A year of Blogging.

(First published photo of John the Mad taken on his first birthday as a blogger.)

Be gentle with me. This is my first effort at blogging. In undertaking this effort I take great comfort in the words of G.K. Chesterton who once wrote, "If something's worth doing it's worth doing badly." So it is. I am known among friends as something of a ranter.

Since I send out large numbers of Emails to friends and family, opining on events of the day, I thought it wise to try a method that does not inflict my views on the unwilling. Trust me, friends, family and colleagues have put up with much. Now they can choose to tune in, or out as they want. Since I believe we human beings are obligated to avoid inflicting unwarranted pain, this is surely a good thing.

At that time one year ago exactly, with those words, John the Mad began to publish this small blog. Since then I have written 712 posts on a lot of different topics. The number of emails rants to my friends has virtually ceased. Oddly, I have only received one complaint about that.

In my first post I wrote about my attending an Anglican church service that day and reminisced about the time a year before that when a female Anglican bishop forced an Anglican communion wafer between my unexpecting innocent Catholic lips! At the latter service I was better prepared and managed to get away with only a blessing. I mused:

So this time I received a blessing only. I must admit it was a good blessing. I sensed the Holy Spirit in that blessing. Of course, it may be that it was just God's reward for successfully avoiding the Anglican host the second time round. You never know.

A post script, if I might. In the Eucharistic prayer used in the service there was mention of Abraham and Sarah. Whatever happened to Isaac? For two thousand years Isaac, Abraham's son, has been twinned in the Christian liturgy with Abraham.

You may recall that Abraham was told by God to sacrifice Isaac, his son, and Abraham was in the process of complying when the angel of the Lord stopped
him. God's demand that Abraham's sacrifice his son was a test of faithfulness
and the result of Abraham's obedience was the covenant with the Jewish people.

The twinning of the names of Abraham and Isaac, in the Jewish tradition goes back long before Christianity. Suddenly, today in Mississauga, I find Isaac
dropped from the program. This is not to take way from Sarah, who was araham's wife. Under current family law she is no doubt entitled to half Abraham's spiritual assets, but let's face it. It was not her neck that was on the line. I want to know. What did Isaac do to deserve this? What have the Anglicans done with him? These questions needs to be answered.

Indeed a full year has passed and Isaac is still missing from the Anglican Eucharistic prayer. No member of that Church has stepped forward to explain or apologize. The questions still need answering. We Catholics have apologized for Galileo. Can the Anglicans get away with silence on what they did with Isaac? Time will tell. Give him up you guys.