Cuenta Atrás el "Super Bowl"/Countdown to Guadalupe, '09 Edition

For all the words of Irish decline in recent days, it seems an especially good moment to note that the increasingly dominant face in the life of American Catholicism (North and South alike) gets its biggest annual turn again two weeks from today with the "Super Bowl": the 12 December feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe... which has indeed become "bigger than Christmas" in the Stateside church.


Already, the annual Guadalupe Torch Relay's into the home stretch of its journey from Mexico City's mother-sanctuary to New York, and from Indiana to Iowa to the day's traditional hubs in the Southwest, plans for the usual all-out celebrations are already well apace... with public safety folks in several locales anticipating even bigger turnouts than usual given this year's Saturday fiesta of La Morenita, the "Empress of the Americas."

30,000 in Dallas... 150,000 in Chicago... and, church, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

For yet another year, gang, prepare to be amazed. And inspired, too.

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