The grounds must be at least half an acre and he was using a small mower to cut long, wet grass.

There is no way he would have got more than a third done before it was dark. The mower’s engine kept dying as he pushed it through the long grass.

I’m often contemplative while walking and this presented a few questions.

Q)Was the man foolish?

A) Yes, but maybe he had no other choice. I’ve been silently complaining about that long grass for a week or so now and perhaps he was told to clean it up. The part of my brain that controls order and efficiency dislikes wasted endeavor.

Q) Was there a better way?

A) Probably. Surely someone in the church community has a ride-on mower. If not, he could have appealed for public help or asked a commercial operator to do the job at a reduced price. Maybe the council would do it for nothing.

Q) Was it any of my business?

A) Not really, except I felt frustrated hearing his mower conk out and seeing how much more lawn he still had to cut.

Q) Would I have cared if it had been a sports ground or a vacant block instead of a church?

A) No. I figured they would have been doing it by choice in those cases, or as a matter of personal responsibility with a vacant block. I gained the impression this old man felt a collective responsibility, which made the scene almost pathetic.

Q) Should I have offered to assist?

A) I don’t know the answer to this. My conscience said yes, but there’s nothing practical I could have done. My mower is no bigger than his and I wouldn’t like to take on a futile task that should be someone’s responsibility (in the church). But I didn’t like seeing the old man struggle.

I’m not surprised The Vatican has a web site; it’s just I had never thought about it before and had never visited.

As The Inquisitr reveals, a Latin section was only recently added.

I’ve never studied Latin and I was born just after the Second Vatican Council, so I never experienced a Latin Mass.

I can appreciate the value of Latin. From Roman times to the Industrial Revolution it was the universal language.

It was never really replaced in that role, although the European aristocracy spoke French for several centuries and English today is ubiquitous.

So it’s good to see Latin being preserved as a means of communication in the Church. I can’t understand a word of it, but here is the link.

While browsing the English section of The Vatican’s site I came across the Pope’s message to Burma.

Deeply saddened by news of the tragic aftermath of the recent cyclone, the Holy Father expresses his heartfelt sympathy. With prayers for the victims and their families, he invokes God’s peace upon the dead and divine strength and comfort upon the homeless and all who are suffering. Confident that the international community will respond with generous and effective relief to the needs of your countrymen, His Holiness asks you to convey his solidarity and concern to the civil authorities and to all the beloved people of Myanmar.

The tragic events in Burma have been well publicised, but given the brutality and isolation of the regime I’m afraid it will be soon forgotten.

It is quite amazing how the repetitive tones from an innocent little phone can incite so much anger and frustration, but they do. And it’s not just the phone rings; you can also have different sound for message alerts and other thing. One of the guys I work with has an extremely loud whistle every time he gets a text message, which fools me every time. And yes, it does bring out the PTR in me. I basically just want to smash his phone each time it whistles.

Kitty admits to variously having Barry Manilow singing Copacabana and WHAM’s “Wake me up before you go go” driving her friends and colleagues mad.

She mentions the embarrassment of mobile phones ringing at inappropriate moments.

I was actually at a funeral some time ago, when someone’s phone rang and The Simpsons theme song bellowed out with great amplification because of the impressive acoustics of the church. What made it worse was that the person didn’t actually answer it or fish for it to turn it off (possibly so no one would know who it was), so it just rang and rang and rang. Finally it finished only to be followed by an encore performance of Homer’s famous “Doh”, as a message alert.

That reminds me of this post when a mobile phone rang during Good Friday Mass.

Kitty’s comments though are topical because ringtones have become so diverse and annoying. People set their phones to have a different ring for different people. The phone of one of my colleagues squawks like a chicken when one of her designated callers rings.

The other interesting thing about Kitty’s column is the reminder that we used to have phones that we actually dialled and they “rang” like a bell when someone called us. Kitty’s sister Robin wrote in reply:

There was something very good about physically dialling a number … it helped me to remember the number … and made me stop for a minute before I spoke (always a good thing for me!). And there’s also the handpiece, it had a bit of weight to it which I liked.

Wow, I’m only 39 and I can remember phones that needed to be “dialled”, rather than have their buttons pressed. It seems like something from a different century.

I agree with Robin. Communication was more calculated in those days. Today it is spontaneous and that breeds trouble in some instances,

It required a big effort to get the family to mass and the twins were a handful.

Traditional denominations in Australia have lost members partly because they haven’t been family friendly.

As congregations grow older it’s hard for parents to take young children to church in an environment where they have few peers.

That’s no reason though to forget or ignore one’s faith.

With Kathleen attending a Catholic secondary school next year it’s likely we’ll become more involved in the local parish.

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Can anyone hazard a guess on the electoral implications of this juxtaposition? My ad is also surrounded by Melbourne Cup competition winners and notices for a calisthenics concert and the Anglican Church “Heavenly-a-Fair”.

Who would ever have thought a former member of the Hitler Youth could become Pope? I’m one of those who think it’s irrelevant.

Young Joseph did what he was told, was conscripted into the armed forces and riskily deserted.

One of the Pope’s cousins lives in Melbourne. In her story she says that Joseph’s elevation to Pope was “no surprise”.

Another oddity surrounds the registration by one speculative individual of the internet domain www.benedictXVI.com before the conclave. Fortunately he doesn’t plan to use it improperly.

This is the first photo of the whole family since the day after the twins were born (December 17, 2003). It was taken at Our Lady of the Snows Church after Dude’s First Communion and Confirmation. We’re pictured with the Bishop of Sandhurst, Joe Grech.