First up, the Church doesn't bluff. There may be a surface resemblance between the Church's move and the typical move of politicians facing budget cuts -- make the cuts in the most visible, most popular, most needed areas first -- but that's where it ends. The Church does NOT use the poor as hostages for imposing its social agenda.

Read the whole thing here.

And I think his send-off is worthwhile:

"And that's coming from an agnostic gay marriage supporter who is still uncertain as to whether the Catholic Church has been a net boon or bane to modern civilization."

from Counterfeit Gods Timothy Keller

Why did we completely lose sight of what is right? The Bible's answer is that the human heart is an "idol factory."

When most people think of "idols" they have in mind literal statues--or the next pop star anointed by Simon Cowell. Yet while traditional idol worship still occurs in many places of the world, internal idol worship, within the heart, is universal. In Ezekiel 14:3, God says about elders of Israel, "These men have set up idols in their hearts. Like us, the elders must have responded to this charge, "Idols? What Idols? I don't see any idols." God was saying that the human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because we think they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them.

And who can deny it. It's like a playdough factory, we no sooner press out and reshape one idol than another one, one that we never suspected lurked within, takes its place.

"Botard: I'm sorry, I ddin't mean to offend you. The fact that I despise relgion doesn't mean I don't esteem it highly."

Hmmm.

I am used to HR speak that tends to refer to people in aggregate as "resources." I understand what is meant by it--both on the surface and in the subtext. On the surface, it is seemingly harmless enough, a shorthand for people and other essential material. Or so it seems--but given that resources rarely refers to "other essential material" it is really short-hand for the interchangeable mass each of whom is as incapable of the next of accomplishing the task.

People are not resources--not unless you are Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or any number of others I could name, eminently capable of doing away with useless "resources." Human dignity rises above the level of a resource, and those of us who are true to our Christian calling need to resist with all of our might the tide of dehumanization that sweeps through our workplaces and our civilization. As small as it may be, changing the language is one place to start with this. When we can stop regarding people as resources, we can begin to understand people as they are--people. A resource is a tool or material that can be put to a limited number of uses in entirely predictable and transferable ways. This description in no way applies to any person. And when we can start thinking of people as people rather than resources, then we no longer have available to us such deplorable and evil euphemisms as "resource reallocation" or "resource sizing" to refer to the potential destruction of hundreds of human lives at corporate whim.

As I said, it's small but it is important. This morning I received an e-mail that asked me "which resources will be used to cover" such-and-such a task. I have not yet phrased my response, but I will tell you without any hesitation at all, it will sharply correct and reflect upon the original phrasing. I do not work with resources--I use them. I work with people, and I endeavor not to use them in that negative sense.

Today St. Thèr&ecute;se, tomorrow Guardian Angels, October 7, Our Lady of the Rosary, and St Teresa of Avila on October 15th. I know, I know, there are others, but this is just a sampling.

In addition, we get peak color in the Northern states, and in my home states, all of those birds that have migrated north, return to roost in the trees so that you see thousands and thousands of egrets, herons, and other birds. The trees look like they're decorated already for Christmas. This month really makes my heart sing.

from A Column Published in 1979
Erma Bombeck

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy and complaining about the shadow over my feet, I'd have cherished every minute of it and realized the wonderment growing inside me was to be my only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

Beautiful and true.

"There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet."

And then later in the same monologue by Vladimir,

"One of the thieves was saved. It's a reasonable percentage."

Both quotations from Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett