Jack,

I made a comment when you blogged earlier about a similar letter from "Covenant House," but I notice that all comments on that prior blog have disappeared.

My sister has several cats and often sends me pictures of them with my birthday cards. In fact, the birthday cards themselves often have cat themes. I don't like to look at cat pictures, or to see cat jokes on any cards I get. But, I understand that they're not sent to offend me, but are a way of conveying a spirit of playfulness and cuteness. I don't own a shredder, but even if I did, I wouldn't shred those cat pictures. I put them in a nice little box where they can rest peacefully and out of sight.

Just so, these religious icons you receive in the mail are meant to relate to your devoutness and to inspire in you the desire to contribute money to a religious cause.

It's not about your personal system of shredding junk mail.

My mother got these kinds of medals in the mail back in the 1960s when I was a kid. She didn't have a shredder, nor did anyone in my parish that I know of. These Catholic organizations haven't changed their ways, and if you have modernized your system of trashing your junk mail, that has nothing to do with their intentions.

And, it's appropriate that this medal was about St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Aren't there a lot of those on this blog?

Those comments have been temporarily lost due to my server crash on August 30. I'm restoring everything that was posted between July 3 and Aug. 30 manually -- a time-consuming process.

The original post and the comments are still all here: https://bojack.org/mt-arc/003368.html.

I've been praying to St. Jude Thaddeus for 45 years, and I know what he's about. And I know the medals aren't entirely new. But look at this one. Come on, it's to make you open it.

You have a good heart, Jack.

Maybe that's why so many people read your blog. I know it's the best one I read.