Catholic Ragemonkey

When You Know That You Are a Serious Catholic

When my sister and I took her daughter and our mother to see the movie "Shrek," I didn't expect an opportunity for catechesis. At the end of the movie, as all you who have seen it know, Princess Fiona ends up married to Faraquad. They say "I do" and everything, as opposed to another marriage scenario in a popular movie. I am sitting there in the dark thinking, "Oh, great, another movie in praise of divorce." Instead, the dragon eats Faraquad and clears the way for Shrek. I sat there thumbing through the mental index to make sure the marriage to Shrek would be valid. But that's not the funny part. As we are walking out of the theater, my sister turns to me and says, "That second marriage was valid, wasn't it?"

These things happen once you start to navigate your life by the true pole of the Catholic Faith. At the same time, it can go a bit overboard.

Recently, after weekday Mass, a well-intentioned, but not well-catechized, woman came up to me and asked me if I knew of a good biography of St. Mary Magdalene. Now, I dropped into the thousand yard stare, not because I was searching my intellect for an appropriate title, but because I was thinking should I mention The DaVinci Code? I told her I would look around, but my suspicion-o-meter was going red line.