Old Stuff

Movin' on up

You may now find Summa Minutiae at stblogs.org. This version of the blog will remain as an archive, Vetus Minutiae.

Update

Since Mr. O'Rama has been wondering... we just finished moving to our new house, and there's not much of me left for blogging right now. And I suspect the "gesima" Sundays have started on the old calendar, leading to my regular but mysterious penitential season shutdown.

Anyways, I hope to be "back" soon.

Measuring my Jesus Christ

It seems that some St. Blog's parishioners like to get a rough measure of the orthodoxy of a web site by finding out how many times the site mentions Jesus. (Aside: What should this measure be called?) Anyway, Mr. O'Rama measured a couple of blogs and found scores of 4 and 15, meaning one blog mentioned Jesus 4 times and the other 15 times.

May I humbly announce that my score is 879?

:-)

That's about right

Congratulations! You're Pippin!


Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I am Theoden, minus some hair

Theoden If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Theoden, Man of Rohan, King of the Mark, and uncle of Eomer and Eowyn. In the movie, I am played by Bernard Hill. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test  with Perseus Web Survey Software

I'm in!

Now I know I've made it! The folks at the nascent Saint Linus Review have even asked me to announce their "literary journal of orthodox Catholic poetry and prose that will be started up next year." Here's the announcement, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out next year.

Here are the basic biographical facts about Saint Linus, the second Pope.

Hooray!

The indispensable CERC - Catholic Educator's Resource Center - has a blog.

Yep

Whether you harbor some vestige of modernist
morality or simply fail to see the irony in
Reality TV, one thing is clear. You are just
Not Postmodern.


What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

Champaign's Catholic blogs

• Mr. Lugardo's Rosa Mystica
• Miss vonHuben's Do the Embot (which I can't read because of the underscores in its name, hint hint)
• The Theoscope
• Yers truly

Have I missed anyone? Are these guys in Champaign? If I weren't asleep as I type this, I could do a google search for, say,

champaign catholic site:blogspot.com

or

swetland site:blogspot.com

or

"catholic disneyland" site:blogspot.com

Happens every time

This happened during Lent, too - seems I lose that blogging thang during the penitential seasons. Weird, huh? Random notes:

• How on earth did anyone buy a house before faxes, phones, computers and cars? The closing date fast approaches (18 Dec) and there's a lot more paper to be shoveled around. On the bright side, the owners are giving us their piano and some furniture.
  
• I'm getting a Clarke tinwhistle for Christmas!
  
• My Advent reading is Opus Dei's In Conversation with God (covers things Catholics do) and a 1961 edition of Divine Intimacy, the old Carmelite meditation book (covers what Catholics are). That Juan de la Cruz nothingness stuff is finally making sense.
  
• Chant notation for the O antiphons
  

Comments are open again

Testing...

Fighting MT comment spam

Jay Allen is working on the problem, and he has a spam-fighting MT plugin recommended by Ben and Mena.

More automated postings

Over at Daily Devotions I've started automatic postings of each day's second reading from the Office of Readings.

Apologies and a new home

I apologize to the folks who head over here regularly - the blog's been mighty quiet lately. We've found a house and are working out the purchasing details and whatnot, so I really haven't been doing the sort of reading lately that leads to bloggable stuff.

The house is far away from our current drug- and gang-infested neighborhood! It's a huge old farmhouse built in 1862 and much renovated, modernized and expanded over the years on the edge of a very small farming town with its own parish, a gas station, very busy railroad tracks, and traffic jams near the grain elevator during harvest time. There's room for six bedrooms, or eight if we divide two of the larger ones, one of which we'll turn one into a library & office and another into a classroom. It has two kitchens (upstairs and down), two bathrooms, a large yard with some good old trees, and on and on. We're offering prayerful thanksgiving to Saint Joseph for his obvious intercession, and we hope that all the remaining work will go smoohly - financing, inspection, and all that other stuff.

I'll post pictures when I have them, and I'm already thinking of starting another blog - This Old House: the adventures of a Catholic family in their 1862 farmhouse. It'd be handy as a todo list of things to fix and as documentation of the work we do on the house.

Hm

I'd better post something here before Gerard moves me to the bottom of his list :-)

Blog spam flood

I'm being overrun by blog spammers, so comments will be disabled for a while.

On peppering one's blog with naughty bits

If you blog something like Cosmopolitan's 101 Fabulous Sex Tips, then some folks who search the net for Cosmopolitan's 101 Fabulous Sex Tips arrive here and not there. I'm assuming that's a good thing :-/

I hereby dub this the Painted Boob Effect; cleverer names are welcome. Following Mr. Lugardo's suggestion,

Net::MovableType

Looks like automated postings at Daily Devotions will begin soon:

use Net::MovableType;
my $mt = new Net::MovableType('http://members.wri.com/billw/cgi-bin/mt-xmlrpc.cgi');
$mt->username('???');
$mt->password('???');
$mt->blogId(2);

my $filename = "/billw/catholic/martyrology/09/09-12.txt";
open (IN, "$filename") || die "can't open $filename: $!\n";
undef $/;

while (<IN>) {
   $content = $_;
}

$entry = {
   title => "Posting from a perl script",
   description => $content
};

$new_id = $mt->newPost($entry, 0); # <-- not publishing it yet
$mt->setPostCategories($new_id, ["Bloggers", "Dominican Martyrology"]);
$mt->publishPost($new_id);

Posting from a perl script

The Twelfth Day of September

The feast of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Sovereign Pontiff, Innocent XI, commanded this feast to be celebrated because of the brilliant victory obtained over the Turks at Vienna in Austria by the help of the Blessed Virgin. A totum duplex feast.

In Bithynia, St. Autonomus, bishop and martyr. He went there from Italy to avoid the persecution of Diocletian. After he had converted a great many people to the faith, one day while he was celebrating Mass, he was slain at the altar by enraged pagans, and thus became a sacrifice of Christ.

At Iconium in Lycaonia, St. Curonotus, bishop. He was beheaded at the time of the governor Perennius, thus receiving the palm of martyrdom.

At Alexandria, the birthday of the holy martyrs Hieronides, Leontius, Serapion, Silesius, Valerian, and Strato. In the reign of the Emperor Maximian, they were drowned in the sea for confessing the name of Christ.

At Meri in Phrygia, the holy martyrs Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tatian. At the time of Julian the Apostate, they underwent various torments at the hands of the governor Almachius, and then were placed on red-hot gridirons. Still rejoicing, they completed their martyrdom.

At Pavia, St. Juventius, bishop, of whom mention is made on February 8. St. Hermagores, a disciple of St. Mark the Evangelist, sent Juventius to Pavia along with the St. Syrus mentioned on December 9. Both these (missionaries) preached the Gospel of Christ at Pavia and distinguished themselves by their miracles and their great virtues. By their admirable deeds, they brought the faith even to the neighboring cities. Thus, with an honor befitting their pontifical dignity, their lives came to a glorious close.

At Lyons in Gaul, the death of St. Sacerdos, bishop.

At Verona, St. Silvinus, bishop.

At Anderlecht near Brussels in Brabant, St. Guy, confessor.

The death of the venerable brother Jerome Xavierre of Saragossa, 52nd master general of the Order. He was also a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.

V. And elsewhere, many other holy martyrs, confessors and holy virgins.

R. Thanks be to God.

Make a new plan, Stan

Daily postings are hard to do - see my Daily Devotions blog. The only way I can get them done consistently is to have a vast library of files, and write a program to select the right file based on the calendar date or liturgical date, and mail or post it. That's how I contribute to the cathspirit mailing list - a cron job runs a program that selects the appropriate file and mails it to the list.

Now that I've discovered various Perl modules that support MovableType, I'm thinking of adopting that approach for postings at Daily Devotions. Now that would be cool.

New blog!

My wife Lisa has started blogging! See Heroic Moments.

Really, I'm not kidding

Stop reading this here blog and read Tom's latest posts at Disputations and William Luse's profound meditation on Glamour and Gehenna.

Hey!

Quit reading my lousy blog and get yourself over to Disputations. NOW! Tom's back and he's on a tear.

Birthday blog

I started blogging one year ago today.

Australia

My website is starting to get boatloads of hits from Australians googling for Bill White. A check of news.google.com reveals a couple of Bill Whites in the news down under.

Reverend Bill White of the Surfer's Chapel:

Christian Surfers, an international organization that started in Australia more than 20 years ago, has flourished recently in the United States. Two years ago, nine chapters served about 450 members. Today, 28 groups from Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to Pensacola, Fla., to Hawaii, count about 1,400 members.

The Christian Surfers' Web site (Christiansufers.com) lists two chapters in San Diego County - Christian Surfers San Diego North County and Christian Surfers Encinitas.

The organization sees itself as a bridge between surfers and churches.

"For a lot of surfers, the whole concept of church is off-putting," said the Rev. Bill White of the Surfer's Chapel, where services are held on Saturday nights to avoid interference with morning waves.

Surfers are sometimes skeptical of organized religion, he said, but can be swayed by a community of faith solely comprised of fellow wave riders. "Nobody thinks anything of an Armenian church or a Hispanic church or a Samoan church," White said. "I feel that surfers identify with surfing as much as any ethnic group identifies with their ethnicity."

Then there's the Los Angeles cyber-stalker Bill White:

A former University of Queensland lecturer who has been stalked over the Internet for the past five years is seeking at least $110,000 in a damages claim.

Trevor Cullen, who taught journalism at UQ, has asked the Western Australia Supreme Court to award him damages of at least $100,000 in his Internet defamation case against Los Angeles cyber-stalker Bill White.

A judge has already ruled that he was defamed by White, who set up a website in Dr Cullen's name in which he purportedly admitted to being a pedophile and to having committed academic fraud.

Daily devotions & readings

The new blog continues apace with readings from the Rule of Saint Benedict, the Office of Readings, the Dominican martyrology and patristic commentaries on each day's Gospel from the Catena aurea of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Important notice

I AM NOT MEL GIBSON. Some confusion is understandable, of course: we both sported mullets in the 1980s, we're both handsome buggers, and so on. Seems that most folks leaving comments on my blog here think I'm Mel.

Open for business

Here's the new blog: Daily Devotions: Daily readings in Christian Scripture, history, spirituality and theology

It's a boatload of work, so I may not have a complete set of postings each day. Heck, I'll probably even miss days when I don't have a good block of time to devote to it. Anyone up for a MovableType group blog? It's easy and secure.

Meanwhile, I should find out where Gerard gets his "this day in Christian history" postings.

That does it!

Mr. O'Rama the Irish hooligan has posted a relevant quote from Ven. John Henry Newman and dang it, that's the (next to) last straw! If I see one more blogger posting a relevant thought from Cardinal Newman (besides Nârwen, whose vocation it is to post relevant thoughts from Cardinal Newman) , I'll start the Newman for Patron of St. Blog's campaign. Or something.

And what's with this Venerable crap? Pray.

These things breed like rabbits

When I'm next in the office, I'll start a new blog and move the daily readings over to it. It'll have (I think) the 1950s Dominican Martyrology, commentaries from the Catena aurea on the day's Gospel, and perhaps the day's second reading from the Office of Readings from the Liturgy of the Hours, and, of course, other relevant etexts as I find them. I have a couple of questions for you, Gentle Reader:

• What should I call the blog? Lectio Divina?
• What other daily-type Catholic etexts are available?

Whee!

Dennis "Stardust" Kucinich has a blog. Apropos of the news of the day, Mr. Kucinich, a Catholic, is against forcing homosexuals to cross state lines to get "married".

Baby-killing is OK, though.

Friday Five

1. What time do you wake up on weekday mornings? Between 3am (back pain keeps me awake) and 9am (rare miracle). 4am is the baby's favorite time.

2. Do you sleep in on the weekends? How late? What is this "sleep in"? Can I get some of it for home use? You know a dealer?

3. Aside from waking up, what is the first thing you do in the morning? Mutter the vulgarity of the day, then take care of whomever is crying.

4. How long does it take to get ready for your day? Anywhere from 15 minutes to 12 hours.

5. When possible, what is your favorite place to go for breakfast? 1: the kitchen when my wife is cooking. 2: Oakley's Restaurant in Champaign.

Institute of Official Cheer

This is consistently hilarious. See especially the Bank of Death, whose designer did a lot of work for the Catholic Church in the 1960s.

A note about the picture - is there an official name for this (punch-in-the-gut depressing) style of interior design and decoration (aside from the animals)?

These kids can blog

The Shrine of the Holy Whapping

Education blog

If you're concerned about education in America, you really should read Joanne Jacobs' blog.

Now, I don't know what Head Start does aside from sending a school bus driver to our neighborhood to honk the bus's horn during our naptime, but from this (found at Ms. Jacobs' blog) I can tell our kids are much better off being loved and nurtured at home.

Daily Mass readings

Inspired by the links to daily Mass readings at Lane Core's blog, I've implemented a similar thing here in my date headers. In each yellow-orange rectangle, the date in white type is now a link to that day's Mass readings.

MT hacking and whatnot

I'd like to move the "Category" line down to the bottom of the post, along with name, date, link and comments. Is there an easy way to do that? I tried to do it recently in a fog of insomnia, but it didn't work - the thing just wouldn't appear down there even though I moved the code there.

Also, my list of blogs over on the right is suffering from bit rot. I'll weed out the dead blogs and update things anon.

Oh, great!

Here I am on a roll about Dennis "Stardust" Kucinich, and Mr. Riddle has to go and blog about chapter three of the letter of Saint James. Sheesh!

I'll see you in Purgatory

Great news! Seems like lots of St. Blog's parishioners are winding up in Purgatory.

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Well heck!

Many thanks to T. S. O'Rama, he of the coolest blog name at St. Blog's, for his extravagant compliment!

Meanwhile there's a new blog in the parish, The Southfarthing Soapbox - perhaps the first blog run by hobbitfolk. This extraordinary development raises a few questions in my mind - are hobbits human? If not, are they in need of salvation? How does Christ's Incarnation apply to them, etc.?

One of Southfarthing's gentlehobbits noticed my rant about mucky irritating old holy cards and wondered, "what's with the tone?" Well, it takes all kinds. I'm the kind who enjoys vociferous execration of things that irritate me. I have a strong revulsion to portraying saints - SAINTS! - as weak swooning delicate things. If St. Louis de Montfort was a large guy who even as a holy priest could get worked up into a towering ass-kicking rage and knock some jerks unconscious with one punch each, well, perhaps a sweet delicate pious representation isn't quite the thing. At least for me.

Anyway.

Hm.

You are Pope John Paul I. You're charming, but you
don't always give people a chance to get to
know you.


Which Twentieth Century Pope Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The end

At least for Lent.

Friday five

Only two days late. I'm up in the middle of the night and there are other things I should be doing, but...

1. What was the last song you heard?

"Times Like These" from the Foo Fighters. What a great tune! OK, so far I can only understand the chorus, not the verses, so maybe it's not what I think it is. Aside from that, though, it's a pretty powerful package: hooks and surprising harmonic combinations worthy of the Beatles; a tricky guitar line in an odd time signature; tasteful guitar playing - no momentum-killing doodling passing itself off as a "solo"; Dave Grohl's satisfying singing which ranges here in three repetitions of the chorus from his usual smooth delivery to better-than-Cobain screaming to an almost-whisper, and all three manage to contribute substantially to the song.

2. What were the last two movies you saw?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (hadn't seen it in ten years) and The Two Towers.

3. What were the last three things you purchased?

The Foo Fighters new album - my first new album purchase in many years, a MapLink map of the Middle East for my office wall, and a Delorme Atlas and Gazetteer of Illinois ("we map the backroads") for use in hiking, camping and geocaching.

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?

For the rest of this weekend, aside from sleeping:
- start a roast before going back to bed
- get to Mass
- do the bills
- do the dishes

5. Who are the last five people you talked to? Reverse chronological order, removing duplicates:
- 4yodd
- wife
- 6yods
- 1yods
- cashier at the Champaign Barnes and Noble

Amy gags

My, I'm filing lots of things under "Bloggers" lately. Ms. Welborn has gagged on Sesame Street books for children, a reaction I share with her. Surely the folks who produce that dreck work awfully hard to "write" such unpronouncable prose. Have you tried to read a Sesame Street book aloud to a child? I defy you to make your way happily through the process.

The illiterate blogger

I've just discovered William Luse's blog Apologia - that guy can write! He reminds me of Bill Buckley and Russell Kirk. After a tour through Apologia, Flos Carmeli and Tenebrae et lux, I feel like an illiterate hayseed. Not that that's bad: I am an illiterate hayseed. Fortunately there's some encouragement to be found in honest self-knowledge.

Confession of a book glutton: gluttony, like other vices, dulls the senses yet inflames the passions. You lose that fine sensitivity to detail and, as it fades, you need more. So we come to one of my Lenten resolutions, made up right here on the spot: rather than reading everything in a rush, I will read well, read deeply and read slowly.

Stop, drop, speak in tongues

Everyone else has a Homeland Security caption; here's mine:

Vampires and Orangemen

Pardon the redundancy.

I'm taking a bit of a tour of Saint Blog's today while my computer works for me! Over at Ad Orientem I found a link to this wacky celebration of post hoc ergo propter hoc, if it can be believed. Quoth Mr. Sullivan, "On the other hand, if the Ian Paisley school is to be believed, a papal blessing outstrips the Curse of Tutankhamen among Things to be Avoided at All Costs. Not only vampires recoil at holy water. So do Orangemen."

Cox and Forkum - bloggers!

That's satisfying

Google ranks my blog #2 in searches for kucinich blog abortion.

Blog spam

Is anyone else getting blog spam? I've seen two so far, here and the second comment here.

Ah - google reveals all:

- Blog spam
- Club vs. Lojack
- Comment spam alert
- Comment spam problem continued
- and related links

Since folks apparently don't visit Summa minutiae to read the snarky comments, I'll probably just turn off commenting if I get hit much more. Unless Ben and Mena find some nifty solution.

10,000

And the ten-thousandth visitor is...

A visitor from 204.39.56.160 (204.39.56.160)
arrived from search.yahoo.com Politics in the 1980s 1-20,
and visited members.wri.com/billw/book-sale/1980s-politics.html
at 8:10:28 AM on Wednesday, February 26, 2003.
This visitor used Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1).

Mr. Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli fame, or one of his regular readers, was number 9998.

No one rants like Big Arm Woman

She doesn't like Feb(r)uary.

Nihil obstat

Nihil Obstat says I've indentified him as Domenico Bettinelli, but it wasn't me. I just took an Obscure clue from Gregg, who already had things figured out, and ran it through the anagram machine (because I can't figure out anagrams by myself.)

Houston, we have boobs

The Old Oligarch rescue mission is proceeding according to plan:

A visitor from ip212-226-138-41.adsl.kpnqwest.fi (212.226.138.41)
arrived from www.google.fi trinity boobs -loren 11-20,
and visited members.wri.com/billw/blog/
at 10:09:10 AM on Tuesday, February 25, 2003.
This visitor used Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt).

A visitor from 62.154.250.43 (62.154.250.43)
arrived from www.google.de beasts boobs 1-10,
and visited members.wri.com/billw/blog/
at 6:21:42 AM on Tuesday, February 25, 2003.
This visitor used Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0).

A visitor from cache-rp01.proxy.aol.com (152.163.189.166)
arrived from www.google.com painted boobs 1-10,
and visited members.wri.com/billw/blog/
at 7:25:30 PM on Monday, February 24, 2003.
This visitor used Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 8.0; Windows NT 5.1).

A visitor from 217.220.101.160 (217.220.101.160)
arrived from www.blogstreet.com boobs,
and visited members.wri.com/billw/blog/
at 3:14:02 PM on Monday, February 24, 2003.
This visitor used Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; it-it) AppleWebKit/60 (like Gecko) Safari/60.

A visitor from metarb-2-adsl-86.mtco.com (207.179.229.86)
arrived from www.google.com painted boobs 1-10,
and visited members.wri.com/billw/blog/
at 1:27:51 PM on Monday, February 24, 2003.
This visitor used Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; Hotbar 3.0).

A visitor from roa-ppp0645.dm.optidynamic.com (66.208.141.118)
arrived from search.yahoo.com painted boobs 1-20,
and visited members.wri.com/billw/blog/
at 3:33:20 PM on Sunday, February 23, 2003.
This visitor used Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98).

Gods & Sinners

Minute Particulars asks, "How can folks who admit slavery was a great evil talk about honor, nobility, and goodness in those who fought to allow it to continue?" Perhaps because we see the good even in the greatest sinner.

Thrownback shut down

Father Rob Johansen's blog has been shut down again. I admire his obedience.

Help is on the way!

The Old Oligarch needs a hand. Hang on O. O. while I unleash the Power of the Blog(TM):

Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs Nice painted boobs

Hope my Mom doesn't see this.

Which blogs for you?

What are your two or three favorite St. Blog's blogs? The ones you visit a half-dozen times a day to see whether anything new has been posted, the ones whose comment boxes you fill to overflowing, the ones that make you think even in the shower or on the drive home.

Similarly, how about your favorite two or three outside St. Blogs?

My St. Blog's top three are
- Disputations
- Oblique House
- Flos Carmeli

and my other three are
- Little Green Footballs
- Nancy Nall
- Tightly Wound

My purpose here isn't to form some cliques or to be complete - I'd just like to find a few undiscovered blogs that other folks enjoy.

I'm number one!

Woo-hoo! I won Robert Gotcher's latest rock lyric quiz. Besides The Word, my other favorite tune from the mid-60s Beatles is Rain - McCartney has some magical bass work and Lennon's voice is just about at its ragged zenith.

Amy's Ghost

Ms. Welborn's blog isn't dead yet.

Crikey!

This bit from Richard Chonak is a must-read.

On Second Thought

I've edited one of yesterday's posts to remove its tone of vulgar condescension and make it a bit more helpful.

Fare Thee Well, Amy

I hope she doesn't delete the archives.

Blogomania

I haven't posted much lately because I'm swamped at work and my blog time goes into a work blog I've started for the reading enjoyment of the local managers. There are probably better work log/indexing/documentation tools out there, but Movable Type is handling it pretty well.

Blogging on Hold

I'm in the middle of an all-nighter, with another one likely Tuesday night. Sleep before blogging.

Ha! (Brr...)

I shouldn't laugh an another's misfortune, but I see that Mr. Steven "Blogging from Floriday" Riddle will need to bundle up a bit today: 30F! Here in central Illinois, the wind chill was only -17F this morning.

Dr. Hahn and Company

Big news over at The Directed Path - Christopher Cuddy is living at chez Hahn this semester!

On Belloc

T. S. O'Rama should read this essay on Hilaire Belloc.

Rosary Blog Update

A good bit from Saint Symeon the New Theologian on Christ's suffering.

Jesus Gil, Master Blogger

Jesus Gil has move his blog to http://ibidem.blogmosis.com/, and the new design by Blogmosis seems to have unleashed his inner blogger.

Introductions?

There are a couple of regular readers of Summa minutiae and the Rosary Blog whom I can't place from their referrer information. One comes from hawaii.rr.com Hawaii! And it's something like 20F here today - all I could think about during the rosary at 2:30 this morning was the warm spring morning of the Resurrection, the warm afternoon of the Ascension, etc. The other regularly surfs in from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. There are some other regulars, too: pacbell.net, gv.shawcable.net and others I'm forgetting offhand. How about introducing yourselves in the comments?

There are others I do recognize - Mr. Jhuapl, Mrs. von chicago1.level3.net, Mr. apple.com among them.

Thanks!

Many thanks to Eve Tushnet for her kind comments about my Rosary Blog. "Neat blog ... good stuff."

Rosary Blog update

I've updated the Rosary Blog with a sermon from Saint Gregory Nazianzus on the Baptism of Christ.

Update: Whew! I don't think Nihil obstat found me out.

Thanks!

Thanks to Tom Abbot of GoodForm for the kind notice. Another Illinois blogger!

Patrologia Bloggae

I was inspired to blog by Wayne Olson's Fathers of the Christian Church blog (no surprise there, eh?) - here is my blog's scanty pedigree.

How does one decline "blog"?

Different Paths

I've been following the discussion between John DaFiesole and Steven Riddle on the merits and demerits of the Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Mr. Riddle gave me one of those "a-ha!" moments with a recent post.

He says:

One must know that I delight in "solving" mysteries before the author reveals the solution to me, and speeding through the NY Times crossword puzzles on a timed basis-- rooting out mystery and resolving apparent inconsistency gives me great joy and a bloated head.

A-ha! I have never solved a mystery on the rare occasions I've read one - I loath the things. The only mystery writer I'll read is Elizabeth George, and that not for the mystery but for her insights into human nature. The mystery is just extra stuff to wade through or ignore on the way to her characters. And the thought of doing a crossword puzzle... shudder. Please extract my fingernails first. I detest, nay, abhor such contrived puzzles (Ed works just down the hall from me).

So maybe the intellectuals among us need a Carmelite vision of life, while the <insert term here> need a different spirituality. As for Aquinas and his mistakes, well, cut him some slack! He was doing the best he could, illustrating points with what he knew, and sometimes he didn't know how things really work. Same here. You can still get the gist of his argument even if he gets the biological or mechanical details "wrong".