"Her book Interview With the Vampire (1976) was the first of Rice's more than 20 works of fiction -- she was filled with guilt that was reflected in her characters. The vampires were a metaphor for the "souls who are away from the light of Christ and live in the darkness of the night," she said.Over the years, she said, the characters continued to reflect her despair, guilt and search for meaning and faith. The first fictional vampires were set in the 18th century. Then Rice and her characters started working their way back in time...
"When I got to the first century and began to study the origin of Christianity and began to study what was going on in the Roman world at the time, I began to realize that I saw patterns that I could not explain, except that God was working in history," she said.
"I read and wrote myself back into the church through my search," said Rice, although she agonized over theological and sociological questions. "Then the day came when I thought, 'Look, you believe in (Christ), you love him, you want to go home to your church and you want to go back to the banquet table, (and) you want to receive holy Communion again. That means you're not an atheist, lady!'"
She no longer needed to answer questions about how things would work out or why evil existed or why good people suffer. Jesus knew the answers, so she could let go. She said she had no doubt that Jesus was God when she returned to the Catholic Church in 1998. ...Cont.
Looking more closely at the candidates similarities
While millions are tossed out of their homes in foreclosures and the poor suffer, Bush Asks to Push Total War Cost to $875 Billion. Note: As Gore Vidal said long ago, we must not kid ourselves, the President of the United States is the talking points man (or woman) for Big Business (the corporatocracy).
--->Bombing Iran, Clinton Style: Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has heralded her own foreign-policy credentials, but last week she sounded more like an action anti-hero than a presidential candidate, in declaring that the United States could obliterate Iran. Although Clinton’s words were presumably intended for domestic consumption, they naturally traveled around the world, prompting a response Wednesday from Tehran. ...more
"Eccentric" Boris Johnson wins London mayoral race
Pressure grows on Israel at London peace talks
The fiancee of the Queen's grandson has given up her Catholic faith
Amnesty urges execution ban
--->The Right Conquers Rome. Is Italy about to Break the Mould? Is a 'Sea Change' Breaking in Europe? Alemanno has said that any foreigners convicted of crimes in Italy will simply be deported. The temperature has been rising steadily in Italy, and especially in Rome, as vast camps of Romanian gypsies have sprung up in the capital city and elsewhere, from where petty and serious crimes are systematically committed. One would have thought that a promise to apply the law as it stands was a fairly uncontroversial proposition, but when the Front national said it would do the same thing in France, it was denounced as extremist. Italy has already started applying these measures and one can only assume that, with the new political hegemony of the Right, they will continue and be amplified.
If so, Italy will indeed have contributed to what I hope will be sea change in European politics. By breaking the taboo in Rome, the taboo may be broken across Europe. But what about cultural hegemony? Here, too, there are signs of optimism – stronger signs, perhaps, than the promises made on political subjects. For the new Mayor of Rome has also promised to dismantle and remove a new building which has only recently been put up in the centre of the Eternal City and which is, to use his words, an “insult” to it. I refer to Richard Meier’s building which now houses the Ara Pacis, a great Roman monument erected to the glory of the Emperor Augustus. ...Cont.
--->Dr. John P. Hubert's New Blog on the Vatican II Crisis
