Top 10 Reasons To Be & (Not To Be) Pope

Cardinals Gather In Sistine Chapel to Vote On A New Pope

Black Smoke.  White Smoke. Cardinals.  Conclave.

It's all part of the Vatican lingo surrounding the pagentry and tradition of electing a new pope to shepherd the millions of Catholics around the globe.

Behind the closed doors of the infamous Sistine Chapel in Rome, Italy, 115  Roman Catholic cardinals on Tuesday started the mysterious business of coming together as a conclave to vote for a man to become pope and succeed Benedict XVI who last month became the first pope to resign in six centuries.

You don't have to be Catholic to be curious about who will be elected by a two-thirds majority of the cardinals.  As we wait each day to see the color of the smoke from the Sistine Chapel's chimney (black smoke = no pope, white smoke = new pope), I think we're allowed to have a little fun (laughter is powerful medicine) with the whole process. 

Enter James Martin, SJ, contributing editor at America magazine and author of "Between Heaven and Mirth" and "The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything."  Martin is charismatic, witty, insightful and of course eloquent (because he's a Jesuit).

Here is Martin's tongue-in-cheek video called the "Top Ten Reasons To Be (And Not To Be) Pope:

Election Day Is Finally Here

Courtesy of Huffington Post

After all the speeches, debates, television and newspaper ads, phone banks, door-to-door campaigning and robocalls, Election Day has finally arrived.

Please vote today!  Every vote does count! 

If you already exercised your right to vote by going to the polls early or by using an absentee ballot, sit back and enjoy some quirky voting quotes that I saw in a recent Huffington Post story:

"Half of American people have read a newspaper.  Half never voted for President.  One hopes it is the same half."  ~ Gore Vidal

"Bad officials are lected by good citizens who do not vote." ~ George Jean Nathan

"The best argument against democracy us a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
  ~ Winston Churchill

"In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state.  When we are ill...we do not ask for the handsomest physician or the most eloquent one."
  ~ Plato

"Thinking is not to agree or disagree.  That's voting." ~ Robert Frost

"Anti-intellectulism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' " ~ Isaac Asimov

"A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." ~ John Quincy Adams

"In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote." ~ David Foster Wallace

Courtesy of New York Daily News