If this article is an accurate summary of this book, all I can say is "amen." As a seven year old in my first catechism class, I was taught by the nun that we could never understand God. It may have been the second or third question in the old Baltimore Catechism. God existed beyond time and space.

For lat the 65 years, the Church has been diligently explaining God to me, and the current crew misses the mark by a mile, in my opinion.

There is only one law, one rule, one force, one reason for being. It's love and love is epitomized in the Christian myth. I use the word myth not to dispute the reality of Christ but to signify the importance of what He means.

In Dr., Zhivago, Pasternak wrote that before Christ, history was written in terms of nations and after Christ it was written in terms of the individual. It also noted that the great Christian mysteries are the stuff of every one's life: one is conceived, one is born, one eats bread and wine, one dies. In one especially beautiful passage he analogizes his wife’s relationship to the child she was carrying to that of Mary with Jesus in her womb. “They have a secret. He shall be great. It’s not their fault if it doesn’t turn out that way.”

But the great Christian myth is not just the Incarnation but the Transfiguration of each of us.

At times, I've found it unbearable to listen to the drivel that comes from the pulpit at Sunday Mass. "The Moslems will defeat the West because they are breeding children while we are practicing birth control" is typical. Another time at Christmas Mass I heard a priest sermonize that although we have celebrate Christ's birth on Christmas, we have to realize he was different from us and at a distance, because he was God. I had this controllable urge to jump-up and scream "heretic, you should be burned at the stake with at the stake like the rest of the Jansenists" But I didn't.

I have also heard great sermons from outstanding men, but they are rare. Oddly, it is a verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, that best summarizes my Christian-and still Catholic - faith:

"In the beauty of lily, Christ was born across the sea,

with a glory in his bosom that transfigures, you and me."

I can not write it better than that, either.

johnklotz.blogspot.com

While the Souter announcement was a surprise and a concern, maybe it's for the best.

The moderate wing is getting old and I expect that some of them have been holding on by their fingertips until the right wing was cleared from the White House.

Given the fact that the two remaining publicly swing Republicans from Maine are woman and pro-life, the guess would be (1) a woman and (2) a double token minority.

That may spell Sotomayer.

Being Latino, she would make Republican obstruction one more nail in the coffin and if John McCain bucks her, he'd better start looking for a job in a Foundation because in 2010, he'll be toast.

http:johnklotz.blogspot.com

Having lived long enough to actually remember things that happened in 2002, I want to remind people of one fact about Nancy Pelosi: unlike John Kerry or John Edwards or most other Democrats, she voted against authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

That doesn't exonerate her from anything but it's one factor in considering just how much the CIA did, or did not, tell her.

Not everybody in the CIA is a villain by a long shot. One of my brothers worked there for 40 years. But it's not as monolithic as one might think and it is as factious as one might expect from an organization with billions to spend and thousands of employees.

It was during the cold war divided into at least two factions: (a) protect American investments and oil faction and (b) the isn't it about democracy faction.

One suspects that right now, when it comes to torture, there is at least one "we shouldn't have done it," faction. Obviously there is also a "GD right we did it faction."

WE get leaks from both factions and obviously the biggest faction of all (all quite common to the entire human race) is the CMA faction.

The contrary and conflicting leaks as well as the doctored records, not to mention the destroyed video tapes, all beg for investigation.

The GOP now wants an investigation? Terrific. Maybe we should call it the "Frank Church Memorial Investigation Commission.

Bring it on.

http:johnklotz.blogspot.com