“The joy of God is not the death of the sinner, but the life of the sinner. And how far from this were those who murmured against Jesus, how far from the heart of God! They didn’t know Him. They thought that being religious, being good people meant always being well-mannered and polite, and often pretending to be polite, right? This is the hypocrisy of the murmuring. But the joy of God the Father, in fact, is love. He loves us. “But I’m a sinner, I’ve done this and that and the other!” “But I love you anyway, and I go out searching for you, and I bring you home.” This is our Father. Let’s reflect on this.”

A new documentary finds exactly what and who I said was happening during the primary:

The not-so-secret hero of “Caucus” is former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who plugs his way across Iowa in his Dodge pickup and an endless wardrobe of endearingly dreadful sweater vests, talking to anyone and everyone who will listen. He’s almost a Frank Capra character, a plainspoken man of principle who believes in old-fashioned politics and refuses to tell lies just to get elected. “Caucus” is in many ways the story of Santorum’s triumph, short-lived as it turned out to be: Despite polling in the low single digits in the fall of 2011, Santorum outlasts Bachmann, Gingrich, Cain and Perry and winds up in a dead heat with Mitt Romney, candidate of the GOP establishment.

Let’s be clear: I wouldn’t vote for Rick Santorum for dog-keeper if the other candidate were a dog. He’s a committed Christian conservative – actually, a Catholic conservative, a subtle but important distinction – who is forcefully opposed to abortion rights and marriage equality, and rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. I do not lament the fact that he didn’t get elected to national office (and never will). But amid all the overheated anti-Obama rhetoric and wild, unfulfillable promises of the Iowa campaign, Santorum comes off as the only candidate who isn’t telling people exactly what they want to hear, and who isn’t fueling hatred for its own sake.

So, once again, the Republican Party - in it's so-called wisdom - wasted the best candidate it had going,...

 

Pope Francis Scourge of Slavery

Long before many other genres, African-Americans found a place in horror. Perhaps because the origin of the word “zombie” itself is rooted in Haitian Creole, with the very concept tied to Vodou or Voodoo, as it is more popularly written. While popular culture has turned “voodoo” into a freak show, it is actually a religion with deep West African roots that is believed to mingle those roots with the Roman Catholicism that was forced upon enslaved Africans from there. In this country, New Orleans is the “voodoo” epicenter, with the practice taking rise in the late 1790s and 1800s as those fleeing Saint Domingue, the one-time French colony, during the tumultuous Haitian Revolution sought refuge there.