Family Guy - Something Something Something Darkside Full Trailer

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Separation of Church & State

"But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me--but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office."

- John F. Kennedy

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In the United States, we live in a nation of law, not religion. I am deeply saddened and truly ashamed as a Catholic myself on how the Catholic Church (specifically the Conference of Catholic Bishops) has decided to thrust itself into the arena of making public policy. Whether it is with regards to abortion (as in this video), gay rights (in which they have stated that they will cease to feed and support the poor if gay marriage is granted as a right), etc…

Today on Thanksgiving, I am certainly thankful for all that God has bestowed upon me… my entire family, my home, my employment, my health, ect… I am also thankful that I live in a nation that is governed by law, not religion. I would like to remind the Catholic Bishops that we no longer live in the dark ages of feudal Europe. They have no place in making public policy; their place is in the church, not the Congress, the White House, or the courts!

I suggest that if Bishops truly wish to make public policy, then they should honestly run for public office. They should tell the voters exactly how they would govern… that they would govern on what the church demands of them first and foremost, and then they would govern for the people. If this is what they want, then they should run for office.

Aut Viam Inveniam Aut Faciam

Oh, how I do truly cherish days long ago when life was much less complicated. I wish I had just a few more carefree days.

It does seem that each day (specifically at work) that I must live by this motto - "Aut viam inveniam aut faciam" ("I will either find a way or make one.")

Often I'm asked (both with my current and previous employers), "What do you do on a daily basis?" Well, this is honestly the best and most accurate response - I either find a way or make one.

I just wish there was a break from this every once and a while. It just seems that so many forces are constantly in motion, purposely trying to make things much more complicated than necessary!

-- Posted from Frank's iPhone

Funny Graph Songs

Here's one more example of people having too much free time! Below are representations of some songs in the form of graphs, venn diagrams, and charts. Very amusing! (You can click each picture to make it a bit larger if you're having difficulty reading the pictures.)

Crossing The Rubicon

Back during the times of the Roman Republic, law prohibited the Rubicon river from being crossed by any Roman Army legion. The river was considered to mark the boundary between a Roman province of Gaul to the north and Italy to the south; the law thus protected the republic from an internal military threat. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army in 49 BC to make his way to Rome, he broke that law and made armed conflict inevitable. It was at this time that Caesar supposedly uttered the famous phrase, "alea iacta est" ("the die is cast").

The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" has survived to refer to anyone committing themselves irrevocably to a risky and revolutionary course of action – "passing the point of no return".

Over the last couple weeks, I have suffered from migraines nearly every other day, awakening a very personal recognition of my own mortality and the frailty of life. I guess approaching the age of thirty has also been a large influence recently on my self-awareness that my days are certainly finite. I find myself frequently examining the times in my life that I crossed my own personal Rubicons - passing my own points of no return.

While I try to live my life without regrets, and I wouldn't change a thing in my life, I do wonder what would be different if I had made different choices during my life. What kind of butterfly-effect would a different decision in my past have on my present and future?

How many more Rubicons will I cross? What will be the outcome of future decisions when faced with a "point of no return" situation?

-- Posted from Frank's iPhone