Oh darn

I have waaaay tooooo much to do. I have to write six to eight pages for my history class mid-term, due next Monday, and I have no idea how to do it. Pant, pant. And I have a Sociology test tomorrow. I didn't buy the book for that class - dumb, dumb. And I have bugs crawling out of my ears. Okay, I'm lying about that. It might as well be true, since my brain has gone to rot ... ahk ...

Last night was supremely odd. They weren't having Adoration for some reason or other, so Mel and I went from St. Paul's to Taco Bell and then to the Donkey (the coffee shop we have here in Athens). Her big thing was apparently how Catholicism is allllll wrooooong. It was the same old crap about how we worship Mary etc. etc. - if you've read one "Death to the Papists!" pamphlet you've read them all.

Idddddiiiiiioooootss! I should be charitable. Maybe she hadn't had it explained to her before. I spent about ten minutes explaining the difference between dulia (the respect we give to the saints) hyperdulia (the way we honor Mary) and latria (worship, which means it's for God alone). She still didn't get it! And it wasn't just because she didn't know Greek.

She is also one of those people who like to throw Scripture quotes at you. The thing is, you can find lots of contradictory statements in Scripture, especially from Old Testament to New; if you've ever seen "sola scriptura" people debate, you know what I'm talking about - we can play the Game of Dueling Scripture Quotes all day long. I knew of a couple verses that contradicted what Mel was saying, and I showed her how the "Hail Mary" comes word-for-word from the Gospel according to St. Luke. She seemed rather annoyed. "Catholics aren't supposed to know the Bible!" Bleeeeeehhhhh.

Anyway, she's going to give me a big list of all the things that are wrong with the Church. The nice thing about my position is that I didn't go to Mass until I was 18, I wasn't raised to believe any of it and before I decided to "revert" I studied what the Church believed and whether it made sense and matched up with history. I was convinced intellectually; it wasn't the result of some previous emotional attachment. So I've encountered all these claims against the Papacy and Mary and the Real Presence before, looked into them, and found them lacking. I don't think they can have come up with anything new. Maybe "all priests dally with little boys!!!!" or something lovely like that.