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Today was the first severe storm alert we had in the Twin Cities metro area this year.  The sirens went off mid-afternoon, at first I thought it was simply the monthly test since it is Wednesday.  But they didn’t stop, so I turned on TV, and sure enough, a funnel cloud had been sited in the northern suburbs.  The weatherman was actually shaking with excitement as he traced the storm on the weather map.  It has been live, continuous coverage ever since.  One would think it was Katrina happening all over again.

There was some storm damage, trees down, roofs off, but that’s what a severe storm does.  The entire 6PM news coverage has been nothing but insignificant videos of golf-ball sized hail, and downed trees, okay, a trailer blown onto a minivan, oh, and someone’s backyard trampoline blew into a tree.   Weather is big news.  It’s cheap and easy to fill a half hour with weather news of no consequence.  It is like nothing else happened in the world today around here.

I love severe storms, but this wasn’t that big, of course many people lost power, but it will be restored.  Weather people get you all excited for the big one, and then it just fizzles out.  Oh, well.

Although I did hear that some people were in a bar and their drinks were sucked right out of their hands, but their cigarettes remained undisturbed in the ash tray.   

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I found this while looking for items on Our Lady Help of Christians, whose feast it is tomorrow:

On the Feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, exactly 31 years ago tomorrow, for the first time in more than two centuries, a Pope publicly rebuked a prelate by name: Marcel Lefebvre (Speech of Pope Paul VI in the Secret Consistory of May 24, 1976). In this famous speech, Paul VI made his mind clear: “The new Ordo was promulgated in order to replace the old one”. - Rorate Caeli 

Lately, it seems to me - many people continue to insist the old rite was never actually meant to be replaced.  The comments on the post at Rorate Caeli are interesting. 

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May 24th is the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians.  Our Lady was invoked under this title for the victory at Lepanto, while the feast was instituted by Pius VII in thanksgiving for his release from captivity under Napoleon.  St. John Bosco held this title of Our Lady in special esteem, and named the Mother Church of the Salesian Order in Turin after her.

The Church, and every Christian in particular, needs the intercession of Our Lady Help of Christians more than ever in these days.

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Organ harvesting in China continues. 

More sweet news from China again today - some sources are calling their harvest of human organs for the purpose of transplant to other humans a ‘holocaust‘.

“The situation in China is that donors are waiting in line for a recipient, said Dr. Trey, adding that there must be a pool of living donors. He mentioned an ad found in April 2006, published in a Chinese newspaper, advertising: “Twenty organ transplants free of charge” at the Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital, for which people could register by calling the hospital’s hotline.

Organ transplants are a lucrative business in China, with prices ranging between $USD 30,000 and $USD 180,000 for an organ. According to the data collected by the organization, these prices were available on the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center website, but have since been removed.”- Holocaust

I have already heard, that when the Chinese execute prisoners, often while they are still alive, they extract their organs for sale in transplant operations.  Now it seems, they are using political prisoners for this purpose - those who are not sentenced to die.  I wonder who the market caters to?

Embryonic stem cell research is a similar phenomenon - although celebrities like Michael J. Fox refuse to acknowledge an embryo is a human being.  Or maybe he and others with money just don’t care.

Human life is cheap.  It’s a strange mentality that believes one’s own life is precious but the other persons life, disquised as an embryo or criminal in a Chinese prison, doesn’t matter. 

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