I just spent almost an hour of my working time tidying up the house in preparation for the cleaners to arrive later today. These are the cleaners I hire to come fortnightly to give me more time to write. I’m not sure it’s working out quite as well as I hoped!

Anyway, I’ve just looked over this week’s edition of The Catholic Weekly. Though I usually do my magazine and news reading online, but there is still something so nice about sitting with a cup of coffee and reading a paper front to back. And if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have noticed the connection between Simcha Fisher’s excellent column on Fr Frank Pavone’s use of an aborted fetus, the altar and the crucifix, and my own book review on Redeeming Flesh.

Check them out, especially Simcha’s column. She explains why the Church teaches us “to be careful with how we treat dead bodies, but also to be careful with how we treat living bodies – our own bodies, the bodies of others, and most of all the body of Our Lord”.

Matthew Tan’s book shows us the result when this doesn’t happen. A culture that denies the reality of life and death, essentially rejects the Christian God and the intrinsic meaning of our bodies, leads not-surprisingly to the absurdist spectacle of flesh-tearing ‘undead’ that we’re seeing lots of in popular culture at the moment.

On a lighter note, I notice in one of the ads there’s a priest who’s selling decks of playing cards with traditional religious images on them. The idea is that if you use them to play a game of solitaire you’ve completed a rosary. It’s a novel idea that’s for sure. He’s developed this as a fundraiser to help build a church – a worthy project. Hopefully, it will move people in one way or another to support the cause…

Also – love the centenarian sisters!!! And I’m already planning to take the kids to see the Christmas lights at the cathedral. They’re fantastic.

Now it’s off the blog and back to FRANKLY – did you know people can order boxes of 40 copies of the new lifestyle magazine at $120 a box (plus postage) to donate to their parish for handing out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day? Friends have even ordered a box to give as gifts to friends and family. Orders have to be in asap though.