Catholic
August 19, 2009
- I'm joining the entire Red Room community in writing a short blog post on this week's trio of topics: "Sex, Religion, and/or Politics." The form and the content of the blog entry are open to personal interpretation--you can blog about one or any combination of these subjects. We'll choose at least one of these blogs to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week, and we'll choose three ...
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July 26, 2009
- An excerpt from my Marion Grace novel, THE GODMOTHER, as yet unrevised and unedited. Dysfunctional family wrestles with the aftermath of two World Wars in pre-Millennium Britain under its dour but charismatic oracle,Sibyl. Sibyl had been twenty-seven when she met Edwin at a Revival Meeting in Begley, and thirty-one before they tied the knot. He was up there on the rostrum at the ...
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July 13, 2009
- The terms Christian and Catholic define mutually exclusive groups in the minds of many in the United States. On closer examination, this is an odd distinction. In common parlance, “Christian” is the accepted term for Protestant denominations, especially those with an evangelical bent. Catholics are somehow excluded from being “Christian.” Yet the Catholic faith can trace a direct lineage ...
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July 1, 2009
- The recent flap over President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame's commencement again exposes the Catholic ultra-right for what it is--hypocritical, self-righteous, and narrow-minded.Anti-abortionists showed up red-faced, hell-bent and furious in South Bend over the weekend to protest Obama's visit to that Catholic "sanctuary" Notre Dame. Actually, there were fewer protestors than you ...
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June 16, 2009
- About two months ago, an Irish woman was telling me about what it meant to be catholic in Ireland. I was interested in the subject, and it led her to tell me what her sister in Ireland told her. The sister’s neighbor was building a brick divider or fence in his yard and asked his other neighbor to watch for his bricks while he was gone to work because the other neighbor in back was building ...
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May 18, 2009
- America, the National Catholic weekly, includes a great review of The Samaritan's Secret, the third of my Palestinian crime novels, this week. "Rees masterfully concocts another claustrophobic tale from the occupied territories that takes us deep into the Palestinian experience even as it entertains," writes Claire Schaeffer-Duffy. She also calls my detective Omar Yussef ...
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April 29, 2009
- Although I couldn't put down "Kavalier and Clay," the super novel about superheros -- and how the comic book industry came into being in North America in the 1930s -- when it was published a few years ago, it's a long time since I have really read a comic book right through (I'm not counting newspaper "funnies" that don't seem so funny to me anymore). When I did read piles and ...
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April 26, 2009
- On Monday, April 20th, one of my all-time favorite students ran up to me in the hall and asked, “Are you Jewish?” “Mmmmm. . .no,” I replied. He looked puzzled. “Oh, we thought you were because we saw you in our neighborhood going to Passover dinner, remember? “That was an excellent inference. But, I’m not Jewish.” “Oh, then why were you going to Passover?” “My ...
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February 24, 2009
- Reading Carolyn Burns Bass’ blog today about Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday made me think. Unlike Carolyn, I am Catholic. Well, a lapsed Catholic, but still Catholic. I went to early morning mass on Ash Wednesdays when I was a kid. One year when I was sick my grandfather rubbed his forehead against mine so I would have ash on my forehead, just like him. Yet I think of something ...
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January 21, 2009
- We are on day three of my young sons bout with influenza. I have produced chicken soup, crackers, lozenges, cold and flu meds, hot apple juice with lemons and honey and ofcourse large doses of TLC including a first class place in my bed watching TV, fresh warm socks and oh almost forgot the smoothies made with blueberries and bananas. I have been up and down the stairs one hundred times a ...
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