We are all just blogwatchers here

Of our own device…

Amy Welborn: The heart of the matter: “I was thinking tonight, as I was playing computer solitaire in Joseph’s room, waiting for him to go to sleep, about Graham Greene and John Kerry. …

“So there’s no nobility or sainthood there, but there is honesty. There’s a recognition that here is the Church, and here I am, and while I may live outside of the Church and sin and cast a jaundiced eye its way–there it is and there I am. No matter what I think of it, I’m under no illusion that all the Church needs is to be remade in my image or even ‘accept me as I am’ in all of my choices. God’s mercy is wide and deep and always waiting and found in the oddest ways and by the most flawed people, but mercy it is, mercy in light of my sins. Which are sins.”

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Army of One: What makes Father Tucker (Dappled Things) tick? Great interview: “Q: What do you think is the most important thing you could communicate to people?

“A: The beauty of God’s holiness and the beauty that He has poured into His creation, beginning with the individual I’m talking to at the moment. To my eye, the world is full of wonder, and each person is so amazingly, uniquely splendid, that it’s hard not to be overcome by joy at it all. Christ was so moved for love of this creation that He willingly grasped it to Himself in the Incarnation, died for it on the Cross, and drags it into Paradise with Him through the Resurrection. I think that if we are able to glimpse a bit of that beauty — and to see in further reflection its connection to goodness and truth — we’ll fall in love and find it nearly impossible not to glorify the One Who made and preserves it.”

Plus Catholic-libertarian goodness (although I no longer consider myself a libertarian, I have lots of sympathy for ’em, and have been known to use the quickie formulation, “I am a conservative because I believe in that authority which can only be accepted in liberty.” For more on that tip, go here and here) and addressing some Protestant concerns.

Old Oligarch: Praying at an abortionists’. Good Friday thoughts, including a request for prayers for three new Catholics we know. Hooray, hooray, and hooray, and praise God!

Relapsed Catholic: New book! “A few years back, I wrote a series of columns about the 12 Steps. I’d been watching the Steps getting co-opted by New Age nutballs, and wanted to do my part to rescue them. The 12 Steps, as one early observer noted, actually resemble the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. Early A.A. literature was unapologetically Christian — call it Bill Wilson’s flawed but sincere attempt to justify the ways of God to drunks. And I wanted to explain the Steps to ordinary people who thought they were all about ‘making excuses,’ ‘avoiding reality’ and narcissistic ‘self-improvement.’

“These columns are now collected in a slender volume called A Seeker’s Dozen: The 12 Steps For Everyone Else. This book is NOT available in stores, or via Amazon.com. You can only buy it through me and CafePress.com.”

more (I have already bought my copy.)