Hell season starts. Basketball season ended a month ago. I've been enjoying the free evenings and weekends. That stops today: baseball (two boys, two different leagues), soccer (two girls, two different leagues, one of them the ambitious travel squad), swim lessons (one boy and one girl, same session). All of them start now, and one of my boys' teams might need me to help coach. It's actually not a big deal, since I've been a dug-out coach for twelve seasons. This season, I'll just do a little more than keep score and tell kids to stop spitting on each other. I may have to attend practices, which will take up more time, but when the season comes, it shouldn't be much worse than most springs.
If my blogging starts to lag, you'll know why.
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Welcome to America, B16: More than eight of out of ten Catholics are satisfied with the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI, according to a poll of Catholic adults in the United States.
The article, incidentally, is stuffed with interesting polling figures, like this one: "Twenty-six percent of adult Catholics say they participate in the sacrament of reconciliation once a year or more often (this is equivalent to 13.3 million adults). Only 2 percent of Catholics do so once a month or more often. Thirty percent say they go to confession less than once a year and 45 percent say they never do so."
Any chance that latter 75% could stop calling themselves "Catholic"? The same goes for the 65% or so who don't attend Mass weekly.
I know, I know: "Be patient and understanding. Keep the door open for them. Maybe they'll embrace the Church for real some day." I agree. But I struggle with how much damage their lukewarmness is doing to the Church in the meantime. Few things are more uncomfortable than to sit at a Kiwanis lunch with a group of people and listen to one of them identify himself as a Catholic, then joke about how he hasn't been to Mass in three months. My elbow always ends up knocking their soup in their lap. I figure, "Hey, he's making me uncomfortable. I might as well make him uncomfortable." It ain't exactly Gospel living, but it feels good.
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The rough equivalent of take-your-daughter-to-work day? Eleven female students in Randolph College's Cultural Studies Program visited the Chicken Ranch Brothel Thursday. "I think I'm going to take away the idea that these women are actually happy at what they're doing and the cultural idea that these women have been forced to do it isn't true," student Alex McKay said. "And these women have other careers and other lives and they're actually happy here. Doesn't everyone want to do a bunch of different guys every day? All that stuff about the wage of sin is death? That's so, like, dated." [Quote may have been modified by TDE Editor.]
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Odd consumer news:
Back in the old days, you just ordered your servant to hold your spoon. Then you had to settle for resting it on your table cloth or shaking it mercilessly before putting it on the table cloth. None of that anymore:
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Man has been arrested a staggering 53 times--the majority for groping women on the subway. I wasn't sure whether to post this story, but this part cracked me up: "The district attorney's office branded him a 'recidivist transit grinder' at a court hearing earlier this week." He faces life in prison. Only took 53 arrests. Better late than never.
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Internet Horror Stories, Episode 1,409,553: A German farmer who married a woman he met on the internet has asked for the marriage to be annulled after finding out 'she' was a he. ". . . We only had a kiss and cuddle before we married. But on my wedding night she told me she had a penis - and that her real name was Ralf. I bet the farmer's name was "Ralph," too, after he made the discovery.
