Replacement Refs

I had to wait a day before I commented on the incredibly controversial ending to Monday night's game between the Packers and the Seahawks. I know it's big business with lots of money involved, and I also know it's still just a game. There are way more important things to concern ourselves with--like the economy, war, poverty, world hunger, healthcare, education. But football is an escape from that for a few hours each Sunday (and Monday and Thursday.) To me, what happened Monday night shows us that the NFL epitomizes "Corporate America", where upper management simply doesn't understand how the work gets done. Where they think the 'stars" are all they need and the 'peons' are expendable, interchangeable, that anyone can do those jobs. Monday night's ending proved that blatantly wrong. Nothing personal against the men who are the replacement refs, but you don't have a first year medical student performing a heart transplant. These guys are Division 2/3 college refs. That game, while entertaining, is slower, the players aren't 350 pounds, and the stakes are smaller. It's not that it's good or bad--it's simply very different. That two refs, standing next to each other, signalled 2 opposite calls, and totally missed the correct call, was an embarassment. It looked like a Three Stooges sketch. There is too much money involved to exhibit that kind of incompetence. And it is devolving each week--what will happen when a wrong or missed call results in some kind of injury? Is the NFL going to let it go that far? The NFL and the Referees Union need to sit down, hash it out, and not get up until a deal is struck--and both sides need to give in just a little to restore the integrity and safety of the game before something even worse happens. The clock is ticking a lot faster now.

Was Jesus married?

Was Jesus married? I love this news item about the parchment allegedly written by Jesus referring to his wife. I was raised Catholic. I attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through high school. I used to go to church, but haven't for years--I golf on Sundays now. But I still consider myself Catholic. Old habits (no pun intended) die hard. I find the story of Jesus and the times in which He lived very interesting. I simply adore biblical movies (Jesus of Nazareth is my favorite--I watch it a couple times a year) and books, especially ones that get your imagination running wild, like The Da Vinci Code. Did Jesus have a wife? If you look at it objectively, it's pretty likely that He was married. In that time period, marriages were arranged by relatives and community elders. You didn't really have a choice, most people were probably married off by the time they were 16 years old. Jesus was 33 when He died--He could have been married more than a decade by that time. I hope He was--everybody needs someone! I also really, really like how the parchment reads "She will be able to be my disciple." This means women were equal in His eyes. That's my favorite part! This is where the church went the opposite direction and that's too bad. Maybe the church wouldn't be dying out in Europe and North America if women could be priests, and if priests had been allowed to marry--just like Jesus. And maybe that little peice of parchment, with a look into the long-ago past, gives us hope for the future.