February 2010 Archives

On Thursday Barack Obama gathered several big players in the U.S. Congress to attempt a thoughtful discussion on healthcare reform.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin slammed the claims that the bill, which he said was "full of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors," reduces the deficit over time. "Hiding spending does not reduce spending," he said.

Here it is:

The big difference, he said, was that the Republicans who oppose the bill believe the U.S. government should not take a command and control approach, but rather leave it to individuals and the marketplace which they constitute to find market-based solutions to the problems of healthcare costs.

The assessment of the National Review Online's Steve Spruiell was that the supporters of the healthcare legislation engaged in "ducking and dodging" in response to Ryan's critique.

Earlier this week Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had some sobering words for Congress, essentially saying that this level of deficit spending is going to come back and bite this country's government, and the people who freely consent to it, in the collective posterior, the same way such debt recently has the country of Greece. He told Congress's big spenders that he would not help them by printing money to pay for the ballooning national deficit.

So, have supporters of Obamacare seen the light and decided to give a little? Nope.

Said Obama:

"The truth of the matter is that politically speaking, there may not be any reason for Republicans to want to do anything," Obama said, summing up. "I don't need a poll to know that most Republican voters are opposed to this bill and might be opposed to the kind of compromise we could craft.

"And if we can't," he added, "I think we've got to go ahead and make some decisions, and then that's what elections are for. "

In other words, he's going to hang his colleagues in his political party out to dry, forcing them to take vote after damning vote on an issue that they all know is now toxic for them. And for a bill that many are already declaring dead. In his own mind, he probably thinks he doesn't owe them anything. Perhaps he thinks many of them rode his coat-tails into office anyway. That's the only explanation I can think of for such nonconsideration.

Few people if anyone think the Democrats have even a snowball's chance of growing their majorities or even minimizing their losses. Members of the mainstream press including David Gergen at MSNBC are even applauding Republicans.

Here's a piece from the Washington Times on the model statesmanship of President Obama:

President Obama pledged to "listen" at the outset of his much-ballyhooed bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. Turns out he meant he'd be listening to his own voice.

By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes - nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a "talk clock" kept by GOP aides.

From the beginning, no one could agree on anything, even how much time each side had used. When a miffed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, pointed out early on that Democrats had controlled 52 minutes to Republicans' 24, Mr. Obama jumped in to dispute even that.

"I don't think that's quite right," he said.

But then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added: "You're right, there was an imbalance on the opening statements because - I'm the president." Half the room laughed. "I didn't count my time in terms of dividing it evenly."

Now that's what I call "cowboy politics."

Now that we're a quarter of the way through Lent, we may do well to assess how we're doing. How is my prayer life going? How is my penance going? Am I still going strong or am I getting tired of it?

I, for one, am getting tired.

It's not that I want to stop doing what I'm doing for Lent. It's just that there are times when I want to take a "break" for just a little while.

But isn't that how giving up always starts? We get a little tired and the devil offers that we just take a break. And then when we decide break time's over, the devil says, not that we don't ever need to return to doing the Lord's work, but rather, "You've got time. Do it tomorrow."

The genius of Jesus' incarnation was that he probably faced times like that as well. He shares in and understands our tiredness.

But Jesus constantly drew His strength from above. The problem is that we rely too much on ourselves to do what He has asked of us. In other words, we fail to "poor in spirit," and to be "meek." Only by focusing on Jesus and inviting his strength into our weakness can we persevere.

So the danger: Relying on ourselves too much leads to tiredness, which leads to taking a break, which becomes giving up. Let's fight the fire at the source. Rely not on our own strength but the strength that comes from the one who created us.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy."

This beatitude is different from the previous ones. In all the previous beatitudes, the gift which the blessed person receives is the opposite of that which defines him. Your poor in spirit, you inherit the riches of a kingdom. You mourn, you are comforted. You patiently endure injury, you inherit the comforts of the Promised Land.

In this beatitude, the gift the we received is like that which defines us. We are merciful, we will be shown mercy. It very closely hints at the golden rule, which Christ will go on in this same sermon to speak explicitly.

We may at first think that mercy is merely a negative precept -- that it constitutes not doing something to someone. If someone sins against me, the way for me to be merciful to him is to forgive him. That is certainly one part of being merciful, but really there are many different ways to show mercy -- known as the works of mercy. There are corporal works of mercy and spiritual works of mercy. For today I will focus on the spiritual. They are:

•To instruct the ignorant;
•To counsel the doubtful;
•To admonish sinners;
•To bear wrongs patiently;
•To forgive offences willingly;
•To comfort the afflicted;
•To pray for the living and the dead.

Those first three put the lie to one particular error that I think some of us may have about mercy -- namely, that mercy is about refraining from ever challenging anyone. To be injured in some way by a friend or acquaintance and not admonish him is not mercy. In fact, it falls quite short of mercy. Mercy (in the sense of forgiveness) is about recognizing the offense and refusing to hold a grudge. But the offense is still an offense. And to fail to observe as much to the one perpetrating it is to allow him to continue to live a life hampered by sin. That is not mercy.

And all of these works of mercy are things that Jesus does. He instructs our ignorance, counsels our doubts, admonishes us when we sin, bears our wrongs patiently, forgives our sins willingly, comforts our afflictions, and hears our prayers for the living and the dead. But in order for all this to be "shown" to us, in order for us to really see it, we must do the same for others.

God's mercy challenges us. Our mercy should challenge others. God loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way. He wants us to be more like His Son, Jesus. We should be able to love ourselves just the way we are, but at the same time we must constantly struggle to be exactly who God created us to be, because that version of ourselves is the one most able to receive and reflect God's mercy to others. And of course we should love each other just the way we all are, yet constantly be inviting each other to become more like Jesus.

"Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied."

One of my favorite beatitudes. Because everyone understands hunger. We feel it every day to some degree.

Hunger means we need something. We need food to keep our bodies from starving. If we go too long without food, we grow restless and uneasy. We get uncomfortable, even irritable. We become more prone to sickness or physical ailments like headaches. We weaken.

Just as our bodies hunger, our spirits hunger. If our spirits go without food too long, they weaken. Our spirits grow restless and uneasy, uncomfortable and irritable, more prone to inner sickness (think temptation and sin).

The key to avoiding that is, Jesus says, righteousness. That means that it is not enough just to keep our noses clean and avoid wrongdoing. If all we do is go through life trying to avoid sin, then eventually sin will find us wherever we are hiding. We will find ourselves not fulfilled, not satisfied. It's not enough just to not drink poison. If we get thirsty enough, we'll drink sulfuric acid. If we avoid sin but do not replace it with something that satiates the desires of our hearts, the desires that God has placed within us, then eventually we will settle.

Sex is a great example. It's a deep hunger that many people have, God knows. God gave us those desires. The Church has many examples of sinful ways of satisfying the sexual appetite. Most of us know what they are. Many people believe such prohibitions are unreasonable. The truth is they are perfectly reasonable and eminently wise. The problem is what's missing. The problem is that we have forgotten in many ways how to satisfy our sexual appetites -- again appetites that are from God Himself -- without resorting to these sinful methods. We've forgotten how to really relate to one another as men and women. We've forgotten how to appreciate and embrace the things that make us different and the things that make us fit together so beautifully. So when the Church tells us we must not do things like have intercourse outside of marriage or self-gratify, we think the Church is telling us to starve ourselves. Not so. The Church is inviting us to pursue what really satisfies, not what tides us over for a time but has poisonous long-term consequences.

We have to actively seek out opportunities to do what is right -- to love our neighbors as Christ loves us. We have to search like starving people, because the truth is we are starving. We need to find opportunities to love other people, and to show our love for God above all. We have to make it so there is no room in our lives for sin, because when we are living on a truly healthy and holy appetite, if we have truly loving relationships and are truly serving others, then we won't hunger for anything else.

Because why compromise? Why settle for anything less? Righteousness satisfies.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land."

I have always had a difficult time understanding this particular beatitude. On the surface, it makes about as much sense to me as "Blessed are the lame, for they will take over the world." Obviously that is not what the actual beatitude says, it just sounds like that to me sometimes.

My confusion I think comes down to two ambiguous terms in it: "meek" and "the land."

"The land" is relatively simple -- it means the Kingdom of God, the entirety of gift that God wishes to give us. Think of the Old Testament "Promised Land."

For one, what is meek? What does a meek person look like? What does a meek person not look like?

Feeling quite lame, just now I looked up the term in the dictionary, and discovered that it has three meanings. One is "deficient in spirit or courage." At first I am inclined to think this may not work very well with the beatitude. But then I must remember that the psalm does not say the meek will "conquer" the land. It says they will "inherit" it -- i.e. that it will be given to them by one who is more powerful. Remembering that, the language of the beatitude is more credible, but only if the one who is "meek" submits to God in order to find greater courage.

Another meaning is "not violent or strong." This one too just makes a person sound weak and flimsy.

The first meaning listed is "enduring injury with patience and without resentment." Now this is something I can wrap my mind around. Jesus Himself was certainly a model of meekness in this sense. The ability to endure injury with patience and without resentment is the opposite of weak, the opposite of being deficient in courage. It takes real strength to endure injury at the hands of others with patience and without resentment.

So a "meek" person isn't some scrawny, helpless little man-child. It is a strong tower of a person who can take whatever anybody can dish out, patiently and without losing his temper. That is Jesus, right there.

The irony is that that kind of strength only comes from deference and submission to God. St. Paul says, "Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong."

The Israelites recorded in the Old Testament wandering the desert for 40 years in search of the Promised Land had to be meek in order to inherit it. They had to endure injury with patience and without resentment. Jesus invites us to share in his meekness, so that we can inherit the Promised Land that His perfect endurance of suffering has made accessible.

In the first year of wrangling over the huge government overhaul of healthcare reform, the use of taxpayer dollars in all the different proposals to fund abortions proved to be a major sticking point, maybe even the main reason nothing got passed.

Well now the latest proposal, straight from the White House, apparently is coffing up even more tax dollars to pay for abortions through its funding of "community health centers," like Planned Parenthood.

If abortion really was the factor that halted Obama's vision of nationalized healthcare reform last year, and I think the case can be made that it was, then he is only hurting his chances of getting something, anything, passed. As the Cato Institute observes:

Abortion may be the one issue that Democrats care about more than health care. Democrats may therefore prefer to let ObamaCare die than violate their principles on abortion. One can imagine pro-life Democrats saying, Health reform, yes -- but not at the expense of the unborn, just as one can imagine pro-choice Democrats saying, Health reform yes -- but not at the expense of a woman's right to choose.
No matter which way ObamaCare comes down on abortion, the legislation could lose enough House Democrats to fall short of the 218 votes needed to win.

Life News has more here and here.

"Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted."

This is the second beatitude. For some reason, I'm reminded of what is basically the opposite phrase, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints." This old adage always struck me as 1) a veiled justification for being satisfied with a mediocre life, and 2) inaccurate.

And it's inaccuracy is itself twofold. First it distinguishes saints from sinners. WIth the exception of one Saint, Jesus' Mother, saints are sinners. There is no flesh and blood saint alive today who is not keenly aware of his own sinfulness. That is why he mourns in the first place.

Saints do not mourn because of their lack of fortune. As we know from the first beatitude, lack of fortune, or "poverty," is in the spiritual sense a good thing. What saints mourn is our brokenness beause of sin, and the brokenness of this world because of death. "They who mourn" are simply those who recognize the stain of sin on their hearts, and that they and their loved ones are destined for a death that was not intended. Jesus Himself mourned at this reality.

Acknowledging our brokenness is quite different from recognizing that without God we are nothing. Adam knew that he was nothing without God before he sinned for the first time. In fact, he probably recognized his nothingness without God better before his fall than afterward.

It is because of sin and death that we mourn, and we are "blessed" when we do because it is better to acknowledge an undeniable truth -- even if it upsets us -- than to ignore it for the sake of keeping up a pretentious smily face.

There are two kinds of happiness in the world: the happiness that comes from constantly trying to forget about the difficult realities that deep down we know we can't escape, like knowing we will die someday; and the happiness that comes from acknowledging it, and then finding that when we acknowledge, we find a deeper comfort than we could ever have had otherwise. It's the comfort that comes from Jesus. By acknowledging our brokenness, we open ourselves up to the comfort of His healing power. But we have to mournfully acknowledge it, like a patient who goes to see a doctor. If the patient refuses to admit that he is dying of cancer, he will continue to sleep with cigarettes in his mouth and refuse chemotherapy. And he will die. If he acknowledges his brokenness, then there is a shot that he will be fixed.

This is the other big confusion about "laughing with sinners." Under which of the above circumstances is the patient likely to laugh more sincerely for a longer time? Not if he refuses to acknowledge the problem. In that case he likely to suffer longer, and more needlessly. It is the man who gets treatment who has more chance to live an exciting and fulfilling life. In the same way, one who "mourns" is not destined to spend the rest of his days crying.

The comfort of God is what gives us our greatest capacity for joy and laughter. Saints aren't just a bunch of old people who sit around crying all day. Having met a couple of living saints, what I can say about all of them is that they are full of life. They have a tremendous capacity for joy and laughter, far more than the cynic who dismisses a life of honor and virtue because he would rather laugh dishonestly for the rest of his life than cry honestly for a short time and laugh for eternity.

President Barack Obama has come out with a last ditch effort to pass something -- anything? -- in the way of healthcare reform legislation. This time around, it's regulating insurance rates.

The Heritage Foundation has observed:

In reality, there are a number of reasons why health insurers raise their rates, and so-called "insurer price-gouging" is one of the least likely causes. The biggest reason is growth in the price and volume of medical care that the plans pay for. If policyholders consume more medical care and/or if doctors and hospitals charge higher fees, then insurers must--obviously--raise their premiums to cover the added costs.

The chances of it passing are not much better this time around, probably because observers and elected officials, and pretty much everyone, see this "new" plan as basically more of the same from the president. The same $1,000,000,000,000 spent over the same ten years, to supposedly extend coverage to 31 million currently uninsured people. The Associated Press calls it "starting over," even though Obama himself has said that simply starting over was not going to happen.

The president called the upcoming healthcare reform summit a "test" of Washington's ability to "solve problems".

Obama often talks about "solving problems," which is common and by no means new in the liberal progressive vernacular. Stanford Economics professor and conservative political pundit Thomas Sowell has written a lot about this topic. Liberal progressives will often talk about "solving problems" categorically rather than incrementally. Sorry, English: solving a problem categorically means eliminating it completely. That's Obamacare. It's universal health coverage for everybody while driving down costs.

Sowell's point is that this view of problem-solving is dubious because it ignores the fact that the universe is limited -- that we have a finite amount of time and resources and a very long list of undesirable situations. The choice to solve a problem in the liberal vision is to essentially support the use of enormous amounts of time and resources (like 10 years and $1 trillion) to not solve a myriad of other problems.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."

The beatitudes are a serious of principles that Jesus taught to his followers, and this is the first, in my opinion because it is the most fundamental. The less "poor in spirit" we are, the less able we will be to be blessed in any other way.

In addition to being the most fundamental beatitude, it is also perhaps the most ironic. We have to be poor in order to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. When I think Kingdom, I think major bling. I think significant wealth. But it is only by being "poor in spirit" that I can inherit the significant wealth of Heaven. If I fill up my heart with the insignificant wealth of this world, there will be no room for what God wants me to have.

But what does "poor in spirit" mean? It means recognizing that we are nothing without God. It also means recognizing that no possessions that we may acquire, no lesser goods like notoriety or money, can give our lives the sense of meaning or joy that comes from being with God. Being poor in spirit means nothing else besides God preoccupies us.

Being poor in spirit means that we recognize that nothing else can make us happy -- that is, nothing can satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts -- other than Jesus. It doesn't mean that we must never enjoy any of the gifts that he wants us to have. Lent takes up only a little over ten percent of the calendar year. But none of those gifts can make us happy. Not even doing what God wants us to do can make us happy.

What does it take to be poor in spirit? In short, it takes letting go. It takes emptying ourselves, as Jesus did, of all the things that we rely on to give us joy and to keep us going -- whether it's our job (should we be blessed to have one) or our social life or whatever. Again, it doesn't mean we can't derive joy from these things, or be thankful to God for them. In fact, we should.

But there is only One who can occupy the very center of our hearts. That's Jesus, who himself gave us a model of spiritual poverty when He was being tempted by the devil in the desert, as Pope Benedict observed in his Angelus message on Sunday:

Of the three temptations of Jesus, the first "had its origin in hunger, in material want", said the Pope. "But Jesus responded with the words: 'One does not live by bread alone'". The second temptation came when the devil showed Christ all the kingdoms of the earth; this, the Holy Father explained, "is the lure of power which Jesus unmasked and rejected". To the third temptation, the proposal to perform a miracle that everyone might believe in Him, Jesus responded: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

"Making constant reference to Holy Scripture", the Pope added, Jesus "made human criteria subject to the only true criterion: obedience to the will of God. This is a fundamental lesson for us too: if we carry the Word of God in our minds and hearts, if it enters our lives, then we too can reject all the tricks of the Tempter".

The devil (who did not know who Jesus truly was at that point) was tempting Jesus to put something other than his closeness to God first in His life. Jesus refuses.

Jesus says, "I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me." Jesus constantly relied upon His Father, surrendering to Him. So we must constantly recognize that we are poor, that we have nothing spiritually to sustain us, to give us joy, to make us capable of loving. We have to constantly rely on Jesus.

He says "Without me you can do nothing." Jesus can love without me. He can love an eternity without me, and He has. He can love all of creation and the whole human race, without me. But I can't love in any real sense without Him. Recognizing that, every single day, is the key to inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven.

There is a lot of doubt out there about the competence of the United States government. Some 73 percent, according to Rasmussen, say that Washington is, in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, "broken."

Indeed, the very term "Washington" has become a sort of catch-all for bad ideas and red tape -- too bad for our nation's first president who helped guide our first armed forces to victory in the war for independence. President Obama has tried to portray himself as somehow above the Washington fray, mentioning Washington nine times in his most recent State of the Union Address, every time negatively. His first mention lamented that "Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems."

But he is not faring much better than the Washington establishment as a whole. His approval rating is 45 percent compared to 54 percent who disapprove, and those who strongly disapprove of his leadership outnumber those who strongly approve by 41 to 22.

This discontent translates to faith in government to handle the country's problems. Some 61 percent say the government should stay out of the housing market. Sixty-four percent of those polled believe government policies made it easier for people to purchase homes that they could not afford. In other words, in the minds of those polled, in Washington's zeal for "solving problems," it created new ones.

Only 28 percent of those polled believe the country is moving in the right direction. And -- most damning of all -- only 21 percent of those polled say the U.S. Government actually has the consent of the governed. The innovation of the United States Constitution was that it established a government that derived its authority from the consent of those governed. Some 71 percent view the government itself as a special interest group, and 70 percent think that government works together with big business in ways that hurt consumers, at a time when limited-government conservatives are hardly in any majority.

Now, in a strict technical sense, the government does have our consent. We voted these people into office. They have a mandate that derives from that fact that they won the last general election. But it is evident that the people feel that the spirit of the consent of the governend has been violated. People feel that they have made their voice heard loud and clear and Washington is just not listening. Healthcare is a prime example, as 61 percent believe it is time for the government to start over on reform. And 51 percent trust business leaders with economic decisions more than government officials. Even if I agreed with the prevailing policy proposals in Washington, I would think that those advancing them were doing a lousy job of explaining themselves.

Yet only 43 percent of those polled believe that Republicans would actually change things if they were voted into a majority, versus 32 percent who do not. If government is to regain ts credibility, it must do so not on the basis of party but on the basis of ideas. There is no reason why certain ideas, like low taxes, reduced spending, and basic fiscal responsibility cannot exist in each party. The problem is that in the eyes of many, such principles are non-existent in one party, and all too often abandoned in another.

The lack of trust in government may simply be an indicator that people believe the United States government is stretching outside of its intended scope, which has historically been understood to be insure the safety of its citizens, and protect their rights and liberties under the rule of law.

Conservative leaders across the country are looking to seize upon this documented lack of faith in the competence of our governing institutions by signing a document called the "Mt. Vernon Statement," named for George Washington's home. I'll be watching to see if its signatories can translate the statement of principles into actual policies that don't involve new spending or taxes and can stand a real chance of rebuilding the private sector to get real jobs into the hands of so many who are looking for them these days.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Here's a clip from John Paul II addressing World Youth Day on August 19, 2000.

It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

There's a lot of confusion these days about what is meant by "happiness." Is it a feeling? Is it a state of mind? Or is it an objective state of being?

I can say confidently that happiness in the sense that John Paul II spoke about it is what happens to us when the deepest desires of our hearts are satisfied. One is happy not necessarily when one feels warm and fuzzy. In fact, happiness that comes with the satisfaction of our deepest, most powerful appetites can coincide with suffering that comes with the dissatisfaction of our lesser ones.

This kind of happiness, which overcomes any suffering we may face, is what Jesus calls being "blessed." The classical term for it is "beatitude."

That's what I'll be looking at for the next few days.

I'm going to go easy on myself on Sundays, since Sundays are not included in the 40 days of Lent and, it's true, those observing Lenten penances are not obliged to do so on Sundays. A scriptural basis for the practice can be found in Luke 5:33-35*:

And they [the Pharisees etc] said to him, "The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same; but yours eat and drink."
Jesus answered them, "Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?
But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days."

For purposes of the Lenten season, it is my understanding that Catholics consider Sunday to be a day that "bridegroom," i.e. Jesus, is with us in the most intimate and ultimate sense. This is a time for celebration, and there is in some sense a mournful, and-or an anticipatory dimension to fasting that is not quite compatible.

Of course, some people prefer to continue their penances on Sundays. I'm not aware of any hard and fast rule against that. I just know that some in the past have said that suspended our fasts on Sundays during Lent is "weak." I don't think so, especially when Jesus Himself is providing a rationale to do exactly that.

*See also Matt 9:14-15, and Mark 2:19-20

Good on ya!:

Australian Catholics were jubilant last night at the Vatican's announcement that Mary MacKillop has become the nation's first saint.

A consistory of cardinals and Pope Benedict XVI voted late last night, Melbourne time, to declare the founder of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart among the company of the saints.

A ''deeply pleased'' Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said St Mary was a woman of holiness, a great educator, an advocate for the poor and a visionary of Christianity.

''It will be a great encouragement,'' he said. ''The nuns were loved by the people because they shared their battles and their poverty. She and her sisters have always been very close to the people.''

The formal canonisation ceremony will take place in Rome on October 17 to allow the expected thousands of Australian pilgrims and church leaders to plan to attend.

There will also be celebratory services in all Australian capital cities and most big Catholic churches, according to Australian Catholic Bishops Conference secretary Brian Lucas.

''It reminds us of the possibilities of heroes and heroines who can make a difference,'' he said. ''We often get cynical, and celebrities attract our attention - we don't often see virtue as attractive. That's what is special about Mary MacKillop.''

St Mary of the Cross, as she may be known from now on, founded her order in Penola, South Australia, in 1866. On her deathbed in 1909, Mary - earlier excommunicated by another Australian bishop - was hailed as a saint by the Sydney Archbishop, Cardinal Moran.

Pope Benedict's Lent 2010 Message.

I want to consider the meaning of the term "justice," which in common usage implies "to render to every man his due," according to the famous expression of Ulpian, a Roman jurist of the third century. In reality, however, this classical definition does not specify what "due" is to be rendered to each person. What man needs most cannot be guaranteed to him by law. In order to live life to the full, something more intimate is necessary that can be granted only as a gift: we could say that man lives by that love which only God can communicate since He created the human person in His image and likeness.

This reminds me of what I wrote a few days ago about the assertion I read that "You deserve love." But if something is inherently a gift, like love, then it is by definition given despite the fact that we have done nothing in particular to warrant receiving it. In the case of God's love, we have done quite the opposite. We have given Him reason to justly withhold His love from us.

And that is, in a most unsettling sense, what we really "deserve." So when it comes to love, it is not a question of what we deserve. It is a question of how we might escape what we deserve. The answer, simply, is we need God to save us. We don't deserve His saving love. We simply need it.

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who has ever been really peeved at the IRS but did not fly a plane into a building.

What a crazy and tragic day in my hometown of Austin, Texas. A majorly disgruntled man flies a plane into a seven story office building barely a mile away from my apartment. The building housed an office of the Internal Revenue Service. At least two people are dead, one of whom is believed to be the killer.

Fox News picked it up. MSNBC picked it up. Heck, even Rush picked it up.

But the coolest story by far was about a glass worker named Robin Dehaven. This guy makes me proud to live in this town, not to mention all the first responders and EMS crews etc. Keep Austin Heroic!

"We though many are one body in Christ, and individually parts of one another," St. Paul writes*. That "one body in Christ," or what is known in Catholicism as the "Mystical Body of Christ," is simply the community of those who believe in Christ and are united to Him by baptism -- it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

Often times when people think of the "Catholic Church," they picture the hierarchy, the Vatican, the pope, the cardinals, bishops, priests etc. And the Church certainly includes all these.

But the Church is all of us, all who are baptized in Christ.

We may think that a life of "holiness" is the business of those ordained types, and the nuns and monks. When it comes to living and praying and being like Jesus, that's for those folks, not me. I have a real job!

But Christ calls us to love one another as He loves us. It is called the "universal call to holiness." He calls all of us who are baptized in Him to really give of ourselves to each other and devote ourselves to one another's wellbeing, the way He first did for us.

The image of "one body" is useful here. St. Paul writes that the "eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need your hep,' nor the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' No much rather those that seem the more feeble members of the body are in fact that much more necessary, and those that seem less honorable, we surround with even more abundant honor.'"**

I, Mark, am one body. Suppose my hand is bleeding from a gash, almost severed, dangling there by a couple of hairs, and blood is spewing all over my shirt and pants. Suppose I look at my hand, shrug indifferently, and say, "Eh, whatever."

I suspect you would think there was something rather wrong with me. Men in white coats would have to come take me away.

Why? Because what is supposed to happen is the whole rest of my body is supposed to get to work to try to fix that.

And notice, if I react to my wound with indifference, then the problem is not just with my hand, but with all of me. With my whole body and my whole mind. You'd think I was crazy, or suicidal, or not all there, or something.

Well if we're One Body in Christ, what does that mean? It means that if just one of us is hurting spiritually, emotionally, or in any other way, and the rest of us do nothing to help that person, then something is wrong with our whole body, our whole mind, our whole soul.

If we are truly one body in Christ, then indifference is not an option.

This is not some Communist-type collectivism that destroys individuality or personal responsibility. Jesus did not create a political city-state. He started a family. And the genius of a family is that you as an individual are loved unconditionally simply because you are a part of the family, and yet you grow up recognizing that you are not the only person on the planet. Sometimes you have to wait in line for the bathroom. Sometimes you have to clean up messes you didn't make. But other times you learn just how great it is to have your mom and dad tell you "good job."

You learn in your family better than anywhere else exactly who you are, what you're good at, what you enjoy, what you uniquely have to offer to the family and to the world. And the goal of a member of the family of God, the Body of Christ, is to hear the Father say to us, the same way He said it to Jesus, "With you I am well pleased."***

And the really interesting thing about families, and this is something we could sure be reminded of these days: the bigger the better. Maybe that's why Jesus told His disciples to go and make disciples of "all nations."+

*Romans 12:5
**I Corinthians 12:21-23
***Matthew 3:17
+Matthew 28:19

My favorite band, U2, are featured on the Vatican's recently released list of top ten albums of all time.

This of course means undeniable cool points for the Central Hub of Jesus Christ's Holy Church, and undeniable holy points for the living Irish rock legends.

The particular U2 album listed is Achtung Baby, the album in which the band sort of rebooted itself, moving from a less moody type of sound to a more edgy contemporary pop feel.

The album includes three of my all-time favorite U2 songs:

One:

Until the End of the World:

and Ultraviolet (Light My Way), which along with Where the Streets Have No Name is my favorite U2 song.

Other classics on this album include Mysterious Ways and The Fly.

Kudos to the Vatican. In addition to dispensing eternal Gospel truth to the world, turns out they also have some taste!

Here's a quick footnote on the divinity of Jesus from my Lent Day One reflection.

Jesus is the human embodiment of the eternal expression of God. When we say a word, it comes and goes. When God says a Word, the Word remains. Isaiah 40:8 says "The grass withers and the flower wilts, but the word of our Lord stands forever."

God is eternal, ever-existing, and before there was anything in the universe to know besides Himself, He knew Himself perfectly. He knew Himself, and He spoke the flawless, complete truth of Himself in the form of the Word.

In this way, the Father begot the Son. The Father did not "make" the Son, for when a man "makes" something he by definition uses materials that are different from himself, like a man making a chair out of wood. When a father begets a son, the son is made of the same stuff as the father. (Kudos to C.S. Lewis for this point.) The Word or Son of God consists of the same eternal, everlasting divine stuff that the Father consists of. So the Word was, in the beginning, with God, and was God.

Heritage Foundation has an interesting piece on the myriad meteorological anomalies blamed on climate change.

No snow, too much snow. It does not matter to the enviroleft crowd. For them, global warming always is to blame. That is the whole reason the movement made a deliberate decision earlier this decade to stop calling it "global warming" and start calling it "climate change." That way they could expand the universe of terrible things they could plausibly blame on global warming. One British citizen even maintains a comprehensive list of everything the enviroleft has tried to blame on global warming including: Atlantic ocean less salty, Atlantic ocean more salty, Earth slowing down, Earth spinning faster, fish bigger, fish shrinking, and (most importantly) beer better, beer worse.

The links are all there. It's pretty exhaustive, and exhausting. Among the ones I found most interesting, was the column by Robert F. Kennedy Jr blaming global warming for anemic winters in Washington DC in Sept. 2008.

Doesn't quite add up with this.

None of this disproves man-made climate change. But how many different things can be blamed on this boogeyman, honestly?

Mike Papantonio wrote a column Feb. 11 in the Huffington Post attesting that the threat of catastrophe has long been used to deny human advancement. He cites the Dark Ages' fear that the ships would fall off the edge of the earth as an example, and blames conservatives for such trepidation.

Yet it seems to be certain members of the left who claim that there are so many things man cannot do, like drill for oil, or rely on traditional energy sources to build new infrastructure even in the short term, because of a fear based on science that some say is settled but on which others disagree. Such energy sources have created enormous opportunities for just the kind of progress that progressives on the left claim they want. Yet it is climate change-believing progressives who warn of impending doom if humans today continue to use the resources they have been given to advance themselves.

It's not surprising that fewer people now believe that global warming is caused by man, or that big energy and fuel companies are pulling out of bigtime initiatives to address climate change. The whole theory is so amorphous and confused, if they made it into a movie, I suspect it would be what my dad calls an "idiot plot."

Oh wait, they already did.

The Season of Lent is upon us. In addition to the private penances that I will be observing for the next 40 days (not including Sundays) I will also write daily reflections on the life of Jesus of Nazareth -- His ministry on earth, His passion and death, my relationship with Him, and what He means to me, how He has affected my life.

I will try to keep my daily entries interesting and not repeat myself too much. My feeling is that since Jesus is God, and God is eternal, you really can never say too much about Him.

Although I try to write about many things on this personal blog -- politics, sports, religion, etc -- I will display the Lenten Days on the front page of the website each day during the season, through the celebration of Easter Sunday.

I hope that those who read these daily entries who share my faith can get something out of it for their own Lenten journey towards the celebration of Jesus' redemptive Passion and Death, and Resurrection. Perhaps something I write about can help you to realize that there's nothing strange about your own journey in faith with Christ.

If there's anything I've learned in the time that I've been actively engaged in my faith and in my relationship with Him, it's that I'm a lot more normal than I used to think I was. Not that it isn't special and unique to me, just that there are always others out there who can relate to what I've experienced, because God wants us to be able to relate to each other, as He does to us and even to His own self -- Father to Son to Holy Spirit.

A prominent politician recently gave a speech to a crowd. The writer from Time Magazine described the speech as "inspired drivel, a series of distortions and oversimplifications, totally bereft of nourishing policy proposals -- the sort of thing calculated, carefully calculated, to drive lamestream media types like me frothing to their keyboards."

I've never read a better description of one of Barack Obama's speeches. After all, what drivel has ever been more inspiring than "Hope," and "Change We Can Believe In"? How excited did it make so many when the President of the United States proclaimed with such confidence that he could provide healthcare to tens of millions of currently uninsured Americans, all while driving costs down? Sure, there are no nourishing proposals of how exactly to accomplish that in the real world, but who cares with such inspiring drivel?

But alas, Klein isn't writing about Barack Obama. He's writing about Sarah Palin, who last week gave a rousing speech to a Tea Party crowd, to whom she asked, "How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?"

Klein continues: "Palin is a big fat target, eminently available for derision. But I will not deride." Except that he just did. "Because brilliance must be respected, especially when it involves marketing in an era when image almost always passes for substance." Marketing that passes for substance? That was the entirety of Barack Obama's campaign! He ran as a moderate who turned out to be as far left as any president in recent memory. Sarah Palin ran as what she is -- a limited government, free-market social conservative. She was never bashful about any of that, even though she was running on the same ticket with a moderate Republican candidate for president.

Klein goes on to theorize about Palin's popularity.

Palin hits the same mystic chords as Clinton. A woman who goes to war against the 19-year-old boy who knocked up her daughter and then posed for Playgirl is far more comprehensible to most Americans than deficit spending is.

Apparently Klein does not consider the lowly, unwashed masses intelligent enough to comprehend the idea of spending money that one does not have. Admittedly, the idea is a little mysterious, especially on the scale that it has been happening in Washington. But surely Klein does not have so little faith in his readers and would-be readers that he would sooner think that Sarah Palin is popular with them because they feel her pain?

And if Sarah Palin can't possibly be popular with the American people because they are upset with deficit spending and recognize in her someone who at least would not do so much of it, then how does he explain Obama's waning popularity? And the ever astounding unpopularity of Congress? Is it that Obama and the rest have no pain for the Americans to feel?

I would suggest that a great deal of voters in this country are finally starting to comprehend exactly what deficit spending is, and they don't like it, and they know this president and this Congress are doing it quite a lot.

I've recently seen a new facebook group -- one of those politically charged ones whose title is always "bet I can find 1,000,000 people who support such and such." It's up close to 2,000,000 members now, but of course who knows how many of the people who have signed on to it actually believe in the group's stated cause or are just signing on to it so they can write on the group's wall. That's just one of the reasons I rarely if ever join a politically charged group or cause on facebook.

Well, suffice to say that if you're one of those dissenters in this particular politically charged facebook group, you are blessed with the time-honored, rational-conversation-ending moniker: "homophobe."

The creator of the group publicly posted a message to one such dissenter, which began with the proclamation: "YOU deserve love."

Now this got me thinking. How successful do relationships tend to be when the focus on one (or both) of the parties is what he or she deserves from it? If I go into a relationship thinking solely of what I deserve, what is likely to happen in that relationship?

Is it better to go into a relationship thinking about what I deserve or what I can do to serve?

We have at least one religious leader in history who expressed a certain philosophy of relationships -- when he said that he came "not to be served but to serve."

That's the point of love. It is not that I deserve anything. Love has to be freely given, and freely received. If I were to walk up to my fiance and say, "Marry me -- I deserve it," how likely would she have been to say yes? Could any woman, or man as the case may be, say yes without disrespecting herself or himself?

Then what disrespect would be done to the beautiful gift of marriage if it was just given away to anyone who demanded it as a "right"?

Life, love, marriage, is not about what we deserve. It's about what we are called to do. I am called to serve others -- in a special way my family -- the one I presently have, and the one that I hope to build in the future.

The problem that I see with the movement to expand (and thereby essentially dissolve) the definition of marriage, is the thrust of the argument -- namely that it is a "right," something that you and I "deserve."

This is not to say that people deserve a wretched, loveless existence. But marriage and love are not the same thing. Many of the people who support same-sex marriage also very well understand this simple fact. Some same-sex marriage supporters view the traditional, heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong version of marriage with suspicion and even contempt. Those who are married to each other certainly deserve to be loved by one another in all the ways that the marriage vow requires. But that is not the same as saying that everyone "deserves" to be married -- much less saying that everyone deserves to enter into whatever manner of relationship they wish with whomever or whatever they wish, and call that "marriage."

Well, Washington D.C. is now recovering from what President Obama has called "Snowmageddon." Apparently our Nation's Capitol was snowed very much under this past week, grinding business to a halt.

They're back at work now. All good things must come to an end.

Anyway, climate change questioners have been having a great ol' time pointing out that, hey, it's cold outside! Not just in Washington D.C., but in other places, like Austin, and Lubbock, and Dallas, Texas! Even annoyingly so. I'm sick and tired of how long and cold this winter has been. The front driver-side window of my truck will not roll down now, because it's been so cold for so many weeks straight.

How has the press responded? Well, one by complaining about the questioners daring to use the snowstorm to joke about global warming. Yes, the nerve!

And two, by trying to convince readers that climate change (originally named "global warming" but that was most inconvenient for circumstances like this) is causing the blizzards. Of course! Why didn't I think of that?

Actually, it's not really surprising that global warming believers would say that. See that's the thing: If you dare to question global warming, there's no way to win, no matter what the weather happens to do. In fact, whatever the weather happens to do, that will actually prove that climate change is real. The fact that "March of the Penguins" could have been filmed in Washington D.C. this past week proves that the world will self-destruct if you don't buy a plug-in. If Washington D.C. was (better) warmer than it normally is, that would prove that you must buy a plug-in.

You know what? Just buy a plug-in.

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the first African American president met with African American leaders to talk about how to address the huge unemployment of the African American population.

Prominent African-American leaders pressed President Barack Obama on Wednesday to pursue an economic agenda that includes targeted help for blacks, whose unemployment rate is much higher than the national average and nearly twice that of whites.

1) Isn't "targeted help" exactly what so many black people have been receiving from the federal government for decades now? At disproportionately high rates African American individuals and families signed onto government assistance programs since they first started mushrooming out of the Washington ground under LBJ. And how much good has it really done them?

2) How ironic is it that on a black president's watch the African American population is langusihing in higher degrees of unemployment than ever? When he said "the road would be long" in his acceptance speech on Election Night, could Barack Obama really have meant that over a year into his presidency that his own ethnic group would be doing worse with no sign of getting better? Wasn't he supposed to bring hope and change for the better to his own ethnic group as well as the country entire?

Of course, someone may object that if African Americans' plight started to actually improve in the United States, while other ethnicities held constant, Obama's policies might still face criticism for being too "targeted." But that would depend on why African Americans did uniquely better. If Obama suddenly decided to step back and let the free marketplace actually be "free at last," and African Americans uniquely seized upon the opportunities afforded to them by the loosening of Washington's command-and-control policies, by working hard and gaining marketable skills, then more power to them. That is how Asian Americans have prospered in this country for decades.

The story continues:

"We worked very hard to share with him ideas around the need for targeted relief - and that means to urban communities, to areas of high unemployment," [National Urban League President Marc] Morial said. He said the next challenge is to "create the political will in the Congress. My argument is that when cities do well, America does well. Cities are the economic engines."

Indeed, the story does not at all discuss the Asian American unemployment rate, which, like with all ethnicities in the United States, is higher now than it's been in a long, long time.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures show jobless rates for whites, African Americans, and Asian Americans. But how much are Asian Americans hurting in comparison to blacks and even whites?

In Jan. 2010 the unemployment rate for:
*Whites was 9.6 percent,
*African Americans was 17.3 percent, and
*Asian Americans was 8.4 percent.

Asian Americans must be receiving some serious targeted help from the United States government, right? The National Association for the Advancement of Asian American People (NAAAAP) must really be breathing down Barack Obama's neck. Right? ... No?

At a press conference on Wednesday, the President said:

the best thing that I can do for the African American community or the Latino community or the Asian community, whatever community, is to get the economy as a whole moving.

Somebody should tell him the economy is already moving for the Asian (American) community and has been moving for decades. Why would that be the case? Because they're the ones who aren't going to Barack Obama to get their economy moving. They rely (mostly I mean -- wouldn't want to stereotype anybody) on themselves. They don't play (generally I mean) the victim. They work hard, they educate themselves, they learn marketable skills, they build their incomes over time, and whaddaya know, they get jobs, even the few that are out there. And they prosper.

It ain't rocket science.

(And no, I'm not suggesting that African Americans as a group play the victim or don't work hard or anything like that. To the extent that any of the 17.3 percent of African Americans who are unemployed do not work hard and do play victims, it is only because they have been persuaded to do so by the well-intentioned policies of central planners in Washington D.C. in recent decades -- policies that place African Americans in a state of dependence on government rather than on themselves for goods and services.)

Twenty-four hours later, and I still can't believe the New Orleans Saints have won the Super Bowl. A week, two weeks, ten years from now, it still won't feel quite real. I could watch the whole game again and probably be just as enthralled as I was the first time -- just because the idea of a Saints Super Bowl victory seems other-worldly.

So, reasons last night was totally kickass:

1) Obviously, the Saints won. And it was actually pretty decisive. The Colts went up 10-0 in the first quarter. After that, the score was 31-7 Saints. A lot of people thought the game would be high scoring and close, and thought the Colts would win. A few thought it would be high-scoring and close and the Saints would win. Some thought it would be high-scoring and the Colts would win going away. Few people if any thought it would be high scoring and the Saints would win decisively.

Of course the obligatory NFL commercial advertising the winning team's championship gear immediately aired after the game. And most seasons you just kind of roll your eyes but this time, that's actually going to be some highly in-demand stuff. I mean, the whole story behind this season for this team in this city with these characters. The Championship DVD's and the literature and stuff, all chronicling the team's history of extraordinary badness and the city's recent catastrophe and road to recovery. It's like the MIghty Ducks meets Rocky meets We Are Marshall.

2) The Doritos Dog. CLASSIC:

3) It was one of the few times in my life that I can remember that my dad was actually genuinely surprised by what he saw. He's usually right about things, so not a lot surprises him. But he has been watching the Saints get whip-creamed for 43 years, and he never ever ... ever ... thought that he would live to see the Saints win the big one. I don't think I will ever forget how, when Porter returned that interception for the touchdown to put the Saints up 31-17, dad waved his arms in the air.

4) Drew Brees is from AUSTIN TEXAS BABY. I remember when he was a quarterback for the Westlake Chapparrals. They used to beat the ever-loving crap out of us ("us" being Leander High School) every single year, and one year for our homecoming game. We lost 49 to 7. Scheduling Westlake for Homecoming. There's a mistake there's no excuse to make twice.

5) When Pierre Thomas scored that amazing 16-yard touchdown, I got to cry out: "My name is Pierre! I come from Paris!" Eddie Izzard-style. (Three minutes in and you'll see what I mean.)

6) Gutsy won out. Sean Payton was the definition of gutsy, and even when it didn't quite work the way he wanted, like when they failed to punch it into the endzone of fourth down near the end of the first half, it still paid dividends, like pinning the Colts deep so the Saints could get the ball back in time for a field goal right before the half. And then of course there was the onside kick to start the half. It changed the entire feel of the game.

And last, and in some ways most spectacular or all ...

7) Betty White makes up for the PetMeds commercials!

Tim Noah with Slate magazine, I hope as a joke, wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI to implore him to get those pesky Catholics off the backs of the elected officials who really really really want to pass the government overhaul of the nation's medical care system.

It's pretty clear from reading the letter that Mr. Noah doesn't know much about the Catholic faith -- not that we would expect him too, since he readily admits that he is not Catholic.Here's some input for his edification.

He writes: "I'm not sure you even know this, but (apart from the Republican Party) no institution poses a greater obstacle to the passage of health care reform than the Catholic Church." Amen to that.

"The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops refuses to support a compromise the Senate reached on the question of whether private health insurers operating within the new insurance exchanges established under the bill could provide unsubsidized coverage for abortions."

Let me help ya out here, Noah. Making an abortion easier to commit in any way shape or form does not constitute a "compromise." Putting the American taxpayer even a step closer to paying for other people's abortions (or "reproductive healthcare," as you might call it) is not a compromise. Catholic politicians are free to compromise on abortion, but only if the compromise serves to tighten acess to abortion. They are not free to vote in favor of, neither are the American bishops free to sign off on, a so-called "compromise" that relaxes abortion limitations or regulations.

John Paul II, who would probably humor you about as much as you could expect Benedict to, actually wrote about this in his encyclical called Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life"), in paragraph 73.

when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.

Mr. Noah claims that "It isn't even true that the Senate bill allows federal funds to be used for abortions."

Well, except that it kind of is. The Heritage Foundation laid it out on January 8:

Here is how it works: the Senate version of Obamacare says that "an exchange shall be a governmental agency or non-profit entity that is set up by a State." The Exchange "shall make available qualified health plans to qualified individuals and qualified employers." Now, the federal government will subsidize private insurance plans through tax credits and subsidies to a state's Exchange or non-profit entity. These health care plans are allowed to cover abortion, but through an accounting gimmick where an individual who wants abortion coverage will pay $12 extra for a plan.

Very simply, the House bill explicitly forbids federal funds from going to any plan that covers abortions, similar to the law governing the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. The Stupak Amendment will require insurance companies to omit abortion coverage if they get federal monies. The Senate restrictions explicitly allow for abortion coverage in federally subsidized plans, under the pretext that people will have to pay an extra $12 dollars in non-federal monies for the coverage. Considering all the federal money that will be pouring into the system, $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years of implementation, to argue that no federal money will support or promote abortion under a government-run health care system defies logic. It seems clear that the House and Senate have a long way to go to reconcile their differing positions on abortion.

Mr. Noah even implored the Holy Father to tell his American bishops more or less to back off their opposition to the abortion language in the bill.

Not likely, Mr. Noah.

Just this past week the Holy Father affirmed that the Church has the right to bring Gospel values into a public debate. Over in Britain, Parliament is considering an Equality Bill, so-called, that Benedict said would actually impose "unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs."

Catholic bishops have said the bill means churches could be sued by anyone who was turned away as a candidate for the priesthood on grounds of gender or sexual lifestyle.

The point is you won't get much out of telling Pope Benedict that he may not want his bishops "mucking around in U.S. politics to quite this extent," other than a light chuckle, maybe.

The United Kingdom's Telegraph has discovered a few more errors in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) report on man-made global warming. Here's a few:

The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company.
Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters.
New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished.
More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups.

At that time, the EPA administrator "relied heavily" upon the recent assessments of the IPCC.

The Heritage Foundation has more.

Aaaaand more from the Times Online in the United Kingdom.

I'm transferring over to a new blog system. I've already got a few brand new posts up and am working on getting the old ones loaded up here as well.

Welcome to my brand-spanking new website. I plan to build more here in the future, but for now I encourage you, dear reader, to take a look at my blog, "mark's remarks." Hope you like it!