I haven’t been in much of a blogging mood this week, but something I caught on the CNN ticker this morning (and later on Calpudit ), has woken me up and made me realize “Maybe there is a God”

Don’t tell Jan Michelini that lightning doesn’t strike twice. Michelini, an assistant director on Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ,” was nicknamed “Lightning Boy” after lightning struck his umbrella during filming on a hilltop in the town of Matera, Italy, reported VLife, a supplement to Variety publications, in its October issue.

He suffered light burns on the tips of his fingers.

A few months later, while the crew was on a remote location a few hours from Rome, a storm rolled in and Michelini, again carrying an umbrella, was standing beside star Jim Caviezel on top of a hill, the publication said.

“I’m about a hundred feet away from them,” producer Steve McEveety was quoted as saying, “when I glance over and see lightning coming out of Caviezel’s ears. Both Caviezel and Michelini got struck this time. The main bolt hit Caviezel and one of its forks hit Michelini’s umbrella.”

Maybe this is just God’s way of saying “Mel, Vatican II was a good thing”.

Speaking of Catholicism, as I was wandering around The Grotto the other day, I started thinking about how I’ve always felt like there was something weird about the Catholic Church. Now I know it’s just because I was raised among Protestants, but something has always seemed kinda odd about it all that I’ve never been able to put my finger on. Until now…

Y’know how there’s people out there who are so into Star Wars that they wrote their own sequels and spin-offs? It wasn’t enough for them to see the Death Star blown up, they wanted to know what kind of kids Han Solo would have, whether Chewbacca would ever get a girlfriend, etc. As someone with no background with Catholicism, things like the mysteries of the rosary, the seven sacraments, the stations of the cross, and the various saints feel the same way. In short, Catholicism feels like a fan-fiction version of Christianity.

Of course this is all negated by the fact that Catholicism was around for hundreds of years before the Protestant reformation. Perhaps a more fair way to put it is that Protestantism is a Cliff’s Notes version of Catholicism. But then again, the Catholics are the ones who are relying on holy tradition as well as the Bible.

To be honest, I really don’t know that much about Catholicism, but I just picked up a pretty good book about it that I’m reading now. It seems to have a pretty even-handed coverage of the Reformation, although it does refer to the Gnostics as “heretics” and compares them to hippies.

Okay, I’m just starting to ramble now…Did you hear about the guy who played Jesus who got struck by lightning?