Habemus Papam!

We have a Pope!!

source

Pope Francis I!

I am so excited.

This morning, I got up at 5:15 in order to be at my parish priest's house at 5:45 a. m. so that we could see what color the smoke was at 6 a. m. As some of you may know, it was black. So our youth group hung out for a little while, chatting and eating donuts and drinking coffee. Than my sister and I walked home and went on with our day.

After lunch, I was in my room about to start another school assignment, when my sister received a text. She gasped, and said, "Do we have a Pope!?"

Indeed we did! White smoke was pouring out of the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, and soon five of us were crowded around one iPod, dying to find out who our new Papa was going to be. 

About thirty minutes before Pope Francis came out, we got another text from a girl in our youth group. Everyone was back at Father's house! We raced over there to watch it together. We prayed for the new pope, whoever he was, and pondered who he might be. Of course we hoped he might be an American, but when the doors opened, nothing else mattered. We had a new Papa.

When Pope Benedict XVI Emeritus was being elected, I remember hoping the new pope would be named Francis. Now, he is. 

Please, please, PLEASE join my in praying for Pope Francis to be the greatest Papa he can be! This world needs a Pope who can love fearlessly and show US how to love fearlessly!

Oh God, pour forth your blessings upon Pope Francis I. Make him holy. Make him like You. Make him a saint who can help us grow in holiness and truth above all else. 

St. Francis of Assisi, please bless and protect your Brother in Christ, Pope Francis, who has taken your name as he steps up to guide the Church as Shepherd. 

Through the intercession of Pope Blessed John Paul II, Pope Blessed John XXIII, Mary Queen of Heaven, and all the Angels and Saints, I pray, Amen.  

History Qtr 2 Week 5 Paper

FANFARE OF TRUMPETS, PLEASE!

Alright. I don't usually post a lot of my school papers on here, and ESPECIALLY not the history papers. But I have been working on this sucker for over a week. I could absolutely not come up with a single thing to say about my topic. I even wrote the NEXT assigned paper before this one. As such, I am extremely proud of it now that it is finished, and I just thought I'd share it with you.

          The French played a pivotal role in helping the American Colonies win their independence from the British government in 1783. A few short years later, the French decided they wanted their freedom, too. This is not at all surprising that the passion for liberty spread to Europe, especially in France, where the social system had been corrupt and unjust for years. The First and Second Estates had all the wealth and power while the Third Estate struggled and starved. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was the official response of the people of France to oppression and tyranny, and it was approved by the National Assembly of France in 1789.
            Unlike the Declaration of Independence, which sought to reach a diplomatic decision and held war as a last resort, The Declaration of the Rights of Man was a document written to declare the people’s desire for freedom and equality, even if it meant overthrowing the government. It consists of 17 articles that make definitive statements about the rights all men ought to have an equal share in. In America, the biggest issue that led the people to war was the fact that they were not being given a voice overseas in England, where all their laws and liberties were being controlled. In France, the issue was not that none of the people had any say, but that some of the people had all the say. There was major class discrimination, and the lowest class did all the work and bore all the suffering. The 1^st Article of the Declaration states, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.”

            Because of the system of Estates (First Estate, Second Estate, and Third Estate), France was a top-heavy structure. The lowest estate had nothing, and the two higher estates had it all, which made it easy for corruption to spread throughout the nobility, and also the Church. Because of this corruption throughout all of France, even in the Church, the place that should have been an example of morality, very many rights were being denied to the poor and underprivileged. What kind of rights were the people asking for? Unfortunately, the rights within the 17 articles should never have been denied to them in the first place. Equality, religious freedom, and right to property are all included in The Declaration of the Rights of Man. The 13^th Article reiterates the unfairness of this class system: “A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.” It is interesting that the same people who stormed the Bastille prison in violence and chaos just a month before proceeded to call out in their declaration for nothing more fervently than balance and order.  

            In conclusion, the Third Estate of France was a veritable time bomb, and The Declaration of the Rights of Man was the fuse. It gave to the greedy and corrupt First and Second Estates fair warning of the people’s desperation to be free and treated with equality.  The Declaration can be summarized by the very true statement found within its 16^th Article: “A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.” Unfortunately, the nobility and religious leaders refused to listen to the reasonable voices of the Third Estate, and so they answered to outright violence. 

History Paper on the Economic Theories of Adam Smith

History Qtr 1 Week 6 Paper

            Adam Smith was a Scottish philosopher who, like many philosophers before him, noticed how philosophical concepts worked with the study of economics. He defined new theories to promote a healthier, more stable market environment, including the theories of division of labor, the role of money, natural price, market price, labor as every man’s property, and the invisible hand. These theories are still mandatory reading for students of economics today.

            First, Adam Smith came up with the theory of division of labor when he observed that when one person was assigned to manufacture a pin entirely by himself, it took him a great deal of time and effort. But when ten people were each given the job of completing a single step in the manufacturing process of a pin, they could all work very quickly and complete very many pins in a single day. By dividing up the labor to produce goods, people could work more harmoniously and efficiently.

            Second, Smith regarded labor very highly, and considered money to merely be a physical representation of the labor of a particular person. Since each kind of labor was worth a different amount according to difficulty and importance, it would be difficult to actually trade labor for labor. For instance, if a man plowed a field for a baker, it would take a lot of loaves of bread for the baker to match the worth of the plowman’s labor. Smith’s theory on the role of money was that it stood in as a dividable, physical representation of each person’s labor. Thus, every market transaction is really an exchange of labor between sellers and buyers.

            Third, Smith developed a theory about the natural price of everything, based on the average income of members in a community, and average wage for rent and goods. The natural price is in essence the ‘perfect price’; the price at which the buyers would purchase as much of the product as could possibly be supplied. When something is being sold at its natural price, the market is in perfect balance; there is no surplus and no shortage, and the demand and supply are even with each other. Hand in hand with Smith’s theory of the natural price is the theory of the actual price or market price. The market price is often above or below the natural price, because it constantly adjusts to the market conditions. If there is a great demand for pins but very few pins in supply, the price of pins rises above the natural price. If there is very little demand for pins, there becomes a surplus of pins, and the price drops below the natural price.

            Fourth, continuing with his great appreciation for labor, Smith invented the theory that every man’s labor is his property. When a man labors to produce a vegetable garden, that labor, and everything that labor brings about, belongs entirely to him. He is not required to share it with anyone. However, since a vegetable garden might produce more than one man and his family could ever eat, and people need more than just vegetables to live, the man can exchange his property (the fruit of his labor) with someone else’s labor to satisfy both of them.

            And finally, Adam Smith believed in a governing force over markets that he called an ‘invisible hand’. While Smith was alive from 1723 till 1790, the prevalent economic system in Europe was that of mercantilism, which meant the government had full control over the economy, and restricted import while pushing export.  Smith saw that free markets naturally settled into the best, most productive prices, imports, and exports. He called this process the Invisible Hand; man’s natural tendency in a market is to freely and fairly exchange labor, and when men are allowed to interact freely in a market, supply and demand even out and there is far more harmony than the discordant and ineffective system of mercantilism.