Now that I've returned, I can finally blog! At any rate, the vacation was more Catholic than most. Reading done included Pat Buchanan's State of Emergency, truly a necessary book, the first four chapters of Pope Benedict XVI's scholarly Jesus of Nazareth, and several articles in the Hoover Institution's Policy Review. More importantly, I was able to go to a Tridentine Mass.

Unfortunately, Fr. Novak of St. Anthony of Padua Church (near Charlotte) was too preoccupied to say a High Mass, or even give a homily. An influential local priest, as part of his response to the MP, warned his flock not to attend SSPX masses, and alleged that they were in schism. In a spirit reminiscent of fiery, righteous Protestant ministers from our Nation's past, and also of minutemen from the War of Independence, he hastily organized plans for the entire congregation to drive an hour and a half to the calumniating priest's church, and distribute literature telling the truth about the SSPX. That is one involved flock!

Although I dearly desired to join this new crusade, which brought to mind the desperate, glorious assault on the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode IV and St. Bernard's grandstanding for the Second Crusade, my mother and grandmother [a visiting Lutheran schismatic] already had plans to go to a "classy" (and faceless) city restaurant. With barely a blessing for the child-stuffed parishioners leaving for the [admittedly friendly] grand clash with the Modernists, we departed.

The trip was also literarilly provokative, especially as I gazed over the farmland of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Of the three poems I completed, I plan only on posting the below

Sonnet LVI

I met her in that giddy day when the
Guilty, clumsy rockets adorn the skies:
Audacious caravels, like fireflies
Inflamed the clouds in blue-edged Modena.

Before the vague watch of the Appenines
And every tall, transcendental spire
My lucid voice held her heart afire;
An easy task, for circles cherish sines.
As when the tricolor is respected
Her figure, fairer than a ruby ring
On conifer green, makes copper churchbells sing
To a soul which is by Christ perfected.
But hers, which is doused in Mary's roses,
Holds few contemplations Christ opposes.