Grief counselors and bartenders must have been doing a great business yesterday and today throughout Wisconsin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNnurmyiv7E

Speaking of football, interesting email from Wisconsin Right to Life last week in which they provided recipients with a website http://www.wrtl.org/mask/index.aspx from which one could download a Tim Tebow mask to show support for the pro-life advocate.

Oh, regarding the QB whose success annoys John Elway, it might have been a foreshadowing that the Broncos wouldn’t make it to the Super Bowl when last week I received an email from AthletePromotions, an agency that books athletes and other celebrities for appearances. It read, “Now is the time to book talent and entertainment for Super Bowl XVLI….” Tebow was on the list. As I mentioned in my last entry, he receives $50K-$70K per appearance. No wonder he keeps praising and thanking Jesus. 

Red hat: No surprise the morning of Jan. 6 when we learned that Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan is going to be Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan come Feb. 18. And that talk of him being the first American pope? PaddyPower, http://www.paddypower.com/bet/current-affairs/the-next-pope?ev_oc_grp_ids=967, has his odds of becoming the next pope at 80-1. Among cardinals residing in the U.S., Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, has the best odds at 25-1. The other resident American on the list is Cardinal Francis George of Chicago at 125-1. Today is also his 75th birthday.
Two Americans working in the Vatican — Cardinal Raymond Burke and Cardinal William Levada — are listed at 20-1 and 25-1 respectively.

Red Milwaukee: Two former Milwaukee archbishops, Samuel Stritch and Albert Meyer, were elevated to the College Cardinals while serving as archbishops of Chicago. The former received the honor in 1946; the latter in 1959 — the same consistory in which Bishop Aloysius Muench, like Cardinal Meyer, a Milwaukee native and former Saint Francis Seminary rector, was made a cardinal.

Red ink: Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who had already put the archbishop’s residence on the market, had the unenviable task of announcing last week that the archdiocese is closing four high schools and 44 elementary schools. In response to those upset by his decision to close “our schools,” he wrote, “No family can run on nostalgia and red ink.” Every bishop in the U.S. might want to share those words with the people he shepherds.