Family news

This morning we went to the hardware store to buy cat litter...the ugly cat's half grown kitten has only one back leg making it hard for him to go outside to do his thing, and as he gets larger, the newspapers won't be enough.

I call him Pegleg. His mama doesn't have a name yet. We have several other cats: Ruby's cat is the main one, but I also have three feral black cats that eat inside the side store room, where I feed them after one had kittens there.

Ruby's church group is having "leadership training" yesterday and today in the meeting room, which means they come and sing praise type songs and get a pep talk on something, presumably how to covert all those heathen Catholics to Jesus. Oh well. They are good people, but tend to be aggressive: One nice pastor asked if he could pray over Lolo at the wake and I said no...three Catholic groups came and prayed for him and us, but I suspect the Evangelicals would turn it into long sermon about Jesus for their captive audience, and since the good Protestants in our family didn't help me clean up the S--- when he was sick, I wasn't in the mood for being preached to.

If I sound ambivalent, maybe it's because Catholicism is being part of God's family, not a race to be perfect and obey the rules. But we also have confession, although since Vatican II this has been hard to find in many churches.

if I rant about the PC it is because they wish to destroy the rules and punish us for saying these rules are there for a reason.

The difference is that Catholics know we all are sinners and can't keep all the rules, so we rely on the mercy of God.

So who are we to judge a person who is trying to find God, but that doesn't mean we think that there is no right and wrong and throw out the rules that are pretty well universal, not necessarily Christian, because they were put there to defend the weak and innocent. One only has to see the destruction of the family in the US to see what the sexual revolution has wrought...but the answer is to recognize why the rules are there, but to extend mercy to those who fail to follow them. (and I should talk, since Lolo was divorced. Yet the damage he did to his family still affects them, just as my hot temper has resulted in my children being harmed).

the answer is not throw out the rules, but to pray so we are in touch with the deity and get the strength to try to do the right thing.  And when we fail, all we can do is seek for mercy and forgive others who have harmed us, just  like God has forgiven us.

Which is why the Pope has a year of Mercy.