Boycott the Blog Awards!!

I fear that I am the only stiffly stifferson who thinks that the Catholic Blog Awards are detrimental, since each blog has its own personality and set of readers. How can we possibly say that one is better (or best) than another? Blogs that I choose the read, others don't, and blogs that others choose to read, I don't. So it's little more than a popularity contest - Why succumb to the American "award culture"? If it's fun just to see if your favorite blog wins, what does that really say? Meanwhile, some blogs are accumulating 5 and 6 awards, I have to say, it seems a little rediculous...

So please, do not nominate me (assuming you had thought about it)... the last thing I need is an award for keeping my blog. I'm not in competition with anyone. I don't do it for ratings or awards, and I don't need an award to know that some readers enjoy reading me and other readers don't. And, if you do like reading my blog, of course I appreciate it and invite you to keep reading!

That's all I have to say about that...

Unbelievable

This is seriously just over a block away from where I live. I walk past it everyday when I go to work.

Seven dead in California postal shooting

GOLETA, California (CNN) -- A female former employee opened fire at a 24-hour postal service sorting facility in Goleta, California, killing six people and critically wounding another, before turning the gun on herself, authorities said early Tuesday.

I didn't see the story until this morning, but last night, I did hear helicopters circling for hours; turns out they were searching for the shooter around the neighborhoods before they found she had killed herself. Don't know what to think...

Translating the Encyclical

DEUS CARITAS EST, et, qui manet in caritate, in Deo manet, et Deus in eo manet. (1 John 4:16)

In the latest broadcast of The Latin Lover, the pope's latinist, Fr. Reginald Foster, groans about his experience translating the pope's encyclical into Latin. It was not an easy task, according to Fr. Foster, to try to fit all the terrible jargon used in modern languages into Latin, the lingua ecclesiae. "The Romans just didn't think that way!"