Dear Friends,

In a recent interview, President Biden said, “What’s going on in Florida, is as my mother would say, close to sinful.” Wow. I must admit I never thought of Florida as a den of iniquity. Well, maybe Miami Beach or the Keys but certainly not Tallahassee or Clearwater. So, what almost sin has Florida committed? The “close to sinful” sin is that the Florida Board of Medicine put the brakes on sex-reassignment surgeries (mastectomy, hysterectomy, castration etc.) on minors.

Dear Friends,

The US Attorney General, recently testified before Congress and was grilled on the case of Mark Houck. Mr. Houck, a prolife advocate got into a scuffle with a pro-abortionist, who was saying vulgar and foul things to Mr. Houck’s 12yr old son while he and his son were protesting in front of an Abortion Clinic in Philadelphia. The local prosecutor declined to press charges, but the Federal Prosecutor decided to charge Mr. Houck with violations of the FACE Act which “prohibits violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.” Mr. Houck volunteered to surrender to the Federal Prosecutor but instead, the Prosecutor sent in a SWAT team with over two dozen heavily armed agents to arrest Mr. Houck early in the morning at his home where he lived with his wife and seven children. A Federal Jury acquitted Mr. Houck of all charges.

Dear Friends,

The Beatles chimed out, “You say goodbye and I say hello’. So, I’ll start with the ‘goodbye’ and move on to the ‘hello’.

Our Director of Pastoral Care, Whitney Lynch, who has served us well for the past many years has moved on to a new position with the Diocese of Phoenix. Which makes me conflicted…good for them not so much for us. Whitney had a unique skill set that suited our Parish and its demographic perfectly. Add to that a very generous personality and vibrant faith, and she was just, sort of like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way!

Dear Friends,

Any time we worship anything other than God we dance around the altars of Baal, a false god. The more we do, the more frantic we become and the more we begin to hurt ourselves. Sounds like addictive or compulsive behavior to me. That is exactly what happens when we substitute a material thing for God. We will dance around it more and more frenetically until we start to harm ourselves. Witness an addiction to a drug: the thing we convinced ourselves would help turn us around begins to harm us.