Alternate title: Ask a Catholic Witch

I've been really enjoying the Ask a fill-in-the-blank" diaries, so here's my contribution.

My synergestic belief system is just too odd not to share and I couldn't resist. First, some definitions. Although I'm very "liberal" in my Catholocism, I've come to accept that "liberal" and "conservative" are terms best left to the realm of politics, and instead have adopted the terms most preffered by the Catholic right -- "orthodox" and "heterodox," mostly to prove that I'm not "scared" by being labled a "heretic."

"Heterodox," from "heretic," meaning: person who holds religious beliefs in conflict with the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. From the Greek, hairetikos, able to choose.

A few months ago, a close friend and I were reexamining our relationship in light of her addiction to alcohol and drugs when she decided to join a 12-step group. For nearly two decades we had been more than friends, and the boundaries were often blurred between us. That built a lifelong bond between us and simultaneously enmeshed us in each other's struggles -- and we wondered how healthy or dysfunctional our friendship had become as a result.

The World Council of Churches, meeting this week in Brazil, came out with a very sharp criticism of the Iraq war, and US policy.

The World Council of Churches includes more than 350 mainstream Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches; The Roman Catholic Church is not a member. The U.S. groups in the WCC include the
Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, several Orthodox churches and Baptist denominations, among others.

I've been part of several groups that have been trying to tackle "what went wrong" for the Catholic allegiance to the Democratic Party. This article in the Weekly Standard lays bare some of the issues that have brought about the current state of disunity when it comes to the "catholic voting block."

This Friday, the new NBC series Book of Daniel will air, staring Aidan Quinn as an Episcopal priest who's dealing with a host of all-too-real problems for some on the Religious Right, prompting a boycott led by the American Family Assn. Grappling with issues ranging from drug addiction to a promiscuous teenage daughter, it's no suprise that Book of Daniel has met with a backlash and boycott from those who prefer their Christianity more sanitized.

So far, two affiliates will be pre-empting the show, and other are under serious pressure to do so, all before the show has aired a single episode.