Rare coins valued at $40,000 and left at National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes were, alas, not a donation but an attempt to have the Blessed Virgin Mary watch over them and protect them. The shrine security director suggested a safe deposit box for this purpose.
It is reported that John Paul may be declared Venerable as soon as December.
Did the prosperity/health-and-wealth gospel contribute to the crash? They speak of people taking unwarranted risks, overextending themselves, and essentially "claiming" what was out of their reach. You wonder how many of these people bothered to read their bible (they note that Joel Osteen, a popular health-and-wealth monger, quotes very little scripture) when they say that "Jesus loved money too!" I suppose that's why he drove out the moneychangers, said "Blessed are the poor", and "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to be saved".
Still, I have a tough time believing that there are enough adherents to this false gospel to blame them for the economic crash. Did they exacerbate it? Maybe, but they hardly deserve all the credit.
Ever wonder where the symbol for a heart came from? Obviously it doesn't look like the biological organ, so where did it come from?
An interesting book I'm reading, Alien Hand Syndrome, has an answer. It's the shape of the seed of the silphium or laserwort plant, which was used — get this — as 7th century B.C. to first century A.D. birth control (and abortifacient). People think of pharmaceutical contraceptives as a modern invention but the ancients had them too. Unfortunately the plant in question grew in only a narrow strip of land and defied cultivation; the lust of the world drove it to extinction. Deo gratias.
But I'm never going to look at the heart symbol the same way again.
I am reminded of a scene in Les Miserables — a bunch of rabble-rousing starry-eyed students are convinced that the death of a general will spark an outcry among the people and stir them to their revolutionary cause, but the general's death comes and goes and the people stir not.
So it is with the raucous tumult among gay advocates over Proposition 8. They staged protests and boycotts and caused quite the hullabaloo (and if I recall desecrated churches and did some other nasty stuff) but they are starting to see now that the people just don't care. 'There was a cry for voter sympathy behind that rage: Feel our pain! It failed. "The activism didn't move the public," said Mark Solomon, Marriage Director for Equality California. Despite the outcry, Mr. Solomon said polling showed that voters were not swayed -- opinion stayed the same as on Election Day.'
They still seek to change people's opinions, but it will be a softer approach. (What, no more desecrating Masses?)
Recent Comments