and then hilarity ensued...

Missouri turned out to be more hot and humid than all the rest of the states we've been in put together. It was thus with a thankful heart that we all arrived in St. Louis (city of Catholicism, Baseball, and Unique Foods including but not limited to "Gooey Butter Cake") wherein we could be in the air conditioning most of the time. Here we visited the Cathedral-Basillica of St. Louis, home of many magnificent mosaics. It's definitely my favorite kind of church architecture, the Byzantine-Romanesque revival which was popular in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Fearless Leader (Admiral and Comrade Party Leader) Dave Kelch and I also attended a Pontifical High Mass with Archbishop Burke which was among the more beautiful and spiritually uplifting liturgies I have ever attended: a long stately Mass in the Ancient and Venerable Tridentine rite, with all the servers and priests moving reverently and precisely like an elaborate dance.

In Missouri this November they are voting on a Constitutional amendment which would make cloning human persons (through Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer) for the sake of killing them and harvesting stem cells a right. I don't think any life issue has made me more angry and more glad that I'm doing Crossroads than this issue. To create thousands of lives for the sole sake of killing them and using their parts to treat diseases--and to tout it as saving lives and actually helping people--seems the sickest parody of charity I can think of. The whole country, beginning with Catholics, needs to rise up to stop this evil. Please pray for the state of Missouri, that they will not allow this violence to legally occur. God bless you all.

In Pace Christi,
Mark Spencer