Admittedly, I’m not a huge fan of the royal wedding. Maybe it’s simply because I’m not British. I am, however, attracted to it insofar as it’s a spectacle which offers plenty of fodder for commentary. [ e.g, why they’re spending a fortune (roughly just a little more than the average price of three weddings in the US) to turn Westminster Abbey into an indoor forest.]

But there are more interesting topics. Msgr. Campion has a recent article in Our Sunday Visitor discussing the Catholic history of Westminster Abbey, the church where the royal wedding will take place tomorrow.

I had no idea that it was originally a Benedictine Monastery dedicated to St. Peter.

Couple of interesting facts:

– [A]lmost every king or queen of England has been crowned in the church, the last being Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

– Last year, Pope Benedict XVI joined the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury at evensong (Anglican vespers) in Westminster abbey.

While I won’t be staying up late to catch the royal wedding live, I wish them well and certainly do not envy them their public life. (For more on that, Christopher Hitchens’ Slate piece is a must read.)

But I am planning my evening schedule tonight around the newest episodes of “The Office” (Is this Michael’s good-bye?) and “30 Rock.” (Can’t wait to see Condoleezza Rice guest star.) I know, there’s no accounting for taste.

And I’ll be pulling an all-nighter Saturday night to watch JP2’s beatification.

Holy Thursday is an amazing feast and celebration for Catholics. Too often, it gets eclipsed by somber tone of Lent and the impending remembrance of Christ’s suffering and death.

Read more here.

Just wrote a wrap-up on the weekend protest of the local 40 Days For Life vigil. Read more here.

Yesterday I wrote about an NPR and Planned Parenthood collective effort to attack the recent Vitae ad campaign that ran here in Seattle.

Upon further research, it looks like NPR took its cue from an article in The Stranger, a local independent paper which ran a story about the adds a few weeks ago. In fact, the debate is not about the Vitae ads per se, but about the recently failed legislation that would have required pregnancy help centers to advertise that they don’t provide abortions. From the article:

The bill that would’ve held religious pregnancy centers accountable for being honest in their advertising and up front about the services they don’t provide—abortion referrals, birth control, comprehensive women’s health care—is dead. So these billboards can advertise sites that promote scare tactics to vulnerable women. It’s sickening that the legislature failed to pass a measure to fix this problem.

And yesterday, they followed up with yet another rant: Anti-Choice Billboard Group Wants to Save Whatever Happens to Be Growing Inside You. [Both articles contain expletives.]

Meanwhile, the Seattle Clinic Defense has jumped into the fray, organizing rallies to support Planned Parenthood. Today, they’ve scheduled a protest of the the 40 Days For Life prayer vigil at a local Planned Parenthood. Let’s hope they’re as peaceful as the 40 Days for Life people have been.

Somehow, I doubt it. The organizer of the local 40 Days vigil has had feces spread on her car, objects thrown at her while she was praying, and her house egged.

Meanwhile, I can’t wait for Planned Parenthood to announce that they don’t promote parenthood and I’d love some transparency about the “peaceful” attacks on the local 40 Days organizer.

Following on my post yesterday about what I think is a misguided pro-life strategy for removing Planned Parenthood’s federal funding, I came across a Politico article which further confirms my theory. We are just making it easy for Planned Parenthood to raise more money and, in turn, provide more abortions. Read more here in my piece at CatholicVote.org.

You read that title correctly. I think the pro-life community is making a critical mistake in how it positions the proposed legislative efforts to stop the government funding of Planned Parenthood.

Read more here. I welcome your comments and feedback!