I have been thinking again. One subject is the Virgin Mary Cheese Sandwich. Another is the Theocratic rule adopted by secular governments (U.S. is a prime example) and a third is the collection, prioritizing and printing out the worst moments of 2004. These are difficult subjects to talk about. Please allow me the luxury to use the list above in that order to begin thinking about difficult choices.

Ms Mary who mothered Jesus never sat for a formal portrait although there are many that have been produced over the two thousand years since God selected her to be mother to his son.  I will make a statement about the most recent happening and hope not to offend anyone.  Jim Defede, a hulk of a man, offered to make a trip across the country to deliver this cheese sandwich to its new owner, a person who bought it over the Ethernet. He is making fun of the whole project although a visage is clearly on it. The Non-Catholic world is treating the claim, the auction and the circus about the delivery of the artifact as a lot of fun. 

Now, Theocracy is rule by God. As everybody knows, God does not come down and mingle with us nor do his Angels and his Saints appear regularly and unambiguously.  So, certain governments are set over us that abide by religious rules and these rules are enforced by secular police.  We are having difficulty here in America because we have elected a chief executive who enforces such religious rules with a vengeance.  His surrogates in the legislatures high and low rush to increase the vice of religious narrowness that has hovered over our country since the Supreme Court decided the Roe Decision.  And, despite or because of this, the missionary spirit is encouraged to intrude on the decisions made in lands conquered by America to help them become “democratic”.  This new kind of democracy will be theocratic because it will be installed in an Islamic culture that has never experienced our once cast in stone concept of separation of Church and State.

The last difficult subject I would choose to write about is simply to begin to list the terrible things that 2004 has been noted for – these are not listed in any particular order: 1. War.  2. Hunger is allowed to exist in a world of plenty. 3. Global Warming warnings have been ignored and the polar ice is melting at an alarming rate. 4. Democracy has had a set back in the U.S. by a fraction of Americans making a bad choice. 5. Education has increasingly become owned by private and parochial groups wanting public money and desperation forces intelligent people to abandon public education to create institutions for an elitist education. 6. The variations of choice of who a person is and wants to be have been officially reduced to man, woman and marriage – this discriminates, an example of how education responds to the worst impulses in us rather than leading us to use reason, intellect and history in making our choices. Thinking is difficult.