Friday, August 19, 2011

New Year- New Website- Coming Soon!!!

WELCOME BACK EVERYONE!!! (or for the first time if you're just starting)


We are so excited for this new semester! Our brand new website will be up in days and when it is you'll be able to sign up and be connected like never before! Until then- here is a list of back to school events so that you can be with us every step of the way!

Saturday - August 20th @ 5pm - UCM Back 2 School BBQ at Zeus on the Geaux - All Students are invited! Meet us at Wisdom at 4:30 to get a free Catholic T-Shirt and walk over to the BBQ with us!

Sunday - 5pm-7pm - Fan Day/Freshmen Introduction. All Students are Invited to the peprally at 5pm at the Cajun Dome. Wear your new Catholic Shirt!

Monday (August 22nd) - All day at the Catholic Student Center- Free Sno-Cones- courtesy of Old Tyme Grocery! See our new look inside :)

Wednesday (August 24th)- 1st Newman Night of the Semester- Meet your Pastor- Father Sibley will give his conversion story- "From Beast to Priest; He used to be the guy your mother warned you about!" - 6pm at the Catholic Student Center- All Students are Invited- FREE FOOD!!!

Thursday (August 25th)- Join us as we walk over to the Welcome Back Music Festival at the Art Museum- Meet at Wisdom at 5:30 to walk over together!

Friday (August 26th)- Noon Mass and Block Party on Rex Street! FREE FOOD

Sunday (August 28th) - Ragin Cajun Catholics Welcome Back Mass and Bash! - Join us for 6pm Mass followed by the best party of the semester! - Fun Jumps, free food, give-aways and a concert by AYLERON! Learn how to get involved and meet lots of new people! All Students are invited!

We can't wait to meet you!



Friday, April 15, 2011

Stay Tuned for our NEW Website!

Please pardon our lack of post'age' lately. We're in the process of creating an amazing new interactive website. The good news is...it's almost done! We expect a launch date very soon. The bad news is...you have finals to study for...so..off you go!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Vainglory: Seeking the Praise of Men

by Edward P. Sri

Do you worry over what others think of you? Do you sometimes say or do things to draw attention to yourself? Do you replay conversations in your mind, wondering if you left the right impression? If so, you might be struggling with the vice known as vainglory.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, "glory" denotes someone's excellence being known and approved by others. He explains that there is nothing wrong with others recognizing our good qualities and deeds. In fact, seeking to live in a way that inspires others to give glory to God and to pursue a more virtuous life is good. Jesus Himself said, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven"(Mt. 5:16). However, seeking human praise for its own sake is sinful. Such a person wants glory for himself more than he wants glory for God. He wants to receive the praise of men, which is a vain glory that is empty, fickle, and often off the mark. Aquinas explains that the glory we seek can be vain in one of three ways.

continue reading...




Thursday, October 7, 2010

tips for surviving the college 'jungle'


Archdiocese of Denver's young adult director offers tips for surviving the college 'jungle'

Straight talk about holding on to your faith, values and finances.
Chris Stefanick provides some really honest practical advice for incoming college
freshmen, who are facing the strange new world of life on campus. From credit cards
to co-ed relationships, the director of Youth, Young Adult and Campus Ministry tells
 it like it is in a new videoDENVER, CO (CNA) -
 Christopher Stefanick, theArchdiocese of Denver's director of Youth, Young Adult, and
 Campus Ministry, has recorded a new video for Catholic News Agency, discussing the
dangers that incoming college students will face as the school year begins.

A number of unprecedented challenges, Stefanick said, come with the new
independence of undergraduate life. The experience of separation from family, friends,
and previous parish communities, he said, was comparable to an animal being
"separated from the herd" for the first time.

But while this independence is exciting and offers new opportunities, it also involves
real dangers. Stefanick highlighted four key areas of life where college students must
be especially careful in order  to avoid compromising their futures and spiritual lives.
(Read the rest of the article here)

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Being Anti-Child via Aggie Catholics :)

Once again an enlightening post from our Aggie Catholic friends in College Station. In light of our Newman Night topic last night I thought this was an interesting post...

Being Anti-Child


Certain segments of our culture hate children. Some come from the radical environmental movement. Some are just looking out for #1. Regardless, the position is now being pushed as the best moral choice for the sake of the planet.

Here are some of the reasons given as to the reasons why not having kids is morally superior to having them:

1 - Because humans are destroying the planet.
Their solution - get rid of humans...


Read the rest of this blog post here.






and don't forget to watch this video...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZVOU5bfHrM&feature=player_embedded

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Our Moral Code is OUT OF DATE?!! Ridiculous.

The following is an excerpt from an article on cnn.com today. It was written by Yaron Brook who  is president of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and a columnist at Forbes.com;  and Onkar Ghate who is a senior fellow at the center. Brook is one of the speakers at The Economist's "Ideas Economy: Human Potential" conference in New York. To read the whole article please visit http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/16/brook.moral.code.outdated/index.html?hpt=T2 (make sure you read the comments after the article...)
The parts italicized  in red are my own comments on the article. Feel free to ad your own. Also, feel free to laugh.

Ask someone on the street to name a moral hero; if he isn't at a loss, he'll likely name someone like Jesus Christ or Mother Teresa. Why? Because they're regarded as people of faith who shunned personal profit for the collective good. No one would dream of naming Galileo, Darwin, Thomas Edison or John D. Rockefeller. Seems like a good start right? I agree with this.

Yet we should. It is they, not the Mother Teresas of the world, that we should strive to be like and teach our kids the same. Alert. Alert. Are these fools serious?

If morality is judgment to discern the truth and courage to act on it and make something of and for your own life, then these individuals, in their capacity as great creators, are moral exemplars. Put another way, if morality is a guide in the quest to achieve your own happiness by creating the values of mind and body that make a successful life, then morality is about personal profit, not its renunciation. So, it's ok to just invent your own definition and meaning of morality and apply it to all mankind? Sure, sure....even though nearly EVERY civilization since the beginning of time has upheld the virtues of selflessness and coming to the aid of those less fortunate than ourselves as moral, good and down right saintly. Just for fun though lets say that this innate knowledge of goodness from the beginning of time is useless and lets make up our own. Puh lease.

Monetary profit is just one of the values you have to achieve in life. But it is an eloquent representative of the whole issue, because at its most demanding, as exhibited by a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs, making money requires a profound dedication to material production.The fact that earning money is ignored by most moralists, or condemned as the root of evil, is telling of the distance we must travel. My sarcasm fails me here because this is just too ridiculous. 

In effect, we need to turn the Billionaire's Pledge on its head. Can we turn Yaron and Onkar on their heads?

The world grants, at best, no moral recognition to Gates and Buffett for the personal fortunes they've created, but it awards them a standing ovation for giving their profits away. But the standing ovation belongs to the act of creation, the profit they brought into their own lives and anyone who traded with them. Saint Bill Gates, Pray for us. Start chiseling the statues.

If morality is about the pursuit of your own success and happiness, then giving money away to strangers is, in comparison, not a morally significant act. (And it's outright wrong if done on the premise that renunciation is moral.) It's NOT a morally significant act? Can you imagine if our morality was solely based on self preservation and looking out for number 1? Murder would be a moral good and mission work would be absolutely unacceptable. Helping the little lady cross the street would be a waste of your time and punishable by law. Why don't you just push her IN to the street? One less person to get in your way of success. 

Science, freedom and the pursuit of personal profit -- if we can learn to embrace these three ideas as ideals, an unlimited future awaits. Ugh.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate. And no other decent human in the world. Amen.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Vocation Explosion!


The Coming Vocation Explosion

Where the Vocations Are

By Tim Drake @ http://www.ncregister.com/blog/tim-drake/

Take a look at some of the good news coming from various seminaries across the U.S. and you’ll find that the Holy Spirit is still at work in the Church.
The St. Paul Seminary is welcoming 33 new seminarians this fall, bringing its total number of men studying for the priesthood to 92. It’s the largest group the seminary has had since 1981. The seminarians for the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis are from 14 dioceses and three foreign countries.
“Our strong enrollment reflects the growing number of men who are answering God’s call to the priesthood,” said Msgr. Aloysius Callaghan, rector of the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. “Their witness offers hope for the future of our Church.”
The Diocese of Saint Cloud, Minn., currently has more men in formation than it has had in more than 40 years.
Meanwhile, at Sacred Heart School of Theology – a seminary for men over the age of 30 – in Franklin, Wis., has accepted their largest enrollment class in 20 years. Forty-two new seminarians have signed up for the fall, putting enrollment at 210. The incoming class is nearly double last year’s.
“A lot of guys…[have] decided that all this stuff they’ve been chasing all of their lives is not as important as they thought it was,” said Father Thomas Knoebel, vice rector for the seminary.
The Dominican order, too, – both male and female – is experiencing what Sister Joseph Andrew, vocation director with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, Mich., describes as a “spiritual explosion.”
On Aug. 28, the teaching order of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, welcomed 22 new young women as aspirants to their community. The average age of the aspirants who just came in is 21. The average age of the entire group is 26. Founded in 1997 by four sisters originally from the Nashville Dominicans, the order presently has a total of 113 in the community.
The order is looking at the possibility of starting another mother house in either California or Texas, where land has already been donated.
Other Dominicans are experiencing growth as well.
On Aug. 2, the Dominican Province of St. Joseph accepted 21 men as novices. That’s the Eastern province’s largest novitiate class since 1966. As evidenced both in diocesan seminaries and religious orders, those entering religious life are trending younger. The average age of those coming into the Eastern province is 24.
The Nashville Dominicans thought that last year’s class would be their largest group of incoming postulants at 23. However, during the order’s 150th Jubilee, they had their biggest incoming class ever this year with 27 women entering. The order’s average age is 24.
Overall, the order is comprised of 274 nuns teaching in 34 schools across the country.
Why are young people being attracted to the Dominican order in such numbers?
Archbishop Augustine Di Noia had some thoughts on the question which he shared with the Capitulars of the Provincial Chapter on June 12.
“Our tradition is constituted by a unique convergence of qualities: optimism about the rationality and fundamental goodness of the natural order; an abiding certitude that divine grace and mercy are sheer gifts, unmerited and otherwise unattainable; a healthy realism about the peril of the human condition apart from this grace and mercy; a determination to maintain a God’s-eye-view of everything that exists and everything that happens; an appreciation of the inner intelligibility of everything that God has revealed about himself and us; a wholly admirable resistance to all purely moralistic accounts of the Catholic faith; an unfailing devotion to the Eucharist and the Passion, combined with an unshakable confidence in the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary; a zealous willingness to preach and teach about all this, in season and out, because we are convinced that the world is dying to hear it and dying from not hearing it; and, internally, a commitment to liturgical prayer, to study for the sake of the salvation of souls, and to a capitular mode of governance in a common life consecrated to God by poverty, chastity and obedience,” said Archbishop Di Noia. “This is a powerful combination, and the Church really does need us to be true to it now more than ever.”