Sunday Meditation: Roadmap for a Happy Life

It seems to me that we all make life too darn complicated. In many ways we get lost in the weeds. And yet, the prescription for a happy life is really very simple. The Baltimore Catechism set it down in question #6:

6. Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.

Meditating on My Pencil and the Desire to Be among the Sharpest in the Box!

Let's all aim to be the
sharpest pencils we can be!

I'm using a pencil to make notes today. It looked fine when I picked it up, nice and sharp and ready to use. But when I put it to paper I realized the graphite was not in the pencil's center. (Must be made in China!) On one side the graphite seemed to have a nice point that should write well. But on the other side the wooden sheath went all the way to the tip. So my pencil will only write on one side. And even that deteriorates quickly as the graphite wears down and the wood hits the paper. Frustrating!

That faulty pencil got me thinking about centering. The Oxford definition defines centering as "placed or situated in the center." Hmm...I was taught you should never use the word being defined in the definition. Dictionary.com does a little better in that respect defining it as " equidistant from all bordering or adjacent areas." When used to describe a person, being "centered" means "to be well balanced and confident and serene."

Where Does The Church Stand on the Question of Capital Punishment? Tradition May Surprise You

Amy Barrett, Catholic nominee for Federal Court Judge

and Al Franken, Democrat Senator

Amy Coney Barrett, a widely published professor of law at the University of Notre Dame has been nominated by President Donald Trump for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and was featured in an article published by the National Catholic Register on September 22.  A Senate hearing was held and several liberal Senators including Al Franken and Diane Feinstein gave her a brutal grilling.  The You Tube video of the Franken exchange is particularly disgusting.  

The Catholic Register article referred to an article Barrett wrote years ago as the subject of Feinstein’s questions, stating,    

“…it was Feinstein who mischaracterized the article’s conclusion, thus raising questions about Barrett’s fitness for the appellate bench.   Truth be told, the 1998 law review article in question, co-authored by Catholic constitutional scholar John Garvey, now the president of The Catholic University of America, reached a very different conclusion about the religious and professional responsibilities of Catholic jurists on the federal bench.  In their paper, Barrett and Garvey posed this question: Must judges who accept Church teaching on capital punishment recuse themselves in federal death-penalty cases? After exploring this question, the authors concluded that such cases were far from common, and when they did arise, Catholic judges should recuse themselves if necessary.” (My emphasis added.)