I just finished reading an article in the magazine A&M sends to former students, written by the president of Texas A&m, Robert Gates. It made me realize all the more what a great school A&M is, for so many different reasons.

Just to name one: At the end of the article, Mr. Gates recounted how he was asked to be the chief intelligence officer for the United States. You can imagine the importance of this job at this time in our history, and he did not want to take the job, but out of duty he said that he would do it to help our country be more secure. Everything was ready for him to leave A&M and take this position, but as he walked around the campus and saw all the different Aggies who had dedicated themselves to their school so heroically, he realized that his place was right here, and he called Washington the next day and told them he couldn’t take the job after all!

At A&M, you can be a Christian without feeling like your a weirdo. You can be patriotic without being ostracized. You can be friendly without having people look sideways at you. It’s a place where good people can be good.

It is not perfect, nor even close to it. There are evil things that people do there just like at other colleges. There are professors who are liberal academians. It is an institution made up of humans, and so has all the flaws that we do. But, it is also a bastion of honor, courage, and integrity, where being virtuous is still admired.

I will post another article about A&M and Catholicism in a few days. Meanwhile, gig ‘em, Aggies!

I met today with our pastor about setting up a tabernacle in the perpetual adoration chapel that is being built and was perplexed about several things. He told me that we could only have one tabernacle in the entire church, and that was in the main sanctuary, so the adoration chapel could not have one.

This position frustrated me because the benefit of having a tabernacle in the chapel is that if someone has to leave the Blessed Sacrament unadored, they can close the tabernacle doors (where the monstrace is exposing Jesus for adoration), and so then we are following the Church’s rules on proper respect for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

But my pastor said it is against canon law or the liturgical norms to have multiple tabernacles in a parish, so we cannot have it. In practice this will mean that when (probably not “if”) someone has to leave the Blessed Sacrament unadored because someone does not make their scheduled hour, then Jesus will be unadored and not properly behind a closed and locked tabernacle.

I am going to verify that canon law or the liturgical norms say this. One parish that has perpetual adoration in our diocese does it this way (with a tabernacle that automatically locks when closed), so I don’t understand why they were allowed to do that if it is against the Church’s guidelines on such matters.

I am a big fan of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR, rhymes with “boater’). The books are the best fantasy written, bar none. The Peter Jackson movies were excellent, too, and I own the extended editions of them all (thanks Mom!).

However, there was one exchange in the books that would have been so easy for Peter Jackson to include in the movies, and yet, for unknown reasons, he left it out. The exchange is in the Fellowship of the Ring and is between Gandalf and Saruman, right before Saruman imprisons Gandalf in Orthanc.

“Yes, I have come,” I said. “I have come for your aid, Saruman the White.” And that title seemd to anger him.

“Have you indeed, Gandalf the Grey!” he scoffed…”For you have come, and that was all the purpose of my message. And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!”

I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if they moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

“I liked white better,” I said.

A priceless Gandalf dead-pan, which would have been awesome to watch acted out. The significance of Saruman’s change from white to “many-coloured” also vividly symbolizes his fall from good to evil as he is confused into thinking that white is weak because it can be dyed and changed so easily.

Way before his time, this scene now uncannily applies to modern ideologies that hold up “diversity” as the highest ideal, where diversity is twisted into meaning “accepting evil behavior as good”.

May God rest the soul of J.R.R. Tolkien!

The G got back from Laredo today and brought home a riding lawnmower! It took us a little bit of doing to get it off the truck, but thanks to our angels, we managed the task unscathed. The lawn has bested both G and I in several mowing contests due to its crazy weeds (last time some were over 3 feet high), but now I think the tide has turned, and perhaps the lawn will be little less smug once it feels the weight of the Craftsman Die Hard grass-annihilator rolling over it!

Our new associate priest at St. Elizabeth’s name is Father Thai. He is an older Asian man, but he has the passion and energy of a man half his age!

I have heard about 3 of his homilies so far, and he speaks the truth of God right from his heart–it is just so awesome to hear. This homily and his one last week both encouaged everyone to go to Confession. “You commit sin and don’t go Confession but then go to Mass: this is NONSENSE!” he boomed last weekend. I was like, “Alright! Rock on!”.

He said that at a parish he was at some years ago, the people would not listen to his preaching, and so he said he was moved by the Spirit to pick up a candle next to the altar and throw it down the center aisle of the congregation, telling them that if they don’t listen to him, then they are not listening to the man God has given authority to for their own benefit.

I have been a Catholic for 4.5 years now, and he is one of the few priests I have heard who is not afraid to actually tell people what the Church teaches. He told people today, from the gospel, to deny themselves, and then he pointed out how we say we are denying ourselves but really are not, and how to truly deny ourselves (succintly, to fight against your selfishness and tempations of the flesh (lust, laziness, etc.)). He then encouraged everyone to get up 3 times this week at 6 am and come to daily Mass at 7.

I am so excited about he and Fr. Albert, the new pastor, and all the good work God will do through them at St. Elizabeth’s. Some very disturbed people did evil things against our last pastor, who is a very kind priest, and I think these priests were brought in to lay down the holy law. The law is grace and people cannot persist in evil if they hope to for this grace from God. Father Thai is telling that to them and showing them the way God has made for them to turn to him.

This is the kind of stuff I need to be reminded of every single weekend. Thanks be to God!

CatholicExchange.com has a great article by George Weigel that he has written as an open letter to Senator Patrick Leahy about Judge John Roberts’ evaluation process.

Weigel succintly points out the glaring double-standard and illogic in the abortionists’ position:

In late July, you told a Vermont radio show that you wouldn’t vote to confirm a nominee who “didn’t consider Roe v. Wade settled law.” You then compared Roe to Brown v. Board of Education, the epic civil rights case that rejected “separate but equal” public education as unconstitutional. I suggest that you have the wrong analogy here. The correct analogy is between Roe and Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that created the “separate but equal” doctrine. Now there was “unsettled law;” there was a decision that cut across the grain of basic principles of justice; there was a decision that roiled our politics for generations, until Brown effectively reversed Plessy in 1954. Plessy, in a word, was the Roe of its time: a case wrongly-decided on a fundamental issue.

There is nothing “settled” about Roe v. Wade…

When it comes right down to it, the abortionists’ believe that murdering babies is okay to do. They can’t appeal to God to defend such evil, and they can’t even appeal to science to defend it, as everybody knows that humans procreate babies when they have sex, and that if you then kill those babies, it’s murder.

Since then they have no basis on which to defend Roe vs. Wade, they use a circular kind of support logic and declare that “there can be no argument because it’s ’settled law’.” As if you could wave a magical golden wand over a court decision to make it become “settled law” or similarly declare something to be true because the Supreme Court of the United States said it was.

They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie and embraced heinous acts against him. God has allowed them to do this in his great love for them, in hopes that they will turn to him and repent (cf. Ezekiel 18:23).

I hope that Senator Leahy reads George Weigel’s letter and the Holy Spirit enlightens his heart to see the truth in it.

Sometimes I have dreams that contain very evil things, whether done by me or by someone else, and when I wake up I remember them and feel bad. I have had conversations with other Christians about such dreams and have received different responses, so I was really happy to read this passage in “Through the Eyes of Jesus”, a book written by Alan Ames from private revelation given to him.

The story is written from Jesus’ perspective:

more…

I met with my two friends tonight about our game (Crescendo). It was very cool because I had trepidation about showing them what I had done and opening up the ideas I have already begun working on up for criticism and revision, but it was surprisingly easy. I think God has helped me grow in humility over the past six years or so, for there was a time when I would not have been amenable to their ideas. (Don’t worry, I’m still very prideful and so I won’t let this modicum of humility go to my head.. ).

I told them that I thought we should put off graphics and networking, mainly because I have never understood those areas of programming very well, so I am afraid of them, and so I want to put them off. They disagreed and presented good arguments for why we need to consider them now at the outset. Additionally, they are both respectively interested in these two areas and have prior experience with them!

“Cool,” I thought to myself. “They actually want to work on these hard parts, and our skills could really complement each other.”

We brainstormed ideas for the different Kingdoms’ creatures and styles, talked about technologies to explore (game engines, libraries, etc.), and talked about meta-level things like source code control, servers, development environments, cross-platform considerations, etc.

My friends do not share my Catholic faith–nor are even Christians, so that makes me the spiritual leader for the team. I’m asking God to help us and to bless us, and I have placed our game completely under the patronage of St. Joseph. May it succeed or fail according to God’s desires for it through St. Joseph’s intercession. (Gotta love that Communion of Saints!).

Tomorrow I’m going to my Catholic men’s group meeting, then up to work for a few hours, then going to play some Warhammer 40K, so it should be an interesting day. May God bless you!

I was blessed tonight to meet with a very faithful and talented married couple from my hometown (Georgetown, Texas) about them creating a custom tabernacle for the adoration chapel that we are building at our parish in Austin. They took me to see the cemetery that God inspired them to build, a very beautiful and reverent place. I wouldn’t mind being buried there one day!

I am going to contact our pastor to discuss the details of the tabernacle so that we can come up with a design that glorifies our Lord, who will spend a lot of time in it as the monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament will sit inside the open tabernacle doors for us to adore him!

I met with some friends today, and I am going to form a team with them to collaborate on developing Crescendo, my first commercial video game. I’ve only been working on it for a month or two now, off and on, but it is a huge project and I think the chance of me and my friends completing the game is much greater than me completing it by myself.

Working on a team is fun, but it brings its own challenges, as we need to share the same vision for the game, as well as divide up the work technically so that we are all working efficiently and on parts of the project that interest us. May God bless us!