It ain't heavy....

I'm not long back from Mass tonight. So far the new routine of going on a Saturday night is going well. It is nice and quiet (and short!) and Honor and Henry, being the only kids, get a nice little dose of attention and have so far been asked to do the Offertory Procession every week. I have, however, found myself battling with a well-meaning white haired lady as we go to collect the rather heavy decanter of wine who is always extremely concerned that my Honor will drop it! I reassure her that it will be fine and then pray heavily as we make our way down the aisle! They are getting better at it, but I think this lady's fussing makes Honor more nervous than she needs to be. Oh well. Henry enjoys having something to do, but, by golly, he was a terrible fidget tonight. I need to look up some strategies to keep them engaged.



The Gospel tonight was very apt for everyone (especially women?) The old 'you who is without sin cast the first stone' story. There I go. Being very 'judgmental' about women. Probably because I cannot think of a time when I get together with the girls when we don't say "oh, you know what so-n-so is doing..." I think women are very hard on each other. And I think the men do it rather a lot too.
I'm not going to give a sermon here. This post is merely about my little mind questioning the natural and the supernatural. It certainly seems that it is a natural part of humanity to judge others. Last night Hubby and I watched the very harrowing, yet compelling film 'The Magdalene Sisters'. It seemed unbelievable to us that these young women were judged and punished in such an appalling way... in the name of Jesus. How natural it was for us to condemn the cruelty of these nuns in the Irish laundries and the behaviour of the trusted clergy who abused vulnerable young women.

I'm becoming wary that this is turning into some massive theological essay. Oh, why not, I do this every now and then, anyway! It just seems to go like that, that these things all crop up at the same time - like you are meant to take notice? So. There was this film. Then there was the Gospel and in the newsletter was a notice about the forthcoming Papal visit to the UK. It invited us to sign a petition in favour because, apparently a secular group has been petitioning against it and had received 20,000 signatures. Well. When I got home I did a wee bit of research. It turns out that the group were actually campaigning for the Catholic Church to pay for the visit rather than it coming out of our taxes. I'm not saying if this is right or wrong. I did sign the petition in favour of Pope Benedict's visit. I then read through some of the comments. One person had answered the question I had been pondering... that apparently our Government finances visits from all kind of world/religious ambassadors and therefore the Pope's visit deserves the same respect. All I am saying is, it is difficult to make fair judgements when we are not in possession of the full facts. Only God is and that is why John reminds us to leave it to him.

On a much lighter note, James Bond has just started on TV. And I hope God will agree (of course he does!) that Daniel Craig is a very very cool 007!