7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol 145)

1
I’m certain it was clear to my friends and readers how excited I was last week (and still am) regards our new Holy Father.  Pope Francis talks about a ‘great spirit of fraternity’ and I experienced that last week (in fact I often do) and I truly appreciate it.  Most of my friends are not Catholic, they are either non-Christian, Protestant or ‘betwixt and between’;).  I was particularly touched by my friends who sweetly listened last week to my excitement and supported me.  It was so lovely to know that my non-Catholic friends were creating papal notebooks:) and one dear friend even rang me to share how excited she was for me!!  Aren’t they just the best:)  No wonder I love them{{}}

2
The sin of calumny is on my mind this week.  I accidentally stumbled across a blog post with comments regarding our Holy Father, I truly wished I had never seen such vitriol, so hard to dislodge. Then I became aware of a couple of other ‘situations’. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (para 2477) has some serious words to state; “that a person is guilty of calumny if he, “by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.” The person who engages in calumny does not even have to specify an untruth about another; all he has to do is place doubts about that person in the minds of others.  

3
If you have tried to leave a blog comment you may have noticed a few changes.  Due to spam I had installed word verification, but I wasn’t very happy about doing so.  Then I trialed comment moderation, not only was it work for me, I began reading some very explicit spam, I did not need to sully my mind.  My solution has been to not allow any anonymous commenting, my apologies to my genuine anon commenters, though you may find you do have a google account after all.  If you have a gmail account then you have a google account.

4
Our financial challenge(7) is very successful at present, so successful that we halved our credit card bill this month!!  Soon, I promise I will share some tips.

5
Found a fantastic blog this week, Aslan’s Library, my kind of blog ’cause the authors, Haley and Sarah love talking about books, in fact they love reviewing books:)  Beautiful and theological books for children and they are more exacting than I! Love their reviews.  Any readers have other book review blogs to recommend?

6
Yesterday I finished reading Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine) the story of how Margaret Humphrey’s an English social worker discovered that 150,000 British children were deported from children’s homes across the Britain to distant parts of the Empire, some as recently as 1970.  Child migrants between the ages of 3-14, the lives that awaited them are truly sickening, horrendous abuse, what they experienced here in Australia breaks my heart,  I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Margaret and her team at the Child Migrant Trust have been able to reunite thousands of families but for many it was too late.

7
A fortnight ago we reshuffled all the rooms and we moved Bass into a cute little bed in with his ‘big’ brothers.  This is the first time in 19 years, except for the transition month immediately preceding a new addition,  that we have not had a cot and babe in our room.  As we are not expecting this feels very, very strange.  I walk into our room and immediately seek out the cot, or lower my voice to not disturb the baby, only to realise there is no cot, no baby.

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