"Revenge" of the Dead Wings
So far, the only good news to come out of the NHL playoffs is that the hated Calgary Flames have been eliminated by the *snicker* Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. I would have counted the elimination/humiliation of the New York Rangers as a plus, except that it meant the advancement of the equally loathesome New Jersey Devils; so, it's a wash. It would take a better man than me to resist saying that the Flames were extinguished by the Ducks. Can I get a rimshot?

The Vatican and the Great Wall
Hyperlink. Of course, given the puppetish nature of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, all it's members are out of communion with the Holy Mother Church, but official excommunication is still a punishment rightly to be feared. Denial of the Eucharist and the other Sacraments? I hate to even think about it.

Of course, that ties in to what I've never understood about Protestantism. What is the point of sacrificial bread if it is just bread and not the Body of Christ? What is the point of Sunday "services" if the minister is just another married guy with a mortgage and bratty kids and not an ordained priest of the one true Church?

But, we can re-fight the Reformation another day. For now the point remains that, just like those heretical "Catholics," Mel Gibson being the most famous example, who deny the authority of the Second Vatican Council, the "Catholics" in the PRC-sponsored church aren't really Catholic, anyway, since they don't acknowledge the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. So, in their case excommunication seems more a recognition of reality than a sanction.