glorify your name

No offense to our parish priests but the best sermons I heard this weekend occurred not at Mass but during the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Both Darrell Green and Art Monk spoke beautifully about their faith, their family and football.

Darrell told an amazing story of how he barely missed the chance for a ride home from college with his best friend Carnelle. He was homesick and depressed that he didn't get to visit his family for the weekend. On Monday morning he learned that Carnelle was killed in a car wreck. Had he gotten the ride, Darrell's life would have probably ended too. Later he said that he felt God had a plan for him to remain with one team when he could have easily been a free agent. By staying with the Redskins, Darrell Green could also stay with the same church. He and Art Monk both mentioned Grace Covenant Church in their speeches. Art and his wife turn up in a photo on the church's website.

Monk must have thought for a moment that he might never get to his speech. He set receiving records throughout his career. Last night he set a record for receiving the biggest ovation from the crowd. The four minutes of applause helped make up for the eight years he had to wait for his enshrinement.

Monk and Green are two of the main reasons I became a Redskins fan. I come from a family of Giants fans. While working at WAVA, I had the opportunity to meet several of the players, including Art and Darrell. At first I would cheer on the individual accomplishments of the guys I had met. How could I not want success for those two? Before long I was rooting for the whole team, just as I am tonight as the Redskins play the Colts.

winz, losses and ties

Nicole Sandler and I know a lot of the same people. We were competitors when I was at KROQ and she was at KLOS. A couple of years later, I got Nicole's old job with Mark & Brian. Despite our common acquaintances, we had never met or spoken until today. Nicole emailed to see if she could call me on her Miami radio show to talk briefly about the tragic church shooting in Knoxville. A podcast of the show is available. I'm on at the end of hour 3.

The accused killer had books by Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity in his home. I said that I had heard Catherine Howell on WNOX wondering if the suspect was one of their listeners. Nicole supports a return to the Fairness Doctrine so that people like the shooter might be exposed to other points of view. I countered by telling how we talked about tolerance and freedom of religion on Monday morning on Star 102.1. I told the Miami listeners that East Tennessee is not all gun racks and confederate flags. We have many different houses of worship along Kingston Pike and plenty of well-educated people at UT and ORNL.

It was nice of Nicole to call. I'm not sure why she thought of me but my best guess would be that she saw one of the links I submitted to Perry Simon's Talk Topics column at All Access. When I find a local story that might interest Perry (like this one), I send it along. I've been doing that since he and I worked in neighboring trailers at the Comedy World Radio Network.

dear diary

The type of tragedy that always seems to happen someplace else happened here in Knoxville yesterday. A hate-filled shooter opened fire in a one of the many churches along Kingston Pike. The shooting alone was enough to make today one of the more memorable days in my personal broadcast history.

I don't usually write about work but in this case I must make an exception so that I can look back on this post years from now. Due to vacation schedules and the departure of another deejay, the boss asked me to do the midday show instead of the morning show both this week and last. Before we knew about the shooting on Sunday, I got a call from Kim Hansard. She said that Marc Anthony was ill and would miss work the next day. We came up with a plan to air rerun segments during the morning show on Monday. I drove over to the station to load the audio files into the "Google box," which is my name for our broadcast computer system. When I finally exited the soundproof studio, I learned of the shooting in an email from my friend Bean.

I felt that there was no way we could run repeats on a day when Knoxvillians would need to talk about the tragic event. We worked out a new plan that involved a double shift. I would still do the midday show from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and also come in early to do the morning show with Kim from 5:30 to 10:00 a.m. We took lots of calls and talked about heroes, hatred, tolerance, freedom of religion and the effect of violence on children. I commented that the Unitarian Universalist beliefs reminded me of the rights guaranteed by our founding fathers. The most powerful moment came when an eyewitness to the shooting called us. Here's the audio of the call:



To top it all off, we finally had a winner in the station's flyaway contest. For the past few weeks, listeners have been trying to guess an airplane seat number to win a trip to a John Mayer concert in Dallas. An hour later we started the contest for the second flyaway to see Linkin Park in St. Louis. Kim and I were stunned when our first contestant guessed the correct seat. It was even more shocking than my 10-9 victory in the daily Her vs. Him contest. I can't remember the last time the guys won on a day I was filling in for Marc.

habit forming

In his homily this morning, Fr. Michael Woods quoted from Terry Mattingly's syndicated religion column, which was in yesterday's News Sentinel. It's not yet available online, but should turn up on Mattingly's site soon.

The headline of the column says it all: "Catholics, evangelicals see sins in different light." A survey by Ellison Research says that 100 percent of evangelical Protestants believe adultery is sinful but only 82 percent of Catholics agree. Similarly more evangelicals than Catholics believed racism (96% to 79%), premarital sex (92% to 47%), and abortion (94% to 74%) were sins. Naturally one must wonder which Catholics were polled. If you asked only the people I know, Catholics would have scored much higher.

The survey defined Catholics as someone who attends Mass at least once a month or more. Evangelicals were defined as Protestants who believed in statements such as "the Bible is the written word of God and is totally accurate in all that it teaches." I'm fine with the way the pollsters identified evangelicals but not so sure about the way they chose their Catholics.

Let's say that a survey respondent went to the minimum one Mass a month. That's 12 Masses and 40 misses per year or a 23% attendance record. A "passing grade" of 70% would require a churchgoer to show up at least 3 times a month. I think they would have gotten a more accurate idea of Catholic opinions if they had asked respondents to say whether or not they believed in Church doctrine like transubstantiation and the Immaculate Conception, etc.

I once won a small prize for knowing my Catholicism. My wife and I were at a performance of "Late Nite Catechism" in Los Angeles. "Sister" asked if any of us knew the meaning of the Immaculate Conception. I told the class audience that we celebrate the conception of Mary, not Jesus, on December 8. The conception of Jesus is marked by the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25. Both dates are nine months before the celebrations of the respective births. I got a little plastic statue of Mary. Thanks Sister!

tip of the iceberg

The "Stuff (blank) People Like" phenomenon hasn't grabbed my full attention. I had heard about the original site, Stuff White People Like but didn't spend a lot of time looking at it, much less the various copycat sites.

Today I found that I had been added to the blogroll on Confessions of a Worshipper (thanks!). One of their recent entries linked to a list of Stuff Christians Like. On the flip side of the coin, All Access posted a link to Stuff Radio People Like. Comparing the two is somewhat reminiscent of the old Goofus and Gallant cartoons in Highlights Magazine.

yuck boo yum

Supermarket shelves are currently stocked with a variety of Easter candy, including a couple of items that I hadn't seen before. Sam's Club had a big stack of Edible Easter Grass made by Galerie au Chocolat. If you've ever ended up with plastic grass stuck to your jelly bean, edible grass seems like a fine idea. However if it's made of white chocolate, it could end up as a melted mess in the bottom of your basket. Yuck.



Milk chocolate fans usually want their bunny, whether hollow or solid. The package for Palmer's Too Tall Bunny amused me while I was at Food City the other day. You see, his ears are so big, they don't fit in the box. My enthusiasm quickly waned when I saw some guy with annoying sound effects prove on YouTube that the bunny is not too tall at all. The box has a false bottom. Boo!



I'm more of a dark chocolate and marshmallow fan. The folks at Candy Blog have described a Lindor Truffle Egg that sounds pretty good. I couldn't find any of them but I did see a different holiday treat at the Food City on Morrell Road. Until now, I had always thought that people who keep Kosher were denied the pleasure of eating marshmallows. That includes Marshmallow Peeps which are not Kosher even if they are "always in season" nowadays. It's because marshmallows are made with gelatin and gelatin is made from animal bones and connective tissues, hence the non-Kosherness. Anyway, this store has a pretty big selection of Passover products. Wedged in among the Manischewitz were packages of Granny's Toasted Marshmallows by Rokeach. So how does a bag of marshmallows get a Pareve insignia on the label? Turns out that these coconut-covered treats are made from "kosher fish gelatine." Yum?

l'chaim

A young couple with whom I share a GMU connection are having a blessed event. They sent me the good news via email with a screen grab attached. Here's what they wrote, with hyperlinks added by me:

Ok, so we’re having another baby in July and found out last week that it’s a boy. Woo hoo. So imagine my surprise when, while researching about the bris ceremony and trying to find a mohel in Knoxville, you show up in the search results. Go figure.

holy pop quiz!

The October issue of "Catholic Update" is available in the rack at the back of our church. I picked one up this morning. This month's topic is "Creationism: What's a Catholic to Do?" I already had a pretty good idea that the essay would support my belief that God created evolution. The article does mention in passing the Creation Museum in Kentucky that I read about in July.

My friend Bean sent along a quiz he found on the Internet that's perfect for a Sunday. I'll post the correct answers in the comments section once several of you have posted your own guesses.

1) In 1966, the Ku Klux Klan burned Beatles records after who said the group was "more popular than Jesus now"?
2) The Depeche Mode song "Personal Jesus" was inspired by the autobiography "Elvis and Me," written by whom?
3) The Jesus and Mary Chain’s song "Just Like Honey" appears in the closing scenes of what 2003 drama?
4) Before "Jesus Christ Superstar," Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice collaborated on what other biblically inspired musical?
5) In the short film "The Spirit of Christmas," when Jesus and Santa are kicking the heck out of each other, who reminds the "South Park" kids that "This is the season just to be good to each other"?
6) What Pulitzer-winning novelist and one-time New York mayoral candidate published The Gospel According to the Son in 1997, told from the point of view of Jesus himself?
7) Victor Garber, Jennifer Garner’s dad on "Alias," plays Jesus in what musical film that climaxes on top of the World Trade Center?
8) The shortest verse in the New Testament, John 11:35, is "Jesus wept." Whose tomb made Jesus cry like a little girl?
9) Supreme Court case Morse v. Frederick determined that a school can restrict student speech at a school event that can be seen as promoting drug use. What did Joseph Frederick’s controversial banner say?
10) In 1899, journalist Louis Klopsch came up with the idea for what biblical innovation?

carved in stone

Here's a couple of leftover photos from last month's road trip. A chapel in upstate New York bore the inscription "Mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people" from the Book of Isaiah. The usage must have been correct at the time but it's weird to see the word "house" preceded by "an." The current New American Bible translation of Isaiah 56:7 reads "a house."

We passed a cemetery in Connecticut that was having some repair work done to its stone gateway. I thought that the scaffolding gave new meaning to the inscription from 1 Corinthians 15:52, "The dead shall be raised."

then God said, "let there be evolution"

Russell Biven's face stared back at me from the free magazine rack at Wal-Mart. I had reached down to grab a Metro Pulse from the middle of the stack when I saw Russell and his wife on the cover of the premiere issue of Tennessee Christian Living magazine. The two page profile focuses on Russell's family, faith and career. I hope the magazine eventually puts its content online. They would get a lot of page hits from posting the photos that accompany the article, especially the one of the "Live at Five" team in their Halloween costumes. Russell is dressed as Mr. Incredible, Beth Haynes is Wonder Woman and Todd Howell is Robin, the Boy Wonder. Did I mention that Beth Haynes was dressed as Wonder Woman?

Toward the back of the magazine is a calendar of upcoming events. It says that Lisa Whelchel will be speaking at a church in Loudon on August 17 and 18. They also have a listing for a new exhibit called "Hatching the Past: Dinosaur Eggs, Nests and Young" at the McClung Museum. Somewhat ironically, that calendar listing is only a few pages after a two page spread on the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

odd name for a magazine

Crisis Magazine has ranked the 176 dioceses of the Catholic Church in the United States. The survey looks at factors like number of ordinations, adults received into the church, etc. The new number one diocese had been ranked second when the survey was last published ten years ago. The most vibrant diocese in America is... drum roll please... the Diocese of Knoxville!

The rest of the top five dioceses are Savannah, Kalamazoo, Alexandria (Louisiana) and Pensacola-Tallahassee. Generally speaking, larger dioceses didn't fare as well in the rankings because of the adherent to priest ratio. The archdioceses where I have been a member are examples of that. New York ranked 140th and Los Angeles ranked 143rd. However the Diocese of Arlington did okay at number 25. Here's a quote from the article:

It is unmistakable that many of the most vibrant dioceses in the country are confronting adversity. This fact has emerged from conversations with dioceses in the South, the Southwest, and the Pacific Coast. This is most especially true in the South, where the Catholic Church has never been the largest denomination. "We are outnumbered, we are young, we are building churches, we are growing, there is an enthusiasm for evangelization among the laity," reported a priest in the number one-ranked Diocese of Knoxville. Catholic dioceses seem to be most successful when they are self-consciously the pilgrim Church on earth.

The main contributor to the vibrancy of the Knoxville diocese is the largest parish, All Saints Catholic Church. The success of All Saints contradicts the criticism of its interior design that I told you about in December.

Meanwhile, the cathedral in America's top diocese is still closed for repairs after a fire on August 30th. Ironically, the fire was caused by faulty wiring in their new electric votive candles. Like many parishes, Sacred Heart Cathedral removed the old wax and wick votive candles because they were considered to be, you guessed it, a fire hazard.

three topping sundae, um... three topic Sunday

Something in the church bulletin caught my eye this morning. At their next meeting, the women's guild will watch "Really Bad Girls of the Bible."

The editorial in the current Metro Pulse is one I can agree with. It explains why it's time to ban indoor smoking in Tennessee workplaces. Majority rules, right? Let the 26% or so of Tennesseeans who still smoke do it only in the privacy of their own homes, not in the restaurant where I'm trying to eat.

The New York Football Giants almost won their playoff game tonight. I'm disappointed that we won't get to see any more of the Pillsbury Throwboy, J. Load, the Hefty Lefty a/k/a Jared Lorenzen. He looks a bit like one of the deejays at the hip hop station down the hall. No offense, T.

she had a bad prayer day

A small controversy has developed at our parish. While it has one of the largest congregations of any church in the area, there are those who don't like the place. The local Catholic newspaper printed a column very critical of the way All Saints Church is designed and decorated. Many missed the original column but did see a letter to the editor in the following issue that defended All Saints.

In the original piece, a columnist wrote that she found it difficult to concentrate in a church without lots of iconography. For example, she prefers to see a crucifix when she prays. The processional cross at All Saints had been carried to the back of the building in the minutes before the Mass she attended began. She writes that she was "searching fruitlessly for some tiny reminder of Christ to direct my gaze toward while praying."

I'm no theologian. All I know is what I learned in Catholic school. We were told to look for Christ in the faces of those around us, which is hard to do. We were also taught to pray anywhere and everywhere. Is the columnist limited to praying only in rooms with a crucifix or other religious icon? Some of my best praying happens with my eyes closed. Am I wrong to do that? Should I be staring at a statue instead?

The columnist also finds fault with the simple wooden chalices at All Saints. Do you think she would have been one of the unfortunate souls who had "chosen poorly" when trying to select the Holy Grail in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"?

Fortunately, the newspaper columnist has plenty of places to go besides All Saints. Immaculate Conception Church has been around since 1855 and has lots of statues for her to look at. It's a beautiful old parish, as is Holy Ghost Church with all its religious art. But not every parish needs to be full of Italian marble. I remember that shortly before we moved away from Burbank, a gorgeous new wooden ambo was installed at St. Finbar Church. It rivaled the beauty of the adjacent marble altar. The wooden furniture at All Saints makes me think about the time and effort a carpenter spent building it. As a matter of fact, I thought our religion was particularly fond of carpenters.

It's a shame that the columnist had such a bad experience at my parish. Whenever I visit another parish, I enjoy the differences yet am always impressed by the things that remain the same. If All Saints is too modern for the columnist from "The East Tennessee Catholic," she could always turn back the clock about 40 or 50 years to attend Mass in Latin. If the photos I've seen are any indication, she'll have no problem finding a seat.