Do Not Call Registry

To my son Tommy,

My belly was not good and, not to get too graphic but, things were coming out of both ends and made life quite eventful.  I stayed home today and you and I got to hang out more.  Not that I was much company for most of the morning.  I pretty much laid on the couch and moaned and groaned and belly ached.  I finally got some energy and spent the last hour cleaning up the living room from the mess that I was just too under the weather to care about you making this morning as you played.

The one thing I was not too under the weather to do is make complaints at donotcall.gov as I have received about a half dozen calls from telemarketers and such.  I honestly don't understand how that law actually did anything and doubt that anyone enforces it.  All the calls were pre-recorded and the phone numbers were probably spoofed or overseas.  But being sick did not stop me from logging each and every number on the website and hope.  I wonder why it is so hard to track these people down.  Someone has to pay for the phone line right?  Anyways, despite the recorded messages, I did not win a free cruise and am sure that I could not save thousands a month on my mortgage, etc. etc.

As life was breathed into me, I could begin to wrap my head around this mornings news that the Pope is resigning.  Not sure what I think of all that.  At first I wasn't even sure that a Pope could leave office, but evidently canon law allows this and it even has been done before about 600 years ago and a half dozen times before that.  Pope Benedict XVI has sited old age and failing health as his reasoning.  The Church is much bigger than any man but many will feel uneasy with this announcement, but I am inclined to believe that the Pope did not come to this decision lightly and I think we as Catholics should respect his wishes.

Of course now we will have to endure, for the lack of a better word, the wackos from within and from without of our religion pointing to the alleged Prophesies of St. Malachy and some even pulling out prophetic words from great Saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Hildegard or from popes of the past like Pope Pius IX or Pope Leo XIII.  I have heard these before and they always come up during times of trouble especially with regards to the Bishop Of Rome.  In this day and age of the internet it should be interesting.  Doomsday sayers will fill the minds of those that refuse to think for themselves.

I have looked into these types of talks before to settle my natural curiosity.  In my humble opinion, it is to borrow a word from the yiddish language, bupkis.  If, and this is a big if and something I do not believe to be true, but if St. Malachy actually wrote these, you have to remember he was an Irishman and you always have to doubt what to believe when the words come from an Irish mouth.  Also it doesn't take a prophetic vision to realize the Church is under threat.  The Church has been persecuted and under threat from the beginning and will be till the end of time, which most likely has nothing to do with the next pope.  But people will pull words and verse and such out of context to prove their point over and over again.  Don't fall for it.

Finally I am reminded that no one knows when the end will come and we should all live our lives so we are prepared and it doesn't matter when it comes.  Just like there is a "Do Not Call" registry for telemarketers, I wish there was a "do not call" option for all the crackpots that are about to come out of the woodwork.  As for the future of the Holy See, we will do what we do all the time and just pray for guidance and inspiration to be given to those involved in the papal conclave.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo