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Showing posts from October 23, 2011
I admit it, I gave up. Tons of times. This Cardinals team earned my respect, my scorn, and my hope all in a vicious cycle for these six or so months. They blew a 6-2 9th inning lead against the Mets with about a week to go. They blew the most games they'd led in the final inning of any team in baseball. They are maddening to watch. I have almost nothing left as a fan. I just need to be honest here. And so, after three errors that all led to runs and a 7-4 lead for the Texas Rangers, trying to win the first title of their existence as a team that made their maiden voyage in 1961, I thought, "It's over." My brother was swearing and asking Tony La Russa why Lance Lynn, only equipped for one inning of duty, returned to surrender the leading runs. As for me, I always lack faith. I pronounced our doom, as is my role as the realist yet again. When Allen Craig smacked a homer in the eighth to make it 7-5, I said to myself, "Why are you making it closer? It'll just hu
5 Irritated Thoughts on Tim Tebow 5. Look, Bryan Phillips, we get it: You don't like Tim Tebow (or Brett Favre*, for that matter) but most normal people do, and seriously, what is it with you people? 4. Tebow wins. At every level. Why wouldn't you roll the dice in re-building mode? 3. You're darn right that we like how he appears to be exactly what he says--a real Christian--who's willing to stand up for that weird sub-cultural tenet that we shouldn't kill each other. What a freak. 2. They won the game, didn't they? And almost won the week before. 1. I'll take 10 Tim Tebows over a whole league of "real," "gritty," and "flawed" people you tell us to like. *Brett Favre is, of course, (with respect) a scumbag, whose beauty queen of a wife would have divorced him long ago if she weren't Catholic. But he was fun to watch.
I had to link this as your "Socialism Sucks" Story of the Day, as if anyone with a brain and a history book needed proof. I mean, I pretty much hate cheese, but I DEMAND multiple cheeses! Better to risk gluttony than starve to death.
I believe in capitalism. I do not believe in it as a concession, a middle-ground until grace perfects something better. I do not hold my material goods with a closed fist, nor adore them as gods. I believe in the dignity of the human person, first as an individual, and then in larger groups. I will accept some limits on the rights of individuals to buy, sell, and trade goods, ideas, or anything of value, consonant with Christian truth, given by the Catholic Church (whether directly or indirectly). I DO NOT automatically accept appeals to the "common good" in the regulation of markets, because "the government" (or the State) cannot be called to account when its meddling creates the very injustices that we all decry. If the efficiencies of markets lead to the valuing of the wrong things, the Church exists to exhort her children (and everyone else, for that matter) to use our freedom to alter outcomes as she sees fit, guided by the Holy Spirit. It may well be unwise fo
You know, this world is tough. We might be tempted to anesthetize ourselves to this fact with pleasure or unreasonable Pollyannish optimism, but it doesn't take long to realize the futility of this. People die suddenly. Friends get sick and injured, the earth beneath us quakes and traps people in rubble and we're left wondering why. When things are going well, there is a part of me that waits for the other shoe to drop. I'm not cynical; in fact, I'm quite the opposite. But I am, as they say, acquainted with grief. Right now, I struggle to love a person who doesn't like sad songs, who doesn't want to hear of misfortune, who doesn't know that we live in a sick, sad, world that would have nothing going for it but that Christ Jesus took on flesh and died for us. It's a beautiful world, too. But make no mistake: He made it that way, we messed it up, and Jesus came to set it (and us) right again. It's not that I don't feel joy, I don't laugh, or lo