes. If you're short they make you look shorter. If you're a size 10 trying to cram into a size 8, just realize you'll look like a sausage. It's not flattering. We wonder why the teen pregnancy rate is so high while we let our kids walk the streets looking like prostitutes. Spaghetti strap tanks in winter. Jeans so tight you can tell if the quarter in their back pocket is heads or tails. Might as well just put them in a sandwhich board that says "molest me."

In hot weather. My friends stand there turning into lobsters in their tanks and shorts. Fanning themselves and panting. Here I am in my long sleeves, long skirts and hats. Cool as a cucumber. How do you do it? they ask. Look at the desert dwellers. They all go out fully covered. Their clothing is a portable tent, keeping them cool. Folks look at me as if I've just announced I'm the antichrist, then totally ignore what I have to say. Even though the proof is standing right infront of them.

I recently discovered Shukr, a website for Islamic clothing. I had visited a blog not long ago, by a recent Christian writer on modesty in dress. Shukr was among her links page. Months later I placed my first order. I caught the most wonderful sale. Most of what I bought was one third it's original price. I bought enough stuff to get free shipping and a free hijab (head covering). What does a Christian woman need with a hijab? Our Islamic sisters aren't the only ones covering their heads. We Catholic women should still be wearing chapel veils. But due to a slip of the tongue by a bishop at the end of Vatican II and an overzealous media bliz, most Catholic women chucked their veils.

Back to Shukr. I bought 4 skirts. They fit wonderfully! Good sturdy construction which is essential for me since I don't drive and am either walking, biking or taking public transportation. Shipping was fast (and free due to the amount I spent). Communication by the seller was excellent. Highly recommend them to anyone!

I've added them to my links section as well as a link to one of my favorite websites about the chapel veil.

2006-05-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

On the infamous DaVinci Code...

I never read the book. I went to see the film, opening day, with a non-Christian friend. I thought she might have questions. Turns out I did!!

Much of it didn't add up. One plus one equals 3. I think the kind of folks who would believe this obviously fictional story is real must also believe most of the stories in papers like the Star or National Enquirer.

We have, from the very beginnng of Christianity, had a woman of elivated status in the church. The Blessed Virgin. The idea that the church would be afraid of such a woman is laughable! Go open the yellow pages. Look up Catholic churches. Count how many begin with Our Lady...

The church teaches that The Blessed Mother is the new Ark of the Covenant - because she carried the Word Incarnate in her womb. Our Greek brethren gave her the title Theotokos which means Christ Bearer.

So much for the church divesting itself of the sacred feminine. BAAAHAHAHAHA!!!

For our Protestant cousins, it's a whole other story...

The church didn't demonize Mary Magdalen. Hollywood did. Hollywood portrays her as a prostitute. Not the Holy See. The church doesn't build basilica's for prostitutes. Her relics rest in a massive basilica in France. Yes, we actually know where her body is.

Magdalene, is a Hebrew term for an adulteress. She has regularly been thought of as "the woman caught in adultery" as portrayed in "The Passion of the Christ." If she was an adulteress, then she was already married and couldn't have married Jesus. Some believe she is called the Magdalen because she came from Magdala in Galilea. Some believe she was the Mary of the Lazarus story. Mary and Martha are the sisters of Lazarus.

We also have the "Holy Grail." The Santa Caliz is in a cathedral in Spain.

The church has always taught that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. How would his having children be problematic to these teachings?

How would testing the DNA of Mary Magdalen prove that these people were descendents of Jesus? It would only prove that they were HER descendents. The story would have been a lot more plausible if Brown had made mention of the Holy Blood in the cathedral in Bruges. Yes, Holy Blood that Mary Magdalen caught in a cup - maybe THE cup - I don't know - at the crucifixion. I believe the Knights Templar brought it to Bruges. Not certain though.

DaVinci's painting may be called The Last Supper. But it isn't a painting of The Last Supper. It is of a meal days before The Passion, wherein Jesus again tells the desciples one of them will "offer him up" (the Aramaic term which we translated into betray), Peter, pulls John (the beloved disciple) to one side and begs him to learn from Jesus who the betrayer will be.

Why use the name of a real lay-organization within the church to signify a false order of monks? That's just silly. And why put a Franciscan robe on a non-Franciscan?

How is it even remotely possible that these people so deeply devoted to Jesus that they would injure themselves in severe penances for their sins could kill his children? Such an act would permanently remove them from His beloved presense. As such it would be an incomprehensible act to them.

I did enjoy the film. Largely because Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen and Audrey Tautou are wonderful. In short, I really don't see what all the fuss is about.

2006-05-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

On May 8th I lost one of the best friends I've ever had. Best friend, adopted dad, spiritual director, constant prankster. He was very well known in some circles. He spent 28 days in a house in Amityville. When I first met him, I was fumbling my way back to a church I'd left long ago. A silly priest had called me a witch and said I didn't belong in "his" church. I was just a kid. I didn't know any better. Now I know I have gifts. Charisms of the Spirit. The church - God's church - is right where I belong. Lee and St. Pio helped me to see that. We often wondered if St. Pio brought us together. St. Pio made an appearance at the house, and to Fr. Ray - the priest helping them through it all. That remains one of the theories as to why activity in the house settled down. St. Pio had phenomenal gifts over evil.

As such, Lee became my greatest spiritual advisor. He held my hand going back into the church. Supported me in joining the Secular Franciscan Order. Through a fit when I told him I was commited to a celibate single life. He always wanted to marry me off to someone.

I love my dad. He's a great guy. Independent. Original. Kind. But Dad's independence often has him forgetting he has kids. Lee was the dad I always wanted. If he didn't hear from me for a few days he was on the phone. "Where've you been?" He was bossy. Always ordering me around. Laughing like a child when I refused to obey or told him to stop being a pill.

Above all he was a good listener. Gave insight when needed. Always supportive.

He put together a family. Collected from 4 corners. Each loving the other as much as he loved us. At his passing, we grabbed on to each other. For support. To support. We laughed. We cried. We ate good food and as Lee would have loved - drank ice coffee.

At his memorial service, I could hear him yelling at me. Why are you sad? You know where I am. Get over it. Get up there and say something nice about me.

2006-04-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

Satanic Panic

If memory serves, it was in August of 1996 that I received an e-mail from my friend Cheryl in Los Angeles. She said there was an episode of HBO’s “America Undercover” that Friday called “Paradise Lost” and I had to see it. Cheryl is my pal. If she says watch, I watch. I wasn’t expecting what unfolded. Within the first few minutes of the program I found myself deeply disturbed by the way one parent smiled while discussing her son’s murder and mutilation and shocked that anyone could land on death row without a shred of real evidence. I’ve been following this case since.

We tell ourselves we’re too sophisticated for something like the Salem Witch Trials to ever happen again, yet, here it is. Three innocents blamed for an evil that one small town felt could only come from the devil. All three teens were surrounded by either friends or family during the time allotted for their supposed criminal actions, but that doesn’t matter. They went to trial with evidence that was sketchy at best. To the world at large, it would seem their only “real” crime was being a little bit different.

On May 5th, 1993 three 8-year-old boys, Michael Moore, Steve Branch and Christopher Byers, went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. The search was launched in a wooded area known as “Robin Hood Hills,” where the boys often played. The very next day their bodies were found in that same area, beneath about two feet of water. All three boys were tied, wrist to ankle, with their own shoelaces. All three boys had been beaten. One boy died of blood loss due to heavy injuries, which would seem to make him the focus of the attack. The other two boys drown, presumably in that very ditch. The medical examiner didn’t think it important to make certain. Weeks later, very little blood would be found via Luminol test at the site. All that was found should have been attributed to the officers pulling the bodies from the water and resting them on the banks. I’m not a cop. I’m not a criminology student. But I’ve read enough books by Robert Ressler to know you don’t move the bodies, you drain the ditch.

Allow me to draw you a picture of West Memphis, Arkansas based on data from AreaConnect: Population 27,666 (I kid you not.), 42% white, 56% black, the other two percent is a smattering of about everything with .21% American Indian. You’ll understand the relevance of that tiny number later. The median age is 31 and women outnumber the men by 2,000. The crime level in West Memphis is higher than the national average. Theft is their offense of choice, numbering 814 in 2001. There are 29 churches, primarily Baptist with one Catholic. I now understand why it’s called the “bible belt.” My own town has roughly three times as many people but barely twice as many churches, evenly distributed by denomination. Murders? We had one, they had two.

What happens when children are murdered in a small southern town? These simple people, unable to conceive of such a crime, began grasping at any and every straw to make some kind of sense out of this act. Given a police department that was ill equipped and untrained to deal with such a case, you’d point the finger at a local “weirdo,” Damien Echols (18 years old), you’d rope in his best friend, Jason Baldwin (16 years old), and you’d bully a third kid, Jessie Misskelley (17 years old), into “confessing.” Local investigators fumbled along destroying, losing and ignoring much needed evidence.

A juvenile probation officer, who would later be in trouble with the law himself, showed up as West Memphis police worked the scene and launched a rumor that would take the town by storm. He brought up the name of Damien Echols as one likely to perpetrate such an evil. He claimed Damien had spoken with him about starting a cult. Thus the match was struck and the fire of Satanic Panic consumed the town. Rumors flew like a flock of starlings and suddenly everyone had a “Damien story.” I pulled a few gems from the www.wm3.org website: One man claimed that Damien levitated him during a "devil meeting." Another person claimed that they saw Damien wearing "dog entrails like a necktie." Another West Memphis resident stated that human skulls with skin still attached were found in Damien's closet. Another local person stated that they watched Damien kill a dog and eat the heart during a satanic orgy/ritual. Another version of this rumor specifies that he ate the dog's leg. If these people were close enough to have such detail, that is, to know the entrails were from a dog, surely they participated. Why weren’t they on trial? If they didn’t participate then why didn’t they go to authorities with such a story immediately, potentially saving the lives of these children?

One of the earliest and most heinous rumors actually began with a parent of one of the murdered children. John Mark Byers told reporters his child’s testicles were found in a jar of alcohol under Damien’s bed. What kind of parent floats such a rumor? Who in their right mind would want their child remembered this a way? I recommend you view the two documentaries on this case: “Paradise Lost: the Child Murders in the Robin Hood Hills” and “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations” for a better understanding.

On June 3, 1993 these teens were arrested for the murder of the three children. Later they would be convicted. Evidence exists to prove their innocence, however, it has been dismissed because the judge does not understand Forensic Odontology. They’re young men now, having been imprisoned for 13 years. Damien Echols, the supposed “ringleader,” is serving his time on death row.

I don’t know about you, but one month seems awfully fast to me. Especially when, as you’ll see below, much of that time was spent chasing a rumor, rather than actually gathering evidence in an attempt to find the real murderer(s). In the Laci Peterson case, police gathered evidence for 4 months, regardless of the “tremendous pressure” involved, before making an arrest.

Just by skimming a few books on cults at the library I learned cults kill their own. Reality is very unlike the media portrayal of cults cleaning our streets up of the indigent or snatching children off dirt roads. If they need to kill someone, they draw someone in then cut them from family and friends so they will not be missed. If they want a child sacrifice, they impregnate one of their own.

I asked a fellow who was well educated about cults what one might find in a wooded area where cult activities were supposedly performed. He commented that different things would be found with different types of cults. I explained that the accusation was of a satanic cult. I was surprised by his answer. Learn something new every day! Let me summarize what he said:

First you have to classify them in the correct way. Satanism is not devil worship. They don’t go into the woods, they’re too controlling. They keep to themselves. They’re more interested in orgies and the like. Satanism isn’t worshipping satan. They are their own gods.

Different sects of satanism may intermingle with devil worship or demon worship. With devil worship you’d find demonic symbols, rune script or satanic script carved in the area, a burnt out fire area and candle wax but no sacrificial knives.

The expert asked point blank what the question referred to. I told him there were three young men in jail, convicted of the “satanic sacrifice” of three children. He asked on what evidence and all I could tell him was none. Not a shred. He asked what symbols had been carved into the victims. Symbols?

“There would have been demonic symbols carved on the victims.”

Really??!! (I didn’t bother to mention what the prosecution’s “occult specialist” [see below] said in court. I didn’t want him to choke on his lunch.)

Knowing full well he was innocent, trusting in the judicial system, and seeming to enjoying the spotlight, Damien was all too eager to give information about himself quite freely. That information would later be used against him. Damien professed to be a practitioner, or student, of Wicca at that time. He would state emphatically that he was never part of any group. However, the prosecution would use this against him, equating the earth-centered religion to satanism.

I had planned on interviewing a practicing Wiccan for my article. I thought it would be great to get some information from an active source on their beliefs. However, I just haven’t been able to get one to volunteer. With what I know about this particular case, I understand why. None of them would want to end up on death row. The very basic principles of Wicca are “Harm none” which is self-explanatory and The Three Fold Law. That is to say, anything you put out into the universe comes back to you three fold. If you case a love spell, three will be cast upon you. (Whew, let’s hope he’s not ugly!) If you murder three children 9 close to you will be murdered.

The prosecution would call upon Dale Griffis as an expert in the occult. He pointed to Damien’s particular style of dressing in black as evidence of his occult practices. They actually held up a concert t-shirt in court as proof of his cult status. I surveyed 6 ladies in my monthly Bible Study group. Three had black jeans in their closets. All six had black t-shirts, two mentioned specific concert tees. Other “evidence” mentioned in court as proof of Damien’s cult activities were books he read and music he listened to. I asked about those specific writers and bands used against Damien in court and found two of my ladies have also read Stephen King and two had Pink Floyd albums in their CD collections. One young lady mentioned having seen a movie made of a Stephen King novel. She makes a good point. I bet more than 50% of the people in that courtroom had seen “The Shining.”

Much was made of the just the name Damien. He was actually born Michael. His stepfather introduced him to church. Eventually he would join West Memphis’s only Catholic church and be confirmed taking the name of Damien after Fr. Damien of Molokai. But the people of West Memphis had seen “The Omen” one too many times and would insist he took the name under darker pretenses.

Had Damien lived in California, he would have numbered among the hundreds upon thousands of average teenagers. Moody, loved heavy metal music, dressed in black and oozing of teen angst. During the trial, comments were made about his long black hair. People said he dyed it as part of his “cult persona.” Damien is part American Indian. His hair is naturally black, stick straight and at that time he wore it long. He is also rather pale. A physical appearance “Goth” kids around here strive for. But Damien isn’t from around here. He’s from a hick town in the Bible belt.

As I read Mara Leveritt’s interview with Damien from the archives of the Arkansas Times, one thing hit me hard. This kid has both a monastic and ecumenical heart. He seems a lot more like Thomas Merton or Bede Griffiths than Anton LeVey (who, by the way, never advocated human sacrifice by any means). I was also shocked to read in that same interview that the probation officer who launched the “cult campaign” viewed speaking and reading Latin as satanic. Imagine a worst-case scenario. This kid continued on his path to Catholicism and at some point discovers the “Rule of St. Benedict.” He is drawn to monastic life and becomes a Benedictine Oblate, which is a third order or secular monk. He takes the oblate habit, black hooded robes. He learns to chant the psalms, with his intelligence and love of study probably memorizes them in Latin. If these things had come to pass, there wouldn’t have been a trial. There would have been a lynching.

It should be mentioned that Damien named his first born, Azariah. A good sound biblical name. However, the townspeople were apparently ignorant of the Bible and decided it was a demonic name. In the Book of Tobit: Azariah is the name the Archangel Raphael gives, to hide his true identity, when he comes in answer to a man’s prayer. In 1 and 2 Kings, Azariah is the king of Judah (one of the 12 tribes of Israel.) In 2 Chronicles, Azariah is a prophet of God. In Daniel, Azariah is the name of one of the boys who survives the “firey furnace.”

A well known wiccan author recently told me, “Ignorance coupled with power is evil.”

It isn’t bad enough that Damien is on death row with literally no evidence linking him to the crime. We have Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley who really are collateral damage. Simply put, the way to “get” Damien. Reading interviews and watching the documentaries on the case, it’s easy to see why Damien and Jason were best friends. Jason is a happy kid with a ready smile, even in the midst of accusations and small town belligerence. His bright and cheery personality must have alleviated much of Damien’s angst. Jason’s defense attorney claimed it was simply ‘guilt by association.’ Although it’s a true statement, I find it sad that he made it seem as if he actually believed Damien was guilty.

Jessie Misskelley was to be the “tool” police in West Memphis used to “get” Damien. Jessie is another sweet, smiling kid who wants nothing more than to make people happy. A woman he knew who was in trouble with the cops pointed the finger at Jessie as someone who knew something. Police had offered to help her clean things up if she would help them get their man, I mean - teenager. They picked him up on June 3, 1993, for questioning. Jessie didn’t know Damien, and Jessie wasn’t even in town the night of the murders. He was badgered, bullied and shown horrid photos until he coughed up what was thought to be enough material to put Damien behind bars. In a desperate attempt to tell them what they wanted so he could get out and go home, he accidentally implicated himself. After 12 hours in the interrogation room, a very tiny segment of what Jessie said was put to tape as his “confession.”

Much has been made about Jessie’s I.Q. as a reason for his “confession.” However, people falsely confess to crimes all the time. That is one essential reason police don’t tell all the elements of a crime to the media. They need to hold on to enough that if someone confesses the key will be in elements of the crime undisclosed to the media. It is then up to police to research the confession. What is real, and what is bogus. Take the case of Jack the Ripper. Police received hundreds of letters, both mocking and confessing, yet only a one marked “From Hell” would stand out.

Jessie gave police all that he could remember from what he’d read in papers. Some very important details were so blatantly wrong it’s surprising that police would even try to use this so called confession. Jessie would state the children were taken and killed at a time when they were still in school. Jessie would claim the children were tied with brown rope when they were actually tied with their own shoelaces. Police would make excuses for details that didn’t fit, but be adamant about what did. In the end, Jessie refused to allow his bogus confession to be used against Damien and Jason even after being offered a reduced sentence for himself.

Criminal Profiler, Brent Turvey, joined the defense team around 1997. Upon viewing the autopsy and crime scene photos, one thing stood out to him. Human bite marks on one of the victims. He dismissed claims of cult sacrifice and stated that this killing was punitive in nature, aimed at one child specifically. The other two children, seemingly, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dental impressions were taken of Damien, Jason and Jessie. These impressions did not match bite marks on the child’s face thereby showing the teens factually innocent. So why are these kids still in jail? Because the judge doesn’t understand “forensic odontology.”

The devil runs rampant. More and more highly educated people believe. Exorcism and deliverance are on the rise. 10 years ago, the global Catholic Church had 6 active exorcists. As of three years ago, the US alone has over 300. In 2005, the Holy See gave a class in exorcism that proved so popular they had to turn away potential students and schedule a second class. My own local exorcist, a Franciscan monk, has more work than he can handle. He repeatedly sends out requests for prayer.

Deliverance Ministry is one of Protestant's most popular at the moment. What is the difference between exorcism and deliverance? Exorcism is a Catholic rite, involving use of the Roman Ritual of Exorcism. It is done only with the approval of one’s bishop and only after certain criteria have been established. Everything else, including priests and secular individuals not using the rite, is deliverance.

In 1999 the Pope updated the rite, De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam ("Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications"). The rite was first written in 1523 with its last revision being made in 1614. Books on demons, and casting them out, ride the bestseller lists with such titles as “American Exorcism,” “Hostage to the Devil,” and “They Shall Expel Demon.” Even the Vatican’s own official exorcist, Gabriel Amorth has written two books on the subject.

The devil not only makes an appearance to incarcerate the innocent, but his name is also tossed around in attempts to free the guilty. The “I was possessed” plea used by Ronald DeFeo, Jr. and “It wasn’t Scott, it was a satanic cult” defense used in the Laci Peterson case.

More recently, Diane Moore, Michael Moore's mother, is now in jail for vehicular manslaughter. She ran down and killed a 26 year old woman. John Mark Byers, Christopher Byers's step-father, is in jail for numerous reasons. Terry Hobbs, Steve Branch’s step-father, is also in jail. He shot his brother-in-law. Byers and Hobbs spent an awful lot of time searching those woods alone. Factor in the mysterious death of Melissa Byers. Christopher Byers’s mother.

In conclusion, I can honestly say the West Memphis Police Department desperately needs a copy of the CSI first season DVD. It sounds like a joke but if they had such an item, three innocent teens would not have spent the last 13 years in prison. The PD’s own medical examiner was in trouble with Rhode Island for selling body parts and their forensic pathologist flubbed in court as to which day he examined the bodies of the three children. He didn’t see the importance of taking core temperatures of the bodies to establish time of death. He would also change his testimony many times.

I would encourage you to go to the West Memphis Three web site and read the information given. Hope is not lost. Rick Walker, who had been incarcerated for 12 years was finally freed due to family, friends and one determined attorney.

May is West Memphis Three Awareness Month. Hence the reposting of this article. Spread the word. Get active! FREE THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE! www.wm3.org

2006-04-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

End the suffering. Boycott meat!

The Chain Never Stops
By Eric Schlosser

American slaughterhouses are grinding out meat faster than ever -- and the production line keeps moving, even when the workers are maimed by the machinery.

In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want him... they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away!
--Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)

Kenny Dobbins was hired by the Monfort Beef Company in 1979. He was 24 years old, and 6 foot 5, and had no fear of the hard work in a slaughterhouse. He seemed invincible. Over the next two decades he suffered injuries working for Monfort that would have crippled or killed lesser men. He was struck by a falling 90-pound box of meat and pinned against the steel lip of a conveyor belt. He blew out a disc and had back surgery. He inhaled too much chlorine while cleaning some blood tanks and spent a month in the hospital, his lungs burned, his body covered in blisters. He damaged the rotator cuff in his left shoulder when a 10,000-pound hammer-mill cover dropped too quickly and pulled his arm straight backward. He broke a leg after stepping into a hole in the slaughterhouse's concrete floor. He got hit by a slow-moving train behind the plant, got bloodied and knocked right out of his boots, spent two weeks in the hospital, then returned to work. He shattered an ankle and had it mended with four steel pins. He got more bruises and cuts, muscle pulls and strains than he could remember.

Despite all the injuries and the pain, the frequent trips to the hospital and the metal brace that now supported one leg, Dobbins felt intensely loyal to Monfort and Con-Agra, its parent company. He'd left home at the age of 13 and never learned to read; Monfort had given him a steady job, and he was willing to do whatever the company asked. He moved from Grand Island, Nebraska, to Greeley, Colorado, to help Monfort reopen its slaughterhouse there without a union. He became an outspoken member of a group formed to keep union organizers out. He saved the life of a fellow worker—and was given a framed certificate of appreciation. And then, in December 1995, Dobbins felt a sharp pain in his chest while working in the plant. He thought it was a heart attack. According to Dobbins, the company nurse told him it was a muscle pull and sent him home. It was a heart attack, and Dobbins nearly died. While awaiting compensation for his injuries, he was fired. The company later agreed to pay him a settlement of $35,000.

Today Kenny Dobbins is disabled, with a bad heart and scarred lungs. He lives entirely off Social Security payments. He has no pension and no health insurance. His recent shoulder surgery—stemming from an old injury at the plant and costing more than $10,000—was paid by Medicare. He now feels angry beyond words at ConAgra, misused, betrayed. He's embarrassed to be receiving public assistance. "I've never had to ask for help before in my life," Dobbins says. "I've always worked. I've worked since I was 14 years old." In addition to the physical pain, the financial uncertainty, and the stress of finding enough money just to pay the rent each month, he feels humiliated.

What happened to Kenny Dobbins is now being repeated, in various forms, at slaughterhouses throughout the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, meatpacking is the nation's most dangerous occupation. In 1999, more than one-quarter of America's nearly 150,000 meatpacking workers suffered a job-related injury or illness. The meatpacking industry not only has the highest injury rate, but also has by far the highest rate of serious injury—more than five times the national average, as measured in lost workdays. If you accept the official figures, about 40,000 meatpacking workers are injured on the job every year. But the actual number is most likely higher. The meatpacking industry has a well-documented history of discouraging injury reports, falsifying injury data, and putting injured workers back on the job quickly to minimize the reporting of lost workdays. Over the past four years, I've met scores of meatpacking workers in Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas who tell stories of being injured and then discarded by their employers. Like Kenny Dobbins, many now rely on public assistance for their food, shelter, and medical care. Each new year throws more injured workers on the dole, forcing taxpayers to subsidize the meatpacking industry's poor safety record. No government statistics can measure the true amount of pain and suffering in the nation's meatpacking communities today.

A list of accident reports filed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration gives a sense of the dangers that workers now confront in the nation's meatpacking plants. The titles of these OSHA reports sound more like lurid tabloid headlines than the headings of sober government documents: Employee Severely Burned After Fuel From His Saw Is Ignited. Employee Hospitalized for Neck Laceration From Flying Blade. Employee's Finger Amputated in Sausage Extruder. Employee's Finger Amputated in Chitlin Machine. Employee's Eye Injured When Struck by Hanging Hook. Employee's Arm Amputated in Meat Auger. Employee's Arm Amputated When Caught in Meat Tenderizer. Employee Burned in Tallow Fire. Employee Burned by Hot Solution in Tank. One Employee Killed, Eight Injured by Ammonia Spill. Employee Killed When Arm Caught in Meat Grinder. Employee Decapitated by Chain of Hide Puller Machine. Employee Killed When Head Crushed by Conveyor. Employee Killed When Head Crushed in Hide Fleshing Machine. Employee Killed by Stun Gun. Caught and Killed by Gut-Cooker Machine.

The most dangerous plants are the ones where cattle are slaughtered. Poultry slaughterhouses are somewhat safer because they are more highly mechanized; chickens have been bred to reach a uniform size at maturity. Cattle, however, vary enormously in size, shape, and weight when they arrive at a slaughterhouse. As a result, most of the work at a modern beef plant is still performed by hand. In the age of the space station and the microchip, the most important slaughterhouse tool is a well-sharpened knife.

Thirty years ago, meatpacking was one of the highest-paid industrial jobs in the United States, with one of the lowest turnover rates. In the decades that followed the 1906 publication of The Jungle, labor unions had slowly gained power in the industry, winning their members good benefits, decent working conditions, and a voice in the workplace. Meatpacking jobs were dangerous and unpleasant, but provided enough income for a solid, middle-class life. There were sometimes waiting lists for these jobs. And then, starting in the early 1960s, a company called Iowa Beef Packers (IBP) began to revolutionize the industry, opening plants in rural areas far from union strongholds, recruiting immigrant workers from Mexico, introducing a new division of labor that eliminated the need for skilled butchers, and ruthlessly battling unions. By the late 1970s, meatpacking companies that wanted to compete with IBP had to adopt its business methods—or go out of business. Wages in the meatpacking industry soon fell by as much as 50 percent. Today meatpacking is one of the nation's lowest-paid industrial jobs, with one of the highest turnover rates. The typical plant now hires an entirely new workforce every year or so. There are no waiting lists at these slaughterhouses today. Staff shortages have become an industrywide problem, making the work even more dangerous.

In a relatively brief period of time, the meatpacking industry also became highly centralized and concentrated, giving enormous power to a few large agribusiness firms. In 1970, the top four meatpackers controlled just 21 percent of the beef market. Today the top four—IBP, ConAgra, Excel (a subsidiary of Cargill), and National Beef—control about 85 percent of the market. While the meatpackers have grown more powerful, the unions have grown much weaker. Only half of IBP's workers belong to a union, allowing that company to set the industry standard for low wages and harsh working conditions. Given the industry's high turnover rates, it is a challenge for a union simply to remain in a meatpacking plant, since every year it must gain the allegiance of a whole new set of workers.

In some American slaughterhouses, more than three-quarters of the workers are not native English speakers; many can't read any language, and many are illegal immigrants. A new migrant industrial workforce now circulates through the meatpacking towns of the High Plains. A wage of $9.50 an hour seems incredible to men and women who come from rural areas in Mexico where the wages are $7 a day. These manual laborers, long accustomed to toiling in the fields, are good workers. They're also unlikely to complain or challenge authority, to file lawsuits, organize unions, fight for their legal rights. They tend to be poor, vulnerable, and fearful. From the industry's point of view, they are ideal workers: cheap, largely interchangeable, and disposable.

One of the crucial determinants of a slaughterhouse's profitability is also responsible for many of its greatest dangers: the speed of the production line. Once a plant is fully staffed and running, the more head of cattle slaughtered per hour, the less it costs to process each one. If the production line stops, for any reason, costs go up. Faster means cheaper—and more profitable. The typical line speed in an American slaughterhouse 25 years ago was about 175 cattle per hour. Some line speeds now approach 400 cattle per hour. Technological advances are responsible for part of the increase; the powerlessness of meatpacking workers explains the rest. Faster also means more dangerous. When hundreds of workers stand closely together, down a single line, wielding sharp knives, terrible things can happen when people feel rushed. The most common slaughterhouse injury is a laceration. Workers stab themselves or stab someone nearby. They struggle to keep up with the pace as carcasses rapidly swing toward them, hung on hooks from a moving, overhead chain. All sorts of accidents—involving power tools, saws, knives, conveyor belts, slippery floors, falling carcasses—become more likely when the chain moves too fast. One slaughterhouse nurse told me she could always tell the line speed by the number of people visiting her office.

The golden rule in meatpacking plants is "The Chain Will Not Stop." USDA inspectors can shut down the line to ensure food safety, but the meatpacking firms do everything possible to keep it moving at top speed. Nothing stands in the way of production, not mechanical failures, breakdowns, accidents. Forklifts crash, saws overheat, workers drop knives, workers get cut, workers collapse and lie unconscious on the floor, as dripping carcasses sway past them, and the chain keeps going. "The chain never stops," Rita Beltran, a former IBP worker told me. "I've seen bleeders, and they're gushing because they got hit right in the vein, and I mean they're almost passing out, and here comes the supply guy again, with the bleach, to clean the blood off the floor, but the chain never stops. It never stops."

Albertina Rios was a housewife in Mexico before coming to America nearly 20 years ago and going to work for IBP in Lexington, Nebraska. While bagging intestines, over and over, for eight hours a day, Rios soon injured her right shoulder. She was briefly placed on light duty, but asked to be assigned to a higher-paying position trimming heads, an even more difficult job that required moving heavy baskets of meat all day. When she complained about the pain to her supervisor, she recalls, he accused her of being lazy. Rios eventually underwent surgery on the shoulder, as well as two operations on her hands for carpal tunnel syndrome, a painful and commonplace injury caused by hours of repetitive motion.

Some of the most debilitating injuries in the meatpacking industry are also the least visible. Properly sutured, even a deep laceration will heal. The cumulative trauma injuries that meatpacking workers routinely suffer, however, may cause lifelong impairments. The strict regimentation and division of labor in slaughterhouses means that workers must repeat the same motions again and again throughout their shift. Making the same knife cut 10,000 times a day or lifting the same weight every few seconds can cause serious injuries to a person's back, shoulders, or hands. Aside from a 15-minute rest break or two and a brief lunch, the work is unrelenting. Even the repetition of a seemingly harmless task can lead to pain. "If you lightly tap your finger on a desk a few times, it doesn't hurt," an attorney for injured workers told me. "Now try tapping it for eight hours straight, and see how that feels."

The rate of cumulative trauma injuries in meatpacking is the highest of any American industry. It is about 33 times higher than the national average. According to federal statistics, nearly 1 out of every 10 meatpacking workers suffers a cumulative trauma injury every year. In fact, it's very hard to find a meatpacking worker who's not suffering from some kind of recurring pain. For unskilled, unschooled manual laborers, cumulative trauma injuries such as disc problems, tendonitis, and "trigger finger" (a syndrome in which a finger becomes stuck in a curled position) can permanently limit the ability to earn a decent income. Much of this damage will never be healed.

After interviews with many slaughterhouse workers who have cumulative trauma injuries, there's one image that stays with me. It's the sight of pale white scars on dark skin. Ana Ramos came from El Salvador and went to work at the same IBP plant as Albertina Rios, trimming hair from the meat with scissors. Her fingers began to lock up; her hands began to swell; she developed shoulder problems from carrying 30- to 60-pound boxes. She recalls going to see the company doctor and describing the pain, only to be told the problem was in her mind. She would leave the appointments crying. In January 1999, Ramos had three operations on the same day—one on her shoulder, another on her elbow, another on her hand. A week later, the doctor sent her back to work. Dora Sanchez, who worked at a different IBP plant, complained for months about soreness in her hands. She says the company ignored her. Sanchez later had surgery on both hands. She now has a "spinal cord stimulator," an elaborate pain-reduction system implanted in her body, controlled from a small box under the skin on her hip. She will need surgery to replace the batteries every six or seven years.

Cumulative trauma injuries may take months or even years to develop; other slaughterhouse injuries can happen in an instant. Lives are forever changed by a simple error, a wrong move, a faulty machine. Raul Lopez worked as a carpenter in Mexico, making tables, chairs, and headboards, before coming to the United States in 1995 to do construction work in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 20 years old at the time, and after laying concrete foundations for two years, he moved to Greeley and got a job at the Monfort Beef plant, where the pay was higher. He trimmed hides after they came up from the kill floor, cutting off the legs and heads, lifting them up with mechanical assistance, and placing the hides on a hook. It was one of the most difficult jobs in the plant. Each hide weighed about 180 pounds, and he lifted more than 300 of them every hour. He was good at his job and became a "floater," used by his supervisor to fill in for absent workers. Lopez's hands and shoulders were sore at the end of the day, but for two years and two months he suffered no injuries.

At about seven in the morning on November 22, 1999, Lopez was substituting for an absent worker, standing on a four-foot-high platform, pulling hides from a tank of water that was washing blood and dirt off them. The hides were suspended on hooks from a moving chain. The room was cold and foggy, and it was difficult to see clearly. There were problems somewhere up ahead on the line, but the chain kept moving, and Lopez felt pressure to keep up. One of his steel-mesh gloves suddenly got snagged in the chain, and it dragged him down the line toward bloody, filthy water that was three feet deep. Lopez grabbed the chain with his free hand and screamed for help. Someone ran to another room and took an extraordinary step: He shut down the line. The arm caught in the chain, Lopez's left one, was partially crushed. He lost more than three pints of blood and almost bled to death. He was rushed to a hospital in Denver, endured the first of many operations, and survived. Five months later, Lopez was still in enormous pain and heavily medicated. Nevertheless, he says, a company doctor ordered him back to work. His previous supervisor no longer worked at the plant. Lopez was told that the man had simply walked off the job and quit one day, feeling upset about the accident.

I recently visited Lopez on a lovely spring afternoon. His modest apartment is just a quarter mile down the road from the slaughterhouse. The living room is meticulously neat and clean, filled with children's toys and a large glass display case of Native American curios. Lopez now works in the nurse's office at the plant, handling files. Every day he sees how injured workers are treated—given some Tylenol and then sent back to the line—and worries that ConAgra is now planning to get rid of him. His left arm hangs shriveled and lifeless in a sling. It is a deadweight that causes severe pain in his neck and back. Lopez wants the company to pay for an experimental operation that might restore some movement to the arm. The alternative could be amputation. ConAgra will say only that it is weighing the various medical options. Lopez is 26 years old and believes his arm will work again. "Every night, I pray for this operation," he says, maintaining a polite and dignified facade. A number of times during our conversation, he suddenly gets up and leaves the room. His wife, Silvia, stays behind, sitting across from me on the couch, holding their one-year-old son in her arms. Their three-year-old daughter happily wanders in and out to the porch. Every time the front door swings open for her, a light breeze from the north brings the smell of death into the room.

The meatpacking companies refuse to comment on the cases of individual employees like Raul Lopez, but insist they have a sincere interest in the well-being of their workers. Health and safety, they maintain, are the primary concerns of every supervisor, foreman, nurse, medical claims examiner, and company-approved doctor. "It is in our best interest to take care of our workers and ensure that they are protected and able to work every day," says Janet M. Riley, a vice president of the American Meat Institute, the industry's trade association. "We are very concerned about improving worker safety. It is absolutely to our benefit."

The validity of such claims is measured best in Texas, where the big meatpackers have the most freedom to do as they please. In many ways, the true heart of the industry lies in Texas. About one-quarter of the cattle slaughtered every year in the United States—roughly 9 million animals—are processed in Texas meatpacking plants. One of the state's U.S. senators, Phil Gramm, is the industry's most powerful ally in Congress. His wife, Wendy Lee, sits on the board of IBP. The state courts and the legislature have also been friendly to the industry. Indeed, many injured meatpacking workers in Texas now face a system that has been devised not only to prevent any independent scrutiny of their medical needs, but also to prevent them from suing for on-the-job injuries.

In the early years of the 20th century, public outrage over the misfortune of industrial workers hurt on the job prompted legislatures throughout the United States to enact workers' compensation laws. Workers' comp was intended to be a form of mandatory, no-fault insurance. In return for surrendering the legal right to sue their employer for damages, injured workers were guaranteed immediate access to medical care, steady income while they recuperated, and disability payments. All 50 states eventually passed workers' comp legislation of one sort or another, creating systems in which employers generally obtained private insurance and any disputes were resolved by publicly appointed officials.

Recent efforts by business groups to "reform" workers' comp have made it more difficult for injured employees to obtain payments. In Colorado, the first "workers' comp reform" bill was sponsored in 1990 by Tom Norton, a conservative state senator from Greeley. His wife, Kay, was a vice president at ConAgra Red Meat at the time. Under Colorado's new law, which places limits on compensation, the maximum payment for losing an arm is $37,738. Losing a digit brings you anywhere from $2,400 to $9,312, depending on whether it's a middle finger, a pinkie, or a thumb.

The meatpacking companies have a vested interest in keeping workers' comp payments as low as possible. IBP, Excel, and ConAgra are all self-insured. Every dime spent on injured workers in such programs is one less dime in profits. Slaughterhouse supervisors and foremen, whose annual bonuses are usually tied to the injury rate of their workers, often discourage people from reporting injuries or seeking first aid. The packinghouse culture encourages keeping quiet and laboring in pain. Assignments to "light duty" frequently punish an injured worker by cutting the hourly wage and forbidding overtime. When an injury is visible and impossible to deny—an amputation, a severe laceration, a chemical burn—companies generally don't contest a worker's claim or try to avoid medical payments. But when injuries are less obvious or workers seem uncooperative, companies often block every attempt to seek benefits. It can take injured workers as long as three years to get their medical bills paid. From a purely financial point of view, the company has a strong incentive to delay every payment in order to encourage a less-expensive settlement. Getting someone to quit is even more profitable—an injured worker who walks away from the job is no longer eligible for any benefits. It is not uncommon to find injured workers assigned to meaningless or unpleasant tasks as a form of retaliation, a clear message to leave. They are forced to sit all day watching an emergency exit or to stare at gauges amid the stench in rendering.

In Texas, meatpacking firms don't have to manipulate the workers' comp system—they don't even have to participate in it. The Texas Workers Compensation Reform Act of 1989 allowed private companies to drop out of the state's workers' comp system. Although the law gave injured workers the right to sue employers that had left the system, that provision was later rendered moot. When a worker is injured at an IBP plant in Texas, for example, he or she is immediately presented with a waiver. It reads: "I have been injured at work and want to apply for the payments offered by IBP to me under its Workplace Injury Settlement Program. To qualify, I must accept the rules of the Program. I have been given a copy of the Program summary. I accept the Program."

Signing the waiver means forever surrendering your right—and the right of your family and heirs—to sue IBP on any grounds. Workers who sign the waiver may receive immediate medical care under IBP's program. Or they may not. Once they sign, IBP and its company-approved doctors have control over the worker's job-related medical treatment—for life. Under the program's terms, seeking treatment from an independent physician can be grounds for losing all medical benefits. If the worker objects to any decision, the dispute can be submitted to an IBP-approved arbitrator. The company has said the waivers are designed "to more effectively ensure quality medical care for employees injured on the job." Workers who refuse to sign the IBP waiver not only risk getting no medical care from the company, but also risk being fired on the spot. In February 1998, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that companies operating outside the state's workers' comp system can fire workers simply because they're injured.

Today, an IBP worker who gets hurt on the job in Texas faces a tough dilemma: Sign the waiver, perhaps receive immediate medical attention, and remain beholden, forever, to IBP. Or refuse to sign, risk losing your job, receive no help with your medical bills, file a lawsuit, and hope to win a big judgment against the company someday. Injured workers almost always sign the waiver. The pressure to do so is immense. An IBP medical case manager will literally bring the waiver to a hospital emergency room in order to obtain an injured worker's signature. Karen Olsson, in a fine investigative piece for the Texas Observer, described the lengths to which Terry Zimmerman, one of IBP's managers, will go to get a signed waiver. When Lonita Leal's right hand was mangled by a hamburger grinder at the IBP plant in Amarillo, Zimmerman talked her into signing the waiver with her left hand, as she waited in the hospital for surgery. When Duane Mullin had both hands crushed in a hammer mill at the same plant, Zimmerman persuaded him to sign the waiver with a pen held in his mouth.

Unlike IBP, Excel does not need to get a signed waiver after an injury in Texas. Its waiver is included in the union contract that many workers unwittingly sign upon being hired. Once they're injured, these workers often feel as much anger toward the union as they do toward their employer. In March, the Texas Supreme Court upheld the legality of such waivers, declaring that the "freedom of contract" gave Americans the ability to sign away their common-law rights. Before the waiver became part of the standard contract, Excel was held accountable, every so often, for its behavior.

Hector Reyes is one of the few who has managed to do something productive with his sense of betrayal. For 25 years, his father was a maintenance worker at the Excel plant in Friona, Texas, a couple of hours southwest of Amarillo. As a teen-ager, Reyes liked to work in the plant's warehouse, doing inventory. He'd grown up around the slaughterhouse. He later became a Golden Gloves champion boxer and went to work for Excel in 1997, at the age of 25, to earn money while he trained. One day he was asked to clean some grease from the blowers in the trolley room. Reyes did as he was told, climbing a ladder in the loud, steam-filled room and wiping the overhead blowers clean. But one of the blowers lacked a proper cover—and in an instant the blade shredded four of the fingers on Reyes' left hand. He climbed down the ladder and yelled for help, but nobody would come near him, as blood flew from the hand. So Reyes got himself to the nurse's office, where he was immediately asked to provide a urine sample. In shock and in pain, he couldn't understand why they needed his urine so badly. Try as he might, he couldn't produce any. The nurse called an ambulance, but said he wouldn't receive any painkillers until he peed in a cup. Reyes later realized that if he'd failed the urine test, Excel would not have been obligated to pay any of his medical bills. This demand for urine truly added insult to injury: Reyes was in training and never took drugs. He finally managed to urinate and received some medication. The drug test later came back negative.

On his fourth night in a Lubbock hospital, Reyes was awakened around midnight and told to report for work the next morning in Friona, two hours away. His wife would have to drive, but she was three months pregnant. Reyes refused to leave the hospital until the following day. For the next three months, he simply sat in a room at the Excel plant with other injured workers or filed papers for eight hours a day, then drove to Lubbock for an hour of physical therapy and an hour of wound cleaning before heading home. "You've already cost the company too much money," he recalls one supervisor telling him. Reyes desperately wanted to quit but knew he'd lose all his medical benefits if he did. He became suicidal, despondent about the end of his boxing career and his disfigurement. Since the union had not yet included a waiver in its Excel contract, Reyes was able to sue the company for failing to train him properly and for disregarding OSHA safety guidelines. In 1999, he won a rare legal victory: $879,312.25 in actual damages and $1 million in punitive damages. Under the current Excel contract, that sort of victory is impossible to achieve.

Federal safety laws were intended to protect workers from harm, regardless of the vagaries of state laws like those in Texas. OSHA is unlikely, however, to do anything for meatpacking workers in the near future. The agency has fewer than 1,200 inspectors to examine the safety risks at the nation's roughly 7 million workplaces. The maximum OSHA fine for the death of a worker due to an employer's willful negligence is $70,000—an amount that hardly strikes fear in the hearts of agribusiness executives whose companies have annual revenues that are measured in the tens of billions. One of President George W. Bush's first acts in office was to rescind an OSHA ergonomics standard on repetitive-motion injuries that the agency had been developing for nearly a decade. His move was applauded by IBP and the American Meat Institute.

The new chairman of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, which oversees all legislation pertaining to OSHA, is Rep. Charles Norwood, a Republican from Georgia. Norwood was an outspoken supporter of the OSHA Reform Act of 1997—a bill that would have effectively abolished the agency. Norwood, a former dentist, became politically active in the early 1990s out of a sense of outrage that OSHA regulations designed to halt the spread of AIDS were forcing him to wear fresh rubber gloves for each new patient. He has publicly suggested that many workers get repetitive-stress injuries not from their jobs, but from skiing and playing too much tennis.

For Kevin Glasheen, one of the few Texas attorneys willing to battle IBP, the plight of America's meatpacking workers is "a fundamental failure of capitalism." By failing to pay the medical bills of injured workers, he says, large meatpackers are routinely imposing their business costs on the rest of society, much as utilities polluted the air a generation ago without much regard to the consequences for those who breathed it. Rod Rehm, an attorney who defends many Latino meatpacking workers in Nebraska, believes that two key changes could restore the effectiveness.

2006-04-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

Play hard, sleep hard. Oh the life of a cat.

2006-04-07T16:49:00.000-07:00

Vatican official calls for more just relationship with animals

John Thavis
Catholic News Service
Dec. 2000

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Human dominion over the natural world must not be taken as an unqualified license to kill or inflict suffering on animals, a Vatican official said.

The cramped and cruel methods used in the modern food industry, for example, may cross the line of morally acceptable treatment of > animals, the official said in an article Dec. 7 in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

The article, titled ``For a More Just Relationship With Animals,'' was written by Marie Hendrickx, a longtime official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

She said that in view of the growing popularity of animal rights movements, the church needs to ask itself to what extent Christ's dictum, ``Do to others whatever you would have them do to you'' can be applied to the animal world.

The "Catechism of the Catholic Church'' says it is legitimate for humans to use animals for food and clothing, and to domesticate them for work or leisure.

But Hendrickx pointed out that a small but significant change in wording was made between the catechism's first edition and its official Latin edition on use of animals for medical experimentation. Such experiments are now called morally acceptable only if they contribute to caring for or saving human lives.

Moreover, the catechism says that in general it is ``contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.''

Hendrickx said the question today is whether "the right to use animals to feed oneself implies raising chicken in cages that are each smaller than a notebook.''

"Or raising calves in boxes where they cannot move or see the light of day? Or pinning down sows with iron rings into a nursing position so that piglets can suck the milk without ever stopping, and thus grow faster?'' she said.

Likewise, she questioned whether the right to dress oneself with animal skins meant it was morally acceptable to let fur-bearing creatures die slowly in traps from hunger, cold or bleeding.

Hendrickx also questioned treatment of animals in traditional spectacles that have survived into the modern age, like bull-fighting or ``throwing cats or goats off a bell-tower.''

She was referring to the tradition in a Spanish town of tossing a goat from a 50-foot bell tower into a piece of tarpaulin, to mark the beginning of the festival of St. Vincent, the town's patron saint. The town gave up the practice earlier this year after years of protest from animal rights groups.

She said that spectacles involving cruelty to animals are sometimes justified as ``cathartic'' acts that release collective aggression. But experience shows the opposite is true: where brutal spectacles are popular, aggression only seems to increase, she said.

Hendrickx said that in applying church teaching, Catholics should remember that causing suffering to animals should be avoided unless there are serious reasons to do so. Feeding oneself or one's family is a legitimate reason, but the sole motive of profit is not, she said.

2006-04-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness Thereof, Oh, God, enlarge within us the Sense of fellowship with all living Things, our brothers the animals to Whom Thou gavest the earth as Their home in common with us . . . May we realize that they live not For us alone but for themselves and For Thee and that they love the sweetness Of life.”
    — St. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea (330-379)

“The saints are exceedingly loving and gentle to mankind, and even to brute beasts. . . . Surely we ought to show [animals] great kindness and gentleness for many reasons, but, above all, because they are of the same origin as ourselves.”
    — St. John Chrysostom (347-407)

“Since factory farming exerts a violent and unnatural force upon the living organisms of animals and birds in order to increase production and profits; since it involves callous and cruel exploitation of life, with implicit contempt for nature, I must join in the protest being uttered against it. It does not seem that these methods have any really justifiable purpose, except to increase the quantity of production at the expense of quality—if that can be called a justifiable purpose.”
    — Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Excerpts from an interview with Cardinal Ratzinger by German journalist Peter Seewald

Seewald: Are we allowed to make use of animals, and even to eat them?

Ratzinger: That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures, and even if they do not have the same direct relation to God that man has, they are creatures of his will, creatures we must respect as companions in creation and as important elements in the creation.

As far as whether we are allowed to kill and to eat animals, there is a remarkable ordering of matters in Holy Scripture. We can read how, at first, only plants are mentioned as providing food for man. Only after the flood, that is to say, after a new breach has been opened between God and man, are we told that man eats flesh...Nonetheless...we should not proceed from this to a kind of sectarian cult of animals. For this, too, is permitted to man. He should always maintain his respect for these creatures, but he knows at the same time that he is not forbidden to take food from them. Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.

— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, leader of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
- Now Pope Benedict XVI

2006-04-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

I made Seitan from scratch last night. It was SUPER easy and tastes better than the stuff I get in stores.

Garden of Vegan (er, I think...) had a basic recipe.
La Dolce Vegan had an "instant" recipe.

Whole Foods only had basic gluten flour(also called vital gluten flour), but not instant.

I compared a couple of basic recipes online and did a sort of "mix." Some basic recipes were too basic - just flour and water. Others were too complicated - Juliano style - 30 ingredients long. The optional items are things I tossed in to the most basic recipe to make it more flavorful and more nutritious.

One cup of gluten flour makes almost three cups of Seitan. Not a single one of these recipes mentioned that the stuff expands almost three times its size!!

Seitan is high in protein, which makes it very satisfying as a meal. It's also very low in calories! Like tofu, it absorbs what ever flavors you cook it in. I love to make "bowl" food. Just one bowl of dinner. One pan, veggies and seitan. One bowl. Yum Yum!!

A cup of gluten flour
2-3 tablespoons Nutritional Yeast (optional)
Some hot water.
Some Tamari or soy sauce (optional)

You can add poultry seasoning and make "chicken." Or vegan worchestershire and make "steak."

Put a very large pot of water on the boil, add some soy sauce. The gluten will absorb the soy sauce. If you want more flavor use veggie broth instead of water. Or a combination of water and broth. I added dulce for extra nutrition.

Sift the two powders together, then add the tamari. Add the water a little at a time, kneading with your hands. It's not sticky. The gluten holds together very nicely.

If your flour is fresh, you'll get one big blob of wheat meat. If it's not fresh, little bits will come off. You can still cook it! Don't throw it out!!

Take that big ball of gluten and pour COLD water over it. Knead it under the water. A bunch of stuff will squish out. Pour that out. Add more cold water and knead. Keep this up for 5 or 10 minutes. If you don't rinse and knead enough, it will come out spongey. The more you rinse and knead - which takes out the starch and fiber - the more "meaty" it gets.

Some recipes said to set it aside for half an hour. Others did not. Your choice...

Then roll it out, or just squash it. I had fun playing with the stuff. Take a knife and cut it. It gets very "rubbery." So flattening it can be a challenge. I cut it in bits about the size I normally eat - not knowing each bit would get HUGE! So while it was boiling I took bits out and cut them in quarters. You can boil it in large flat pieces and make "steak." Just remember that it will expand!

Toss all your bits in the boiling water. An hour to an hour and a half. The longer it cooks - the firmer it gets.

Store it in the fridge, in the broth you cooked it in.

2006-04-03T07:24:00.000-07:00

Isn't this cute? I've been trying to get a photo of my new kitty up for well over a month. But just couldn't get it properly launched into cyberspace.

This is Zotikos. Zoti for short. I adopted him from the local pound. I just discovered he's a pedigree Turkish Van from a local breeder.

Turkish Van

Zoti is nuts. Into everything. He's brought Miss Sophie out of her shell. Kicking and clawing I think, but brought her out of her shell. He talks constantly. I would never for a moment have thought I'd find a cat more talkative than my Maine Coon was. But Yoshi only talked when spoken to. Or when ratting out his brother Murphy. Zoti talks all the time. Unless he's asleep. He'll be out in the living room playing and talking. He calls to Sophie - who is napping as I read in bed. She looks up and calls back.

2006-03-31T09:14:00.000-08:00

It would seem the general subject of "V for Vendetta" - denial of the right to be you, the right to free speech, the right to live - may not be so far away.

Enter the SHAC 7. Animal rights activists who are now in jail.

*************

March 03,2006 | TRENTON, N.J. -- Six animal-rights supporters face up to seven years in prison after being convicted of using a Web site to incite threats, harassment and vandalism against a company that tests drugs and household products on animals.

A jury returned its verdict against Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty and six of its members on Thursday after three days of deliberations.

Federal Judge Anne E. Thompson ordered five of them held without bail until a sentencing hearing on June 7. The defendants, all in their late 20s or early 30s, face three to seven years in prison and fines up to $250,000.

The government charged that SHAC waged a five-year campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, posting on its Web site information about the lab's employees and those who do business with Huntingdon. The information included their home phone numbers, addresses and where their children attended school.

Many of those people saw their homes vandalized, and they and their families received threatening e-mails, faxes and phone calls.

SHAC, based in Philadelphia, maintained its actions were protected under the First Amendment.

The defendants were not accused of directly making threats or carrying out vandalism. Instead, they were charged with animal enterprise terrorism, stalking and other offenses.

Mike Caulfield, Huntingdon's general manager, said the verdict was "a victory for democracy, research and patients."

"The government and this jury have sent a strong message to those who would ignore the democratic process and resort to criminal activity to advance their political views," Caulfield said in a statement.

SHAC President Pamelyn Ferdin said the jury was fooled by the government's case and the judge's order to remove victims' names and home addresses from its Web site reeked of fascism.

"This is a scary path for all Americans," said Ferdin, a former child star who was the voice of Lucy in the "Peanuts" movies and played Felix Unger's daughter Edna on TV's "The Odd Couple."

"Here is a government, a feckless federal government, who spent millions of taxpayer dollars to wage an assault on all our constitutional rights," she said.

Ferdin became leader of the group in 2004 after its former president, Kevin Kjonaas, and the others were indicted. She was not charged.

Many of the targets of the harassment testified that they started looking over their shoulders when walking or driving, changed their phone numbers or even moved. Some kept their children from playing outdoors, and several bought guns.

Sally Dillenback broke into tears as she recounted an anonymous e-mail that threatened to cut open her son and fill him with poison "the way Huntingdon does with the animals."

Marian Harlos testified she got late-night calls in which someone asked: "Are you scared? Do you think the puppies should be scared?"

She said masked protesters parked down the street from her house, videotaping her comings and goings. They barged into her office, screaming and tossing leaflets, and others ruined the rear door with glue and animal stickers, she said.

original article: http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8G3VP2O9.html

Info on the SHAC 7
http://www.shac7.com/

2006-03-29T08:37:00.000-08:00

Pope to Join Rosary in Memory of John Paul II
Event to Relive Last Moments of His Life

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 28, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI will join the rosary that will be prayed in St. Peter's Square this Sunday night to commemorate the last moments of Pope John Paul II's life.

The Polish Pontiff died at 9:37 p.m. on April 2, 2005. Some 60,000 people had gathered in the square that night to pray the rosary for the dying Pope.

Shortly after, at the end of the Marian prayer, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, substitute of the Secretariat of State, announced to the world that "our Holy Father has returned to the Father's House."

The crowds, visibly moved, intoned the Salve Regina followed by prolonged applause. Most of the faithful knelt down, many with tears in their eyes.

These memories will be relived with the rosary, presided over by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar for Rome.

Beginning at 8:30 p.m., the choir of the Diocese of Rome, directed by Monsignor Marco Frisina, will accompany the prayer with Marian songs and the reading of texts of Karol Wojtyla, according to a communiqué issued today by the Vicariate of Rome.

"At 9 p.m., the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, will appear at the window of his study and the holy rosary will be prayed," it added.

During the prayer, passages will be read taken from John Paul II's apostolic letter "Rosarium Virginis Mariae" and other of his magisterial texts.

Blessing

Around 9:37 p.m., the time of John Paul II's death, Benedict XVI will address the faithful present and will conclude the prayer with the apostolic blessing.

On Monday, a Mass marking the first anniversary of John Paul II's death will be celebrated in St. Peter's Square. Benedict XVI will preside over that Mass at 5:30 p.m.

That Mass is being celebrated on Monday since April 2 this year falls on a Sunday of Lent, which takes liturgical precedence.

In addition, Benedict XVI will remember his predecessor at a meeting with young people of Rome, on Thursday, April 6, in St. Peter's Square.

The pilgrim Cross from Cologne, Germany, will be received, in the context of this year's celebrations of World Youth Day, which will be held at the diocesan level worldwide on Palm Sunday.

2006-03-28T10:55:00.000-08:00

Veggies beware!

This is one for the "converts!" I picked up some "Now and Zen" brand "Unribs" at Whole Foods the other day. New product. Must try...

I heated them up in a pan while steaming broccoli. Smelled good. Basic barbeque sauce.

While the texture is lovely, the taste is so much like pork I almost hurled. This one is NOT for long term veggies who have lost their taste for meat.

http://www.nowandzen.net/unribs.html

Maybe it's just me. I've never liked pork.

2006-03-27T16:25:00.000-08:00

I think we should follow along...

--------------------------------------
2 Days of Fasting and Prayer Urged for Iraq

ROME, MARCH 27, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad has proposed April 3-4 as days of fasting and prayer for peace in Iraq.

Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni read the patriarch's appeal on Sunday, during a visit to the Italian city of Gallipoli.

"We have estranged ourselves from God by our deeds," wrote the patriarch in the message, which was reported by Italian bishops' SIR news service; "we do not obey his will, and we have moved away from piety and virtue, from forgiveness, and because of this the blood of so many brothers has been shed and so many children have remained orphans."

For this reason, the Christian representative said, "we must return, repentant to God's house to do the will of our sovereign God."

"To achieve this sublime objective," the message said, "we invite all Iraqis, in and outside of Iraq, and all believers and people of good will, to prayer and fasting this coming Monday the 3rd and Tuesday the 4th of April, so that the Lord will restore peace, tranquility and security to Iraq, country of our beloved Abraham."

2006-03-27T10:54:00.000-08:00

Today, one of my local papers carries this article...

Pursuing healthier bacon through genetic cloning
By Paul Elias

SAN FRANCISCO — A microscopic worm may possess the vital genetic spice to make heart-friendly bacon.

A team of geneticists announced Sunday they’ve mixed genetic material from the roundworm C. elegans with pigs to produce swine with significant amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, which are normally found in salmon and other oily fish and believed to stave off heart disease.

Six of the 10 cloned piglets they’ve produced showed increased levels of the coveted molecule, giving researchers hope they can improve the technique in pork and do the same in chickens and cows.

“We all can use more omega-3 in our diet,” said Dr. Jing Kang, the Harvard Medical School researcher who modified the omega-3-making worm gene so it turned on in the pigs. Kang is one of 17 authors of the paper appearing in an online edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology.

The researchers also said their creations can be used to better understand human disease.

The cloned, genetically engineered pigs are the latest advance in the agricultural biotechnology field, which is struggling to move beyond making esoteric products such as soy that’s resistant to weed killers and bug-repelling corn.

Hoping to create healthier, cheaper and tastier products that consumers crave, Monsanto Inc. of St. Louis and its biotech farming competitors like DuPont are developing omega-3-producing crops that yield healthier cooking oils.

Kang said 30 academic laboratories are now working with his omega-3 gene, presumably pursuing similar projects.

“Consumers have responded pretty positively when asked their opinion of food modified to improve food quality and food safety,” said Christine Bruhn, director of the University of California, Davis’ Center for Consumer Research. “Just as long as the taste isn’t altered negatively.”

Earlier experiments have succeeded in manipulating animals’ fat content but most never made it out of the lab because of taste problemsm, though omega-3-enriched eggs produced by feeding chickens large amounts of flax or fish meal are popular.

While boosting Omega-3s doesn’t decrease the fat content in pigs, the fatty acids are also important to brain development and may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. A lack of omega-3 has been implicated in depression and the American Heart Association recommends two or more weekly servings of fish, particularly fatty fish like trout and salmon, which are naturally high in omega-3s.

“There’s a lot of potentially beneficial products that could come from this technology,” said Irina Polejaeva, a top livestock cloner and chief scientific officer of Austin-based ViaGen Inc., which is awaiting federal approval to clone valuable beef-producing cattle.

ViaGen only clones and doesn’t genetically engineer animals, a highly controversial step in the latest work.

It’s one thing for traditional crops like corn to be engineered to be pest-resistant, and people already eat genetically engineered soy beans in all manner of processed food. But biotech companies run into what bioethicists call the “yuck factor” when they begin tinkering with animals.

Federal regulators — and even the researchers themselves — cautioned that meat and dairy products rich in omega-3s will probably not be sold in supermarkets anytime soon. The Food and Drug Administration has never approved food derived from genetically engineered animals and there are high hurdles to overcome. Unlike crops, the FDA treats genetically engineered animals as medicine and requires extensive testing before approval.

“We understand that this research is in the very early stages,” FDA spokeswoman Rae Jones said. “This technology will not likely reach meat counters for many years.”

The FDA is still considering Waltham, Mass.-based Aqua Bounty Technologies’ application to market a salmon genetically engineered to grow faster, the only such request pending with the agency. Aqua Bounty began its federal application process about nine years ago and there is no indication when the FDA will rule.

In the meantime, the researchers of the latest project said they will use their genetically engineered pigs to study human disease, especially heart conditions.

“The paper isn’t about cloning,” said Randall Prather, a University of Missouri researcher and co-author of the Nature Biotechnology report. “We have created a model to study the human condition.”

2006-03-26T13:17:00.000-08:00

I worked my first "Christian vegan activist" function yesterday. Thanks to prayers of support from many friends I was able to make it through the day with a strong backbone. That strenght gave out at about 5am this morning. I had a dream about a woman abusing her cats and my move to intervene. Then I woke up and spent the next half hour in prayer for the many animals in misery right at that moment. I've spent a good deal of today crying.

I think the most difficult part of yesterday was the number of people who told me "Christians just don't care." Several folks told me they were atheists and asked for my help in getting through to their uncaring Christian families. I was given the great grace to resist telling these folks that two of the speakers that day, like myself, were active Catholics. Activist Catholics no less. God bless them.

Sadly, though, there is apathy among all Christian denominations. Rather than focus on that, I was able to offer much help in ways to speak. Even encouraging these folks to go out and get bibles, read the words of the prophets, and use it on their families. In Genesis, we begin as vegetarians. The prophets tell us that when God's Kingdom does come, we will again be vegetarian. Why not start now and show Him we are ready for that perfect world?

I logged on just now to search for more Christian vegetarian resources. I was shocked to find that my blog comes up as the second link if you search Yahoo for Vegan Franciscan. Oy vey - that's a responsibility I'm hoping my friends will continue to pray I have the strenth to carry!

I need some fresh air and a walk right now. God bless you all.

2006-03-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

Most curious.

Today I learned that San Francisco and Santa Fe are the number one and number two most vegetarian friendly cities in the US. It was just last month that my SFO friend Franz and his wife Ana came back from Santa Fe and told me it was named for St. Francis. The true name of the city is Santa Fe de San Francisco. Which means the Holy Faith of St. Francis. There are basilicas to the saint in both cities.

2006-03-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

Did I mention I went vegan for Lent? I picked up all three of Sarah Kramer's books at Overstock.com. Very reasonable. While I was shopping I picked up a pair of Vegan Earth Shoes too. So comfy.

Well - GOD BLESS SARAH!!

Her recipes are super easy. Minimal in the ingredient department. So many raw food dishes have 20 plus ingredients. I end up leaving half of them out.

Veggie meats are great for a single person. You can slice off or portion out a single serving. Last night I made stroganoff with seitan which is a wheat meat. I hadn't intended to make stroganoff. It just ended up that way.

I had a little seitan left. I thought I'd have it with mushroom and spinach. I put a little olive oil and garlic in a pan. Toasted up the garlic, then added the mushrooms and seitan. I had some "cheese" sauce (not cheese at all but a sauce made from nutritional yeast) that I'd made over the weekend. Ooo, I thought, cream sauce! So I heaped a bunch in. It smelled wonderful so I decided tomato needed to be added. The sauce stuck a little so I added some water. I added a little marinated sun dried tomato and tomato paste.

It took less than 10 minutes and was DELICIOUS! I served it over a single slice of hemp bread.

For those of you looking to lose weight, seitan is a fantastic option! Compare a 3.5 ounce serving of Seitan to Steak: Seitan, 31.5 grams of protein, 157 calories. Steak, 27 grams of protein, 275 calories.

2006-03-21T12:36:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday, I went to see V for Vendetta with a friend. I think I’ve mentioned my love of comic book based movies. Batman, X-Men, Spiderman, Constantine, The Crow. Didn’t care for The Hulk, but it seems few did…

V for Vendetta was true to form. While I’ve never read the graphic novel, I loved the film. Hugo Weaving is amazing. He manages to portray a man who is barely sane. Maybe completely bonkers. Yet, we love him. There was no comical tilt of the head that so many masked characters use to convey that they’re listening. Somehow, you just knew the individual had his rapt attention. How’d he do that??

I had a very vague knowledge of the Gunpowder Plot. I knew some men tried to blow up Parliament. I never knew why or whom until V. I wanted to know more about Guy Fawkes, the very real man behind the comic book hero, after seeing the film. I understand Alan Moore’s story was about the real Guy Fawkes and that the film version held very little in common with his book version.

Guy Fawkes was a Catholic with a cause. A man of conviction. He and some other Catholics set off to blow up Parliament with the hopes of ending Catholic persecution in England. Guy was a former military man, and thus, set in charge of the gun powder. Like Jesus and his 12 Apostles, there were 13 men in all. One of course, would play the roll of Judas. One man sent an anonymous letter of warning to a cousin in Parliament warning him not to attend on the set day. The letter was thought to be a joke by everyone until it made its way to into the king’s hands. The king took it seriously and The Plot was uncovered. Guy, standing guard close by, was arrested. The other 12 fled. 4 were killed at their capture.

Reading over trial transcripts (available online) you get an understanding of his strength of character. Fawkes stood his ground, holding that he and only he was responsible for the plot and that he resolved to die if caught before even beginning. He signed a confession saying as much. When questioning by a council didn’t frighten him – harsh treatment was advised by order of King James himself. Yes, THE King James of the King James Bible. (that's a whole other story...)

After three days of torture on the rack, his conviction slipped. He gave up the names of his compatriots. He was hung, then drawn and quartered. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it’s a long process. A very painful way to go. The victim is hung until he loses consciousness, then revived. He is then strapped to a table where he is cut open from sternum to navel (drawn) then cut across the abdomen (quartered). His entrails would be pulled out slowly, while he’s still alive and aware. Lastly, his heart is ripped from his chest. The highest paid torturers could keep their victims alive long enough to actually show them their own hearts, removed from their chests.

Guy was a martyr for his faith. As a Catholic that means instant sainthood. So why has he never been canonized?

Reading the entry at New Advent – I discovered the accused men are held accountable by Catholics for trying to implicate the church, via the Jesuit priests they turned to for sacraments and for advice. I’ve read the transcripts. They didn’t try to implicate anyone. They stood firm for as long as they could under torture. Many people have misinterpreted the Bible and used it as reason to persecute. Why not accept that these boys misinterpreted the advice they were given?

Catholic persecution went on for centuries. The English hold no punches about their spending centuries burning an effigy and calling it Guy but meaning the Pope.

Canonize Guy Fawkes. Catholic martyr. He’s long over due.

Father in Heaven,
If it be Thy will to recognize Guy Fawkes, your servant, as a saint -
Please put it into the hearts of men to do so.

2006-03-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

Last week I learned a friend of mine went veg. It didn't matter how or why to me. Just that she did. Bravo!

However, something she said stuck with me and I chewed on it all weekend.

She's one of those New Agers who runs around in tye dye speaking in a very soft voice. She recently started seeing her own personal guru. She'd been having trouble sleeping so her guru told her to "elevate her vibration by adopting a vegetarian diet." It worked so she's running round telling people they should elevate their vibration by adopting a vegetarian diet.

It sounds loopy so no one will listen to her. I understand the truth of it. But how does one communicate it in a level manner to the spiritually uninformed?

Muscle Memory.

Body builders and grief therapists have scores of data on muscle memory.

It's been documented that some organ recipients adopt traits of the folks who donated organ. A woman who hates bell pepper gets a heart transplant. The man the heart came from LOVED bell pepper. Suddenly this woman finds she can't get enough bell pepper.

Stanford has documented that if we "remember" doing sit ups for a particular period of time, we gain the same benefits as actually doing the sit ups themselves.

What does it all add up to?

America takes a nose dive in clinical depression. New drugs are popping up left and right. Is it genuine depression? Or is it something else? The fact that every piece of meat people are eating is carrying muscle memory of years of torment. Years of sadness. Years of grief and lonliness - life ended in extreme pain and torture. These animals are skinned alive. Some survive even after having their tummies ripped open.

Also rage skyrockets. Click the link below to read about a man who literally died of road rage.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/18/MNG6HHQGG41.DTL&hw=skyline&sn=002&sc=918

More muscle memory. It all goes back to factory farming. Some of these animals go insane with rage over their confinement. Our response? More torture. Chickens are de-beaked without anesthetic. Other animals have their toes and teeth removed.

And America goes happily along thinking meat is great.

Don't take my word for it. If you're a meat eater, write down how you feel today. Your mood as well as your physical feeling. Then go veggie for a week or two. Chronicle the changes in your mind and body.

2006-03-13T12:48:00.000-08:00

“Those people…”

I’ve been vegetarian for about 13 years now. I have often wondered why more Christians aren’t vegetarians. Vegetarian and Vegan lifestyles are humanitarian. We save animals. We save people. We save the environment.

The other night I was out with some Christian friends. Someone asked for Chapstick. I offered up my MerryHempsters Vegan Hemp lip balm. Someone else took out her Vaseline. She made a point of expressing to me that she wouldn’t use hemp products because she didn’t want to be associated with “those people.” Those people. Pot heads. Hemp is eco-friendly. It’s a sustainable resource! The Constitution is written on hemp paper. Hemp is not pot.

But then it hit me. Those people. Christians don’t want to be associated with “those people.” The environmentalist. The animal activist. The tree hugger.

As Christians we’re specifically called to live left of center. So what’s the big deal with associating with others left of center?

It makes no sense! As Christians, we believe in God. God created this earth, all the plants that grow on it, all the critters that move on its surface as well as those that swim in its waters.

Most Christians are aware we’re called to stewardship. Good care of ourselves, our planet, our neighbors. All these things that the Good Lord gave us!

Especially now, during Lent – when we are called to sacrifice, prayer and almsgiving.

Did you know that if America alone cut its alcohol and beef consumption in half we could end world hunger with the extra grain? That’s just beef. Doesn’t talk about how much we could do giving up factory farming all together. The methane gas produced by factory farms, in America alone, does more damage than all the cars on the planet combined. Not to mention the destruction to the environment done by manure lagoons. That’s right folks lagoons of poop doing more damage than the latest oil spill.

Why? We don’t need all that meat. Most of it goes to waste.

So many of us who vehemently speak out about cruelty to dogs and cats think nothing of cruelty to a pig – who is far more intelligent than any dog ever dreamed of being. My own father who refuses to go to the circus because of the cruelty there, thinks nothing of the cruelty heaped upon the cow now resting in his plate.

Approximately 40% of America’s water supply is routed to factory farms. Don’t kid yourself that it’s for the animals. It’s used to clean up waste matter and wash away blood. But not from the tiny cages these animals are housed in.

It is estimated that each vegan and vegetarian is saving the lives of about 95 animals a year. This little effort spirals outward. We have more water to give to the thirsty. Spare grain to feed the hungry with.

Oh, and by the way, Vaseline is a petroleum product. Nothing like putting motor oil on your face. It may seem moist, but it’s actually drying you out more.

2006-03-10T16:28:00.000-08:00

Gotta love the Great One...

GOD MADE MAN THE STEWARD OF CREATION
Pope John Paul II
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
24 January 2001

Today there is an urgent need for ‘ecological conversion’ to protect not only the natural environment by also the human quality of life

The effort to prevent ecological catastrophe was the subject of the Holy Father's catechesis at the General Audience of Wednesday, 17 January. The Pope reminded his listeners that man's lordship over creation is not "absolute, but ministerial: it is a real reflection of the unique and infinite lordship of God. Hence man must exercise it with wisdom and love, sharing in the boundless wisdom and love of God". Here is a translation of the Holy Father's catechesis, which was given in Italian.

In the hymn of praise (Psalm 148:1-5), the Psalmist summons all creatures, calling them by name. Angels, sun, moon, stars and heavens appear on high; 22 things move upon the earth, as many as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, in order to give an impression of fullness and totality. The believer, in a sense, is "the shepherd of being", that is, the one who leads all beings to God, inviting them to sing an "alleluia" of praise. The Psalm brings us into a sort of cosmic church, whose apse is the heavens and whose aisles are the regions of the world, in which the choir of God's creatures sings his praise.

On the one hand, this vision might represent a lost paradise and, on the other the promised paradise. Not without reason, the horizon of a paradisal universe, which Genesis (chapter 2) put at the very origins of the world, is placed by Isaiah (chapter 11) and the Book of Revelation (chapters 21-22) at the end of history. Thus we see that man's harmony with his fellow beings, with creation and with God is the plan followed by the Creator. This plan was and is continually upset by human sin, which is inspired by an alternative plan depicted in the same Book of Genesis (chapters 3-11), which describes man's progressive conflictual tension with God, with his fellow human beings and even with nature.

Man is called to continue the Creator's work of life

The contrast between the two plans emerges clearly in the vocation to which humanity is called, according to the Bible, and in the consequences resulting from its infidelity to this call. The human creature receives a mission to govern creation in order to make all its potential shine. It is a delegation granted at the very origins of creation, when man and woman, who are the "image of God" (Genesis 1:27), receive the order to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, and to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and every living thing that moves upon the earth (cf. Genesis 1:28).
St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three great Cappadocian Fathers, commented: "God made man capable of carrying out his role as king of the earth.... Man was created in the image of the One who governs the universe. Everything demonstrates that from the beginning his nature was marked by royalty.... He is the living image who participates by his dignity in the perfection of the divine archetype" (De Hominis Opificio, 4: PG 44, 136).

Man's lordship, however, is not "absolute, but ministerial: it is a real reflection of the unique and infinite lordship of God. Hence man must exercise it with wisdom and love, sharing in the boundless wisdom and love of God" (Evangelium vitae, n. 52). In biblical language "naming" the creatures (cf. Genesis 2:19-20) is the sign of this mission of knowing and transforming created reality. It is not the mission of an absolute and unquestionable master, but of a steward of God's kingdom who is called to continue the Creator's work, a work of life and peace. His task, described the Book of Wisdom, is to rule "the world in holiness and righteousness" (Wisdom 9:3).

Unfortunately, if we scan the regions of our planet, we immediately see that humanity has disappointed God's expectations. Man, especially in our time, has without hesitation devastated wooded plains and valleys, polluted waters, disfigured the earth's habitat, made the air unbreathable, disturbed the hydro-geological and atmospheric systems, turned luxuriant areas into deserts and undertaken forms of unrestrained industrialization, degrading that "flowerbed"—an image from Dante Alighieri (Paradiso, XXII, 151)— which is the earth, our dwelling place.

We must therefore encourage and support the "ecological conversion" which in recent decades has made humanity more sensitive to the catastrophe to which it has been heading. Man is no longer the Creator's "steward", but an autonomous despot, who is finally beginning to understand that he must stop at the edge of the abyss. "Another welcome sign is the growing attention being paid to the quality of life and to ecology, especially in more developed societies, where people's expectations are no longer concentrated so much on problems of survival as on the search for an overall improvement of living conditions" (Evangelium vitae, n. 27). At stake, then, is not only a physical ecology that is concerned to safeguard the habitat of the various living beings, but also a "human" ecology which makes the existence of creatures more dignified, by protecting the fundamental good of life in all its manifestations and by preparing for future generations an environment more in conformity with the Creator's plan.

The Creator is perceived in the beauty of created things

In this rediscovered harmony with nature and with one another, men and women are once again walking in the garden of creation, seeking to make the goods of the earth available to all and not just to a privileged few, as the biblical jubilee suggests (cf. Leviticus 25:8-13, 23). Among those marvels we find the Creator's voice, transmitted by heaven and earth, by night and day: a language "with no speech nor words; whose voice is not heard" and which can cross all boundaries (cf. Psalm 19 [18]:2-5).

The Book of Wisdom, echoed by Paul, celebrates God's presence in the world, recalling that "from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator" (Wisdom 13:5; cf. Romans 1:20). This is also praised in the Jewish tradition of the Hasidim: "Where I wander—You! Where I ponder—You! ... In every trend, at every end, only You, You again, always You!" (M. Buber, Tales of the Hasidim [Italian ed., Milan 1979, p. 256]).

------------------------------------------------------------------------
L'Osservatore Romano (24 January 2001, page 11)

2006-03-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

Well, many fun things to report. Tried getting a photo of my new kitty online. Can't manage to get it uploaded. Will keep trying so you can see his little furry self very soon.

Also, one of my fairly new favorite people is having a birthday. Any Serenity/Firefly fans out there? Wish Captain TightPants a happy one...

Happy Birthday Nathan

2006-02-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

Today is a better day. Yesterday was very difficult for me. It would have been Yoshi's 13th birthday. He died last year just two months after his 12th birthday. He moaned and complained for a few days but he was always so dramatic I pretty much ignored him. Then he died. I know he waited for me to get home before letting go. It was so painful for me to watch him struggle with not wanting to go. He was always SO attached to me. I cry now typing this. It's still so hard. I miss him so much.

He was a Maine Coon. I spoke with a friend of mine this weekend who noted that his retriever pups had just reached 24 pounds. I said, almost as big as Yoshi. My friend said, no hun. 24 pounds. I said - didn't you know? Yoshi was 28. My friend lives far away and never knew I had a cat that big.

Animals love us in the most special ways. I don't think I'll every find someone who loves me as much as Yoshi did.

2006-02-17T16:28:00.000-08:00

Poor in Spirit.

Last night we had our monthly Secular Franciscan meeting. Our friend Cathy was welcomed as a candidate. During the service, Fr. Camillus talked about the beatitudes. The specific Franciscan charism of poverty.

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit.

Fr. Camillus specifically discussed those who are not poor in spirit. Those who are poor but envy the rich. Long for money and glory. They are not blessed. Those who are poor and content to be so, while working to better themselves. They are blessed.

Gotta love those monks. They know their stuff.

2006-02-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

Our new archbishop was installed yesterday. Gosh. Makes him sound like a drain pipe or cable or something. But yes, it's an official ceremony.

I wasn't able to be there but I heard about is first words. Apparently they've made quite an impact with his first words to his new congregation. He stated, with warm open arms, that Catholics are called to have a life agenda. So many Catholic believe that being pro-life is only anti-abortion. But pro-life, according to our new archbishop, also means anti-war, anti death-penalty, anti-euthanasia. Life means all life. Even the lives of animals.

So few people understand euthanasia. Euthanasia isn't the right to die. Euthanasia is when your doctor decides to kill you. People read all about Terry Schiavo and ran out to get living wills. Living wills don't stop a doctor from offing you if they opt out of therapy for you as Terry's husband did. Many people opt for death if they contemplate coming to a point where they are vegetative. In making this call, many doctors opt for what is essentially murder. THEY decide thereapy would be of little good.

So few people understand partial birth abortion. Partial birth abortion is where a doctor pulls a perfectly viable full term child feet first out of the mother. Just up to the head. Because according to society in general - you're not a person til you're all the way out. With the infant's head still inside the mother, the doctor takes a pair of large scissors and cuts open the baby's head. Using a vaccum removes the baby's brain. The dead child is then pulled out of the mother.

In 1999, Pope John Paul II stated that animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity for our smaller brethren. He stated that our furry friends are fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and as such merit our respect. He reminded us that animals are as near to God as we are and that we should treat them with the same spirit of love as St. Francis of Assisi. That means that Catholics at large should be against factory farming where animals are torturned.

Have a life agenda. I like that.

2006-02-15T15:48:00.000-08:00

This was one of those things that drops into one's inbox regularly. Friendly spam. But I liked it. So I'm sharing it with you.

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me what you see."

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg.

Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?"

Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity - boiling water. Each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.

The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

"Which are you?" she asked her daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?"

Think of this: Which am I?

Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water. The very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you.

When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity?

May we all be COFFEE BEANS.

2006-02-09T17:56:00.000-08:00

Fun with Dick n Jane.

2006-02-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

Happy Feast of the Presentation of the Lord!
Also known as Candlemas.

When I was just a kid, I was chased away from my church by a priest who called me a witch. He said my particular talents didn’t belong in God’s church.

My grandmother also called me the family witch. She told me one was born into our family at every generation.

Thus, I launched a belief in witch craft. Study of goddess worship. Hanging out with a bunch of pagans.

Called by God, I came back to my church. I discovered I DO belong and my abilities are a biblical gift from God. Charisms of the Spirit. I launched into another spree of learning, I discovered a lot of the things claimed by the pagan community just aren’t true. Let’s take today the “Holy Day” of Candlemas.

Back, oh say 20 years ago, when I was knee deep in learning everything I could about being a witch, books on being a witch included a celebration of February 2nd as Candlemas. Later books would change the name to Imbolc.

Candlemas is a Catholic feast. The Candle Mass, a celebration of the Presentation of Our Lord when all the faithful bring beeswax candles to the church. They are blessed outside the church then a procession into the church and a mass given by light of the newly blessed candles. They represent Jesus as The Light Of The World.

My pagan friends celebrate Candlemas (odd since it’s a Catholic feast…) or Imbolc as it would later be called. Imbolc is a Gaelic term for being pregnant and was generally celebrated as a time of wealth based on the fertility of certain critters. Namely sheep. More pregnant sheep meant more money for the sale of lambs.

My pagan friends focus this Holy Day on the celebration of the goddess Brigid. They’ll tell you the Christians stole her and Christianized her. Calling her St. Brigid. My research into the subject has proven this to be quite untrue, as it has with a number of their claims to Christian conspiracy and thievery.

While Christianity did “sanctify” a number of pagan practices by putting them to use for God, it isn’t the case with Brigid of Ireland. St. Brigid was a real person. She was born around 450 AD, the illegitimate daughter of a druid and a slave. Even as a child her holiness was noted. She loved to woods and the animals found therein. She managed dairy cows as a youth. While she gave away much of it’s produce to those in need, the dairy thrived. As such she is the patron of milk maid, cows and dairy workers. She became a Catholic nun and founded churches and ways of religious life in Ireland. She was also a woman of great charisms. Such that frightened the local people who more than once thought to burn her at the stake. Her druid father owned both she and her mother as slaves, but eventually freed them. Seemingly because he was tired of Brigid giving away so much of his dairy produce.

There are older references to a goddess called Brigid in Ireland. This goddess is thought to be a Welsh import. Perhaps St. Brigid's druid father named her for this goddess. However, the "cult" of Brigid begins around the time the very real St. Brigid lived.

A quote from St. Brigid of Ireland:

I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us. I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all. I would like Jesus to be present. I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us. I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts. I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me. I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings. I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity.

2006-01-23T19:08:00.000-08:00

My exciting evening out with the boys!

Fr. Paulinus, Fr. Dave and Fr. Francis.

It was a fun night. Teaching the young teens. One of the boys asked if it was a sin for priests to get drunk. No more so than for you or I. There is a big difference though between having too many cocktails during a night out to dinner and making a habit of being drunk. For anyone, being a drunkard is not good.

Why don't folks every speak to kids with honesty?

2006-01-20T14:28:00.000-08:00

Last night my friend Diane made her profession to the Secular Franciscan Order. Here she is making her vow with the minister of our fraternity and our formation director.

I can't wait!!

2006-01-17T09:54:00.000-08:00

On to all things nutritious - and - well - not quite spiritual...

I've been regularly using Nature's Plus "Source of Life" vitamins for some time. Recently I was at Whole Foods and picked up VegLife "Vegan One Multiple." VegLife is produced by Nutraceutical.

VegLife - Vegan Vitamins

They have much less in them than the Sourse of Life vitamins but my body seems to be making far better use of them. My skin is more clear. My hair and nails are growing in leaps and bounds.

I was so pleased, I went back and got their iron supplement.

While there I discovered Juvo. Juvo is fairly new. It's marketed as a raw food meal. While freeze drying and dehydrating does preserve a lot of the nutrients that cooking destroys, I'm not sure you can honestly call a powdered additive "raw food." I took home a sample packet. The directions say to mix with either water or juice. I mixed it with water. Since it's largely grain based, it tasted like Cheerios.

The stuff is just packed with nutrients so I immediately got a little lift. Not the kind of lift that you get from sugar or caffeine that is followed by a let down. But a lift that held. So I went back and invested. Juvo is NOT cheap. But one shouldn't expect to skimp out on one's health. No matter how well we think we are eating, we've depleted the earth's resources so our food is lacking.

I mixed my Juvo in mango juice. I had to add water. Since the powder is mostly grains it tends to stick to the sides of my blender. Mango juice is thick and absorbs less. The water helped. Juice has a lot of sugar in it anyway so it's always good to cut your juice with water.

Delicious!

Juvo

2006-01-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

Ask yourself why is curing cancer illegal in the United States. Ever hear of someone who knows someone who was diagnosed with this cancer or that and in two weeks were dead? You think to yourself - wow. Fast cancer... It wasn't the cancer that killed them. It was the chemo.

Did you know that if your child is diagnosed with cancer and you opt OUT of chemo, the goverment will sue you, take your child away and dose them without your approval? Yup.

The raw food community is in an uproar about a raw food family who was split apart. Parents in jail. Kids bounced from one foster home to another until an aunt came forward to take them in. These vegan raw foodists had a baby born with a birth defect. The child's life expectancy was about two weeks. Instead, the child lived 5 months. After the baby passed away the parents were investigated for child abuse.

WHAT???

Their three other children were considered "too thin" by the US average. Hello??? Am I the only one reading headlines that state the average US child is grossly over weight?

So these healthy, happy kids are ripped from their parents and shoved into foster homes where they land in the emergency room over and over again because their little bodies aren't used to processing all the junk that is in the average American meal. Mac N Cheese, Spaghetti-O s and the like.

CBS 48 Hours did a profile on the raw food detox program. Regardless of the shining results everyone had - some doctor comes on and says (insert nasal whine) 'Well ya know... losing weight that fast is bad for you...' Here are people eating healthy and he's got to talk smack. Why dont' any doctors ever warn those people popping handfulls of pills to lose weight?

Color me disgusted.

2006-01-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

Another lovely morning commute!

2006-01-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

My lovely morning commute!

2005-12-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

How many people does it take to get Crab Ciopino from the pot it's cooked in to a serving bowl?

2005-12-24T18:13:00.000-08:00

Fuzzy n Atticus

2005-12-24T18:12:00.000-08:00

Christinie, Derek and Jeff waiting for Christmas dinner...

2005-12-19T20:36:00.000-08:00

Our Lady Speaks to Josyp Terelya about 3rd Saturday Fasting
This fast to take place every third Saturday of the month, beginning in December 2005.

TORONTO - Free Republic - December 12, 2005 - Josyp Terelya, a Catholic activist who spent much of his life behind bars in the Soviet Union because of his faith and evangelism, also experienced many extraordinary events—allegedly supernatural events—there.

He has since spoken at the white house and had audiences with Pope John Paul II on 36 occasions.

His mystic experiences gained him audiences with the Pope, and he was released from the Soviet Union with the help of President Ronald Reagan, the Queen of Holland, and the President of France.

On August 29, 2005 at 2:30 am, Our Blessed Mother spoke to him at his home in Toronto, Canada and gave him a very special message. While in deep prayer and fasting, and after praying the Sorrowful mysteries of the Holy Rosary, Mother Mary made herself known to him.

"As Our Lady began to speak to me," Terelya said, "I could feel great sorrow and despair. This was her message."

Mother Mary's August 29, 2005 Message to Josyp Terelya.

"Peace be with you, My child! I have come to bring another warning to My children. The warnings given before and many times, have gone unheeded by most souls. Have the natural disasters and illnesses that have come upon mankind not been enough for all to open their eyes as well as their souls? No, for the warnings are not taken seriously!

"However, many will experience the terrible fate that awaits many. In North America (USA and Canada especially) there will occur many earthquakes, hurricanes and sicknesses. In your beloved Toronto, there will be a sudden outbreak of virus that will cause great sickness and death, especially among the elderly and the very young. Soon panic and fear will grip the hearts of My poor children.

"Many will turn back to God, as they have in past times when tribulation had occurred, but many only for a short time. In the USA, even more disasters will take place. Great outbreak of sickness will overtake many areas. Like in Canada, extreme amounts of snow and rain will fall causing great flooding and destruction.

"Still many souls will not turn to God the Father in prayer and repentance. Do you not realize by now that through fasting, prayer, repentance and unity with one another, these tribulations can be avoided? How much longer can My Holy Son, Jesus, stay the hands of God, the Holy and Righteous Judge?

"Even through this trying time, precious children, safety, health and peace can be truly yours! Remember that mercy abounds from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, our Redeemer! Come to Our two hearts, and peace will be yours, even in the face of tribulations and sorrows.

"God, our Holy Father, desires all things good for His children. He sent the ultimate example through His Son, Jesus! Has He not blessed mankind over and over? Many are like unruly children who don't get their way. Please, please turn your hearts back to Jesus, the Merciful Lord, and great blessings and graces shall be poured without end upon you and your loved ones! Call upon Me as your Mother to intercede for you and I will place you at the holy feet of Jesus. Go to the Holy Mass much more often. Go there in great humility before God, and He will bless you.

"For all who will, a one day fast for peace and unity among mankind will turn Satan away from your door. This fast will take place every third Saturday of the month, beginning in December 2005. The Sorrowful mysteries along with the chaplet of divine mercy are to be prayed with great conviction. Seven Candles are to be lit upon an altar, four red and three whites (white in the center of the altar).

The four represent the Holy Blood and the three whites represent the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Great will be the grace and blessing that you will receive! On this day, I will make Myself known to all who heed this request. On this day of prayer and fasting many hearts will be healed, many physical healings will take place, and I will walk among you and bless you. You are very special to Me, even to the depths of My Immaculate Heart. I am not far from you, My precious ones, only as far as you pushed Me!! However, I am only a truly sincere prayer away from you! All who heed this message shall be blessed. Be at peace! Amen."

Our Lady of Grace

2005-12-19T11:07:00.000-08:00

Rats. Well, the dreadies had to come out yesterday. I caught a cold. It was one of those colds that came with excessive skin sensitivity. You know the kind. Where even the bed sheets hurt. I ended up in a hot bath at midnight. My head covered in conditioner trying to loosen them up. In the end I used Neroli oil. It took 2 hours to comb them out. I'm sad. I miss them already. My scalp is still bruised though. Couldn't even wear a pony tail today...

2005-12-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. A big day for we Militia Immaculata folk. I went to mass at 6:30. Fr. Mark gave lead to some excellent devotions after mass. Such a lovely DAY!!

Love is in the hair!!

I love my locs. Thank you Knotty Boy! It's funny that doing something to make my hair less maintenance would inspire so much happiness. Vanity is a big time NO NO in the Bible. But is being happy with my simple "do" a vanity? It's no-fuss, wash-n-go. I'm so FREE! After almost a month I had to drag out the wax and tuck in new growth and strays that had popped out. I also had to "latch" down the new growth. Tighten up my little twists. But this is easy. I can do one or two while watching the tube.

Happy Happy Joy Joy.

2005-12-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

The health nut reviews a current health craze. Mangosteen juice.

What is a mangosteen? It's a tangerine size fruit that grows primarily in Thailand. It promotes all round good health. It's reaching a frenzied level of popularity.

Sadly though, we American's don't take the time to read labels. Not all products are created equal. You've GOT to read the fine print. What's in it? How much of each nutrient?

I was at Molly Stone's last night picking up some groceries. There were two bottles of Mango-Xan brand mangosteen juice on the shelf in the vitamin section. I bought one.

http://www.mangoxan.com/

$30.95 for 24 ounces.

I read the label on the bus ride home. It's reconstituted mangosteen. Which means it's got only 5 to 10 percent of the nutrients of the whole fruit. Happily though, it did contain a blend of the rind. A number of these mangosteen juices are only fruit and not rind. The rind has a great many nutrients in it. It touts itself as giving you 100% of your vitamin C intake but the C is added in the form of asorbic acid. No biggie. That's how you're getting the C in your orange juice these days as well...

It contains a variety of reconstituted juices including pear, cherry, cranberry, pineapple, star fruit and blue berry - along with the mangosteen.

"Vemma" brand contains fructose - sugar. So the Vemma brand is essentially the junk food of mangosteen juices. Avoid any juice with sucrose, fructose, dextrose, glucose or any other kind of sugar added. Juice is sweet enough without added sugar. You've already lost the good fiber found in eating a whole fruit. So avoid additional JUNK. Vemma brand also contains green tea extract and aloe vera juice. Tons of folks swear by aloe juice but it can cause horrible bloating and dribbly doo doo...

Vemma is a 32 oz bottle for $30, but requires you to also buy the back up juice at $30. So you're spending $60 a month. I'm not paying $30 for a bottle of Kiwi/Strawberry juice when I can buy it at the market for half the cost and know that it's been flash pasteurized so it retains more goodies!

http://www.govemma.com/

Xan-Go is made of a puree of the whole fruit rather than a reconstitution. Meaning it would have more nutrients. However, I find no list of ingredients on the site so I can't determine what's been added. Major bad in my book.

$32 for a 25 ounce bottle.

http://www.mangosteen-xanthones.ws/

Thai Go brand touts itself as being higher in all the nutrient qualities of the mangosteen, and lists all the other fruit included in the beverage but doesn't give a list of ingredients or say how it is processed - it doesn't state that it's made from the whole fruit. The comparison page shows FRUIT but states Xango brand uses reconstituted fruit - whereas Xango's website states whole fruit.

So far though, the Thai Go gets my vote because it's whole fruit rather than reconstituted and contains several different kinds of grapes and grape skins. All sorts of good stuff in grapes. Buckthorn and blue berries too.

$35 for a 25 ounce bottle. Currently on sale at 2 for 50.

http://www.bettermangosteen.com

There are a few other brands. But those listed here are the most popular. I think all of these are part of pyramid marketing schemes.

In short - the juice I had last night was not very sweet. Not very flavorful. You have one ounce a day. Mango-Xan recommends one to three ounces. I sipped my ounce while I ate my suishi dinner last night. An hour later I needed another shot. I mean, I was fiending for the stuff. Clearly there was something in it that my body really liked and wanted.

I slept like a log and didn't have allergy issues this morning. Regardless of the biting cold this morning I didn't have the join pains I did yesterday when I walked into the office. Is it the mangosteen? I don't know. We'll see. If I have some over all good results I think I'll order a bottle of Thai Go in January.

2005-12-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

Excellent Article!!!

OUR FRIENDS THE HEBREWS!!

http://www.towardtradition.org/article_christmas.htm

2005-11-24T16:59:00.000-08:00

Little Derek gets his bottle at Thanksgiving dinner... Ok. Not his bottle. His dad's!!

2005-11-24T16:54:00.000-08:00

Auntie works on the turkey. Poor poor turkey...

2005-11-23T12:55:00.000-08:00

So the word is out. The Vatican is saying NO Thanks to sexually active gay men applying to seminary. That seems a little unfair if you ask me. Word on the street is that seminary's are loaded with sexually active people. One of my favorite priests married a girl he met in seminary. They eventually realized their mistake and that they both were actually called by God. They parted ways. If the Vatican is going to demand homosexual men be celibate for three years before entering seminary then they'd better ask the same of the heterosexual men.

Truth be told, I think my beloved Holy See has mislabeled the issue. This isn't a gay issue. This is a people issue. Sadly, community agencies are loaded with cases of hetero men abusing children. Some lonely people will take what ever they can get.

Long gone are the days when one's parish priest was a part of one's family. When he appeared at the dinner table on a weekly basis. When families wrestled over who would get to host a holiday dinner complete with a real blessing by a real priest. Now our faith is passed along to a once a year Easter celebration. For some, it's a weekly Sunday visit. But rarely do people get involved in their faith community.

But the faith community is what Jesus was all about.

Our faith community involves supporting our religious. Priests and nuns too. So many nuns have given up the habit (sadly) that they aren't recognized for the holy people they are. So they're passed along as another teacher, another secretary. Not as a consecrated person who may not have a local family to spend a holiday with. It's up to us to look after "the least of my brothers (and sisters)" as Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25.

I cringe when I hear people say they've lost their faith over these abuses. If that's true, then we are guilty of what the Protestants have accused us of. Idol worship. If we've put our priests up on such a pedestal so as to make them some kind of god. They are just people. Like us. Loaded with flaws. Their battle is a lot more difficult than ours. As such, we must support them.

I also cringe when I hear people say celibacy is the reason for the priest shortage. Well, then how do they explain the same shortage in Protestant denominations where marriage is allowed? Again, truth be told, the shortage is due to the fact that America worships the mighty dollar, not the Mighty Lord. Over and over again I hear young people say they feel God's call but their parents want them to be a doctor/dentist/scientist - and make a lot of money.

It's too bad really. This country was founded out of love of God. People who fled oppression - looking for the ability to freely express their faith. And now, if the ACLU has it's way - faith will never be expressed in public.

From an article by Joseph Farah:

William Bradford, the leader of the Pilgrims, studied the Hebrew scriptures. The Pilgrims took them very seriously. The idea of giving thanks to God with a feast was inspired by that knowledge of the Bible. In a very real way, the Pilgrims saw themselves, too, as chosen people of God being led to a Promised Land.

At the table, they acknowledged "God's good providence" and "blessed the God of Heaven who brought us over the furious ocean." For "what could sustain us but the Spirit of God and His grace?" asked Bradford. He then quoted Moses, "Our fathers cried unto Him and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity" (Deuteronomy 26:7).

Here's what George Washington proclaimed Oct. 3, 1789:

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor; and whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the twenty-six of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that Great and Glorious Being, who is the Beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country, previous to their becoming a nation; for the single manifold mercies, and the favorable interposition's of His providence, in the courage and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the Great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private institutions, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discretely and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us) and to bless them with good governments, peace and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science, among them and us; and generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Later, in 1863, with the nation torn apart by the war between the states, Lincoln reinstituted the tradition for two years. Again, in 1941, with a global war threatening, Congress established the fourth Thursday of November as the day for Americans to thank God.

So - thank you God for my freedom, my family, my friends, my health, my good job, a roof over my head, food in the fridge, the ability to walk, to laugh and to love.

Happy Thanksgiving and God bless!

2005-11-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

Now that's good coffee!

2005-11-17T14:47:00.000-08:00

God grant me humility!

Suddenly everyone needs to touch my head. When I was considering locs, a number of folks warned me about the bigotries of non-loc folk. So far, I've only encountered one negative comment. Someone suggested I'd done this only so that I'd never have to wash my hair again. Silly silly!! Generally, it's been very well received. But again, many thanks to Jeffrey Bradley with his warning that folks will just walk up and touch you. I'm beginning to wonder how pregnant women put up with complete strangers running up to hold their tummies! Really though. The reactions have been cute.

2005-11-15T15:36:00.000-08:00

Two posts in one day. Can you believe it?

I went ahead and started my dreadlocks, or as some say "locs."

After all my research, I went with Raw Food Discussion List friend's suggestion of doing braids, then "latch-hooking" them into locks over the next few years.

My hair really loves my Knotty Boy bar shampoo. I used the Knotty Boy wax to smooth down the hair and get a good grip. I started out with a three part braid but ended up doing two strand twists. The two strand twists are easier to do, easier to catch short hairs in and as such look more neat. That being said, the bad part is, it's more difficult to "latch" the two strand twist without making a hole. Mind you, the hole is easy to cover with one or two more latches. But if it's in the back of your head, how do you know?

I had Friday off work. I spent the day cleaning and running in to the bathroom to do a few more braids. So it took all day. It would have been better if I'd waited until I had help to do the back but... Since they're braided, I can always take them out and re-do them. I've done that a few times already, to take larger braids and make them smaller twists.

All in all, the result is fantastic! I have the most wash and go hair I've ever had in my life. No product. A simple bar soap to wash with.

I use very little of my wax to keep them neat and to pull in loose hair. The shorties at my scalp are woven in with wax and a tiny crochet hook. I had the crochet hook already, but I had to go to the fabric store to buy a latch-hook. That's when I found the lovely sushi place I ate at. See photos below.

I love that I can wake up in the morning and have great hair. I love that I can wash it and run out of the house without dumping a ton of product in to tame the frizz.

I might post a photo. I took one. But I'm not much on photos of myself. Give me time...

Thanks must be given!!

Thanks to my boss for her support and understanding.

Thanks to

Knotty Boy

for great products!!

Thanks to

Jeffery Bradley

for some sage advice (via his wonderful publications) on the ups and very big downs of dreadlocks. That is to say, human bigotry. People are so judgemental!!

And a very special thanks to my raw food buddy

Cherie King

for her e-books on locs and support while I stumble along.

God bless!!

2005-11-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

I had dinner with a two friends last Saturday. During the course of the evening one friend piped in that he felt the Catholic Church was responsible for overpopulation due to their policy on birth control.

Now - why a person of no faith would want to get into a debate about doctrine with two people of deep faith is beyond me but...

I replied that he just didn't understand the church's stance. He insisted he did. We went round and round. Clearly he was repeating a lot of anti-Catholic misinformation. But the part that really floored me was that he felt people of wealth had no need to help the less fortunate since they'd gotten themselves into that predicament in the first place. That all this was to be blamed on the church. I was really quite shocked at that.

Starving people are not thinking about sex. They're wondering where their next meal will come from. How they will live to see tomorrow when disease is rampant. How they can send their kids to school with no shoes.

Sadly, my friend didn't think any of this mattered. He only felt we needed to stop them from having children.

In the end, he revealed that he was specifically speaking about India. How can the Catholic Church be responsible for overpopulation in a nation that is 80% Hindu and only 2% Christian. Granted the majority percentage of Christian denominations in that 2% is Catholic. But still. 1% vs 80%

I knew my church was mighty but I had no idea we as 1% could over shadow a faith of 80%

On the off chance that I was wrong, I spent some time yesterday researching overpopulation. Specifically in India.

Overpopulation.com defines overpopulation :

Overpopulation is a term that refers to a condition in which the density enlarges to a limit that provokes the environmental deterioration, a drop in the quality of life, or a population collapse.

The government in India implemented a family planning program back in 1958. Their population increase has reduced by 47% according to Overpopulation.com.

In 1994 they implemented a new population program pushing birth control. Sadly, their main birth control is sterilization - Of women. 67% of women vs 9% of men. The problem with this is their poor conditions and the invasiveness of sterilizing women - as opposed to the ease and NONinvasiveness of sterilizing men - has caused the mortality rate among women in India to skyrocket.

Still, India's way worked far better than China's, with the government enforcing a one child law and abortion at gunpoint.

But - India's population problem is not the reason for poverty and starvation. Improper distribution of wealth is. A great number of India's people are simple farmers. They support themselves and live happily. A great many go into the big cities hoping for wealth or looking for a less severe life. Illiterate farmers can't find work and end up in slums. Millions moving into big cities like Bombay, Delhi, Madras and Bangladore - unable to support themselves.

For one job in any of these cities 1000 people apply.

This is what's causing the overpopulation. A large number of people in one area - unable to handle the growth. No jobs. Substandard housing.

The sad part is - McDonalds has gone to India now. So we have a poor family living in a shack. Three starving to death and one obese.

Lastly, I found this article by Dr. Brian Kopp

Contraceptive Imperialism and Third World Poverty

I think this is the sort of misinformation my friend has ingested. In the event you don't have time to read the article - here is a snippet:

As the problem of “poverty” has been transmuted into the problem of “overpopulation” so have our consciences been mollified. We no longer feel so acutely our duty to make sacrifices in order to alleviate third world suffering with food, shelter, infrastructure, and the means to develop third world economies. We now can say, “It’s your fault. If you’d just stop making babies, you wouldn’t be living in poverty.”

Instead of corn meal, we ship them condoms. Rather than artificial contraceptives, which can have life threatening complications, always seem to be paired with abortion, and frequently undermine third world societal structures, there is the Church’s alternative of Natural Family Planning. Safe, cheap, and effective, this method confers considerable power to couples to control their fertility for both achieving and, when couples have a serious reason to do so, preventing conception. It is time the misconception that Catholicism is synonymous with ineffective birth control and that her teachings against abortion and contraception are the major hurdle in eliminating poverty around the world be laid to rest.

Now... Let me take a minute here to talk about the church's stance on birth control. Let's get real. If we believe God created the universe, plant, animal and man - then we really don't believe a little piece of synthetic material is going to stop HIM from giving you a child. No pill. There's even a story out there about a child who survived being aborted. Sadly, her twin brother did not.

The church's stance is about respect. Deep meaningful respect. Respect for each other. One is never to have "meaningless sex" with one's partner. How would my friend have felt if I'd let fly with the fact that our Holy Father John Paul the Great wrote a book when he was still a cardinal. A book about marriage. A book that stated it's every Catholic husband's duty to make certain his wife is satisfied during their love making.

Sex should be nurturing. These days sex is recreation. These days it's cool to be an "urban cougar" - that is an older woman who goes after younger men and uses them like exercise equipment.

When speaking about this with a friend of mine who's wife is a nurse, he explained that in many third world countries women are little more than cattle. They aren't allowed to say no to their husbands. Even when they are provided with condoms the men see it as a slight against their masculinity and refuse to use them. Here, the church's stance on reverence for all life is of utmost importance.

"The meaning of life is found in giving and receiving love, and in this light human sexuality and procreation reach their true and full significance... Respect for life requires that science and technology should always be at the service of man and his integral development. Society as a whole must respect, defend and promote the dignity of every human person, at every moment and in every condition of that person's life."

—Pope John Paul II Evangelium Vitae, 81

2005-11-14T14:00:00.000-08:00

Wowie! I finished Anne Rice's new book "Christ the Lord" this weekend. It was sold out in book stores near me, but my friend Nancy managed to find me a copy for my birthday.

I've been a fan of Anne Rice since her first book, though I ran out of time to read them some time after Servant of the Bones. As a person who doesn't exactly see things the way others do, I found her world of the unseen a comfort. Anne Rice paints lush portraits in print. I really enjoy that about her books. When she writes about New Orleans, you find yourself standing IN New Orleans. See the sights, taste the food!

Her newest venture - Christ the Lord - is very much the same. I was taken back to ancient Jerusalem. I experienced walking in the desert and bathing in the Jordan river. I experienced seeing the Great Temple through the eyes of a child. I gained an understanding of the Holy Family that I really must call a gift!

Most fascinating of all - I experienced my favorite person, Jesus Christ, discovering himself. Well done! Well done!

2005-11-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

Lunch!

2005-11-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

Ah the delightful Catepillar Roll.

Yes, I found a new sushi place. Fantastic!!!

2005-11-10T09:03:00.000-08:00

I guess the moral of this story is - never EVER give Hollywood permission to recreate events in your life.

What's the story? George Lutz is my friend. One of the best and most wonderful people I know. Who's George Lutz? One of the family members who lived through a violent paranormal event that would later become a best selling book and top grossing movie called The Amityville Horror.

But wait - you say - I heard the family came forward and said it was all a hoax. Not true. They've never said that. They've stuck by their story these past 30 years. However, that doesn't stop nay sayers from spreading lies.

Dimension Films teamed up with Michael Bay and his film company "Platinum Dunes" to remake the movie. They called it a remake but aside of the title and the name Lutz - their 2005 film had nothing to do with the original.

The film itself was really bad. A patchwork of at least 12 different horror films stolen by the "writers" and director. Most notably "The Shining" - having the father character running around with an ax and the mother character as buck toothed as Shelly Duval. Even similar dialog and events - where she says "let's just pack up and go" and where she finds what he's been up to behind closed doors... Top it off with the fact that the film makers are so arrogant they don't even bother to hide that they've "borrowed" from other films. Watching and reading interviews with them, they talk about each film they pirated. Also, actor Ryan Reynolds said a great number of times that he just didn't care what repercussions his portrayal of a living person had. He was paid to do a job so he did it. Melissa George claims to have read Kathy Lutz's diaries. Didn't happen.

The Lutzes are all people of great faith after what they went through. Mr. Lutz's three daughters are all youth ministers. How do you explain to teens and children that the movie portraying your father as an insane ax wielding maniac is not true? Especially when the film's entire PR campaign touted it as a True Story...

There is no truth in that film. There is a LOT of truth to what that family went through.

Sadly, the courts decided Hollywood's first amendment rights allowed them to portray the family any way they wanted to.

Defamation Suite

2005-11-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

From Zenit - a Catholic news agency

--------------------------------------
Pope Encourages "Apostolic Drive" of Secular Franciscans

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 9, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI greeted representatives of the Secular Franciscan Order at a general audience and encouraged them to witness to the Gospel in the world.

These spiritual children of St. Francis are taking part in their general chapter in Assisi, through Saturday. The event has attracted members from 57 chapters, in 46 countries, as well as some 30 observers and relators.

Before taking leave of the 25,000 pilgrims gathered today in St. Peter's Square, the Pope expressed the hope that the Secular Franciscan's general chapter "will be for all of you an opportunity of renewed apostolic drive when it comes to spreading the Gospel everywhere, following the example of St. Francis of Assisi."

The Secular Franciscan Order comprises lay people who follow the Rule and Franciscan spirituality. Its origins go back to 1221.

Today the order has 435,000 professed members, in 99 countries. ZE05110904

2005-11-09T14:20:00.000-08:00

Here we have Art Takes a Ride. A project between our local public transit and the school system. All the art work is done by the kids. I wish I could have gotten a photo of each piece inside the bus. Sad that I did not.

2005-11-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

Very cool bus.

2005-11-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

My good friend Paul enjoys the kid's art. Or maybe it's the bus fumes...

2005-11-09T14:17:00.000-08:00

Close up of the right side of the bus.

2005-11-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

This is what I love about not driving. I bet most of the south bound cars missed this rainbow. It was so huge it took three photos to capture it all. I love my commute.

2005-11-07T13:04:00.000-08:00

Traffic on the way to lunch.

2005-11-07T09:46:00.000-08:00

Brittany (my niece) helped me make my first dreads this weekend. I have three. Rather like two and a half because I don't think the third one will hold. Brittany's too afraid of hurting me to make them very tight. I've been tightening them down at the roots on my own. The process itself is very fun. Locking down the roots can be problematic. I brought my fine toothed comb to work today to help with the process. I probably jumped the gun, in not getting the dark wax and not talking to my boss first. Whole Foods only had the light wax. They're a tad lumpy at the moment. Where I've got a good knot in some spots and no good knot in others. Wait and see.

2005-11-04T16:26:00.000-08:00

To dread or not to dread. That is the question.

My boss, God love her, got sick of messing with her hair. Trying to find the right way to straighten it and have a decent style. She's such a polished person I about came out of my shoes when she told me she used to wear a massive "fro."

So she did a lot of homework, then went out and got sisterlocks.

SisterLocks

Sisterlocks are a thin version of dreads. It looks more or less like yarn hair.

She looks great and there's no mess. No product. No harsh chemicals. Her hair has great movement and NO frizz! My favorite "side effect."

I loved them and immediately began looking into getting dreads done. That was two years ago. Here I am again, looking at dreads. I hate my hair. One of the greatest aspects of being able to wear a habit some day is permanently covering my hair. It's curly and frizzy on the top, stick straight underneath. I spend hundreds of dollars on products that don't work. Curly hair is dry. So I buy moisturizing shampoos and conditioners which just cause FRIZZ! UGH!

In my research I came across this article about dreads. Good stuff...

History of Dreads

With my aspirations to holiness, you can just imagine how good that sounded.

I might dread it and just be done with it. If I can figure out how to post pictures I will.

2005-11-04T09:45:00.000-08:00

It has been less than 2 years since the Vatican gave its approval on wearing one's rosary around the neck. When I was a kid, it was considered a profane use of a holy item. Along came the pop star. U2's Bono and soccer favorite David Beckam began wearing rosaries around their necks. The kids who adore them followed suit.

During The Year of the Rosary, the Vatican agreed that wearing a rosary around one's neck could create excellent opportunities for dialog on the faith. They even created a special brochure for teens to have with them and hand out as needed.

Now we have a school that bans wearing rosaries around the neck because it MIGHT be construed as gang related.

Rosary Debate

From a Catholic news source we have a rather scary little article about actual twisting of one's faith by these kids.

Youth Gangs

To me, a rosary is a sign of one's faith. A reminder to "pray without ceasing" as the Bible advises us to do. Turn every thought, dream and wish to the Lord. Place it all in His hands.

Rosaries have a special place in my faith formation. Our whole lives are faith formation. I feel very sad for folks who miss that. Anyway... The rosary is a time to contemplate the sacrifice Jesus made for us. God Himself, come to live the human condition. The rosary is my traveling prayer book. It goes everywhere with me. I favor wrapping it around my wrist over wearing it around my neck. I can pray at any time. Even just looking at it I am reminded of how I feel when I connect with God.

That being the case, I think counseling and faith formation would help the situation. Tucking the rosary away isn't going to solve anything.

2005-11-02T11:09:00.000-08:00

Jersey Girl.

I just loved this film. I'm not a big Ben Affleck fan. Er... I'm not an Affleck fan at all. Probably the only person on the planet who cared very little for "Good Will Hunting."

I rented this because I love Kevin Smith's movies. It wasn't what I was expecting. It wasn't Dogma. It wasn't Jay and Silent Bob. It wasn't the kind of slap stick comedy that has me laughing so hard I can skip my nightly sit ups for a week.

This was touching and warm. A very courageous break out for Kevin Smith. One to watch over and over again.

2005-10-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

Just as Christmas turns our thoughts to love and giving, Halloween - All Hallows Eve - turns our thoughts to the dead.

A significant portion of horror writers, both book and film, are Catholic. If I recall correctly more than 3/4. I think it's our belief in the Communion of Saints - the dead with us always - that leads many of us into fascination with their physical appearance. For me, I've been seeing them since I was a kid.

I recently visited Alcatraz. Not many folks know Alcatraz is a mispronunciation of it's true Spanish title "alcatraces." Alcatraces are a type of sea bird commonly called a boobie.

Los Alcatraces

I was closed up in the "haunted cell" in solitary, which is D Block. I had a very interesting experience. As soon as the door was closed and I was left in complete darkness and silence, a "movie" began to play in my head. There was no picture. Only feeling. I was the prisoner. Naked in the cell, he'd wedged himself into one corner and begun to go slowly mad. Rumor has it he hung himself. How could he do that if he was naked? No, there was no suicide. Yet, in another sense there was. He literally frightened himself to death. He scratched at the wall with his right hand continually. His heart beating faster and faster as he became more frightened. Until it just stopped. --end of movie.

This poor man's soul is not trapped in that cell. He moved on long ago. But the memory of his passing is in the very fabric of the cell itself.

The WB Network has a new series out called "Supernatural." Thus far, the series has dealt entirely with souls (people!) who've met with violent ends and somehow become empowered enough to wreak havoc in our physical world.

Someone needs to have a long talk with the series writers about compassion, as well as the truth about all things non-physical. First off, lost souls - that is those who don't attain Heaven - need prayers. Second, they very rarely have the power to make much of a difference in the physical world. When they do, it's usually because they're either A) in the presense of a physical medium (think human battery) or B) demonic, using the form of a human. Now, item A, the human battery, has a limited charge. Pun intended. Hence poltergeist activity is usually sporatic. Energy comes and goes. Item B is your long term power. Prolonged and violent "hauntings." I put hauntings in quotes because prolonged demonic activity is properly called oppression.

"Supernatural" portrays two brothers who call themselves "hunters." They hunt what most people don't believe in. In the first episode we have one brother discharging his pistol into the "head" of a ghost. Yeah, it looks and sounds cool on screen. But what good does it do? It's the presense of a second person that sends the ghost off. Not the pistol. In the end, they get their ghost to her "home" where she is left in the hands of her own to children - whom she murdered in a fit of dispair. All three souls are left in torment. But the brothers pat themselves on the back and say job well done.

Sigh...

Therein lies my problem with most "paranormal investigators" as well as WB's fictional "hunters." Who prays for the lost souls? Who discerns the demonic? No one. They want to go in - see fantastic phenomenon - then walk out patting themselves on the back for their cool recordings and photos. Some victims have suffered violent hauntings for years because they had no religious background and the paranormal investigators were so interested in documentation they would never recommend calling a priest to end the trauma.

2005-10-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

Life without Murphy is getting easier to accept.

The idea that my furry friend who had such a fear of hunger, in the end lost his appetite and wittled down to half his normal weight has me thinking.

Hermits regularly perform acts of penance. Especially for others who cannot. Self-sacrifice.

One of my favorite light hearted Catholic websites is BustedHalo.com. Today they've got a great article on the reasons behind fasting. Not just in Christianity but in Judaism and Islam as well.

Good reading:

Think Fast

One of those famous ancient philosophers said "Nothing sharpens the mind like hunger." Very true indeed. I think that's why fasting helps us reach the divine. It sharens are attention to a pin-point, enabling us to see that "narrow gate."

2005-10-17T16:36:00.000-07:00

Canonical hermits make a vow of poverty. Items owned are kept to a minimum. If you own your hermitage, its administration is given to someone else. One of the things a hermit can own is a cat. Why? Cats are a lesson in non-ownership. You never own a cat. You become their servant.

Murphy Patrick O’Brien, a cat I served for 12 fun-filled years, went to Heaven on Saturday. He fought an 8 month battle with kidney failure. In the end, a common cold got the better of him.

13 years ago, my stupid boyfriend decided it was cruel to keep a cat in the house. He let my kitten Casey out the front door. Casey got hit by a car before I even knew he’d been let out.

On St. Patrick’s Day of 1993, I headed off to the pound to donate all of Casey’s food and toys. I was determined not to go look in the cat room. I needed a break from cat servitude. I dumped the goods and ran for the door. A howl stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the barrel chested howl of a sasquatch. There could be no other explanation. The howl came again and curiosity got the better of me and I headed towards the sound.

In the very front cage of the cat room there sat this big orange cat. Well. His head was big. The rest of him was emaciated. He had brilliant yellow-green eyes. His fangs reached far below his upper lip. He one paw shot through the cage bars and grabbed a hold of my sweatshirt with claws that would have made Freddie Kruger proud. He howled again. Not a howl of fear, a determined howl. A howl of “Get me out of here.” He was NOT going to let go of my sweatshirt. His tag was marked “stray.” Their best guess based on his teeth was 4 years old.

I disobeyed SPCA policy and took the cat out of his cage. He let go as soon as the door was open. I picked him up and once again he put a death grip on my sweatshirt and immediately began bumping his forehead against my chin and rubbing all the way up to my ear. I’d been claimed. Cats have scent glands in their foreheads. When they rub their head on you, they’ve claimed you.

I went straight to the counter and said – I’ll take this one. I got scolded for taking him out. But they had to remove him from me sweatshirt and all, so I think they understood. He was still intact and would have to have his plumbing modified before leaving. I never did get that sweatshirt back.

His first moments in his new home were spent in the bathtub. He stunk badly. Years on the street I guess. I found two cigarette burns on him. I later determined, due to his abject fear of couches, that a cigarette had been used to teach him not to get on the couch.

His first meal was gulped down with such speed it promptly came back up. I would spend the next few years teaching him to eat slowly. If ever given access to free amounts of food, he would eat til he barfed. Every time. He did bulk back up nicely. The average cat weighs 9 pounds. At one point he reached 18. I managed to keep him at a steady 16 until his final year.

Murphy had a difficult time adjusting to life indoors I don't believe in letting cats outdoors. Too many things can go wrong. They're far safer inside. And far more healthy. That being the case, he was terror on legs. He never walked anywhere. He ran. He jumped. He cavorted. He regularly pounced on the dog. He knocked down plants. He attacked my shoelaces. He’d regularly sit at the door and make his infamous sasquatch howl – begging to be let outside. He did escape now and then. Hunger always brought him home. Landing in the bathtub afterwards did little to stop his escape attempts.

He began talking to his reflection in the mirror. I thought he might be lonely. I’d always wanted a Maine Coon. There was one in the paper, a mackerel tabby kitten. I brought home a $350 kitten to keep my $24 pound kitty company. Murphy tormented the little guy. Threw him around like he was a basketball.

Yoshi loved to be groomed. The Big Moo detested it. Grooming and nail clipping sent him into howls of abuse. He carried on like I was gutting him with a spoon. It took me several years to convince him the brush did not equal a death sentence and the nail clippers did not equal amputation of a limb.

Here’s a hint, never use those guillotine style pet clippers. They pull the cat’s claw as they clip. A nice new pair of people style toe-nail clippers works much better. Cut the claw sideways.

With Murphy’s propensity to eat too-much too-fast then barf and the hairballs harfed up as a result of his aversion to grooming, I adopted the habit of wearing flip-flops around the house to avoid something wet and icky covering the bottom of my bare feet. Yoshi, being Maine Coon was soon as big as his big brother. The two wrestled all night. This prompted me to begin sleeping in ear plugs. Their favorite game was chasing each other up and down the hall way – earning special nicknames from my brother. Thunder-Butt and Lead-Foot.

Murphy was a scrapper and very street smart. I've always known if someone broke in the house, Murphy would attack and try to protect me. His capacity for destruction earned him the nick name Murpinator. But he never figured out doors. Cabinet doors especially. Yoshi was always smarter that Murphy. Many days I’d get home from work to the howling. Yoshi would open a cabinet door, wait for Murphy to go in, then close it. I’d have to let him out. He never figured out the pushing part.

He woke me up if I had bad dreams. The only time he ever wanted to sit in my lap was if I was crying about something. Usually some silly movie.

At some point the Begging Stool was implemented. I have a small step I use to get things out of high cabinets. Murphy developed the habit of sitting on the Begging Stool while I cooked. Hoping for tidbits or pats on the head. He’d also sit on the toilet lid every morning and watch me get ready for work.

The very fact that Murphy was an assertive cat – who might even be considered aggressive to some – had me worried when my favorite cousin announced she was having a baby. What would Murphy do with a baby? He certainly surprised me when I discovered that baby could pull his hair and drag him around by his tail and he LOVED it! Murphy had obviously been previously owned by a man. He loved the rough stuff and HATED all that girlie affection stuff.

Once while babysitting her, I gave her a bath. She screamed in delight the ways kids sometimes do. Well, the Big Moo flew like a rocket down the hall and into the tub. I had a momentary flash of terror as I had time to envision him shredding her as he hit the water. But that didn’t happen. He sat down in the tub and began licking her face.

My uncle Art, on the other side of the family, wouldn’t allow me to baby-sit. He’d claim I was just looking for fresh meat for my mountain lion.

Life was fun. Constant entertainment. Who needed TV? Years passed. Seasons changed. People came into my life and went out again. But there was always Yoshi and Murphy. Being a typical Maine Coon, Yoshi grew for a great many years. Far longer than the average cat grows. He eventually outweighed his “big” brother by 12 pounds. Yet, as Murphy aged and grew weaker and thinner, Yoshi still always let him win fights.

Then in April of this year Yoshi passed away. Murphy didn't handle it well. Being that Murphy tended to break things, and that he fought with Yoshi so much, I think he felt he broke Yoshi. He wouldn't let me near him for days after Yoshi passed. His appetite declined. He got lethargic. At first the vets told me Murphy was just grieving. This normally 16 pounder was now just under 9. It was natural they said. But a cat who fears hunger does not walk away from his food. I took Murphy to a new vet who diagnosed him with kidney failure. In the same breath this vet told me Murphy clearly had a tremendous will to live – with the way he’d fought 4 vet techs to get catheterized – and recommended I put Murphy to sleep.

That simply wasn’t going to happen. As long as he was fighting, I’d fight with him. So they loaded me up with Ringers Solution which Murphy took via a needle twice a day for the rest of his life. Which wasn’t to be much longer.

Chronic Renal Failure is actually pretty easy to handle, if you get Terumo Ultra Thin 20 gauge needles and always warm the fluids. Never microwave them. Just dump the bag in a bucket of hot water for a few minutes. Be sure to get puppy or kitty on a full spectrum B vitamin right away. They're a lot more likely to pass away from a heart attack or stroke due to potassium shortage. The potassium is flushed out of their bodies by the constant flow of water. Makes one think twice about that 8 glasses of water a day deal, huh? Murp-oh didn't like the gel potassium at all. I got him a liquid version from Whole Foods.

I have to thank the wonderful folks at Persian and Himalayan Rescue for their kindness and patience with me. I fought with myself for weeks over the idea of getting a friend for Murphy. He was back to talking to himself in the mirror. I had begun looking at Persians because of their reputation for gentleness. Yoshi had spoiled Murphy. Always letting him win fights, Murphy really had no clue that he was smaller and much weaker than he’d been before. I was afraid that if I got another adult cat, Murphy would play too hard and hurt himself.

I eventually adopted a 7 year old lilac and cream point Himmie. Her name is Sophie. While she looks like a little lady, she really is a wanna-be bad-kitty. What ever naughty things Murphy did, Sophie would do too. Unlike Yoshi, who always held back then ratted Murphy out. If Murphy broke a potted plant just to sleep in the dirt, Sophie slept in it with him. His health began to improve. The two of them enjoyed Feline Futures, a kitty raw food program. It’s a difficult thing for a vegetarian to prepare raw meat meals. But I knew Murphy was fighting for his life and couldn’t deny him. I also began giving him Azmira’s Kidney Biotic. I think that helped a lot.

He never complained about the needles. As long as I wasn’t hugging him or trying to brush him, he’d put up with anything. Then about two weeks ago, his weight began slipping again. Murphy never was one for luxury. No $40 plush pet bed for him. He preferred a box. Any old box. There was a plant box by the front door that I kept finding him in. I think he just caught a cold. He began to produce copious amounts of snot. Back we went to the vet. While they found his lungs clear and no sign of infection, they put him on antibiotics anyway. The antibiotics totally killed his appetite. I took to force-feeding him chicken liver just to get something in his tummy.

By Saturday the 15th, he wasn't aware of much any more. He was drowning, more or less. He wouldn't let Sophie or I near him any more. I bundled him up in a towel and we sat in the sun for some time on Saturday. He always loved the sun.

He was pretty out of it. My upstairs neighbors have a toddler. His jumping, crying and bumping makes me nuts. But he was out walking with his Grandma and they stopped to say hello. With Murphy’s love of kids, he actually had a positive reaction to the little guy. It's the most conscious he'd been in two days. After the boy left, he tucked his head inside the blanket and began to cry. Murphy has never cried. I knew it was time.

The vet had an open appointment. We took it. I knew it was the right thing to do. I couldn't sit back and watch him suffocate. The strange part is, putting Murphy to sleep goes against my beliefs. Only God has the power to give life and take life away. God took Yoshi. But I sent Murphy to God. And yet, I feel it's Yoshi that I murdered. It's so confusing.

It was really difficult leaving him at the pet hospital. Even thought the vet said he was gone, I knew he was still in there. I had a tough time with that. I wondered if, because it wasn’t his time, what if he was trapped in there? Then I sort of sensed him leave. As if a door in the room opened then closed again. I stayed with his body for about 45 minutes or so. Then I went home to cry.

I was ok for about 5 hours. Then I totally freaked out. I wanted so badly to take it back. I totally lost it. Sophie was terrified and went to hide under the bed. She didn’t come out until after I’d gone to sleep.

I began feeling better after mass yesterday. I had a vision of Jesus. Not the way I normally see Jesus, but Jesus the King, in a crown and purple robe. He walked up to me, and took out my heart. He replaced it with a bigger heart - the odd part being that this heart is blue. I felt peaceful.

The house got so quiet after Yoshi passed. Now it's a tomb. Murphy never walked anywhere. He ran. He trotted. He made a lot of noise. He got up on tables when he knew he shouldn't and knocked things down just to make sure I knew he'd been bad.

Yoshi was utterly dependent on me. Murphy was the opposite. If I walked out the front door and never came back, Murphy would have been ok. Even if he had to chew the lids off canned food, he'd survive.

It's a whole different kind of love, you know? He didn't need me. But he liked having me around.
I sure liked having him around. God bless you Big Moo.

2005-10-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

ZAGREB!

My friend Mario and his dad took me to see a Croatian folk dance troop this weekend. It was fantastic. The colors, the music, the dance - it really was a feast for the eyes and the heart.

The troop is called Zagreb Folk Dance Ensemble. They even have a CD you can buy on Amazon.com.

2005-10-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

Christian Vegetarians Unite!!

Not long ago my brother "informed" me that Catholics don't pray for animals. HUH?? was my reply. On what planet? Saints like Francis of Assisi and Martin de Porres viewed animals as our brothers and sisters in Christ. Created by the Divine, just as we were. Sadly, it's pretty common to find Christians out there who are deeply in need of formation.

Here's a lovely article from Go Veg about Pope John Paul II,

http://www.goveg.com/f-popejohnpaulii.asp

Pope John Paul II Taught Love for Animals

As Catholics around the world mourn the passing of His Holiness John Paul II, non-Catholic animal lovers remember his dream about animals.

Pope John Paul II taught love for animals more than any other pope in recent memory.

In 1990, His Holiness proclaimed that "the animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren." He went on to say that all animals are "fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect" and that they are "as near to God as men are." Animal lovers everywhere were overjoyed!

The Holy Father reminded people that all living beings, including animals, came into being because of the "breath" of God. Animals possess the divine spark of life--the living quality that is the soul--and they are not inferior beings, as factory farmers, fur farmers, and others who exploit animals for profit would have us believe.

After he became Pope John Paul II, His Holiness went to Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis, and spoke of the saint's love for animals. He declared, "We, too, are called to a similar attitude."

PETA is grateful that His Holiness spoke out so beautifully for animals and their souls, and we hope that his successor will also speak out for them with the same love and compassion. Catholics can honor his teachings by incorporating compassion for animals more fully into their own lives.

Holy Scripture tells us that God created the world to be vegetarian.

Genesis, Chapter 1 Verse 29-30, from the Jerusalem Bible - the official bible of the Holy See

God also said, "Look, to you I give all the seed-bearing plants everywhere on the surface of the earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this will be your food. And to all the wild animals, all the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that creep along the ground, I give all the foliage of the plants as their food." And so it was.

Most modern translations have "interpreted" this text for us rather than leaving us to gleen our own understanding. They would have us believe that plant and animal was intended for our food. In truth we only began this struggle between man and beast after man's fall from grace. We are intended tol return to this happy vegetarian existance.

Isaiah, Chapter 11, Verse 6

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fattened calf together and a little child shall lead them.