Andrew Brown asks a good question

The question he asks is "Do we really need so many 'Eucharistic Ministers'?" Excerpt:

What’s the point of all these assistants? The Catholic Church does allow for what it calls an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, in cases when the priest is not available. But there is absolutely no need to have five extra ministers, giving Holy Communion under both kinds, as I saw this morning in an ordinary parish church, two thirds full, with a perfectly capable parish priest.

I can’t help thinking all these ministers are there just to give the more assertive parishioners something to do – so that they feel as though they’re joining in. I should think the priest is often bullied into allowing it, and daren’t refuse. As for ordinary Catholics, most of them probably find the extra helpers irritating, but are too polite to say.

All good points in his article. One priest I knew told me he runs into EMs who seem to feel they have some sort of "right" to distribute communion and they get hurt feelings when they aren't needed.

In my experience a lot of EMs seem distracted by ephemera. One time I was asked a question by a very young man distributing communion immediately after I had received communion. What was he thinking? I just shrugged.

I don't know if I'm "too polite to say" anything as Brown suggests. I just consider that there are too many moral crises in the church and the world to obsess about some of these matters. But liturgical abuses certainly don't help the situation.

Did anything change with "phone spammers"?

Several years ago, between 2006 and 2008, I was constantly getting unsolicited calls on my cell phone. I would estimate that I got an average of one a day, but sometimes I'd get several in one day. They were primarily either robocalls from shady refinance companies, vehicle warranty scamsters or there was simply dead air when I picked up the phone, so I don't know what they were. I assumed that I was on a list since I owned my own business. It became enough of a time waster that I purchased a piece of software for my phone that sent everything to voice mail unless it was in my address book. This was when I was still using a Treo 680 which now looks like a TRS-80 next to my iPhone, and the software was developed by a dude who pretty much disappeared. So updates and support were out of the question. I wondered what was going to happen when I had to switch phones.

Now I get unwanted phone calls about twice a month, and sometimes I'll go several months without any. I doubt anything happened with laws because these people don't obey them anyway. Maybe it's just the business downturn and credit crunch that has dried up the activity of these folks, but I have a hard time believing that this could account for such a drastic decline. Maybe my carrier has cracked down on these people? There are good sites where you can log annoying calls: whocallsme.com, phoneowner.info, 800notes.com, whocalledus.com, etc. Having these sites on the 'net has allowed people to basically search for numbers and have information concerning the nature of the calls. I don't know how much this helps the shutting down of "phone spammers", but I don't suppose they like it much.