Ash Wednesday

So here we are. We have our ashes. We all went to confession. And now it begins.

I will be posting less in the forty days. No blogfast, but I have much work to do and need to spend more time in prayer. I don't know how this will play out in practice, but I suspect there will be less posting in general.

(Picture courtesy of Holy Cards for your inspiration )

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I inquired at our Chancery if there would be any tickets available for the Papal Mass in DC. I was told that they don't know yet, but they have a few tickets for the Mass in NY. The drawing is on Monday!

Originally the DC diocese website said there would be no motorcade, but apparantly this decision has been reversed due to popular demand. I know the Curley's will be on the streets of DC in April waiting for a Papal blessing.

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Finally, this post on family and civilization was long, but very interesting. Here's a clip:

Zimmerman was a prominent Harvard sociologist whose topic in F&C is to investigate the connections between the kind of family that predominates within a civilization, and the vitality of that civilization. He says there are three basic social types of family: 1) the trustee family, which is close-knit, tribal and clan-like; 2) the domestic family, which is centered around the nuclear family, but which maintains close ties to the extended family; and 3) the atomistic family, in which ties outside the nuclear family have been greatly attenuated. Dynamic civilizations pass from one to another at various stages in their ascendancy, and many civilizations have all three present at any given moment in their lifetime. But at the current moment, the atomistic family is the predominant type in the West. It was in 1947 when Zimmerman wrote this, and certainly is today, even moreso.

This is not good news at all from a historical and sociological point of view, Zimmerman writes. Greece and Rome both passed through all three stages before their respective final collapses. Why does the social predominance of the atomistic family form presage civilizational collapse? Basically, because of children.

Oremus pro invicem!