The Alive and Young blog has a great weekly feature called Not Said By Jesus Sunday. This week’s installment is a gem:

Glad to know there won’t be a scantron test to enter heaven!

Apparently there was a good religious showing at the 27th Great American Beer Festival, including brews from The Lost Abbey of San Marcos, Calif., “where the tap handle is a Celtic cross and the legacy of beer-brewing monks endures. Standing under a banner promising “Inspired beers for Saints and Sinners Alike,” proprietor and former altar boy Tomme Arthur had a confession: He’s using God to sell some beer.” Check it out on FOXNews.com.

Thanks to The Sporting News for this gem: We Don’t Recall the Bible Saying Anything About Female Football Players

I know that Harry Potter’s pet owl Hedwig died a heroic death in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I didn’t realize that she’d been canonized…or that today was her feast day.

A sad, yet funny, account by a University of Notre Dame student is available on Ignatius Insight Scoop: “I went to Mass and a ’60s/70s rock concert broke out” (Thanks to the National Catholic Register for bringing this gem to my attention).

Just when you thought the election season couldn’t get any more exciting, suddenly a new earth-shattering product is launched: Presidential Candidate Paper Dolls! Oh, I know what you’re thinking. How have we survived without these in the past? But more importantly, how will the stiff-necked rendition of John McCain and the casual-and-relaxed pose of Barack Obama impact the upcoming November election? Never have paper dolls been more important to the future of our nation.

[Special thanks to RZ at Savings Potpourri for this one!]

Football season is just around the corner, and in these parts, anticipation is high: the Georgia Bulldogs are expected to do great things. The USAToday Coaches’ Poll just issued their preseason NCAA rankings and the Dawgs are at the top of the heap: preseason #1, baby!

As a UGA alumnus and the curator of DawgFan.com, I proudly sport many rather obnoxious Georgia Bulldogs items – not the least of which is a statue of Uga, our beloved mascot, which is prominently displayed just outside our front door.

Living here in the Bible belt, it’s not unusual for door-to-door missionaries to drop by. But it just occurred to me that none of them has ever mentioned anything about our family’s Uga statue. I’m sure if it were a statue of the Virgin Mary or some other saint, this would have set off the missionary’s graven-image-worshipping-Catholic radar. Their spiel would have quickly brought up Exodus 20:4-5 and its supposed prohibition against making statues, then accusing me of some form of idolatry. My response would have pointed out that God forbade the worship of statues, not the use of statues – not even the religious use of statues. In fact, scripture reveals that God commanded the use of statues in worship (see Exodus 25:18-20…a mere five chapters after the supposed condemnation of statues mentioned above). [If you’re interested in reading more, see Catholic Answers’ helpful article Do Catholics Worship Statues?]

But our statue of Uga never had an effect on these missionaries. Why not? Perhaps the statue isn’t large enough to notice. Maybe I need to upgrade to something that might be closer to waist height to get their attention? Who knows? Maybe I’ll ask them what they think of my “graven image” of Uga the next time they come a-callin’. It could spark an interesting conversation that might steer them in the direction of the Catholic Church. Or at least turn them into Dawg fans.

Sometimes a well-designed T-shirt just says it all…

[Free plug: get it at AgnusGiftShop.com]

Today’s Musings from a Catholic Bookstore shows the relationship between the writer’s Big Bell Box Meal from Taco Bell, his Aunt Gloria’s homemade Mexican cooking, and the Pope’s reaffirmation that there is no salvation outside the Church. A fine blend of hysterical and insightful. Read “Salvation Outside the Burrito” >

Just what we’ve always wanted: the Pope as a Japanese anime superhero. Bizarre, but fun.

Enjoy it on the Phatmass site at http://www.phatmass.com/more/superpope/.