This will sound sarcastic, but it is not meant to be. Sometimes I wonder what some people who have never been to mass might think about me going to mass several times a week. You're refreshingly honest letter is informative.

When you throw a party, all you get back is a few memories and good will.

This is an Irish town. This is an African-American town. This is a Chinese town. This is a Polish town. This is a German town. This is a Russian town. This is a Jewish Town. This is a Catholic town. This is a Hipster Town. This is a Yuppie Town. This is a Criminal town. This is a White Sox town. This is a Cubs town. This is a [fill in the blank] town. . . Most of us can care less about some stupid Olympiad. But, we love to throw parties. We'll grumble about it beforehand, until the first beer opens.

Can't wait to see you in 2016 (I hope).

need to take a hike and join the Puritans or Calvinists. The rest of us Catholics will be praying to God to get laid just like we have since we were teenagers.

owned slaves, would one be so willing to emulate him in that too?

Thomas Jefferson was by no means an atheist, rather, he was obsessed with the Bible and devoted to what he took to be (mistakenly in my opinion) his version of Jesus.

And Bill Maher, why is it that everyone who questions the reliability of the gospels forgets the letters of St. Paul, which were written in the 60s? I mean the original 60s as in six zero A.D. We can question it, as we should everything, but let's not ignore what evidence there is of the resurrection merely by pointing to the failings of some of the kooks who believe in it. There are many places to start, but one is here

http://www.jamesgregory.org/tom_wright.php

(please cut and paste and listen to this lecture. You may not agree, but it is worth your time)

Take off your critics hat, your irony hat, your "there is no way this is actually a good song hat." There are few sports songs that people actually love in their hearts. Few songs that if you start talking about them, someone just starts smiling. There was never a team which was so dominant, and, well so just darn goofy as the '85 Bears. And they put out a song which was so bad, that it was good, and then back to bad again, but then back to the awesomely high mountain top of the being the GROAT (greatest rap of all time, slight hyperbole).

It is hard to look at any of the persons with Downs Syndrome over at Misericordia and believe that they would have been better off if they had not been brought into the world. The only thing I happen to like about Sarah Palin is that she is NOT a hypocrite on this issue, and truly put her faith to the test.

It is wrong to assume that there is NO evidence that Jesus Christ even existed (because of the idiocies of those who do believe, but believe ignorantly), rather than even bothering to examine whether it actually happened. They fail to realize that the late date theory of gospel creation is totally flimsy and ignore solid scholarship by people like N.T. Wright and John A.T. Robinson. John bar Zebedee wrote the books attributed to him; Matthew the tax collector did write Matthew; Luke is the physician who traveled with Paul; and Mark did transcribe Peter’s sermons. Not to mention the letters of Paul, which predated all of those, and who had access to many people who had personally known Jesus and the 500 who witnessed the resurrection. That's not to say that this knowledge will lead to belief, but so many seem to be unaware of what solid evidence actually is available.