They Blew Up My Car

but it’s nothing more sinister than incompetence: the old Dodge minivan, with 190K miles on it, needed a new timing chain. We went for it, figuring $1300 for another year of use (gulp!) would be worth it.

Well, the dude working on the car evidently started it up before setting the timing – this is a mystery to me, but that’s how it was explained – and, because the timing was way off, basically bent, blew out or otherwise destroyed the valves.

So, we get to drive a nice brand new Dodge minivan for a few days while the shop rebuilds our engine, puts in new values and whatever else got fubared, and redoes the timing belt – all on a vehicle that is *this* close to being hauled off as junk.

Hey, maybe we can get *2* years on it…

Church Music in Hell

Quick note, I’m swamped:

Orthometer has this list of bad church music. This topic gives me a headache. Dodged a bullet a couple Sundays ago when the choir director at Parish A asked me if I’d cover a Mass for him while he vacationed. After years of skirting around the issue, this time I was afraid I’d have to say: No, for two reasons – almost every Sunday, there’s at least one song that is not merely poor music, but is actively heretical, and the fancy remodel of the church makes it so the cantor stands with his back to the tabernacle.  Instead – he’s a very nice man, really don’t want to make his life any more difficult – I was out of town on business, so the topic didn’t come up.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on what makes a song unacceptable for the Liturgy (or for Catholics to sing in any event). I’m making a distinction the Orthometer doesn’t – between music that shouldn’t be sung because it is bad or infantile or inappropriate, and music that *can’t* be sung because it is heretical.