LOLSaints

Our third monthly capshun contest is on it's way tonight at the stroke of midnight! For those of you following us on Facebook, you've already seen a sneak peek of what the contest photo will be. For those of you who are on Facebook, but not following, why not?? It's easy to do.

Happy Easter! Don't get too sick from all the peeps, k?

Holy Week is quickly approaching, and as we wrap up the season of lent, LOLSaints will be slowing down a little bit. During Holy Week, we will only be posting entries until the Easter Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday), then will resume operations on Easter Sunday.

I expect that with all the extra time you'll have on your hands, you might be able to pray a little more and finish your preparations for the most holy of solemnities, Easter Sunday!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to everyone!

You might have noticed the special Saint Pat's logo (including a beauterrific clover) we created, just for today, up in the top right corner. It's also reproduced below, for your viewing pleasure:

Perhaps for the next big feast (Saint Joseph, anyone?), we'll have a nice selection of images to choose from... maybe we could even have a 'two for St. Joseph' day!

Well, it's now been over a month since this website was started. We've had a lot of positive feedback, from the likes of Our Sunday Visitor, many Catholic bloggers, etc.; we've also had some people inform us of their concerns about what we're doing and/or why we're doing it.

I can't really address all these concerns at this time, and I urge people to at least read the 'About' section (link at the top of this page) before criticizing the website. It should clear up some misconceptions.

Anyways, as time goes on, I hope to add some exciting new things to the website... maybe some forums, maybe more content, maybe more resources... Anyone with ideas for awesome things we can do with this website—feel free to chime in and leave a comment.

The next Capshun contest is fast-approaching! I'll give you a hint as to what the topic will be: Mary and Jesus. Get your thinking caps on again, because this time, we'll have an even more amazing prize for our winner! (Hint: It also involves Mary and Jesus!). The contest will be held in Early March, so make sure to check back every day.

Also, while you're browsing around the Intertubes, you might want to check out something pretty spiffy: The Archdiocese of Saint Louis is offering anyone who would like to know the ability to receive a text message informing them of the next Archbishop of Saint Louis!

A few weeks into this endeavor, I figured it would be good to give a "state of the LOLz" address. I've been reading *all* of the comments on this website, and many of the blog and news postings about this website around the corners of the web that I frequent, and I'd like to explain a few things a little more, because there seems to be confusion.

I think this posting on About.com seems to wrap up a lot of the unease some people have about the whole idea of a site like this. Some specifics:

> "IMHO, Catholics should respect the saints. We should not joke about the saints."

I agree wholeheartedly! But I think I might say that we're not joking "about" the saints on this site... rather, we're joking "with" them. Obviously, everyone has a different temperment, but I'm almost one hundred percent sure that God wants us to be good-humored and happy by the time we get to Heaven. Which is why we should joke with the saints. And joke with Jesus. I can't believe that Jesus never laughed, since he shared in our humanity.

> "I just think for the most part…the LOL Saints are dumb. I tend to love humor, believe Jesus does, too. But these aren’t funny."

Okay, okay... can't please everyone, I guess. I think they're funny, though ;-)

> "What bothers me, and what (I think) makes some people find LOLSaints not funny, is that we’re mixing categories. LOLSpeak works with cats and other animals, and it might even work with children."

The comment from which the above quote is taken was probably one of the most helpful to me. (And, the only one with an actual name attached!). It's definitely something to ponder... but I really still can't see why this kind of humor shouldn't be applied to the saints. Even if it doesn't appeal to everyone.

> "Where the line is on any particular joke ‘working’ or ‘being irreverent’ comes down to the sense of humor of the individual encountering the joke."

Sounds reasonable to me! Whenever you do something not 100% 'by the book,' there's bound to be some push back... but you have to discern continually whether you've pushed the envelope too far. We don't want something crazy happening here!

Funny thing is, most of the people who comment negatively about this website seem to be Catholics. I'd like to hear more from Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and other groups... what do you think?

Just wanted to see if this works... It does! I had to turn off the text editor the site normally uses in order to get the iPhone to recognize the text input field... But once I did that, everything started working great! The hardest thing? Tying in those darn HTML tags on the iPhone... Three taps per symbol!

Ah well... Time for dinner!