Effort & Illness: The Confusing Habits of Sick People

Since I surround myself with people who know better, no one’s yet given me the dreaded words You don’t look sick. Even people who do look sick often don’t look as bad as they feel*.  As Jen Fulwiler explained it last year:

I feel self-conscious that I’ve been doing better, and have no visible symptoms of being ill. . . . I worry that the folks dropping off the food are starting to suspect this is some kind of scam. The other day a super sweet lady from the parish came by with a steaming gourmet dinner for our entire family, complete with appetizers and dessert. I had just gotten back from a doctor’s appointment so I was dressed up and wearing makeup; I’d been resting most of the day so I was unusually energetic. She seemed tired from having worked so hard to cook for our entire family in addition to her own, and I used my Neurotic ESP to determine that she was wondering why I wasn’t cooking for her.

I told Joe that I should get some crutches for when I answer the door for people delivering meals, as a symbolic gesture to assure them that their efforts were not wasted. He looked at me like I was insane, and pointed out the obvious fact that my problem is with my lungs and that I would have no use for crutches under any circumstances. I said that I know, but they sell them at the grocery store, and I didn’t know where to get my hands on a ventilator — and, again, it’s all for symbolism anyway. He backed away from me slowly and went to pour himself a large glass of wine.

Yes.  This. I put a short section in my catechist book on invisible disabilities, because it’s something that comes up in religious ed more often than you’d think.  Mostly among catechists, but among students as well.  That one chapter is the one I get the most thank you letters about.

You can be seriously ill without being 100% incapacitated.

It’s pretty rare for someone to be completely felled in a single blow.  This causes confusion, because you see people wandering WalMart who look like they’re going to collapse any second now.  So if your sick person still has good balance and coordination, and manages to answer the phone in a cheerful manner, you think, “Must not be that sick.  There are people at WalMart who look much, much worse.”

The people at WalMart might be worse.  But that doesn’t cause the sick person to be less sick.

Some people are good at putting on.

I knew a lady once who would answer the phone cheerfully even if you woke her up at 4AM.  It wasn’t that she wanted you to call then.  She just had excessively good phone manners.  And thus the Perceived Illness Paradox: Some people complain a lot, other people don’t.  Some people are good at masking their symptoms, other people aren’t.  Some people are good at coming up with clever work-arounds that keep them high-functioning, other people aren’t.  You really can’t judge how someone feels inside by how they’re acting outside.

Rest makes a difference.

Anyone who races knows you manage your training schedule so that you peak when it counts.  There are days when you can ride hard and fast, no problem, and days when you can’t.  Depends on how much sleep you got.  What you did the day before.  What you did the week before.

Illness doesn’t change that, it just changes the scale.

Figuring out an unpredictable body is exhausting.

Normal people spend most of their time operating well within the margins of their abilities.  If you knew you had to ride 100 miles on your bike sometime soon, you’d have to plan ahead to make sure you could do it.  You’d strategize how to make it happen with as little trouble as possible.  But you wouldn’t feel the least bit of guilt if you misjudged: “Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be, why did I make such a big deal out of it?”  Or conversely, “I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t realize how hard!”

Sick people have to figure out the 100-mile ride about everything they do . . . and then get in trouble if they misjudge.  “Why’d you spend half an hour answering e-mails? You should have rested up so you could talk to your mother on the phone!”  Or “Why’d you put off that phone call, look, you talked for twenty minutes, no problem!”

It’ll make you bonkers.  You hear the mail truck go by, and you think to yourself, “Should I walk to the mailbox?  Or get a kid to do it for me?  What’s the best thing here? How will this decision impact my family life?”

What you like is easier than what you don’t like.

Sick people are confusing because their gifts don’t go away.  Okay, if your gift is watching football on TV, everyone will think, “Look he spends all day watching football games, he must be sick.”  But what is hard for you is effortless for someone else. What is easy — even fun — for you is difficult for someone else.  It’s not about the sheer physical energy required.  It’s the mental energy.

So my son might say to my daughter, “I see you have plenty of time for scrapbooking.  Why don’t you research computer components?  What’s wrong with you?  Just lazy, I see.”  And she’d point out to him that he received a photo album for Christmas, and he’s supposed to put his photos in it.  He had time to build a computer, and even more time for playing computer games . . . why so lazy with the photo album?

Everything costs.

There’s service to your fellow man, and then there’s letting your fellow man turn you into his servant. We live in a hyper-critical age.  What you wear, what you eat, what your hobbies are, how you spend your money — all of it is subject to the approval of seven billion self-appointed guardians.  That doesn’t change when you’re sick, it just becomes harder to please the seven billion, because you’ve got less to please them with.

Normal people might say, for example, “Is it worth it for me to give up an hour of my time to visit my crotchety uncle who invited me for dinner tonight?”  When you’re sick the question becomes, “Is it worth it for me to set aside an entire afternoon to rest, and give up getting any chores done, at all, the entire day, so that I can physically pull off the feat of visiting my uncle for an hour?”

In normal life, a dysfunctional friend is the one who makes inordinate demands on your time and energy.  In sick life, everything is an inordinate demand.  But some of those demands are very gratifying, so you organize your life to make them possible. The chief sin of sick people, I suspect, is in gratifying too many whims.

Order in all things.

Sick people are confusing because of the scale change.  With so little room for covering-over, it becomes obvious what the sick person values most.  It becomes obvious where the conflicts lie, because there’s no margin where you can quick slip in a nod towards other people’s priorities.  As in academia, the rivalries can be so bitter because the stakes are so small.  “Just a few minutes of your time” is now also, “all your time”.  How are you going to spend all that time? The way you want?  The way I want? Something in between?

The Darwins have a novena started on just this question.

*Sometimes things look so bad that you assume the other way, “It’s not as bad as it looks, I hope?”  To which I’ll observe: A badly scraped knee looks horrible.  But it feels even worse.

Papal Economics + We Don’t Want Your Stinkin’ Snow Plow

Over at the the blorg bookshelf, I do a book club bleg.  I’m reading Papal Economics, which is a good book, but one that wants to be discussed.  So if that’s your scene, get a copy and chat with me.  Your place, my place, whatever suits.  Let me know what you like.

***

Meanwhile, speaking of economics:

1) Usually snow does not actually cause any more problems in the South than it does anywhere else. That thing going on in Atlanta is an aberration.  And really? Atlanta?  It’s Atlanta.  ‘Nuf said.

2) Ice causes problems.  There is an economic case to be made in favor of below-ground power lines.  But the call-before-you-dig people probably have the winning charts, so I bet our lines stay overhead for a long, long time.   And really, the ice mostly just makes things cold and unpleasant.  It can cause the same terrible problems it can cause anywhere. But most people don’t experience that.  So you’d have to have some serious cost-benefit studies before even taking on much in the way of anti-ice measures.

But, please, dear northern friends, do not form a 501(c)3 and start collecting funds for poor, snowplow-deprived southerners.

3) Because here’s the clincher: When we get “winter weather”? We want to stay home.

Not only is there no financial justification for, say, your county owning a snow plow when you have a perfectly good Sun that will be back again by Friday . . . who’d want one?  Why on earth would anyone want to go to work on the only snow day in a year? If you’re lucky enough to get snow that often. Way better to get out the ATV, hitch up a towline and an inner tube, tell the kids to hang on tight, and do donuts on the school playground.

Clarification: I don’t actually think parents should do this.  But I approve of the spirit of such recreation.  Only mean nasty evil people think innocent children should do school work during the Snow Minutes.  Sheesh, one shouldn’t even have to do housework doing the snow minutes.  You shouldn’t have to go to bed.  You should just admire, photograph, touch, shape, throw, sculpt, and roll in the stuff.

I do feel cheated, though, because NOAA’s revised their forecast, and it’s not supposed to hit 60 by the end of the week.  I was looking forward to short sleeves.  Meanwhile, yes, of course we have harvested our icicles and tucked them away safely in the freezer.  Waste not want not.

7 Takes: Too Much Money & First Communion Dresses

My 7 Takes this week are because I woke up remembering I wanted to mention these gorgeous First Communion dresses from Embroidered Heirlooms: I had the chance to see them and touch them a couple years ago, and they really are that well made.  Now’s the time to order if you want to have one for the spring.

1.  Let’s clarify: My girls wear the polyester department store special.  And that’s only because someone up and gave us a hand-me-down dress, otherwise it would not have happened.  It was a little big on #2 daughter, but there’s a lot you can do with safety pins these days.

–> So before you spend a lot of money on a handmade dress to last the generations, ask yourself: If this item were to meet a box of Sharpie markers on the way home from church, how would that affect me?

I don’t for a moment endorse your purchasing things you can’t afford, whether financially or emotionally.

2. So, today’s topic: How Much Money are You Allowed to Have and to Spend, Before People Start (Rightly) Pelting you with Catechisms?

To answer the question, we don’t need to know which dress you’re supposed to buy — that’s the thing that confuses everyone.  What we need to know is: Is it moral to purchase a First Communion Dress?

3. You’re already scratching your head, because you got this great deal at the consignment shop last June, and you’re absolutely sure that $15 is not too much to spend, so how could someone even suggest there’s something wrong owning an FCD?

Well, obviously I don’t think there’s anything wrong with owning such a thing, or I’d be a tad quieter about the one hanging in my closet. But the trick to understanding the morality behind income issues is this: If it’s okay to own the dress, it’s okay to buy the dress.

4.  You could argue that one should not buy special-occasion formal wear.  You could argue that it’s okay to buy the white dress only if you do like the Haitian ladies and wear it all year.  You could argue that it’s okay to buy the FCD, but you’re only allowed to own two other dresses, the nice one you wear every Sunday till you give it to the poor next Easter, and your weekday one that you protect with a burlap apron over, and a hair shirt under.

Haitian ladies in white dresses say: Visit CRS.org for more thoughts on how to spend your money.

But once you go off and say, “It’s okay to own an FCD, no permit or registration required,” the only question left is: How much can I spend and where should I acquire the thing?

5.  Let’s pause here and list the things we aren’t discussing:

• “I’m jealous because so-and-so is dripping with money, and I’m eating used oatmeal for dinner.”
• “She’s just showing off.”
• “Do you really need thirty pair of stirrup pants?”
• “She’s not really Catholic anyway, she just wants a big party.”
• “If you used forty acres of silk, 3 knuckle-sized diamonds, and trained litter-bearers to escort your daughter to her FHC, that would be excessive.”

Those are all bad arguments.  Distractions.  Off-topic.

6.  So. Here’s what confuses us: In our culture, when we think “Holy Poverty”, the first thing that jumps to mind is, “Look at this deal I got at the thrift store!”

This book will not tell you how to find costume jewelry that looks like the real thing.

We confuse “not spending a lot of money” with “not living luxuriously”.  Whole books are written by good Christian ladies explaining to you how you can live like a king on $2 a day.  In their proper place, there’s nothing wrong with those books: If you don’t have any money, and you still want to be both fed and not naked, and perhaps even sleep indoors at night, it’s helpful to know how to pull that off.

And there is holiness, much holiness, in learning to cheerfully make do with what God gives you.  Absolutely.

But that legitimate spiritual exercise should not disintegrate into a game of, “How many toys can I amass for my dollar?”  Far worse is if it becomes, “Thank you Lord that I’m not like that surgeon over there who pays full retail.”

7.  Somewhere along the line, someone has to be the one who bought that dress / couch / textbook you snatched up at the garage sale.  Someone has to fund the wages of the worker who neatens the clearance racks at the end of the day.  Someone has to pay the whole bill for Catholic school tuition so that your kid can get the scholarship.

–> If that person doesn’t bring in enough income to pay retail, you don’t get to live like a king.

What’s a living wage?  It’s enough income that one can live in “decent and frugal comfort” without:

• Someone else picking up the tab for part of our legitimate expenses.
• Paying slave wages to the people who provide us with our stuff.

Try it.  Make a list of what someone raising a family really needs for a year.  Include the FCD or not, as you like.

Don’t forget to include a portion for things like taxes.  For example, if your local public schools are spending $12K a year per student* (and let’s say you determine that’s a legitimate cost — perhaps benchmark them against Catholic school tuition at a school that provides all the special-needs services, buses, and everything else, on an all-salary, no-monk teaching staff), then the living wage tax bill needs to include that amount for tuition. Remember to multiply that by the number of children the family should reasonably hope to have. Don’t forget to add in what you think is an acceptable per-capita spending on sidewalks, roads, police, military, and sanitation workers.

Then add up the cost of acquiring those items without resorting to sweatshops.

You included a bit for the savings account, right?  Emergencies, illness, and old age do happen to nearly everybody.  Throw in a modest sum for the poor box and the maintenance of the Church as well.

Back to the dress, now that you’ve got your annual living-wage salary figured out: Estimate how much time it takes to sew up an FCD, and you can figure out what the wage of your seamstress needs to be in order to make that decent frugal living.  Gives you a new perspective on what a fair price is for that white dress.

__________________________________

*Homeschoolers don’t be smug. Those amazing per-student costs people report rarely (if ever) include an amount for your salary, nor for the cost of the buildings in which you educate your child.

How much does Kolbe cost?

I keep forgetting to answer question in the title, which someone asked me via e-mail.  My answer:

I do not know how much it will cost you if you decide to enroll with Kolbe.  It depends on:

• How many children you are enrolling.
• What parts of the program you choose to use.  (Even if you order full-menu, there are choices).
• How you acquire your books.

Proven accountant trick: Get out your spreadsheet and add it up.

 

Some Tips for Lowering Your Total Cost

1. Get yourself onto CathSwap, so you can buy used books from people.

2. Beg and borrow books from people you know.  Many Kolbe books are also used by the other major Catholic homeschooling programs.

3. Do every-other-year on subjects that you really don’t need to do the full shebang for.  We do that with the National Catholic Reader — I only own years 2, 4, & 6. I’d take the others if someone gave them to me, but we get plenty of benefit from just the half-set.

4. If you own a computer of some kind (such as the one you are reading this blog on?), look on Kindle or Project Gutenberg for free e-books for out-of-copyright works.

5. If you don’t own a computer, or you just like paper, go to the thrift store or garage sale to find your classic works of English literature.  That is where the ones that don’t get composted end up.  (I know!) You won’t necessarily find the best edition, but it will do.  At $0.25 – $0.50 a piece, most people can afford to speculate that their kindergartener will in fact read Tom Sawyer one day.  You can even afford to accidentallly buy duplicates now and again.

6. Don’t buy services you don’t need.

7. Don’t buy services you can’t afford.  That’s more important than #6.  If you haven’t got the cash, do something else. Learn to avoid debt, and your child will have a very strong foothold on the world.

That was fast.

Whoever prayed for the SuperHusband’s ribs, THANK YOU.  It worked.  Now please apply your efforts to Hathaway’s lungs.  Thanks.

(PS: People tell me the radio thing sounded good enough.  So double-thanks on that one.)

And two things to read:

Chris T. on when and how to give to a worthy cause.

Pope Francis on just about everything.

How much pay should the evangelist accept?

Serious answer this time.  As it happens, pay for evangelists works the same way as for anyone else.

If you have any choice about it, don’t accept less than what is needed to provide for the essentials of life for yourself and your dependents.  Sure, living martyrdom is glamorous and all, but it’s an exceptional calling.  For most people, choosing to live in squalor just makes you a pain someone’s rear in the long run.  If you have the option, go for decent work that pays the bills every time.

If your employer offers you more than you strictly need, graciously accept.  Use what you need, then direct the remainder towards some worthy cause.  If your employer is foolishly overpaying you, save your excess diligently, because you’ll soon be looking for other employment.

If you’re the boss, pay people in this order:

1. Provide for the absolute essentials of life for yourself and your dependents.
2. Pay your employees what they need in order to make a living, including reasonable savings for the future.
3. Pay your employees what your organization needs in order to keep it a going concern.
4. Pay yourself a decent salary.
5. Direct your excess towards some worthy cause.

Of course you’re going to do this badly.  It’s the rare person who strikes that perfect balance between generosity and prudence.  Keep working on it.  If you tend to be miserly, commit acts of wanton generosity.  If you tend to be wasteful, discipline yourself with acts of self-denial.  If you tend to be scrupulous, find a sensible person to talk you off your ledge.  If you tend to worry too little about your almsgiving and stewardship, feed yourself a steady diet of questions and better examples to kick yourself back on the right path.

It’s not complicated.  Difficult, because you have to battle the just-a-bit-more demon at every turn.  But not complicated.

April 8th HHS Contraceptive Mandate Comment Period Closes

Go here to leave a comment. Go ahead and do it right now, then you can come back to read my ranty-rant if you like.

Either you believe in women’s liberation or you don’t.  Do you believe that mentally competent, grown women are capable of making their own purchases?

Then require employers to pay us a living wage, and let us make our own purchases.

Women don’t need men at the office, men in Congress, or men at the HHS to force us to spend our wages on this pill or that surgery.  And we don’t need Mama making us buy stuff either.

We’re grown-ups.  Pay us fairly, and we’ll pick our own health insurance, thank you very much.

Seven Takes: Life, Death, Warped Things Governments Do

No, I’m not back to regular blogging.  But I had approximately seven things to say, and it’s a Friday, so that makes this Seven Quick Takes, right?

1.  Why yes, that was us you saw at the National Vocations Meet-Up March for Life.

Low point:  Children in tears due to experience of being a southern-person whose mother does not know how to dress them for cold weather.

High point: Making a brief retreat into the National Gallery to go potty, rest, and warm-up, then re-emerging to a gentle made-for-TV snow flurry, taking up our signs, and falling into line with these guys.  Who sing beautifully.

Weird Point: The Metronome, as my 3rd-grader calls it, is determined not to take my money.  I kept trying to pay full fare, but the machines refused me at every turn. Fortunately the kind metro-ladies are apparently used to clueless tourists with five children in tow, and sorted me out with a combination of generosity and exasperation that I think must be the hallmark of the metro system.

2. Petersburg National Battlefield is a good place to run the kids and get your history fix all at once.  The ranger does come around checking to see if you’ve paid.

–> Touring tip:  Always ask if you’re supposed to pay.  Because they expect you to pay, even if they never ever tell you that.  And the ranger lady has a gun.  Luckily I had asked.

Discussion Question: Any Particular Reason the Union had to engage in war?  Why not just let the Confederacy secede, and work on patching things up diplomatically?  Put another way:  Did the US Civil War meet just war criteria for the Union?

My boy says yes.  I’m playing neutral professor-person.

In other US history topics: The essay “Smuggler Nation” in this month’s Harpers is really quite good. One more shovel of fodder for that pirates-vs.-privateers topic that’s always coming up around this household.

Our other airline-miles magazine subscription, Western Horseman ran a great piece a month or so ago on the troubles ranchers along the US-Mexican border are having with Mexican smugglers, and the lack of cooperation from some of the US border patrol in keeping their lands safe.  I can’t seem to find an article link.  But let me just say right now, that if you purchase approximately one plane ticket every five years, and want a family-friendly periodical to purchase with your miles before they expire, WH is the one.

3.  My son objects to the strong language in Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter Views the Body.  It pleases me greatly to discover I’ve reared a middle-schooler who complains about words like “damn” and “hell” improperly used.

4.  My January New Evangelizers column was 10 Ways to Support Evangelization Even When Your Parish is Falling Apart.

I picked this photo.

Apparently it grabbed someone’s attention, because the Catholic Vitamins people invited me to do an interview for their podcast.  Which is exciting, in an I-hope-my-phone-battery-doesn’t-die-while-we’re-talking kind of way.  I think I can bribe my kids into being quiet with the promise of Krispy Kreme donuts.  Also, presumably this is just one step on the long road towards true fame? By which I mean, of course, being on Rhett & Link’s Good Mythical Morning? My son doesn’t think I’ll ever be quite that good, but he puts on an encouraging face all the same.

5.  Helen Alvare nails it on the head in her analysis of the new HSS regulations.

Let me observe once again that there would be no moral objection at all if the government merely required employers to pay workers a sum sufficient to pay for the desired contraceptive services — for example, by putting the necessary funds into a healthcare savings account that employees could then use to purchase supplemental insurance if they so chose.

And how exactly is it “freedom of religion” if insurance companies and self-insurance administrators must sell (or give away, per the new iteration of regulations) products they may themselves object to?  Is there no legal right to sell insurance for some but not all health care services?  Will insurers eventually be required to pay for euthanasia as well?  Apparently there is a religious test required in order to enter the insurance industry.

6.  Speakin’ of that constitution thing . . . my boy observes that 2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides.  (Wikipedia’s citing 60%.) Which puts a certain corner of the culture in the odd position of wanting to outlaw something they’re trying to legalize.  Apparently depressed and disabled people should die, but only at the hands of licensed death-care providers?

If you aren’t from Gunlandia, you probably should not visit gunmemes.com. It takes a special red-state redness to enjoy.

7.  You know you live in a warped culture when you feel the need to clarify something like this: “For the record, I’m 100% opposed to all forms of murder and suicide.”

Ooh, oooh, want me to exasperate everybody in one single catechism quote? How about this one?  Enough to make everyone you know get all squirmy-wormy:

2269 The fifth commandment forbids doing anything with the intention of indirectly bringing about a person’s death. The moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger.

The acceptance by human society of murderous famines, without efforts to remedy them, is a scandalous injustice and a grave offense. Those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them.⁷⁰

Unintentional killing is not morally imputable. But one is not exonerated from grave offense if, without proportionate reasons, he has acted in a way that brings about someone’s death, even without the intention to do so.

Happy February.

Busy not blogging. And blogging.

What I’ve been up to so far this Advent:

1. Acquired a cold just strong enough to plant me in front of the PC and get some writing done for a change.  I’d complain, except it’s really not that bad. For me.  My family wishes I’d start making dinner again.  I think.

2. Posted my book review of the Didache series of textbooks up at AmazingCatechists.com.  These are awesome books, and the new parish editions bring serious theology to high school and adult faith formation.  Long-needed.  Don’t cry to me you don’t have priests, but refuse to teach theology.  How exactly is a boy supposed to fall in love with a something he’s never met?

3. Guessed at my login information for the Happy Catholic Bookshelf enough times that I finally broke in.  And put up my review of Walking Dickens London. Verdict: I still don’t like Dickens all that much, but the guide book is awesome.  Of course I had to put a reference to Rerum Novarum in the review.  Only logical.

4. I cleaned out my inbox.  If I still owe you an e-mail about something, you’d better tell me.  Because I’m under the mistaken impression I’m all caught up.

5. Planted the potatoes that were sprouting in the cardboard box in the living room.  Ditto for some garlic in the bottom of the fridge.

6.  I’ve written about 5,000 words on the homeschooling manuscript. Also pre-wrote my January CatholicMom.com homeschooling column, because once you get school on the brain, and a cup of coffee, these things just pop out.

7.  I got all vice-presidential over at the Catholic Writers Guild.  Being VP is almost exactly like being the blog manager, except that instead of plaguing the officers all month long with bad ideas and unhelpful suggestions, you also get to do it during the monthly officer’s conference call.  I think someone nominated me because the existing officers were already practiced at telling me, “No!  Quiet! Sit!  No Biscuit!” so it makes their job easier.  So mostly as VP I amuse people with my ridiculous ideas, and about 1 time in 10, I think one up that someone makes me go do.  And then I regret it, and don’t think up any more ideas for at least 10 minutes.

Also, I goofed off on the internet more than I had planned.   It happens.  I was sick.

3.5 Time Outs: New Things

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who’s also doing a time-travel edition today.

Click and be amazed.

1.

Blogging Popes.  That’s my topic for today.  Not the kind you’re thinking of, though.

2.

See, here’s what happened:  Saturday night I was bored, tired, and itching for something to read.  Something fun and relaxing and novel.  Meaning, new-to-me.  I usually grab one of my daughter’s library books for this purpose — just enough entertainment to get me through a non-digital Sunday, but not so much that I’ll be out of service, glued to a book, for 10,000 hours waiting for Br. Cadfael to tell me who did it.  But I needed novelty.

So I went to Papal Encyclicals Online.  I’m sure that’s what you do, too.  But before you get too impressed, keep in mind that the three reasons this was a possible source of reading material were:

• I’d never read most of them before.  Strike one against my Catholic-nerd credentials.
• They’re usually very short.  This is why I’ve read the minor prophets, but *still* never gotten through all of Isaiah.
• There was no chance I’d let the cat starve, or grouse at my children for interrupting me during an especially gripping scene.

And the thing is, they tend to cover that same juicy ground as your average Catholic blogger, only you get bonus credit for not being stuck to the computer all day while you work up your angry frenzy at the injustice in the world.  Of course, no Star Trek screen shots for illustrations, but look, I was desperate for entertainment.

3.

And the one I picked was Rerum Novarum.  Which is basically a series of blog posts on economics.  Perfect.

(Let me just say right now, JPII’s follow-up work is not blog-genre.  Waaay more wordy.  Waaay more.  I haven’t finished it yet.  But I’m half thinking, “What more is there to say?  Leo.Encyclicalpress.com already covered the whole territory.  But you know how it is, people need to explain the obvious.  Or maybe people needed the obvious re-explained.)

Here’s a sample snippet of the Leonine goodness:

Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition.

And this:

The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men.

Followed by this:

To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.

 

See? I spent my weekend reading 64 Cath-Econ-blog posts, 19th century edition.

3.5

And although I could pretty much shut my eyes and point my finger anywhere in the document to find a good quotable quote, one of my underlined favorites is

***

Well that’s all for today.  Still accepting suggestions for additions to the sidebar, so tell me who to add.  But do just one link per comment, because otherwise the robotic spam-dragon will consume the whole lot of them.  Thanks!