Cato–or Laelius

I stand by what I said about Brett Favre: More power to him for wanting to stick it to the Packers. (Even though the Packers never did him any wrong.)

If ever there was a good reason to come out of retirement to play football, a personal vendetta is it.

Speaking of returning All-Pro quarterbacks: My heart goes out Michael Vick as he fights doggedly to get his reputation back…

…The Roman statesman and philospher Seneca wrote letters to a young friend to exhort the young man to live a virtuous life.

Seneca was a demanding moralist, much like his hero Cato. He urged his young friend to choose a role model.

We need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing.

Excellent advice. Even more excellent, I think, is the way Seneca then tempered his advice:

So choose yourself a Cato–or, if Cato seems to severe for you, a Laelius, a man whose character is not quite so strict.

According to Cicero, Laelius like to go on holiday to the seashore and collect shells on the beach, “like a child.”

Strict role models are good. Not-quite-so-strict role models who are good men are okay, too.

(“Non Sequitur” by Wiley Miller)

Holy Family Sunday

1) San Fran weather update

2) Environmentalist Pope Benedict says no to “gender ideology”:

The Creator helps Christians to understand our responsibility toward the earth. It is not simply our property to be exploited according to our interests and desires. Rather, it is a gift of the Creator.

However, concern for God’s creation cannot be limited to care for the natural environment– although that is certainly a part of it. Far more important is the Church’s mission to preserve the ecology of the human being, understood in the proper manner. The Church must teach clearly about the nature of the human person, to counteract the influence of secular ideologies that confuse and diminish human dignity. God created man and woman as complementary, and the Church demands that this order of creation be respected by promotion of marriage and family life.

3) Your servant’s Holy Family Sunday homily:

In the beginning, God created mankind. Then, in the fullness of time, He became man. In the beginning, He made man and woman to be a family. In the fullness of time, He became a member of a family.