Important News:

That doesn't involve dead celebrities.

Today was the date upon which Benedict XVI promulgated his newest Encyclical

Caritas in veritate

On integral human development in Charity and Truth.

Too bad the 24 hour News outlets were otherwise engaged showing wall to wall coverage of homage to "the gloved one".

I encourage you to click on the link above and read the encyclical.

If you prefer, Curt Jester has done us all a solid and converted the text to ereader and kindle format. Check that out here.

I am printing out my copy now.

Pax

A Little Hope for Christmas

What better way to spend this Advent than by reading and meditating on a new Papal Encyclical:

Saved by Hope

Here is a review from Catholic Online.

I am a great proponent of the average pew-sitting Catholic reading these amazing documents. In fact the first one I ever read was Fides et Ratio in 1999, long before I ever thought I would work for the church or get a Gradual Degree in theology. I just decided one day that if the pope wrote this encyclical for "the faithful" that included little old me. So, I printed out a copy and worked my way through it.

Since then I have made it a point to read each new one as soon as I can when they are published. When I was working for the parish I wrote an article encouraging everyone in the parish to read Deus Caritas Est.

So. I am sorry Judith Viorst, but Murdering Mr. Monti will have to wait, because I am going to be reading this for the next few days. Then perhaps I will savor what I have read until Christmas. That seems to me to be a much more spiritual use of my time than finding out how and why your protagonist chose to murder anyone, especially this time of year.

Pax