Tuesday, October 21, 2008

A couple quick hits...


First up-November, the month we dedicate to praying for the holy souls in Purgatory, is almost upon us. Are you prepared? We ( Requiem Press) have a help, a prayer book with a short prayer (less than 5 minutes) for every day of the week for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. And what's more, we have deeply discounted our already discounted quantity numbers (they are priced at an additional 10% off a purchase of 50 or more; 25% off a purchase of 100 or more; 45% off a purchase of 500 or more from the regular quantity discounts.)

Not sure? See an excerpt here .

Get in the habit in November, and then pray all year round for these forgotten souls. And get some booklets for all your friends and family members. Not sure how to explain why we pray for the holy souls? The intro gives the traditional and scriptural explanation, referencing councils of the Church.

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Secondly (and lastly) I know I blow hot and cold on politics. One week I am decrying every candidate and every bailout and the next week I ignore everything, and talk only on pigs. (Last night I dreamed I was back teaching at that Catholic school, but I brought my pigs to keep me company and create a conversation piece if I ran out of math material in the block scheduling.)

I love my country but see how wrong the direction is. Our choices seem worse and worse, but the way out is unclear. We are set up for a two-party system and thus forays by third parties are useless (generally). So I dream of a candidate who may not be perfect but who understands the problems and has a good sense of direction. I am unsatisfied with anything less and it deeply pains me to have to vote for anything less. But as I have read in a number of other places (wisdom is often not found here), I must force myself to remember that elections are not canonizations. We vote for a result (or sometimes against another result).

Oremus pro invicem!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And you know the pigs would have listened and probably got better grades.

Jim Dorchak

Anonymous said...

I recently read about voting in Australia, where instead of picking one candidate, you list them in the order you'd like them. This way, if your first choice doesn't get enough votes, your second choice counts instead. This allows third party candidates to have a chance without splitting the vote so that the candidate whom people want least won't get chosen by mistake, so to speak. I think I'm explaining it poorly, but it basically ensures that, for example, the liberal candidate doesn't get elected because the conservative vote was split over two candidates. I don't know exactly how they do it, but I wish we had something like that over here!
Agnes

Jim Curley said...

Jim-I might need that job again someday, so I won't comment....

Agnes-Recently a friend from England who has lived in the States for most of the past 40 years advised me that third parties tend to curb the excesses of major parties-if they are not locked out like they are here.

I have heard much good (functually)about the way Swiss government works; with more decentralization and more local control-but haven't looked into it much.

Thanks for stopping in...

Jim