I’ve been reading The Spirituality of the Diocesan Priest edited by Donald Cozzens. An interesting quote:
“While in need of ministry himself, he ministers to others; while wounded himself, he heals and gives comfort. Though broken in heart and spirit, he reconciles and forgives; though anxious himself, he gives courage and hope to the alienated and estranged. In the name of God and the Christ and the Spirit, he has set out on a journey fraught with dangers and dragons. His quest is to set people free with the freedom and grace of the Gospel and in doing so to renew the face of the earth.”
I think this is a very interesting view of a priest. He’s not perfect but he wants to try to bring perfection to us all. This is something that is not limited only to priests though. We all can help give comfort to others even though we are wounded ourselves. Not everyone at all times to all people but we are able to be Christ to other people and we fail to do that so many times. And I don’t mean that we are able to do something huge always (sometimes we are) but sometimes simply just chilling with someone can make a world of difference. I digress….
Before I start rambling too much, I just thought Cozzens’ quote had a nice insight on the humanity of the priest.

Talk about a mixed blessing. The latest thing to hit the Internet in terms of spammers are “comment spammers.” They attack sites ran by blog software (like this run running Moveable Type) and posts spam in the form of comments. I’m getting around five or so spam comments a day now.
It’s not that big of a deal though because I haven’t been able to iron out that bug with my comments. For those who haven’t tried to post a comment, you can fill out and press “Post” and an error message will come back. The error is simply saying that the system couldn’t figure out how to rebuild the page to include the comment. The comment itself is saved to the database, where I notice it and manually rebuild the page so it shows. The downside is the comment process isn’t automatic, as it should be. The upside is that comment spammers posts are being killed by me before they see the light of day.
For any other Moveable Type users, any luck on killing the spammers? As far as my original bug, I’m clueless on it but if the only real downside is the comment issue, I am willing to deal with it.

I was reading a magazine today and saw this in an advertisement for a motorcycle:
Someday.
“I’ll do it someday.”
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
See? There is no Someday.
It’s time to ride.
I thought it was a cool ad.

From the few e-mails I have been sent regarding my previous post, Why Meat?, I think I may have not been so clear.
I know that chicken is meat. My question is how did the definition of meat come about as it is used for the Church? Is it simply definition 2b from Websters? “flesh of domesticated animals”? I am just curious on why meat is meat and something that is not meat (fish, seafood) is not meat.
Like, pigs (ham, pork) are meat since they are domesticated animals. What about a wild boar, that is by definition not domesticated? I’m never going to go out and kill a wild beast because it could be a loophole; I’m just curious on what definition the Church looks at.
I’m not trying to find a loophole or get too picky. I’m just curious how much thought there is out there on this.
From what I’ve read so far, the reason meat was chosen was because it is pretty common and most people would prefer it to veggies and so it seems to be an acceptable universal penance. Is that correct? I have no idea. It’s just what I have to work with right now.
As far as my personal discipline: No meat works just fine for me as it is something that is a sacrifice to me and with my current dining habits, it is a challenge. I also follow the school of thought that there is nothing wrong with “going a bit further” on Fridays- such as giving up sweets also on Fridays. However, in questioning why things are as they are, we can better understand our faith and the disciplines of it. The better we understand, the better we are able to express it, internalize it and then spread it.