Ignoring the latest

If this was written eight months ago it would be better.  Now Dr. Fauci and company are saying they're going a different direction with pursuing a 'universal Covid' vaccine.  Plus, multiple reports since last week say the two most protected groups are previously infected - vaccinated then, close behind, unvaccinated. That's unvaccinated and previously infected being safer than merely vaccinated.  Not to mention the current requirement for endless booster shots given in ever diminishing timespans to remain 'fully vaccinated'.   

All of this is an off handed way of saying 'the current approach hasn't worked as we imagined'. And it hasn't.  The difference between ICU and death with Omicron has dropped to as low as 64% unvaccinated to vaccinated in some reports.  And doctors admit that you're just as likely to get it and spread it if you're vaccinated or not.  Something our experience more than confirms. 

That's a far cry from '98% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated' from a year ago (remember, when it hits 50%, the vaccine officially becomes irrelevant).  And then we have the creeping number of severe side effects.  They have reduced promoting one vaccine (J&J) because of multiple confirmed deaths linked to it.  The others continue to see occurrences of severe side effect increasing, especially among younger recipients.  

In the end, with all that has developed and the underperforming of the initial rollout, you just can't keep saying 'Get the Shot!'.  You certainly can't compare such a flawed product as the current vaccines to the Sacraments.  Words fail me on that last one. 

How to reclaim the world for the Gospel

Easy.  Stop acting like the World is always right about everything, but on those rarest of occasions where it might drop from perfection, then God stuff.

This Saint day website I visit had this nifty insight as it reflected on today's feast of Saint Camillus de Lellis:

Are you sick and in need of healing? Do you realize that you can lay hand on yourself, family, friends and call on Jesus with faith to heal . This should be the first step before going to the hospital. Medications and hospitals are gift of God to mankind. They should be used with deep gratitude to God.  Jesus is still active in the healing ministry and testimonies abound.

You see that?  Lay on hands as a first order?  I'm sure they don't mean if you're pinned under a truck or your arm just got sliced off by a lawnmower.  Though I don't know. 

I've become more convinced than ever that the Church's 'keep up with the worldly Joneses' approach has allowed endless seeds of doubt and confusion to be sown in the minds of the faithful for generations.  It's even to the point where a Catholic exorcist says that the  Church assumes a purely  materialistic, atheistic explanation for problems and if that fails, then we go demon and angel.

That hasn't worked, and it reflects poorly on the spiritual Creation that Christianity proclaims.  For Christianity proclaims God and God's Creation, the Holy Trinity, and the whole of the human person made in God's image and alive in his Creation, which includes that one aspect of Creation we call the universe.  Letting the godless and the secularist have the wheel has allowed us to assume the secular view that the vast, eternal universe is all that and a bag of chips, and then maybe spirit stuff (but probably not). 

So there you have it.  I won't make prescriptions about just when you should default to the laying on of hands before consulting the medical doctors of the day.  But just the fact that someone says it as such a matter of course was worth noting. 

Out of the mouths of babes

So after prayer time last night, our youngest was reflecting on God.  Out of the blue he said, "God is a number I don't know."  I liked that.  Taken from his perspective, what he was trying to say is something that would do us adults some good to remember: God is beyond us, no matter how much has been revealed.  There will always be that part of God that is outside our abilities to grasp.  A little piece of humble pie for this foggy, December morning.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  Romans 11;33