I recently got a question about praying the Rosary that went something like this: If you pray the Rosary all the time, doesn’t it just become this kind of robot-thing, like doing the dishes or something? It certainly can. I’m very bad at praying, period, so my chief danger is not that I’ll pray the Rosary (or anything) badly, but that I won’t pray it at all. But sometimes I do manage to get my act together and behave like... Read more
Way back when I was a confused but zealous Catholic teenager, I considered whether I might have a religious vocation. I read some books from the parish library about being a nun, and maybe a few articles in the diocesan newspaper. Nobody at my parish made any effort whatsoever to talk to high school students about religious vocations or help them explore the possibilities, but in any case I came to my own conclusion: If women could be priests, I... Read more
The National Review has a snippet-article about “Recess Consultants” whose job is to improve the playtime experience for school children. Circulating elsewhere are reports of schools banning games of Tag, latest casualty in the war on scraped knees and egos. Before we get too wrapped up in our self-righteous huffing and puffing, let’s talk about Don Bosco. The background is this: St. John Bosco started schools for boys from the bad parts of town. Boys who weren’t growing up in loving... Read more
Friday morning we’re back at the parish, and this time the place is lively. A couple dozen teenagers and not a few grown-ups have turned out for the looming clean-up. This is for the elderly couple whose home was flooded Sunday; we’ve been waiting all week to be able to get in there and clean everything out. Debbie gives us a briefing: Expect it to be nasty, do not throw anything away until the owners have given thumbs-up or thumbs-down,... Read more
The way flood clean-up works is that you try to figure out where you can be useful, and you show up. Thursday we get the call for youth volunteers. For a change I don’t have anyone contagiously ill at my house and the roads are not blocked between me and the rally point, so three girls and I turn out. (The boy stays home stuck in school, price of doing your coursework online with people who aren’t centered in a... Read more
In the inbox I received this flood-issue special bulletin from St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Columbia, SC, which sits just a few blocks up the hill from the most catastrophic flooding in the city. Donations page is here, where you can specify “storm relief” when you make your gift. Note on the parish page that they are also accepting donations in-kind, and if you are so inclined, non-perishable food and hygiene items do ship. You can be confident nothing will... Read more
The South Carolina Emergency Management Division has updated their information on donating and volunteering. There is a long list of options for monetary donations, as well as opportunities for donations of goods and services. If you’re looking for the Catholic option, direct your funds to Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Charleston. This is an organization of the diocese itself, and is a go-to source around the state, particularly well known for legal aid and for preventing homelessness. If you strike up... Read more
Statesmen have a right to poetry in their oratory, and I give Governor Haley every allowance for referring to the flooding in South Carolina as something that happens “once in a thousand years.” The point she wishes to make is that the present events were utterly unexpected, and I agree with her. There are countless cases where you can glance at the land and the forecast and be utterly unsurprised by a bit of flooding; the recent disaster in the Midlands... Read more
In my next post I’m going to talk about the notion of whether the devastating flooding in the Columbia area can, in fact, be considered a “1000-year flood.” But before I do that, it will help if you understand some of the words I’m going to use. They are place-words, and they may not mean what you think they mean. What is “Columbia, SC”? When speaking to outsiders, or speaking of your travel from the hinterlands back to the homeland,... Read more
Christian LeBlanc (Cajun architect, when he isn’t being your Sunday school teacher) inquired if sand boils might be a factor in the dam failures in central South Carolina right now. And what might a sand boil be? I’d never heard of them either. But curiously, I said, we’d noticed this strange thing while walking around the neighborhood Sunday: In the cracks between the pavement, the sand wasn’t just saturated with water, the water was bubbling. Christian gave the virtual knowing-nod —... Read more
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