Ragin Cajun Catholics

New Year- New Website- Coming Soon!!!

2011-08-19T21:01:00.000-05:00

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!

Stay Tuned for our NEW Website!

2011-04-15T10:08:00.000-05:00

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!

Vainglory: Seeking the Praise of Men

2010-11-16T10:41:00.002-06:00

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...

tips for surviving the college 'jungle'

2010-10-07T10:55:00.003-05:00

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

9/10/2010
Catholic News Agency (www.catholicnewsagency.com)
Christopher Stefanick, the Archdiocese of Denver's director of Youth, Young Adult, and Campus Ministry.

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)

Being Anti-Child via Aggie Catholics :)

2010-09-23T10:24:00.000-05:00

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

Our Moral Code is OUT OF DATE?!!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

2010-09-16T11:50:00.000-05:00

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.

Vocation Explosion!

2010-09-14T07:52:00.000-05:00

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.”

The Prince of This World and the Evangelization of Culture

2010-09-13T14:33:00.002-05:00

The Prince of This World and the Evangelization of Culture

Archbishop Chaput presented the following address at the Fifth Symposium Rome: Priests and Laity on Mission.

Life as a bishop - or at least the life of this bishop - does not leave much time to spend on poetry. But a few years ago a friend loaned me a volume of Rainer Maria Rilke, and of course, Rilke's work can be quite beautiful. In it, I found some lines of his verse that might help us begin our discussion today:

Slowly now the evening changes his garments
held for him by a rim of ancient trees;
you gaze: and the landscape divides and leaves you
one sinking and one rising toward the stars.

And you are left, to none belonging wholly,
not so dark as a silent house, nor quite
so surely pledged unto eternity
as that which grows to star and climbs the night.

To you is left (unspeakably confused)
your life, gigantic, ripening, full of fears,
so that it, now hemmed in, now grasping all,
is changed in you by turns to stone and stars.

Philosophers and psychologists have offered a lot of different theories about the nature of the human person. But few have captured the human condition better than Rilke does in those 12 lines. We are creatures made for heaven; but we are born of this earth. We love the beauty of this world; but we sense there is something more behind that beauty. Our longing for that "something" pulls us outside of ourselves.

Striving for "something more" is part of the greatness of the human spirit, even when it involves failure and suffering. In the words of Venerable John Paul II, something in the artist, and by extension in all human beings, "mirrors the image of God as Creator." We have an instinct to create beauty and new life that comes from our own Creator. Yet we live in a time when, despite all of our achievements, the brutality and indifference of the world have never been greater. The truth is that cruelty is also the work of human hands. So if we are troubled by the spirit of our age, if we really want to change the current course of our culture and challenge its guiding ideas - and this is the theme of our session here today -- then we need to start with the author of that culture. That means examining man himself.

Culture exists because man exists. Men and women think, imagine, believe and act. The mark they leave on the world is what we call culture. In a sense, that includes everything from work habits and cuisine to social manners and politics. But I want to focus in a special way on those elements of culture that we consciously choose to create; things like art, literature, technology, music and architecture. These things are what most people think of when they first hear the word "culture." And that makes sense, because all of them have to do with communicating knowledge that is both useful and beautiful. The task of an architect, for example, is to translate abstract engineering problems into visible, pleasing form; in other words, to turn disorder into order, and mathematical complexity into a public expression of strength and elegance. We aresocial animals. Culture is the framework within which we locate ourselves in relationship to other people, find meaning in the world and then transmit meaning to others.

In his 1999 Letter to Artists, John Paul II wrote that "beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty." There is "an ethic, even a 'spirituality' of artistic service which contributes [to] the life and renewal of a people," because "every genuine art form, in its own way, is a path to the inmost reality of man and of the world."

He went on the say that "true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience . . . Art by its nature is a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice [to] the universal desire for redemption."

Christianity is an incarnational religion. We believe that God became man. This has huge implications for how we live, and how we think about culture. God creates the world in Genesis. He judges it as "very good" (Gen 1:31). Later he enters the world to redeem it in the flesh and blood of his son (Jn 1:14). In effect, God licenses us to know, love and ennoble the world through the work of human genius. Our creativity as creatures is an echo of God's own creative glory. When God tells our first parents, "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen 1:28), he invites us to take part, in a small but powerful way, in the life of God himself.

The results of that fertility surround us. We see it in the great Christian heritage that still underpins the modern world. Anyone with an honest heart will grant that the Christian faith has inspired much of the greatest painting, music, architecture and scholarship in human experience. For Christians, art is a holy vocation with the power to elevate the human spirit and lead men and women toward God.

Having said all this, we still face a problem. And here it is: God has never been more absent from the Western mind than he is today. Additionally, we live in an age when almost every scientific advance seems to be matched by some increase of cruelty in our entertainment, cynicism in our politics, ignorance of the past, consumer greed, little genocides posing as "rights" like the cult of abortion, and a basic confusion about what - if anything at all - it means to be "human."

Science and technology give us power. Philosophers like Feuerbach and Nietzsche give us the language to deny God. The result, in the words of Henri De Lubac, is not atheism, but an anti-theism built on resentment. In destroying God, man sees himself as "overthrowing an obstacle in order to gain his freedom." The Christian understanding of human dignity claims that we are made in the image and likeness of God. Thomas Aquinas - whose feast we celebrate tomorrow - said that "In this [likeness to God] is man's greatness, in this is man's worth, in this he excels every creature." But this grounding in God is exactly what the modern spirit rejects.

Of course, most people have never read Nietzsche. Nor will they. Few have even heard of Feuerbach. But they do experience the benefits of science and technology every day. And they do live inside a cocoon of marketing that constantly strokes their appetites, makes death seem remote, and pushes questions about meaning and morality down into matters of private opinion. The result is this. While many people in the developed world still claim to be religious, their faith - in the words of the Pontifical Council for Culture - is "often more a question of religious feeling than a demanding commitment to God." Religion becomes a kind of insurance policy for eternity. Too often, it is little more than a convenient moral language for daily life. And what is worse is that many people no longer have the skills, or even the desire, to understand their circumstances, or to think their way out of the cocoon.

Part of what blocks a serious awareness and rethinking of our current culture is the "knowledge economy" we have created. In its 1999 statement Towards a Pastoral Approach to Culture, the Pontifical Council for Culture saw that the constant flow of "information provided by [today's] mass media . . . affects the way things are perceived: What people come to know is not reality as such, but what they are shown. [The] constant repetition of selected items of information involves a decline in critical awareness, and this is a crucial factor in forming what is considered public opinion." It also causes "a loss of intrinsic value [in the specific] items of information, an undifferentiated uniformity in messages which are reduced to pure information, a lack of responsible feedback, and a . . . discouragement of interpersonal relationships." This is all true. Much of modern technology isolates people as often as it brings them together. It attacks community as easily as it builds it up. It also forms the human mind in habits of thought and expression that are very different from traditional culture based on the printed word. And that has implications both for the Word of God and for the Church.

There is one other important point here that even strong religious believers often find hard to talk about. Let me explain it this way.

Referring to artists, John Paul II said that, "In shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work into being, but also . . . reveals his own personality by means of it." In other words, "works of art speak of their authors; they enable us to know their inner life." This is quite normal. But it also poses a danger. A key temptation of our age is the will to power. It is most obvious in our politics and science; in the constant erosion of our respect for the weak, the infirm, the unborn and the disabled. But the impulse to pride -- that hunger to smash taboos and inflate the self - appeals most naturally to artists and other creators of high culture. Genius breeds vanity. And vanity breeds conflict and suffering. The vanity of creative genius has a pedigree that leads back a very long way; all the way back to the very first non serviam from Satan himself.

It is very odd that in the wake of the bloodiest century in history - a century when tens of millions of human beings were shot, starved, gassed and incinerated with superhuman ingenuity - even many religious leaders are embarrassed to talk about the devil. In fact, it is more than odd. It is revealing. Mass murder and exquisitely organized cruelty are not just really big "mental health" problems. They are sins that cry out to heaven for justice, and they carry the fingerprints of an Intelligence who is personal, gifted, calculating and powerful. The devil is only unbelievable if we imagine him as the black monster of medieval paintings, or think The Inferno is intended as a literal road map to hell. Satan was very real for Jesus. He was very real for Paul and the other great saints throughout history. And he is profoundly formidable. If we want a sense of the grandeur of the Fallen Angel before he fell, the violated genius of who Satan really is, we can take a hint from the Rilke poem The Angels:

. . . when they spread their wings
they waken a great wind through the land:
as though with his broad sculptor-hands
God was turning
the leaves of the dark book of the Beginning.

This is the kind of Being - once glorious, but then consumed by his own pride -- who is now the Enemy of humanity. This is the Pure Spirit who betrayed his own greatness. This is the Intellect who hates the Incarnation because through it, God invites creatures of clay like you and me to take part in God's own divinity. There is nothing sympathetic about Satan; only tragedy and loss and enduring, brilliant anger.

In 1929, as the great totalitarian murder-regimes began to rise up in Europe, the philosopher Raissa Maritain wrote a forgotten little essay called The Prince of This World. It is worth reading. We need to remember her words today and into the future. With no trace of irony or metaphor, Maritain argued:

"Lucifer has cast the strong though invisible net of illusion upon us. He makes one love the passing moment above eternity, uncertainty above truth. He persuades us that we can only love creatures by making Gods of them. He lulls us to sleep (and he interprets our dreams); he makes us work. Then does the spirit of man brood over stagnant waters. Not the least of the devil's victories is to have convinced artists and poets that he is their necessary, inevitable collaborator and the guardian of their greatness. Grant him that, and soon you will grant him that Christianity is unpracticable. Thus does he reign in this world."

If we do not believe in the devil, sooner or later we will not believe in God. We cannot cut Lucifer out of the ecology of salvation. Satan is not God's equal. He is a created being subject to God and already, by the measure of eternity, defeated. Nonetheless, he is the first author of pride and rebellion, and the great seducer of man. Without him the Incarnation and Redemption do not make sense, and the cross is meaningless. Satan is real. There is no way around this simple truth.

Let me underline that even more strongly. Leszek Kolakowski, the former Marxist philosopher who died just last year, was one of the great minds of the last century. He was never a religious person in the traditional sense. But Kolakowski had few doubts about the reality of the devil. In his essay Short Transcript of a Metaphysical Press Conference Given by the Demon in Warsaw, on 20th December 1963*, Kolakowski's devil indicts all of us who call ourselves "modern" Christians with the following words:

"Where is there a place [in your thinking] for the fallen angel? . . . Is Satan only a rhetorical figure? . . . Or else, gentlemen, is he a reality, undeniable, recognized by tradition, revealed in the Scriptures, commented upon by the Church for two millennia, tangible and acute? Why do you avoid me, gentlemen? Are you afraid that the skeptics will mock you, that you will be laughed at in satirical late night reviews? Since when is the faith affected by the jeers of heathens and heretics? What road are you taking? If you forsake the foundations of the faith for fear of mockery, where will you end? If the devil falls victim to your fear [of embarrassment] today, God's turn must inevitably come tomorrow. Gentlemen, you have been ensnared by the idol of modernity, which fears ultimate matters and hides from you their importance. I don't mention it for my own benefit - it is nothing to me - I am talking about you and for you, forgetting for a moment my own vocation, and even my duty to propagate error."*

We live in an age that imagines itself as post-modern and post-Christian. It is a time defined by noise, urgency, action, utility and a hunger for practical results. But there is nothing really new about any of this. I think St. Paul would find our age rather familiar. For all of the rhetoric about "hope and change" in our politics, our urgencies hide a deep unease about the future; a kind of well-manicured selfishness and despair. The world around us has a hole in its heart, and the emptiness hurts. Only God can fill it. In our baptism, God called each of us in this room today to be his agents in that work. Like St. Paul, we need to be "doers of the word, and not hearers only" (Jas 1:22). We prove what we really believe by our willingness, or our refusal, to act on what we claim to believe.

But when we talk about a theme like today's topic - "Priests and laity together, changing and challenging the culture" - we need to remember that what we do, proceeds from who we are. Nothing is more dead than faith without works (Jas 2:17); except maybe one thing: works without faith. I do not think Paul had management issues in his head when he preached at the Areopagus. Management and resources are important - but the really essential questions, the questions that determine everything else in our life as Christians, are these: Do I really know God? Do I really love him? Do I seek him out? Do I study his word? Do I listen for his voice? Do I give my heart to him? Do I really believe he's there?

For more than 30 years, first as a bishop and now as the successor to St. Peter, Benedict XVI has spoken often and very forcefully about the "culture of relativism" that guides today's developed world, breaks down human community and intimacy, and drains the meaning out of human activity. That culture flows out of the "new Areopagus" John Paul II described in Redemptoris Missio - a culture formed by radically new technologies and methods of communication; a culture with a power that reshapes how we think, what we think about, and how we organize our personal and social lives.

We have an obligation as Catholics to study and understand the world around us. We have a duty not just to penetrate and engage it, but to convert it to Jesus Christ. That work belongs to all of us equally: clergy, laity and religious. We are missionaries. That is our primary vocation; it is hardwired into our identity as Christians. God calls each of us to different forms of service in his Church. But we are all equal in baptism. And we all share the same mission of bringing the Gospel to the world, and bringing the world to the Gospel.

And yet, Kolakowski's devil was right. The fundamental crisis of our time, and the special crisis of today's Christians, has nothing to do with technology, or numbers, or organization, or resources. It is a crisis of faith. Do we believe in God or not? Are we on fire with a love for Jesus Christ, or not? Because if we are not, nothing else matters. If we are, then everything we need in order to do God's work will follow, because he never abandons his people.

I began this talk today with the words of a poet, so I will end with the words of another poet. You may not have heard of him here in Italy. His name was Dante Alighieri, and he wrote an interesting little work calledThe Divine Comedy. He ends the Paradiso and the entire Comedy with these words: "The Love which moves the sun and the other stars."

The Love which moves the sun and the other stars. That is the nature of the God we preach. A God so great in glory, heat, light and majesty that he can populate the heavens and call life out of dead space; yet so intimate that he became one of us; so humble that he entered our world on dirt and straw to redeem us. I think we can be forgiven for sometimes running away from that kind of love, like a child who runs away from a parent, because we simply cannot understand or compete with that ocean of unselfishness. It is only when we give ourselves to God that we understand, finally, that we were made to do exactly that. Our hearts are restless until they rest in him. We should not be afraid to believe and to love; it took even a great saint like Augustine half a lifetime to be able to admit, that "late have I loved thee, Beauty so old and so new; late have I loved thee."

God calls us to leave here today and make disciples of all nations. But he calls us first to love him. If we do that, and do it zealously, with all our hearts - the rest will follow.

* Excerpt taken from "The Key to Heaven and Conversations with the Devil," translated by Celina Wieniewska and Salvator Attanasio (New York, Grove Press, 1972; pp. 117-129). This book may be out of print, but should be available for check-out at any local public library.

Happy Birthday Mary! - A Meditation on the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary

2010-09-08T08:32:00.002-05:00

Meditation on the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The History of the Liturgical Celebration of Mary's Birth
[Mary's Birth; Master of the Pfullendorf Altar]
The Churches of Constantinople in the East and Rome in the West celebrate liturgies in honor of Mary's birth from the sixth and seventh centuries on. The origin of the liturgy is traced to the consecration of the church in Jerusalem in the sixth century that has been traditionally known as St. Ann's Basilica. The original church built in the fifth century was a Marian basilica erected on the spot known as the shepherd's field and thought to have been the home of Mary's parents. After its destruction and reconstruction in the sixth century, the basilica was named in honor of St. Ann.
By the seventh century the liturgy was also celebrated in Rome where it had been introduced by monks from the East. From there, it spread throughout the West, and by the thirteenth century the liturgy had developed to a solemnity with a major octave (eight days of commemoration prior to the liturgy) and a solemn vigil which prescribed a fastday. Pope Sergius I (687-701) established a procession (a litania) from the Roman Forum to St. Mary Major for the feast.
During the reform of St. Pius X, the octave was simplified, and in 1955 Pius XII abolished it. The liturgy received the rank of feast.
The date, September 8, was chosen as the eighth day (an octave) after the former Byzantine New Year. Although Mary's birth was celebrated on various dates throughout the centuries, September 8 predominated. The feast celebrating Mary's Immaculate Conception, December 8, (a liturgy instituted later) was set to correspond to nine months before Mary's birth.
In the East, Mary's birthday is celebrated as one of the twelve great liturgies. The title for the liturgy in the East: "The Birth of Our Exalted Queen, the Birthgiver of God and Ever-Virgin Mary." Around 560, Romanos the Melodist wrote a Kontakion for the celebration. The oldest existing sermon for the liturgy was written by St. Andrew of Crete:
[Geburt Mariae; Marx Reichlich]
The present feast forms a link between the New and the Old Testament. It shows that Truth succeeds symbols and figures and that the New Covenant replaces the Old. Hence, all creation sings with joy, exalts, and participates in the joy of this day. ... This is, in fact, the day on which the Creator of the world constructed His temple; today is the day on which, by a stupendous project, a creature becomes the preferred dwelling of the Creator.
The responsory for the liturgy proclaims:

Your birth, Birthgiver of God, announced joy to the whole world. From you came the Sun of Justice, Christ our God. He released the curse and gave the blessing.

The Spiritual Tradition Regarding Mary's Birth
Sacred Scripture does not record Mary's birth. The earliest known writing regarding Mary's birth is found in theProtoevangelium of James (5:2), which is an apocryphal writing from the late second century. What matters is not the historicity of the account, but the significance of Mary's and of every person's birth. In Mary's case, the early Church grew more and more interested in the circumstances surrounding the origin of Christ. Discussion about Mary throws light on the discussion about the identity of Jesus Christ.
The Church usually celebrates the passing of a person, that is, the person's entry into eternal life. Besides the birth of Christ, the Christian liturgy celebrates only two other birthdays: that of St. John the Baptizer and of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. It is not the individual greatness of these saints that the Church celebrates, but their role in salvation history, a role directly connected to the Redeemer's own coming into the world.

Mary's birth lies at the confluence of the two Testaments--bringing to an end the stage of expectation and the promises and inaugurating the new times of grace and salvation in Jesus Christ. Mary, the Daughter of Zion and ideal personification of Israel, is the last and most worthy representative of the People of the Old Covenant but at the same time she is "the hope and the dawn of the whole world." With her, the elevated Daughter of Zion, after a long expectation of the promises, the times are fulfilled and a new economy is established. (Lumen Gentium 55)The birth of Mary is ordained in particular toward her mission as Mother of the Savior. Her existence is indissolubly connected with that of Christ: it partakes of a unique plan of predestination and grace. God's mysterious plan regarding the Incarnation of the Word embraces also the Virgin who is His Mother. In this way, the Birth of Mary is inserted at the very heart of the History of Salvation. (M. Valentini, Dictionary of Mary, pp. 36-7.)

Representations of Mary's Birth in Art
Mary's birth is usually included as one panel in art series on Mary's lifestory; however, it is also a theme depicted by itself. The oldest known representation is on a sixth century diptych in Leningrad. From the very beginning, the paintings were modeled on the type used for the birth of Christ, where the mother is in a lying position. Instead of a landscape, a cave or a stable as in the birth of Christ, various types of architectural structures are depicted which represent an interior dwelling place. Ann, the mother of Mary, is lying on a couch or on a bed. Usually, servants are busy bathing the child. Starting around 980 the compositions depict three women. One very simple painting, the so-called Berlin diptych from the early twelfth century, shows a servant handing Ann a bowl, while the child lays all tucked in on a little bed. These representations show the natural and joyful event of Mary's birth.
[Anne Conceiving the Virgin; Bellegambe]
Other works place the stress on the destiny of the child and the teachings of the faith. Pietro Lorenzetti (1342, Siena,Museum dell'Opera del Duomo) places the birth in a side room of a church. On Wolf Huber's Field Church altar, angels participate in the birth through an opening in the heavens. Albrecht Altdorfer places Mary's birth in a church with pillars surrounded by angels (1525, Munich, Alte Pinakothek). During the baroque and the rococo periods, heaven and earth unite in the paintings in happy profusion at Mary's birth.

[Birth of the Virgin (detail); Murillo]
During the later periods, especially after the fifteenth century, the representations of the birth of Mary highlight her destiny as the immaculate virgin, the child predestined by God's choice to bear the God-man, Jesus Christ. The words of the mystic, Mary of Agreda (1602-1665), describe well the way art would attempt to depict this birth. Mary of Agreda wrote, "Not only was the Word conceived before all these by eternal generation from the Father, but His temporal generation from the Virgin Mother full of grace, had already been decreed and conceived in the divine mind. Inasmuch as no efficacious and complete decree of this temporal generation could exist without at the same time including his Mother, such a Mother, the most holy Mary, was then and there conceived within that beautiful immensity, and her eternal record was written in the bosom of the Divinity, in order that for all the ages it should never be blotted out. She was stamped and delineated in the mind of the eternal Artificer and possessed the inseparable embraces of his love."
The Prayer of the Church
The Church prays at midday in the Liturgy of the Hours:

Today is the birthday of the holy Virgin Mary whose life illumined all the Churches.
In many cultures, the birthday of every person merits a celebration. Family and friends gather to wish the "birthday child" many happy returns. There are well-wishing, balloons, cards, cakes, candles, a favorite meal, there are gifts and jests--all the things that say, at least once a year, "You are special, there's only one of you, we are happy that you exist." So, it is for the people of God and Mary.

The Byzantine Daily Worship gives us the following prayer:
[Birth of the Virgin; The Hours of Catherine of Cleves]
Come, all you faithful, let us hasten to the Virgin: for long before her conception in the womb, the one who was to be born of the stem of Jesse was destined to be the Mother of God. The one who is the treasury of virginity, the flowering Rod of Aaron, the object of the prophecies, the child of Joachim and Anne, is born today and the world is renewed in her. Through her birth, she floods the church with her splendor. O holy Temple, Vessel of the Godhead, Model of virgins and Strength of kings: in you the wondrous union of the two natures of Christ was realized. We worship Him and glorify your most pure birth, and we magnify you. (441-442)

Author: Father Johann G. Roten, S.M.

Sources: Christopher O'Donnell, At Worship with Mary; E. Sebald, "Kunstgeschichte," and L. Heiser, "Liturgie Ost," and Th. Mass-Ewerd, "Liturgie West," inMarienlexikon 2; A. Valentini, Dictionary of Mary; Jean Guitton, The Madonna.

So why are we called the 'Newman' Catholic Student Ministry?

2010-08-31T10:14:00.001-05:00

What Newman Centers Owe Their Namesake (Part 1)

Interview With Oratorian Priest, Director of Newman Institute

By Kathleen Naab

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, AUG. 30, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The dossier for Cardinal John Henry Newman's beatification does not list Catholic university centers that bear his name among the miracles the soon-to-be-blessed gained through his intercession.
And yet, Newman Centers could be considered one of the cardinal's first works from heaven.
This is the lighthearted suggestion made by Oratorian Father Drew Morgan, provost of the Pittsburgh Oratory of St. Philip Neri. As an Oratorian priest, Father Morgan is a member of Cardinal Newman's own congregation. Leading up to the cardinal's September beatification, ZENIT spoke with Father Morgan about the mark the English convert has left on the world of the Church in universities.
In addition to sharing Cardinal Newman's spirituality, the Pennsylvania-native priest served for 15 years at one of the Newman Centers with the best reputations in the United States. Father Morgan was ordained for the Oratory in 1985 and has a 1997 doctorate from Duquesne University where he wrote his dissertation on Cardinal Newman’s understanding of conscience. He is presently the director of the National Institute for Newman Studies.

Father Morgan: According to John Evans, author of a history of the Newman Clubs titled "The Newman Movement": "Reaction to supposed anti-Catholicism certainly accounted for the origin of the first Catholic student organization in secular higher education."
The very first meeting of such a “club” was on Thanksgiving Day, 1883, in Madison, Wisconsin, where Catholic students were enjoying the holiday at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John C. Melvin, who lived across the street from the University of Wisconsin. In the course of the evening, one of the students mentioned that a professor had slandered the Catholic Church in his treatment of “medieval institutions.” His fellow Catholic students began a discussion as to whether such discourse was, indeed, slanderous, or appropriate, given the state of the Church in that period of history.
The students continued to meet at this home for further discussion and fellowship, constituting the beginning of the “Melvin Club.” It was the first organized manifestation of Catholic students coming together on a secular college campus.

One of the students who participated in the meetings of the Melvin Club was Timothy Harrington. He eventually found his way to graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). During a semester break, Harrington reread Newman’s autobiography, "Apologia pro Vita Sua." Inspired by Newman’s ability to defend the faith and his ideas about university education for Catholic students, Harrington drew on his experience in Wisconsin and initiated the first “Newman Club.” It followed a similar format, incorporating social activities, discussions on the faith, and mutual support for Catholic students in a frequently hostile academic environment. The meetings often became occasions for dating and debating, essentially providing a Catholic culture in a secular environment.
Surprisingly, Newman Centers emerged in the United States only three years after Newman’s death in Birmingham, England. The group at Penn held their first meeting in 1893. It is often thought that this could well be one of Newman’s first great miracles! It certainly is an affirmation of the power of his charismatic influence upon the life of the Church in the English-speaking world and his ongoing efforts from above to assist Catholic students in their most formative academic years.
Today, Newman Clubs or “Centers” can be found on almost every secular college campus in the United States, although one of the earliest clubs was at the University of Toronto in Canada. Frequently, and unfortunately, the Newman name is no longer tied to this ministry and the work is identified as “campus ministry.” Nevertheless, the mission can be traced to the Newman Club movement.
Eventually, the Newman movement became essential for the pastoral care of a growing population of Catholics attending secular colleges and universities. The return of the servicemen after World War II and the emergence of the “baby boom” generation swelled the ranks of Catholics seeking higher education at these institutions. The response of the institutional Church was to provide not only encouragement for Catholic faculty and students to associate with one another, but also the assignment of a Newman chaplain for their spiritual and sacramental needs.
The Newman movement eventually became know as the “Newman Apostolate,” and after Vatican II was placed under the aegis of the Catholic Campus Ministry Association by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

ZENIT: Can a Newman Center replace what a student stands to gain from attending a university that is itself Catholic?

Father Morgan: This is an interesting question that provides insight into an entirely different role that Newman played in the development of the modern American university. Throughout the 1850s, Newman served as rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, which he was asked to found by the Irish bishops. At the beginning of each academic year and as each college of the university was established, Newman would deliver an opening lecture or an address that powerfully illustrated insights into the role of the various disciplines of higher education. Newman took great strides in establishing the role that the Church should play in promoting the study of that particular field.
The collection of his lectures and these opening addresses constitute his great work, "The Idea of a University." This work was used as the essential “blueprint” by the religious orders that were rapidly founding Catholic colleges and universities throughout the United States. Their work was seen as a necessary completion of the work that the Church had initiated for her students in the parochial school system. In one generation, American Catholics went from being uneducated new immigrants to educated citizens capable of engaging the broader culture. The contribution made by Newman to this great work is yet another manifestation of the power of his charismatic leadership in the area of university education.
To address your question about Catholic vs. secular education, originally, the Newman Clubs hoped to be the appropriate response to this issue. However, many pastors and even a few bishops felt that Catholic students attending non-Catholic institutions were placing themselves in near-occasions of sin and therefore should no longer receive Communion! The safeguarding of the faith today paradoxically may in fact be more secure in a vibrant Newman Center on a secular college campus, where students are regularly challenged to defend their faith and give an account of their beliefs.
Of course Catholic universities can provide quality education in all areas, introducing the Catholic perspective in each discipline, as well as the teaching of the faith through their faculties of theology. This was really Newman’s great contribution to the very meaning of a “university” education, where universal Truth would be pursued, including the Truth found in theology and the teachings of the Church.

[Part 2 of this interview will appear in a later post]

On the Net:

The National Institute for Newman Studies: www.newmanstudiesinstitute.org

Prayer for Cardinal Newman’s canonization: www.newmancause.co.uk/prayer.html

For those of you who enjoyed Fr. Tad's presentation.... "The Truth about the new emergency contraceptive on the market"

2010-08-30T09:53:00.000-05:00

Ella: Untangling the Ball of Lies (Part 1)

by Gerard M. Nadal, Ph.D.

The FDA’s recent approval of Ella (Ulipristal acetate) as an emergency contraceptive is an action so fraught with lies and incomplete research, that it beggars the imagination. It is a tissue of lies built upon a foundation of lies. Let’s begin with the foundational lies and work our way up.

Ella is marketed as an emergency contraceptive because it can inhibit ovulation for up to five days. It also acts to prevent the implantation of the embryo and destroys the maternal component of the placenta (more on that later). So how is this not considered an abortifacient by the FDA?
The answer lies in the redefinition of both pregnancy and conception.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has for over 25 years accepted a redefinition of both pregnancy and conception as starting at implantation of the embryo, rather than at the fertilization of the egg by sperm. That’s earth-shattering in its effect. The activist attorneys who lobby ACOG saw these drugs coming and worked to get the new definitions put in place well in advance.

The definitions are also tied to the in vitro fertilization industry. Fertilization used to take place solely within the woman’s fallopian tubes, so that conception and pregnancy were respectively both an event and a condition that were simultaneous. When fertilization occurs in a Petri dish, the mother has neither conceived, nor is she pregnant. It was absurd to discard these traditional definitions for those whose pregnancies begin in the natural manner, but then logic is neither the aim, nor the concern of the pro-abortion lobby. Apparently neither is ethics or truthfulness.

Ella, as will now be seen, works as an abortifacient – even under the revised and tortured definitions of conception and pregnancy. In order to understand how it works, we must consider for a moment the processes with which it interferes.

During a normal menstrual cycle, estrogen stimulates the lining of the uterus to grow and prepare for the implantation of the embryo. At mid-cycle the follicle of cells surrounding the egg in the ovary will rupture and release the egg into the fallopian tube. That follicle of cells becomes a structure called the corpus luteum, which produces the hormone progesterone. Progesterone travels to the uterine lining, binds to it and maintains the structural integrity of the uterine lining throughout the pregnancy, if one happens to occur.

If no baby is conceived, the corpus luteum dies at about 28 days. No corpus luteum, no progesterone. With no progesterone, the uterine lining (endometrium) breaks down and a new cycle begins. If, however, the woman does conceive, the corpus luteum will live for approximately 10 weeks (the first trimester), after which time it will die and the baby will take over its own housekeeping.
Ella acts in three ways to kill an embryonic human being.
First, Ella blocks the progesterone receptors on the surface of endometrial cells in the uterine lining. This is analogous to jamming a piece of metal into the lock on one’s front door. It prevents the key from being inserted and unlocking the door. By blocking the “keyhole” for progesterone (the key), progesterone cannot initiate the complex of events necessary for sustained development and maintenance of the uterine lining. This mimics the onset of a menstrual period with the breakdown of the endometrial lining of the uterus, leaving nowhere for the embryo to implant.

That’s considered “contraceptive” by ACOG and FDA because conception is now defined as implantation. However, the next two steps are abortifacient mechanisms under anybody’s definition.

The second way that Ella works to kill an embryonic human is that it inhibits the ability of the cells of the corpus luteum to produce progesterone, thus mimicking the death of the corpus luteum. Without the progesterone made by the corpus luteum in the first ten weeks of pregnancy, the placenta dies and the baby is starved of oxygen and nutrients. Hence, Ella is effective far beyond the five-day window being touted by FDA.

The third mechanism of action for Ella is that it blocks the progesterone receptors in the endometrial stromal tissue, directly killing the mother’s portion of the placenta. These last two mechanisms are the exact manner in which RU-486 works.

Thus we see that Ella simultaneously blocks the production of progesterone and blocks it from binding to its receptors in the uterine lining, producing a miscarriage. This can happen at any time in the pregnancy. It also acts to destroy the endometrium before the embryo reaches it for implantation.

If this level of outright lying and obfuscation is profoundly disturbing, the safety standards that were deliberately ignored and the clinical trials never performed on the road to approval are nothing less than scandalous. In Part II, the story of how Ella was shepherded past the safety standards in product development, clinical trials and FDA approval.

Dr. Nadal holds a Ph.D. in molecular microbiology. In addition to teaching for 16 years, he's spent seven years working with homeless teens at Covenant House in Times Square, New York. He is currently pursuing an M.A. in theology through Franciscan University of Steubenville and blogs at http://gerardnadal.com/.

Thanks to Headline Bistro for this article.

Catholic Student Center & Kurzweg Cafe; Great Coffee & Great Friends; a Home away from Home!

2010-08-21T14:09:00.001-05:00

Welcome Back UL!!

Join us for our Back to School Activities !

August 21st @ 5pm - UCM Welcome Back BBQ @ Zeus on the Geaux
August 22nd @ 6pm - Welcome Back Mass and Reception - Our Lady of Wisdom & Church Hall
August 23rd @ 11am-2pm - Free Burgers on the Deck! @ Wisdom
Wednesday, August 25th - Welcome Back Party @ Wisdom- Prizes, Games, Get involved, Free Food! 6pm
Thursday, August 26th- 1pm - Status of the Human Embryo talk- Our Lady of Wisdom Church
8pm - Candlelight Adoration & Confession
Friday, August 27th - Lunch with the Lord (Free Lunch after Noon Mass!)

New Cafe Hours
M-R 7:30 am- 8pm
Friday 7:30 am-3pm
Coffee- Sandwiches-pastries

Why Evangelicals have been becoming Catholic.

2010-08-02T18:46:00.000-05:00

Evangelicals ‘Crossing the Tiber’ to Catholicism

Under the radar of most observers a trend is emerging of evangelicals converting to Catholicism.
By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

In the fall of 1999, I was a freshman at Gordon College, an evangelical liberal arts school in Massachusetts. There, fifteen years earlier, a professor named Thomas Howard resigned from the English department when he felt his beliefs were no longer in line with the college’s statement of faith. Despite all those intervening years, during my time at Gordon the specter of Thomas Howard loomed large on campus. The story of his resignation captured my imagination; it came about, ultimately, because he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Though his reasons for converting were unclear and perhaps unimaginable to me at the time (they are actually well-documented in his book Evangelical is Not Enough which, back then, I had not yet read), his reasons seemed less important than the knowledge that it could happen. I had never heard of such a thing.

I grew up outside of Boston in what could be described as an Irish-Catholic family, except for one minor detail: my parents had left the Church six years before I was born when they were swept up in the so-called “Jesus Movement” of the 1970s. So Catholicism was all around me, but it was not mine. I went to mass with my grandparents, grew up around the symbolism of rosary beads and Virgin Mary statues, attended a Catholic high school, and was present at baptisms, first communions, and confirmations for each of my Catholic family members and friends.

All throughout this time my parents never spoke ill of the Catholic Church; though the pastors and congregants of our non-denominational, charismatic church-that-met-in-a-warehouse, often did. Despite my firsthand experience with the Church, between the legend of my parents’ conversion (anything that happens in a child’s life before he is born is the stuff of legends) and the portrait of the Catholic Church as an oppressive institution that took all the fun out of being “saved,” I understood Catholicism as a religion that a person leaves when she becomes serious about her faith.

And yet, Thomas Howard is only the tip of the iceberg of a hastening trend of evangelicals converting to Catholicism. North Park University professor of religious studies Scot McKnight documented some of the reasons behind this trend in his important 2002 essay entitled “From Wheaton to Rome: Why Evangelicals become Roman Catholic.” The essay was originally published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, and was later included in a collection of conversion stories he co-edited with Hauna Ondrey entitled Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy.

Thomas Howard comes in at number five on McKnight’s list of significant conversions, behind former Presbyterian pastor and author of Rome Sweet Home, Scott Hahn, and Marcus Grodi founder of The Coming Home Network International, an organization that provides “fellowship, encouragement and support for Protestant pastors and laymen who are somewhere along the journey or have already been received into the Catholic Church,” according to their Web site. Other featured converts include singer-songwriter John Michael Talbot and Patrick Madrid, editor of the Surprised by Truth books, which showcase conversion stories.

Would Saint Augustine Go to a Southern Baptist Church in Houston?

McKnight first identified these converts eight years ago, and the trend has continued to grow in the intervening years. It shows up in a variety of places, in the musings of the late Michael Spencer (the “Internet Monk”) about his wife’s conversion and his decision not to follow, as well as at the Evangelical Theological Society where the former President and Baylor University professor Francis J. Beckwith made a well-documented “return to Rome.” Additionally, the conversion trend is once again picking up steam as the Millennial generation, the first to be born and raised in the contemporary brand of evangelicalism, comes of age. Though perhaps an unlikely setting, The King’s College, an evangelical Christian college in New York City, provides an excellent case study for the way this phenomenon is manifesting itself among young evangelicals.

The King’s College campus is comprised of two floors in the Empire State Building and some office space in a neighboring building on Fifth Avenue. The approximately 300 students who attend King’s are thoughtful, considerate and serious. They are also intellectually curious. This combination of traits, it turns out, makes the college a ripe breeding ground for interest in Roman Catholicism. Among the traits of the Catholic Church that attract TKC students—and indeed many young evangelicals at large—are its history, emphasis on liturgy, and tradition of intellectualism.

Lucas Croslow was one such student to whom these and other attributes of Catholicism appealed. This past spring, graduating from The King’s College was not the only major change in Croslow’s life, he was also confirmed into the Catholic Church.

Croslow’s interest in Catholicism began over six years ago when he was a sophomore in high school. At the time, Croslow’s Midwestern evangelical church experienced a crisis that is all too common among evangelical churches: what he describes as “a crisis of spiritual authority.” As a result of experiencing disappointment in his pastor, Croslow began to question everything he had learned from him. This questioning led him to study the historical origins of scripture and then of the Christian church itself. Eventually he concluded that Catholicism in its current form is the closest iteration of the early church fathers’ intentions. He asks, “If Saint Augustine showed up today, could we seriously think that he’d attend a Southern Baptist church in Houston?” The answer, to Croslow, is a resounding “No.”

Croslow’s belief that the Catholic Church most accurately reflects the intentions of the early church fathers is echoed throughout the movement as other evangelicals seek a church whose roots run deeper than the Reformation. Further, due to the number of non-denominational churches that have proliferated since the Jesus Movement, many evangelicals’ knowledge of their history runs only as far back as the 1970s. These are the young believers who are attracted to a Church that sees itself as the direct descendent of the religion founded by Saint Peter and the apostles.

Another recent convert and current King’s sophomore, Nick Dunn, agrees with Croslow about the need for a historically grounded Christianity, however he emphasizes the liturgical aspects of Roman Catholicism as a motivation for converting. When he moved to New York City to attend The King’s College he had a difficult time finding a church that was similar to his home church in San Diego. The churches that he attended in New York, even the evangelical ones, often were a bit more structured and incorporated some liturgical elements into their services. In time, Dunn realized that these liturgical practices, which had been all but absent from his church life to that point, were quite rich.

When he asked his parents why their church didn’t have a benediction or a call to worship, they answered as many evangelicals would, saying that they don’t like “these ritualistic or religious kinds of things.” Eventually, after attending mass at St. Francis of Assisi in midtown Manhattan, Dunn became interested in learning more about Catholicism. It was living like a Catholic, Dunn says, that finally made him to decide to convert

Hat Tip to our Aggie friends at St. Mary's for this one.

A Letter of Farewell from Sister Mavis

2010-07-29T12:27:00.001-05:00

On August 2004, as I was helping Srs. Fatima and Nina prepare for their first vows, and Srs. Chhanda and Moyna transition into their second year of novitiate, my Congregation, the Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows, was preparing to open the very first community in the diocese of Lafayette. Needless to say, it was a busy time for us! Now, six years later, I find myself busy again as I prepare to move “up north” once again.

I am very grateful to Fr. Chester and to you, the people of Our Lady of Wisdom – parishioners, students, staff – for having welcomed me (and our sisters) as you have. You have been loving, kind, supportive, generous, and simply fun to be with – and I thank you for that. I cherish all that I’ve been able to experience and to accomplish in these past 6 years: I was part of the first OLS community to ever live in the diocese of Lafayette; I completed my mandate as novice director for our community; I earned a degree from UL Lafayette and began working towards being a licensed counselor; I became a certified Spiritual Director; I was here for the birth of my little niece (I was in Shreveport, Rome or Bangladesh when the other eight came into this world), and I was part of the best homecoming float-making crew ever!!!

Part of religious life is going where we are asked to go, and doing what the Congregation needs - and while it saddens me to leave this place, faith and experience tell me that “all will be well”. Know that I will carry you and the memories of this beautiful place in my heart as I go forward to live this new adventure the Lord has prepared for me. I ask that you remember me in your prayers and I assure you that I will keep you in my daily prayer.

May Our Lady of Sorrows and Blessed Elisabetta Renzi be with you,

and may our Lord bless each of you with His peace.

Love,

Sr. Mavis

____________________________________________

We Love you Sister Mavis!
This Sunday after the 11am Mass we will be having a small pot luck reception to say our goodbyes to Sister Mavis. Please come and if you can bring a dessert or a side to share (for about 20 ppl).

Fire On The Earth: God’s New Creation and the Meaning of Our Lives

2010-07-27T14:29:00.000-05:00

An amazing read- by the one and only.....
Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

One of my favorite Christian authors, writing about the Christianity of his day, said that popular faith is “like a farmer who needs a horse for his fields; he leaves the fiery stallion on one side, and buys the tame, broken-in horse. This is just the way men have tamed for themselves a usable Christianity, and it is only a matter of time and honest thought before they lose interest in their creation and get rid of it.”

The man who wrote those words was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Lutheran theologian. For Bonhoeffer, Scripture was not an academic discipline, or a personal hobby, or a collection of useful wisdom. It was the living Word of God, the furnace that powered his life. And it had a cost. It led him to oppose National Socialism, then to work against Adolf Hitler, then to his arrest, and finally to his execution.

There’s nothing tepid or routine about a real encounter with Sacred Scripture. In his Narnia tales, C.S. Lewis warned that Aslan is a good lion, but he is not a “tame” lion. Likewise, God’s Word is profoundly good, but it is never “tame.” Augustine thought Christian Scripture was vulgar, inelegant, and shallow—until he heard it preached by St. Ambrose; then it grabbed him by the soul, and turned his world and his life inside out. When Jesus said “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled” (Lk 12:49) he spoke not as an interesting moral counselor, but as the restless, incarnate Word of God, the Scriptures in flesh and blood, on fire with his Father’s mission of salvation.

Scripture is passionate; it’s a love story, and it can only be absorbed by giving it everything we have: our mind, our heart and our will. It’s the one story that really matters; the story of God’s love for humanity. And like every great story, it has a structure. Talking about that structure and its meaning is my purpose here today. (continue reading)

_________________________________________________________________

Why the Catholic Church teaches that using artificial contraception is immoral...

2010-07-24T07:51:00.000-05:00

So, if you've ever had questions about why the Church teaches what she does about contraception (and even if you never did)...here is a very good article written by Dr. Janet Smith. This weekend marks the 42nd anniversary of Pope Paul VI's prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life). This is a topic that, in my opinion, is bigger and more impacting than most of our time (and thats saying alot). Go ahead, take a chance, listen to what the Church has to say about it. One suggestion: even if you think the Church is crazy on this topic...no ESPECIALLY if you think the Church is crazy on this topic, take a few minutes and read this but make sure you read the WHOLE thing.

Contraception: Why Not?

JANET SMITH

Janet Smith explains why the Catholic Church keeps insisting, in the face of the opposite position held by most of the rest of the modern world, that contraception is one of the worst inventions of our time.

My topic for tonight is the Church's teaching on contraception and various sexual issues. As you know, we live in a culture that thinks that contraception is one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind. If you were to ask people if they wanted to give up their car or their computer or their contraceptive, it would be a hard choice to make. It's really considered to be something that has really put us, greatly, into the modern age and one of the greatest advances of modern medicine and modern times. Yet, there's this archaic church that tells us that, really, this is one of the worst inventions of mankind. According to the Church, contraception is one of the things that's plunging us into a kind of a disaster.
So we have this great polarization: a world that thinks contraception is one of the greatest inventions of our time and the Catholic Church that says it's one of the worst. I am going to try to help people see tonight why the Church's teaching certainly deserves serious consideration.

Most people don't know that every Christian church up until 1930 taught that contraception was wrong. There was a universal teaching against contraception within Christian churches. It was only in 1930 that the Anglican church first broke with that unbroken tradition and approved contraception within marriage for serious reasons. In 1931, Pope Pius XI wrote the Encyclical,Casti Connubii, which is usually translated On Christian Marriage, and there he reiterated what had been the constant teaching of the Church. Within the Catholic Church there was virtually no debate on the issue until the mid-1960's. The debate starts about 1963. There was really a great acceptance of the Church, of those in the Church, of the teaching of the church. In 1960, some 66% of Catholics were living by the Church's teaching. Sixty-six percent. Now they say some 80% of Catholics are contracepting. Thirty percent of Catholics are sterilized, which is the same rate as the rest of the population. Only 4% of Catholics are using Natural Family Planning. I personally think that might be a high estimate.
So, how have we in the last 30 years gone from 66% compliance to at best 4% of compliance?
Read the rest of the article here.

Camp W.I.S.D.O.M 2010

2010-07-19T15:43:00.000-05:00

What is it?

Camp W.I.S.D.O.M stands for Willing and Inspired Sons and Daughters on Mission. Camp Wisdom is a 5 Day, 5 Night experience that is part service camp, part retreat and all out party that will inspire you, challenge you and start your college career off with a bang! You'll SERVE those in need, PRAY with your fellow students, receive life changing teachings and have the time of your life with other students as you get a taste of what its like to be involved in the Catholic Student Ministry and Our Lady of Wisdom Church on UL's Campus.

Where is it?

You'll stay right here at the Catholic Student Center located at Our Lady of Wisdom Catholic Church on the campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Our Student Center is located on the corner of St. Mary Blvd. and McKinley St. Make sure you bring your sleeping bag and a pillow!

Note: If you live near by you are welcome to stay at your own house or with a friend but we'll be happy to have you here too! If you are moving into the dorms- don't fear- part of our service experience is joining up with the other ministries on campus to help everyone move into the dorms. You'll have plenty of time to get your things settled and lots of help to do so!

When is it?

Camp Wisdom begins on Sunday, August 15th. Registration begins at 4:30 and we'll attend 6pm Mass together that evening. Camp Wisdom ends on Friday, August 20th after the 12 Noon Mass. Your parents are invited to join us for Mass both on Sunday evening and Friday afternoon if they'd like.

Who's invited?

All UL Lafayette Students are invited to Camp Wisdom. Many older students will be here for the whole experience and some will come for the evening activities to make sure they meet all of the incoming freshmen. We especially invite incoming Freshmen as Camp Wisdom is a week that will get you involved, inspired and geared up for College Life and introduce you to all of your new best friends!

How much does it cost?

The cost for the entire week is only $25. You can't eat for a whole week for that little! We'll feed you 3 meals a day plus all the snacks you can eat. Returning Students: If an incoming freshmen says that you referred them to Camp Wisdom you receive $5 off your registration fee. Tell everyone you know! (there is a space on their form for your name)

How Do I Register?

On the right in the information bar on our blog you'll find a registration form. Just enter your information and press submit. In a few days you'll receive an email with follow up information. Just bring your $25 Registration fee when you show up on August 15th. It's that easy!

On Confessing your sins ( a note from Fr. Sibley)

2010-07-15T09:47:00.003-05:00

Father Sibley has some helpful advice for us when it comes to confessing mortal sin.

___________________

A Note on Confessing Mortal Sins

When coming to Confession, if you have to confess a mortal sin, the Church teaches that it is important to mention both KIND and NUMBER (cf. Canon 988.1). Kind: What specific “kind” of sin is it? It is not
enough to say that you committed “impure acts” – this is too vague. While you don’t need to get into graphic detail, if you committed adultery then say you committed adultery. Number: How many times did you commit this specific mortal sin? There is a big difference in committing the sin one time since your last Confession vs. ten times. Why is it important to mention kind and number when making an integral confession? Because mentioning the kind of sin helps to hold us accountable for what we’ve done – any number of sins could fall under the category of “impure acts.” Please don’t be embarrassed or afraid, the priest has heard it all before (and will forget it soon after you’ve confessed it). Confessing the number of times you committed the sin is important because knowing the number helps the priest better give you advice on how to overcome a sin that might be have become habitual.

In reference to the issue of mortal sin, it is also valuable to note Canon 916 of the Code of Canon Law which reads: “A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of
the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.” If you are conscious that you are in the state of mortal sin, you are not to receive Holy Communion until you have received the Sacrament of Confession. Doing so becomes another grave sin. It is not sufficient to simply make an act of contrition with the intention of going later. Notice that the Canon mentions this is only possible when there is no opportunity to confess and there is a “grave reason.” The noble desire to receive the Eucharist or not wanting to be embarrassed
in front of friends and family does not constitute a grave reason. If you happen to find yourself in the state of grave sin, I encourage you to make it a point to go to Confession as soon as possible!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Hey, atleast its not like this...'Automatic Confession'

Lesson One in Prayer - Peter Kreeft

2010-07-14T12:26:00.000-05:00

Lesson One in Prayer

Let's get very, very basic and very, very practical about prayer. The single most important piece of advice I know about prayer is also the simplest: Just do it!

How to do it is less important than just doing it. Less-than-perfect prayer is infinitely better than no prayer; more perfect prayer is only finitely better than less perfect prayer.

Nancy Reagan was criticized for her simple anti-drug slogan: "Just say no." But there was wisdom there: the wisdom that the heart of any successful program to stop anything must be the simple will to say no. ("Just say no" doesn't mean that nothing else was needed, but that without that simple decision nothing else would work. "Just say no" may not be sufficient but it is necessary.)

Similarly, no program, method, book, teacher, or technique will ever succeed in getting us to start doing anything unless there is first of all that simple, absolute choice to do it. "Just say yes."

The major obstacle in most of our lives to just saying yes to prayer, the most popular and powerful excuse we give for not praying, or not praying more, or not praying regularly, is that we have no time.

The only effective answer to that excuse, I find, is a kind of murder. You have to kill something, you have to say no to something else, in order to make time to pray. Of course, you will never find time to pray, you have to make time to pray. And that means unmaking something else. The only way to install the tenant of prayer in the apartment building of your life is to evict some other tenant from those premises that prayer will occupy. Few of us have any empty rooms available.

Deciding to do that is the first thing. And you probably won't decide to do it, only wish to do it, unless you see prayer for what it is: a matter of life or death, your lifeline to God, to life itself.

Prayer is like Thanksgiving dinner. It takes one hour to eat it and ten hours to prepare it.

Is this exaggerated? Are there more important things? Love, for instance? We need love absolutely; but the love we need is agape, the love that only God has and is; so unless we go to God for it, we won't get it. And going to God for it means prayer. So unless we pray, we will not love.

Having got that clear and having made prayer your number one priority, having made a definite decision to do it, we must next rearrange our lives around it. Rearranging your time, preparing time to pray, is like preparing your house to paint. As everyone knows who has done any painting, preparation is three-quarters the work, three-quarters the hassle, and three-quarters the time. The actual painting is a breeze compared with the preparation. The same is true of prayer: the hardest step is preparing a place, a time, a sacred and inviolable part of each day for it. Prayer is like Thanksgiving dinner. It takes one hour to eat it and ten hours to prepare it. Prayer is like Christmas Day: it took a month of preparation, decoration, and shopping to arrange for that one day. Best of all, prayer is like love. Foreplay is, or should be, most of it. For two people truly and totally in love, all of their lives together is foreplay. Well, prayer is like spiritual love-making. God has waited patiently for you for a long, long time. He longs for you to touch the fringe of his being in prayer, as the woman touched the hem of Christ's garment, so that you can be healed. How many hours did that woman have to prepare for that one-minute touch?

The first and most important piece of practical preparation is scheduling. You absolutely must schedule a regular time for prayer, whether you are a "scheduler" with other things in your life or not. "Catch as catch can" simply won't work for prayer; it will mean less and less prayer, or none at all. One quick minute in the morning to offer your day to God is better than nothing at all, of course, but it is as radically inadequate as one quick minute a day with your wife or husband. You simply must decide each day to free up your schedule so you can pray.

How long a time? ...read the rest of this article.

Got a question about the Catholic Faith?

2010-07-12T13:12:00.000-05:00

EWTN brings to you ' The Teachings of the Catholic Faith in an easy to use format'. Share it with your friends :)

Why be Catholic? Does it even matter?

2010-07-08T10:04:00.000-05:00

Have you ever asked yourself "does it matter what 'brand' of Christian I am? Isn't it all the same as long as I'm a good person and love Jesus? The following is part of a journey of one woman who began as an Atheist and asked questions until she found the truth.

Read the first part of her journey here (from Atheism to a belief in God) and the second part (which this excerpt is taken from) here. Enjoy!

...................

I found out that the Catholic Church claimed to be a sort of divinely-guided Supreme Court, that God guided this Church to be inerrant in its official proclamations about what is right and wrong, how to interpret the Bible, how to know Jesus Christ, and all other questions of God and what he wants us to do. I heard that it claims that God speaks to us through sacred Scripture and through the sacred Tradition of his living Church.

That got my attention.

Clearly there was a need for this. Surely I was not the only person to ever feel lost in the world, unable to trust myself to objectively interpret the Bible to discern what God wants from us, unable to clearly tell which of my conclusions about right and wrong were guided by the Holy Spirit and which were guided by deeply-rooted selfishness (or perhaps something worse).

Now, obviously I wasn't going to become Catholic. I mean, the Catholic Church is weird and antiquated and sometimes the people in it do seriously bad stuff. But I was interested to at least explore this line of thinking and see what I found.

I could have never, ever imagined what I'd find. Reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church was like nothing I'd ever experienced. This was truth. I knew it. I'd finally found it. It described God, our relationship to him, the Bible, Jesus, moral truths -- the entire human experience -- in a way that resonated on a deep level.

When I started living my life according to Catholic teaching the proof was, as they say, in the pudding. It worked. It worked better than I could have ever guessed it would. And since I've been able to receive what they say is really the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, my soul, my entire life, has changed profoundly. But that is whole separate story (and, really, the main subject of this blog). To summarize my experience, I leave you with a quote from G.K. Chesterton, writing about why he converted to orthodox Catholicism:

I do it because the [Catholic Church] has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden.

My thoughts exactly.

Again, I share this not to cause division, but for the same reason anyone talks about anything they love -- that mysterious desire we all have to shout from the rooftops about the things that we find to be profound, beautiful, and true.

Pope Gives Secret to Vocational Discernment (and True Prayer)

2010-07-07T11:39:00.000-05:00

a Guideline to Determine "True Prayer"

SULMONA, Italy, JULY 5, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is telling youth the secret of recognizing God's call, affirming that the trick is making the heart accustomed to recognizing the Lord.

The Pope said this Sunday during his one-day trip to the Abruzzi region of Italy, devastated by an earthquake in 2009. While in Sulmona, he had a meeting with youth in the city's cathedral.
Responding to their questions, he told them the "secret of a vocation lies in the capacity and in the joy of distinguishing [God's] voice, of listening to and following his voice. But to do this, it is necessary to accustom our heart to recognize the Lord, to hear him like a person who is near me and who loves me."
The Holy Father asserted that for this, moments of "interior silence in the day-to-day routine" are essential.
But once one has learned to hear this voice, he said, and to generously follow it, "one fears nothing, he or she knows and feels that God is with him or her, and that he is a Friend, Father and Brother."
"Said in one word: the secret of a vocation lies in the relationship with God, in prayer that grows precisely in interior silence, in the capacity to feel that God is near," the Pontiff added. "And this is true both before the decision, at the moment, that is, of deciding and of leaving, as well as later if one wishes to be faithful and to persevere along the way."

Addressing problems
Going on to clarify the concept of prayer, Benedict XVI affirmed that "true prayer" is not "foreign to reality."
"If praying alienated you, took you away from your real life, beware: it would not be true prayer," he said. "On the contrary, dialogue with God is the guarantee of truth, of truthfulness with oneself and with others and, therefore, of liberty."
In this sense, the Pope acknowledged, faith and prayer "do not resolve problems, but enable one to address them with a new light and strength, in a way fitting to man, and also more serenely and effectively."
He said the history of the Church is full of saints who, precisely with prayer, "were always able to find new, creative solutions to respond to concrete human needs in every century: health, education, work, etc."
"Their daring," the Pope reflected, "was animated by the Holy Spirit and by a strong and generous love of brothers, especially of the weakest and most underprivileged."

As Benedict XVI concluded his meeting with the young people, he admitted his regret at having to leave.

However, he said, "I leave happy, as a father who is serene because he has seen that his children are growing and are growing well. Carry on, dear young people! Carry on in the way of the Gospel; love the Church, our Mother; be simple and pure of heart; be humble and generous."

Viva la Papa!

Father Sibley on his 4th of July Homily

2010-07-04T17:41:00.002-05:00

"In reference to my homily on July 4th, you can read

the text of the homily where Pope Benedict spoke

of the establishment of the Pontifical council for

the New Evangelization here.

I drew most of the points from my homily from the first

response of the Pope to the questions posed to him

by the US bishops during his visit to the States.

You can read the texts of all of Pope Benedict’s speeches

and homilies during his apostolic visitation

to America in 2008 in the  book Pope Benedict in America.

Here is the link to Archbishop Chaput’s challenging talk

in the liturgy.I think it is one of the best things

on the liturgy I have read in years.I think you can

actually make a connection between Benedict’s

comments on the  “individualism and eclecticism”

of American Catholicism and the approach of many

to the liturgy. They want to have their own special

liturgy, one fashioned to their own tastes and preferences,

rather than receiving the liturgy givento us by the Church.

Of course, Ratzinger makes this point exactly in

his now classic The Spirit of the Liturgy."

( I apologize for the choppy layout of this post- its been one of those tenchnological moments here! - Amy)

What’s Behind the New Interest in Confession?

2010-07-02T09:14:00.000-05:00

What’s Behind the New Interest in Confession?

Is the present increase in the popularity of the confession of sins a step toward a realistic religiosity, or is it the popularity of the penitential rite of the American Church of Christ without Christ?

Confession of sins is making a comeback. Catholics, other-Christians, non-Christians, and even non-believers are reported to be embracing the practice in traditional and non-traditional ways.
As a Catholic priest who hears confessions, and as a sinner who needs it, I welcome the new interest in the forgiveness of sins as an opportunity for spiritual growth. Indeed, the roots of the urge to confess our sins lie deep in the human heart. I believe that the impulse to confess deeds that weigh on our conscience can be a healthy affirmation of ties that bind us all. This experience of solidarity is the beginning of that sense of social responsibility upon which our survival depends. From this point of view, the reported popularity of confession is a welcome development. However, this is only a beginning.

read this article here.

A Canadian! Who woulda thought Eh?!

2010-07-01T10:46:00.001-05:00

In a move without precedent, a Canadian prelate has been named to lead one of the nine Congregations of the Roman Curia. Yet on an even more seismic plane, for the first time in history the Vatican's "Big Three" dicastery chiefs -- State, CDF and Bishops -- are dominated not just by two North Americans, but two non-Europeans.

This appointment is special to me as Cardinal Ouellet was someone who's works we read often and came to love greatly in graduate school at the John Paul II Institute in Washington DC. Even more special for our new Pastor Fr. Sibley as He was directly taught by Cardinal Ouellet and not only that but the good Cardinal directed His thesis at the JPII in Rome. This is very
good news for the Church as the Canadian Cardinal will be making all the new appointments for Bishops from now on!

Read more about Cardinal Marc Ouellet and his appointment as "the Kingmaker" here.

* for those of you reading this on Facebook please see this post at our blog http://ragincajuncatholics.blogspot.com

iMass?

2010-06-30T10:25:00.000-05:00

I found this on The Curt Jester's blog this morning. Interesting.....(a little scary) but, very interesting...

"An Italian priest has developed an application that will let priests celebrate Mass with an iPad on the altar instead of the regular Roman missal."

He stressed that the iPad application, like the iBreviary, was launched at his own instigation and with his own money and is not an official Vatican initiative. Vatican officials have previously praised the iBreviary as a novel way of evangelizing. [Source]
This does present some interesting questions though. The intersection of technology and the Mass is nothing new. We forget about how the printing press changed liturgical books used in the Mass in going from hand-written volumes to ones created via the mechanical printing press. In modern times the use of wireless microphones and sound equipment has become quite prevalent – though not everybody is happy about that technological transition either.
The Vatican has gotten involved at an official level before when it came to using technology during the liturgy or in our churches for that matter. After the invention of the electric light the question came up about using an electrical lamp for the sanctuary to indicate the presence of Christ in the Tabernacle. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), No. 316, states: “In accordance with traditional custom, near the tabernacle a special lamp, fueled by oil or wax, should be kept alight to indicate and honor the presence of Christ.”
I once went to a parish with electric votive lamps where you inserted coins for a lamp to light for a certain period of time. Surely someone thought this was great way to reduce insurance premiums but it was unbelievably tacky looking – seemed more like a machine from an amusement park. Asking someone to turn on a candle for you is just not the same.

The invention of the telephone brought questions about using a telephone for confessions. In modern times the same question was asked about confession over the internet and was answered in the negative for really the same reasons phone confessions would not be valid.
In a Church with sacraments and the sacramental view of things the types of materials used at Mass are not insignificant questions. The type of material used for the chalices should be made of solid and noble material that is not easily breakable or corruptible, is another example of how the Church takes seriously these questions.
So we come down to is should an iPad with the Roman Missal be used on the altar? Now as a self-professed geek who is a lover of both technology and theology, and Apple and Jesus fanboy I have mixed feelings about this. Technically I know of no liturgical law that would prevent an iPad or any other similar device from being used for this purpose as the Roman Missal used in Mass. The question would be more of a prudent one for now. I would expect though that this might be a question answered by the Vatican sometime in the future, though they are notoriously slow in answering questions of this type. I can certainly see why some priests would appreciate and electronic version of the Roman Missal. It would be much harder to loose your place and in fact easier to find the correct section each day. I love electronic versions of the Liturgy of the Hours because it makes it so easy to read the LOTH without having to thumb through a bunch of ribboned book marks. Liturgy of the Hour apps replaced my four-volume set of the LOTH and I would not like to have to go back to the old way. I can spend more time praying/reading the LOTH instead time spent getting to the right page.
As St. Paul said that just because something is lawful it does not mean that it should be done. That there are other things to take into account such as the reaction of people to an electronic device used for the Roman Missal. Would people be scandalized by and iPad Roman Missal? Surely there would be some who would be. Or it could just be something that people get use to and just think odd at first. ...read the rest of this article

What do you think?

(for those reading this on Facebook) Find this post at our blog http://ragincajuncatholics.blogspot.com

New Council for the New Evangelization! Yipee!!

2010-06-29T11:46:00.002-05:00

Pope Benedict announced the creation of a New Pontifical Council dedicated to the New Evangelization on Monday evening, during the Vespers service marking the vigil of the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul. He said he wanted to give the new Pontifical Council the task of promoting a renewed evangelization in countries with deep Christian roots which are now experiencing a sense of the “eclipse of God”, and becoming increasingly secularized. This is the first Curial dicastery to be established from scratch in over a quarter-century.

The council will be aimed at addressing the "progressive secularization" of historically Christian areas.

The new Vatican dicastery will be the first created since the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care was created in 1985 by Pope John Paul II. Vatican writer Andrea Tornielli predicted the new council's creation in April 2010, saying that it would be “the most important novelty of Pope Benedict’s pontificate."

After pointing to the "extraordinary impulse" John Paul II gave to the mission of the Church and the "genuine missionary spirit" that drove him, Pope Benedict XVI said that he is drawing on this inheritance.

Noting that he asserted at the beginning of his Petrine Ministry "that the Church is young, open to the future," he emphasized, "And I repeat it today, close to the sepulchre of St. Paul: the Church is an immense renewing force in the world, not exactly for her forces, but for the force of the Gospel, in which blows the Holy Spirit of God, God creator and redeemer of the world."

Read all about it Here.

Prayer to Saint Peter

O Glorious Saint Peter, because of your vibrant and generous faith, sincere humility and flaming love our Lord honored you with singular privileges and especially leadership of the whole Church. Obtain for us the grace of a living faith, a sincere loyalty to the Church, acceptance of all her teaching, and obedience to all her precepts. Let us thus enjoy an undisturbed peace on earth and everlasting happiness in heaven. Amen

Prayer to Saint Paul the Apostle

O Glorious Saint Paul, after persecuting the Church you became by God's grace its most zealous Apostle. To carry the knowledge of Jesus, our divine Savior, to the uttermost parts of the earth you joyfully endured prison, scourgings, stonings, and shipwreck, as well as all manner of persecutions culminating in the shedding of the last drop of your blood for our Lord Jesus Christ.

Obtain for us the grace to labor strenuously to being the faith to others and to accept any trials and tribulations that may come our way. Help us to be inspired by your Epistles and to partake of your indomitable love for Jesus, so that after we have finished our course we may join you in praising him in heaven for all eternity. Amen.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us

A Summer Rule of Life For College Students

2010-06-28T12:11:00.000-05:00

Thanks to our friends at Aggie Catholics for this article :)

A Summer Rule Of Life For College Students
The primary authors are the Apostles of the Interior Life.

A RULE OF LIFE FOR SUMMER

Summer can be a very good time for relaxation and rest, compared to the hectic life of the year, but it can also be a very fruitful time for spiritual growth.

“In this oasis of quiet, before the wonderful spectacle of nature,” the John Paul II says, “one easily experiences how profitable silence is, a good that today is ever rarer. The many opportunities of relation and information that modern society offers sometimes run the risk of robbing time for recollection, to the point of rendering persons incapable of reflecting and praying. In reality, only in silence does man succeed in hearing in the depth of his conscience the voice of God, which really makes him free. And vacations can help us rediscover and cultivate this indispensable interior dimension of human life” (Angelus, July 11, 2004).

It is important to enter summer with a “plan” for your spiritual life. Otherwise it is so easy to drift away even from the prayer commitment that you had during the year.

* First of all be faithful to your daily prayer. Establish how much time you want to devote to it, how (rosary, meditation on the Word of God, adoration…) and where (home, the chapel, your parish…). It is better to start with a little commitment (for example 20 minutes every day), and then in case increase it, than to start big and then give up because you can’t keep up with it.
* Continue to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation with frequency. Get information about the days and times for Confessions in your parish.
* If it is possible, you ought to go to Mass during the week as much as you can, according with your academic/work commitments.
* Summer is usually a period when you have some more free time on your hands. It is ideal to read some good spiritual books that can inspire you and nourish your faith. You will find a great treasure in the lives of Saints, their writings, and in books about specific topics in which you are interested (e.g., spiritual discernment, virtues, faith and reason, Church history, apologetics, morality, etc.). You can ask your spiritual director or a campus minister for some good titles.
* Try to be in touch with some good friends, with whom you share the same values. You can either pray together sometimes, or take a commitment at the parish together (e.g., helping with teens, Bible study, working in a soup kitchen, etc.), and certainly keep each other accountable for your spiritual life. If you can’t be physically in the same place, at least you can call each other regularly.
* If you have a spiritual director, or spiritual mentor, keep in touch with him/her, calling or emailing him/her if you are in need of help and suggestions during the summer.
* If you are going to spend summer at home, you might find difficulties because you don’t have your Catholic community around. Families are not always supportive of faith, some parishes seem to be less alive than the Catholic Center, and you don’t get to see so many young people around. Remember that God is at work also in your parish, in your family and in your home town. Try to see the positive aspects there, and to think of that as an opportunity to give something of what you have received here during the year. With your family, try to be strong about your decisions, but also understanding of where they are at and not judgmental. You can be a witness to them, with your peace and gentleness.

Have a great rest of the summer!

Even the Vatican knows about Ragin Cajun Catholics!

2010-06-28T09:53:00.002-05:00

19 May 2010
Cultural Evening Features the State of Louisiana, May 19, 2010
http://vatican.usembassy.gov/viewer/article.asp?idSite=1&article=/file2010_06/alia/10061502.htmOn

May 19th, the American Embassy to the Holy See held a Louisiana Cultural Night with traditional Cajun food, music, and a film and short presentation about Louisiana’s unique culture.Ambassador Miguel H. Díaz discussed the history of the region’s African-American Catholics, and their contributions particularly to the region of southern Louisiana.
Public Affairs Officer J. Nathan Bland, a native of Louisiana, spoke about the local language in Louisiana, the French-based Creole, which his grandparents spoke as a first language.The evening was capped by a screening of the Disney film, the Princess and the Frog, a re-make of the classic tale that takes place in New Orleans and the city’s surrounding bayous.The Louisiana-themed evening was co-hosted by the Lay Centre, a Rome-based foundation that supports the formation of Catholic laity.

Take note at the image in the background of the pictures.....

Geaux Ragin Cajun Catholics!

Ambassador Díaz talks about Catholics in Louisiana

hat tip to James H. at the Opinionated Catholic for pointing this out to us!

Friday Funnies...

2010-06-25T10:40:00.000-05:00

Ok I seriously forgot how much I LOVE this site. If you loved the lolcats craze you'll probably love it too. If you didn't you'll probably STILL love it. Check it out for yourself. Here are a couple of my most recent favorites.

Also, if you haven't seen this yet check it out... but I have to warn you. This is 3 minutes of your life that you WONT get back. :)
http://www.hulu.com/watch/114927/saturday-night-live-new-doorbells

"Mean Girls' and the message for your life ....?

2010-06-24T09:48:00.000-05:00

I found this on Fr. Jim Chern's blog and I like it. I like it a lot.

BAD FRUIT, COSTUMED WOLVES OR PLASTIC - AVOID ALL OF THEM

Hi everyone, here's my homily for June 23, 2010 – WEDNESDAY of the 12th Week in OT (the readings can be found at - http://www.usccb.org/nab/062310.shtml ) as I continue my time here in Champaign Illinois for the FOCUS Staff training. Some of you Newmaners will probably know who I'm referring too throughout. See, I told you guys - you're always on my heart and mind! Hope you're doing well! Fr. Jim

HOMILY
This past semester, before everyone returned to campus, the officers for our Student Organization met, as they do before each semester for what we call a prayer and planning day. We celebrate Mass together, make a holy hour to reflect on the blessings of the year, pray for guidance for the semester to come as we make plans for the upcoming semester. The students are pretty creative and consistent to balance things and make sure they have a variety of Spiritual, Community Service and Social activities. At this meeting back in January, things had started off okay for awhile: Work at the Food Bank on this Saturday; Respect Life would be giving out information in the Student Center on that Tuesday; Adoration every Thursday Night... great. And then we moved into possibly one of the most unexpected not to mention bizarre debates, in our “strange but true” category.

It started off innocent enough: “How about on this Wednesday Night we do a movie night?” - someone suggested.
“Yeah that sounds great... 9:00 at the Newman Center?” another asked.
A quick look at the schedules - “Yeah bible studies are done by 8:30 on Wednesday that should be good.” No problems so far...

And then, just when you thought - cool lets move onto the next thing, one person innocently asked “So what movie?” Honestly, the insanity that ensued would make the debates between Republicans and Democrats in DC over Health Care look tame.

We had one person trying to argue that “Boondock Saints” was a “Catholic” movie - trying to appease the priest who foolishly thought maybe we could watch something “meaningful.” These two young women argued in agreement that it should be a Disney movie and then started arguing between Lion King and Mulan. One person who truly does find meaningful, positive films was told he couldn’t even vote because they thought his choice the semester before was just painfully boring (hate to agree - White Squall it wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t that great either) - and in the middle of all this was this 6 foot 4 guy sitting next to me and whenever the room would get quiet for a moment would just grunt under his breath his suggestion:

“Mean Girls.” At first I thought he was kidding. I looked at him and just laughed. But then he kept saying it. So I kind of interrupted the Mulan- Lion King debate to ask “are you serious?” Which he was: “It’s my favorite movie.” Probably out of sheer exhaustion at this point and people tired from the further argument about whether that was a “chick flick” and should this guy have his “man-hood card” revoked he won and thus Mean Girls was the first movie of this past semester. I can see so many missionaries are disappointed they’re not coming to Montclair this year.

So sadly, I can fill in details for those of you who haven’t seen it: There’s this girl named Cady who moves from the African jungle with her zoologists parents where she had been home schooled and was this authentic, sincere girl. She comes to a typical American High School and meets the clique above all cliques that are referred to as “the plastics.” These women who were considered the most popular, most attractive women in the school. But despite there outward appearance, their popularity, their having all the cool things, people could realize the shallowness, knew that they were “plastic” not authentic and were in fact, Mean Girls. Their friends and classmates could tell in a certain sense that they were not “good trees bearing good fruit. “

A crazy example, I know, but it kind of points out that today’s Gospel shouldn’t seem earthshattering advice that Jesus is telling us. Good Trees bear Good Fruit - Bad Trees - bad fruit... Yet, he also warns us to BEWARE OF THIS - To BEWARE OF FALSE PROPHETS... BEWARE OF THOSE WHO COME TO YOU IN SHEEPS CLOTHING, BUT UNDERNEATH ARE RAVENOUS WOLVES... In America 2010, perhaps Jesus would say “BEWARE OF THE PLASTICS.”

Because the reality is that so often those wolves decked out in sheep-ery or the plastics do seem to gain people’s attention, are popular - do influence a heck of a lot of people. People settle for the bad fruit.

All of us who are on college campuses know that, don’t we? We’ve seen it. We’ve experienced it. We look at some of our students and wonder ‘really? You think going around with this group of people is a good idea...?” “You don’t see the bad fruit, the bad things that are coming from what these people are doing?” Which is why it’s interesting that Jesus points them out to us as a warning, telling us to BEWARE of them. We’re not to ignore them. We’re not to pretend that they’re not leading people astray. In the art imitates life category, back to that Movie of the week, the wholesome non-mean-girl Cady compromises herself, her values, her beliefs, her good fruit to become a plastic herself to be accepted by this powerful clique - all to horrible results.

Well, what fraternities or sororities are doing the same thing on our campuses? What sports team or club comes across as just a group of students with but slowly, insidiously challenges and attacks a person’s beliefs? What religious groups appear on the surface simply to want fellowship and explore common bonds when the real aim is to lead people away from the fullness and richness of Jesus Christ found in the Catholic Church?

They’re out there, and the reality is the opponent the devil isn’t just looking for college students. These false prophets, these plastics, these wolves-in-sheeps clothing can be found in every group of humanity. It’s something that as Christians we’re going to encounter over and over again.

Which is why Jesus is clear about what our task is and that is to beware of them, know them, identify them by the fruits that they bear. At the same time, we are called to recognize that as long as we stay true, as long as we’re connected to the one source of goodness, the one tree of life that produces good fruit that is Jesus Christ; we can be there to offer people the richness they’re missing in all of these fake prophets leading them astray with their bad fruit - not to mention avoid becoming “plastic” ourselves.

Join us tonight for Student Community Night!

2010-06-23T09:59:00.000-05:00

Meet your new Pastor and the Game of Things!!!

Join us @ 6:30 tonight for a chance to meet Fr. Sibley as we play the game of Things and munch on some goodies. Come one, come all, bring a friend. We can't wait to meet you!

Welcome Freshmen!!

2010-06-23T09:54:00.000-05:00

Welcome to all Freshmen who are involved in Orientation today! We can't wait to meet you. Check out our video on the right bar to learn more about us then shoot us an email to learn how you can get involved right now!

Steubie on the Bayou Keynote....mmmhmmmm good stuff!

2010-06-19T14:01:00.000-05:00

Damon Owens talks about Sex, Love and Relationships at this weekends Steubie on the Bayou . Give a listen....

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7764990

Beautiful.

2010-06-19T12:15:00.001-05:00

Ave Mundi Spes Maria – Latin

Ave mundi spes Maria, ave mitis, ave pia, ave plena gratia.
Ave virgo singularis, quć per rubum designaris non passus incendia.
Ave rosa speciosa, ave Jesse virgula:
Cujus fructus nostri luctus relaxavit vincula.
Ave cujus viscera contra mortis foedera ediderunt filium.
Ave carens simili, mundo diu flebili reparasti gaudium.
Ave virginum lucerna, per quam fulsit lux superna his quos umbra tenuit.
Ave virgo de qua nasci, et de cujus lacte pasci res cćlorum voluit.
Ave gemma coeli luminarium.
Ave Sancti Spiritus sacrarium.
Oh, quam mirabilis, et quam laudabilis hćc est virginitas!
In qua per spiritum facta paraclitum fulsit foecunditas.
Oh, quam sancta, quam serena, quam benigna, quam amoena esse virgo creditur!
Per quam servitus finitur, posta coeli aperitur, et libertas redditur.
Oh, castitatis lilium, tuum precare filium, qui salus est humilium:
Ne nos pro nostro vitio, in flebili judicio subjiciat supplicio.
Sed nos tua sancta prece mundans a peccati fćce collocet in lucis domo.
Amen dicat omnis homo.

Ave Mundi Spes Maria – English
Hail, hope of the world, Mary, hail, meek one, hail, loving one, hail, full of grace
Hail O singular virgin, who wast chosen to not suffer flames through brambles
Hail, beautiful rose, hail, staff of Jesse:
Whose fruit loosened the chains of our weeping
Hail whose womb bore a son against the law of death
Hail, O one lacking comparison, still tearfully renewing joy for the world
Hail, lamp of virgins, through whom the heavenly light shone on these whom shadow holds.
Hail, O virgin from whom a thing of heaven wished to be born, and from whose milk feed.
Hail, gem of the lamps of heaven
Hail, sanctuary of the Holy Ghost
O, how wonderful, and how praiseworthy is this virginity!
In whom, made through the spirit, the paraclete, shone fruitfulness.
O how holy, how serene, how kind, how pleasant the virgin is believed to be!
Through whom slavery is finished, a place of heaven is opened, and liberty is returned.
O, lily of chastity, pray to thy son, who is the salvation of the humble:
Lest we through our fault, in the tearful judgment suffer punishment.
But may she, by her holy prayer, purifying from the dregs of sin, place us in a home of light
Amen let every man say.

hat tip to www.ucatholic.com and The Catholic Church Facebook page.

Community Night: Whats going on Tonight?!

2010-06-16T09:37:00.000-05:00

Tonight for Community night we'll be meeting for a little food and a round or two of Mafia (for those of you who don't know, we arent the murderin' type..it's a game and it's lots of fun!) and other board games. At about 7 those of us who would like to go to the Theology on Tap talk at Tsunami will carpool over to downtown and the rest will stay and continue the fun and games. Everyone is welcome...bring a friend...bring a snack if you got em!

6:30 pm in the Catholic Student Center Cafe (door adjacent to the Church entrance on Saint Mary)

Pro-Life Story

2010-06-12T09:32:00.005-05:00

Some of you may know who Andrea Bocelli is but if you don't all you have to do is google his name to find out the incredible talents of this singer/musician. You have probably heard recordings of he and Celine Dion singing 'The prayer' and you might remember a few years ago when Mr. Bocelli could not attend the practice for an award ceremony that he and 'the' Dion were to perform together in. Replacing him for the practice was a very young but surprisingly talented young man named Josh Groban (and you know the rest of THAT story)....but here's something I bet you didn't know about Andrea Bocelli....

Welcome Freshmen !

2010-06-11T13:55:00.001-05:00

We'd like to extend a special welcome to the newest members of our Ragin Cajuns Family, the Freshmen class of 2010! Sarah, Trey and I enjoyed meeting all of you yesterday at Orientation and we can't wait to get to know you better in the next few months (and years!)
There are so many ways for you to get involved here at Our Lady of Wisdom to meet new people, grow in your prayer life and in the formation of your faith and become a full fledged part of our (rapidly) growing community!
Make sure you visit this sight daily along with our Facebook Page; Ragin Cajun Catholics for updates on events and links!

Feel free to email me - amy@ourladyofwisdom.org or come by the office any day of the week this summer for a tour! Also, you are all welcome to our summer Events!

Meet Your New Pastor!

2010-06-08T11:06:00.001-05:00

If you haven't met him yet, here are a couple of published articles by our new pastor Fr. Bryce Sibley. Enjoy!

The Fr. Richard Rohr Phenomenon

The Mass is Serious Business

Summer Bible Study!

2010-06-04T13:33:00.001-05:00

Join us on Tuesdays during the summer semester- all students invited (even if you're not in summer school!)

You are invited to a party for Father Chester!

2010-06-02T09:14:00.002-05:00

A Message for our New Pastor!

2010-05-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

Well we're in Denver now having a great time dreaming and planning for the new semester after a week of being filled up with wonder for the Church. We were so happy to learn only moments ago about the appointment of our new Pastor.
We also learned that he's been following this blog. So to our new shepherd we have this to say.....

We couldnt be more excited!!!!! We can't wait to all meet you!

Day 4: If you want to go places you've never gone before you've got to do things you've never done before.

2010-05-19T15:53:00.001-05:00

Today we had the first part of a crash course on Catholic Evangelization. Curtis Martin inspired all of us about the Gospel and how to share it with everyone! My only wish is that the new semester were starting next week so the fire they have right now could still be blazing so strong. We'll rekindle that in each other this summer though and trust in the Holy Spirit to renew the excitement and call to evangelize the campus.
Tonight we're going to have Adoration and Confession after Mass and Dinner and I know after all of this processing and praying its going to be a powerful experience for the students. We finally got a chance this afternoon to go out as a team and take some pictures and spend a little time together. We had lots of fun and the boys still got to make it to their ultimate frizby game.

Keep praying for us and coming back to see more pictures!

Day 3: A Catholic Worldview

2010-05-19T08:36:00.000-05:00

It feels like we've been here for such a long time. It's hard to believe it's only been 2 days. The students are really starting to bond with the other students and I can see the seeds of life long friendships forming quickly. Not only are they getting to know each other but they are getting to know the inner workings of campus ministries around the country. They are also happy to find that the other students are amazing at how many activities we already have and how active we are at Our Lady of Wisdom.
Today they had course 1 about a Catholic Worldview and once again they soaked it up and loved every minute of the education that they are getting. I can't tell you in the short time I have right now how valuable the information they are getting is going to be in their personal spiritual lives and in the ministry as a whole.
You'll also be happy to know that the Louisiana culture is catching on a nd we've already had many requests to come and visit. They're already teaching everyone how to cajun dance.
Here are some pictures from the day.

Day 2: Catholic College Summit

2010-05-17T15:40:00.000-05:00

Well everyone got a good nights sleep and it seems like our little bouts of altitude sickness are fading quickly. We had a wonderful breakfast followed by morning prayer with the entire group- beautiful.
Dr. Edward Sri taught the first class this morning on John Paul II's Love and Responsibility and the Theology of the Body. I was worried that the students, just having finished the semester would be a little tired of "class" but boy was I wrong. He taught for 3 hours and had their attention the entire time. They were buzzing after the class. I'm glad they are learning such beautiful Theology and getting so much out of it. This is turning out to be even better than we had originally thought. Just after a half a day I know that our whole ministry is going to be blessed by our experiences here.

After class we had a light lunch and we're on break now. They convince me to go on a little hike with them. I made it up the mountain though for a minute I thought I would need an oxygen tank. 8,000 feet is alot for us sea dwellers.

There are students from 23 other colleges here and our students are making great friends and learning about how their ministries work. So far an amazing trip. Come back later for more stories and pictures!

We Made it! Day one of the College Student Summit @ St. Malo's retreat center in the Rocky mountains of Colorado!

2010-05-16T18:35:00.001-05:00

Well after 2 plane rides, a scavenger hunt through the Denver International Airport and a winding bus ride we've finally reached St. Malo's retreat center and wowowow! The students are having snowball fights and loving every minute of it. We're unpacking at the moment and some are being trained to be lectors and musicians for our liturgies here. In a few minutes we'll meet for dinner and an introduction session about our week. There are about 45 other students from around the country here and some great leaders from the FOCUS office and the Augustine Institute. It looks like it's going to be an incredible week. Please continue to pray for us!

I will try to update often and tonight when I have more time I will upload more pictures. My camera is gonna be click click clickin away this week!

Come back soon too see how we're doing!

To my Wisdom family...

2010-05-08T16:11:00.001-05:00

May 8, 2010

To my “Wisdom” family,

Every encounter in life that takes great faith can lead us to a deeper intimacy with God. On Friday, April 30th, I received a phone call from Bishop Jarrell appointing me as Pastor of St. John’s Cathedral. This unexpected appointment has led me to great prayer, humility and contemplation on my last 8 years with you as your Pastor. I feel truly blessed and grateful to have served you, the students, families, faculty and staff that make up this great community, and have come to realize why so many people are drawn to Our Lady of Wisdom. It is not because of any one Pastor; it is because of the light and hope that the young adults bring to this parish. Your zeal for the faith, your quest for truth, and your desire to serve God has given me and this community hope for the future of our Church. I pray that you will continue to be faithful witnesses to the love of Christ and that you allow the Holy Spirit to guide you. Know that if I have failed to be present to you, disappointed or hurt you, I humbly ask for your forgiveness. I also ask that you continue to bless Our Lady of Wisdom with your generosity and your faithful service.

In the midst of difficult transition, my prayer is that all of you welcome your new shepherd with open minds and hearts and allow his unique gifts to guide you on your spiritual journey. I pray that you make him a part of your family just as you welcomed me into yours. I pray that the bishop bless you with an Associate Pastor to help meet the growing needs of Wisdom. I also want to reassure those with whom I have made sacramental commitments, that I will do my best to fulfill them.

On June 13th, I ask you to join me in a farewell lunch after the 11 a.m. Mass. This day will mark my anniversary of 18 years of service to the priesthood, and I would feel blessed to share it with you. Know that from the youngest member to the oldest of this parish family, I will love you and cherish you always. Thanks again for all your love and support. May the peace of Christ be with you always.

Sincerely in Christ,

Father Chester Arceneaux
Pastor, Our Lady of Wisdom

Are you called to be 'extra'ordinary? Powerful Videos.

2010-05-06T11:56:00.000-05:00

Wow, Check these out!

Video for Men Video For Women

Does your relationship with God sustain you, enliven you, and invigorate you in such a way you want to share
the good news of Jesus Christ with others?

Do you have a desire to serve others more?

Is the work you do in weekly ministry more fulfilling than your 40-hour work week?

Do you feel called to give more or be more?

Do you long for more?

Do you find yourself searching the Internet for information regarding the priesthood or consecrated life?

Does the idea of becoming a brother, sister, or priest keep coming back time and time again?

Do you have a sneaking suspicion you are on the brink of a major life decision?

Answering yes to these questions may confirm that you hear the call
to discern your vocation to the priesthood or consecrated life.
We invite you to take time to look at the resources available to you on this website
and to consider talking to a Vocation Director about these possibilities in person.

Vocation
(Latin–vocare: called)

A vocation is who God has “called” us to be. All of the baptized possess the vocation of the universal call to holiness and service in the Church. This site is dedicated to the promotion of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life. Visit www.foryourvocation.org

Pool party

2010-04-27T19:08:00.001-05:00

Join us tomorrow night, Wednesday April 28th for an end of the semester pool party and BBQ. 6pm at bourgeois pool!

Newmie Awards!

2010-04-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

If you missed the Newmie Awards last night you can take a look at the winners right here and the slideshows will be up soon. But we can't recapture the talent- way to go everybody!

Living Stations of the Cross pictures!

2010-04-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

Easter.....ahhhhh! Alleluia Alleluia - He is Risen- Alleluia!

If you missed out on the Living Stations of the Cross this year in Girard Park - here is a link to the photo's I took. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31952873@N06/sets/72157623642141575/

What is the Triduum?

2010-04-01T11:52:00.001-05:00

Here is a great explanation of these 3 holy days in the Church via our favorite Aggie Campus Ministry! Check it out here.

http://marysaggies.blogspot.com/

Schedule for Wisdom is :

Tonight (Thursday) - 6:30 pm - Mass of the Lord's Supper

Friday - 2pm - Living Stations of the Cross @ Girard Park followed by Veneration of the Cross @ 3

Saturday - Easter Vigil Mass - 8pm

Sunday - 9am Mass
11am - Mass

Have a blessed Holy Week!

What was your favorite/worst class this semester?

2010-03-30T10:42:00.001-05:00

Ok, we're nearing the end of the semester! 17 days left of classes (but who's counting right?). People are scheduling and its nice to have advice from those who've been there, done that. So here's your chance to 'school' and 'get schooled' on what courses 'make the grade' and which ones 'fail'. Ok enough puns....pencils down, turn in your papers! (one more for good measure)...

What class was your favorite this semester?

What class was the absolute worst?!

Go!

(if you're reading this on facebook, log onto the blog to make a comment so that everyone can read it! http://ragincajuncatholics.blogspot.com )

"Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me?"

2010-03-29T11:15:00.003-05:00

"Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied"; and Jesus replied: "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me...? He who has seen me has seen the Father." These words were spoken during the farewell discourse at the end of the paschal supper, which was followed by the events of those holy days during which confirmation was to be given once and for all of the fact that "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." From Dives in Misericordia (The Mercy of God) -Pope John Paul II

I'm doing a novena to the late great Pope John Paul II right now. Each day, along with prayers there is a reading from one of his works. The above paragraph is from yesterday's reading. It's one of those readings that kicks me in the gut when I read it. I mean, the WHOLE of it literally makes me feel like the wind has been knocked out of me and not in a good way either...

"Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied"...First off, the innocence and ignorance of the apostles. They wanted to be satisfied, something we all want. We seek the 'fullness'..the 'completeness' that only God can give. Most of us seek out this satisfaction in some way shape or form in earthly things, food, drugs, affirmation, sex, attention (enter your own vice here). The apostles are wise enough to go to the source here and as I'm reading it I think, "If I were only so wise as to just bring my struggles to Jesus and say show me the Father!" and then Jesus replies....
"Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me..." All together now....Ouuuuuuuccchhhh! It hurts because it's so true. We who have given our lives over to the Lord on a daily basis forget what and WHO is the source of our fulfillment and happiness. Do I really know Him?
Pope Benedict recently met with youth and answered questions of them. When one youth asked him how we could 'know' Jesus, the Pope replied,

"Only with the opening of the heart to him, only with knowledge of the whole of what he has said and done, with our love, with our going to him, can we little by little know him ever more and thus also have the experience of being loved," the Holy Father said. ... One must also act: "To do good things, to be committed to one's neighbor." (read the whole interview here)

If we KNOW Him....we know the Father...we know that which is our fulfillment. "He who has seen me has seen the Father" and we should have no place in our lives for these things that tempt us into believing that they could ever REALLY satisfy.

And the truth is....we don't know Him perfectly. We fail, we sin....we get back up again (pardon the rhyming) and our 'efforts' are so small and yet infinitely valued.
I cook, clean after, care for, transport, pay for, and protect my son. Not to mention the hours of suffering that went into bringing him into this world... He could never really 'pay me back' nor do I want him to. What is desired from me is a response of love. So...a spontaneous 'yuv you' is all I need to melt my heart'. Of course it could never equal the things we 'do' for him...and it's not a requirement but it is a natural response from him.

Our response of love is so small in comparison to His infinite Mercy.
"God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ."

A good reflection for Holy Week.....whew.

Bible Study Online

2010-03-25T11:56:00.001-05:00

I was 'googling' around online today searching for things like, 'college faith' and 'young adult'+ 'faith' and 'what the heck is relevant to these people'+'faith'...and I came across a website for a young adult group in cape cod. I was surprised to see Pope Benedict greeting me on the homepage and happy to discover that the website is Catholic. I haven't had the chance to explore it completely but I did find an interesting element there - online Bible Study for the Sunday Mass readings - seems like it could be a useful thing for those of you who are always online :)

What the heck is a Seder meal anyway?

2010-03-23T10:37:00.000-05:00

This Wednesday Parishioners and Students will join together in Jeanmard Hall to celebrate our annual Seder Meal. In a nutshell (although no nuts are served) the Seder meal is a celebration of some elements of the Jewish Passover meal and it's fulfillment in Christianity.
A Catholic family and/Parish can enter more deeply into the Passion of Christ by having a seder meal, similar to the Passover, or Last Supper that Jesus would have celebrated with his Apostles. With the knowledge that Christ has come and redeemed the world, we can incorporate a Christian attitude during the seder meal. Arleen Hynes discusses the preparation necessary for a seder meal, including housecleaning, guests, scheduling, appropriate decorations, music, and finally, the traditional foods. Read the rest of this article...

GEAUX GREEN!

2010-03-17T11:35:00.003-05:00

Tonight @ 6pm
Costume Contest (green of any variety or Saint Patty's day themed)
Scavenger Hunt with Prizes!
Karaoke
Free Food!
Bring Friends!

Father John Corapi's conversion story

2010-03-11T08:13:00.005-06:00

Last night at Newman Night after we had a delicious dinner (cooked by wonderfully generous parishioners) with the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist- we watched part of the conversion story of Father John Corapi. If you've never seen it before you definitely owe it to yourself to watch it now. If you have seen it before it might be a good time to watch it again. So, here it is!

Here is the Link to the Conversion Story of Father John Corapi.

and for Facebook readers here is a copy and paste version http://gloria.tv/?media=23129

enjoy!

Meet the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist

2010-03-08T11:12:00.004-06:00

Have you ever wondered if you might be called to religious life? Have you ever been curious about a way of life that offers up the joys of family and marriage in order to completely offer time, work, prayer and self to the call to serve God? Well then come by the Center on Wednesday. The Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist will be here to meet and answer your questions. This is for guys and girls as there is an order of brothers who are a part of this order too.

Watch a Short Video about the Sisters Here.

Did you miss the debate? ....Here's a link...

2010-03-05T22:45:00.002-06:00

Does God Exist? A Debate between Dr. Peter Kreeft and Dr. Keith Korcz

I'll let you know when we have recordings of it.

http://ragincajuncatholics.blogspot.com

Jesus Week and 'The' Debate

2010-02-26T11:23:00.004-06:00

Alright so if you haven't heard yet next week is Jesus Week! It's a time every year that all of the Christian ministries on UL's campus come together in prayer and other activities to work together for the conversion of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. This year we're so excited to have as our guest speaker Dr. Peter Kreeft Philosophy professor and renowned Christian author. If you haven't read his work yet make sure to visit his site and get acquainted. Some refer to him as the modern day C.S. Lewis but no matter what you call him, his work is profound and thought provoking. Among other things he will be debating Dr. Keith Korcz, UL's own philosophy professor and all around pretty cool guy on the subject to end all subjects (or begin them) 'Does God Exist'. You'll have 3 other opportunities to hear Dr. Kreeft next Thursday and Friday but I have a feeling this is going to be one of the main events!

We'll also be taking some time on Monday to pray for the campus in unity with all of the ministries. Meet us here at Wisdom at 5:30 to walk over to the Wesley or just meet us there at 6pm. We'll have a 'progressive prayer walk' where we'll pray and visit each of the campus ministry buildings ending at the BCM around 7:30 where we'll end our prayer and have some grub. One Challenge for you borrowed from the students of the BCM is to fast on Monday and offer your sacrifice in prayer for the success of Jesus Week. If we really come together in prayer we can touch hearts and change this campus!

Wednesday of course we'll have our free bag lunch in the quad with a message given by Wesley's own Daniel Hixon. Be there or be hungry! 12pm in the Quad (unless of course you're in Mass at Wisdom!)

Thursday the debate will kick off at 7pm followed by pizzza and a talk by Dr. Kreeft.

Friday for Lunch we'll have Dr. Kreeft over here for our Lunch with the Lord at 12:45 - after Noon Mass and you'll have a chance to hear his testimony and ask him any questions that you might have about the faith.
Friday Night at 7pm he'll be speaking again open to the public on 'Divine Truth: The Hearts Deepest Longing"

Don't miss any of these amazing opportunities to grow in faith this week!

If you're reading this on Facebook visit the RaginCajun Catholics blogger site to print the flyer out and pass it on to your friends!

Lenten Reflection - Journey to Jerusalem (Adore Worship)

2010-02-18T20:43:00.002-06:00

JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM
WELCOME

Welcome to Lent.
The “season” of Lent has ancient Apostolic roots. The writings of St. Athanasius, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Cyril of Jerusalem give us a glimpse at a “retreat-like” preparation for non-Christians who were to be Baptized and
fully initiated into the Church at Easter. By the close of the 4th century, Lent was an established liturgical season— a sacred time of inner pilgrimage mirroring the 40-day journeys of Noah, Moses, and Christ himself.
While popularly understood as a time where we “give up” our favorite things, Lent is much more than abstinence from soda, snacks, or sweets. Lent is a time of inner transformation. You might say the outward expressions of penance and fasting are meant to erupt from the inner breakthroughs in our relationship with Christ.
Nowhere else is this more poetically prayed than in the Lenten Preface I as we pray, “Each year you give us this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed ... As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ, you bring the image of your Son to perfection within us.”
Yes, welcome to Lent.
Lent is a time where our “mind and heart are renewed.”
Lent is a time where we experience a “new life in Christ.”
Lent is a time where the Father brings “the image of the Son to perfection within us.”

Keep Reading

www.adoreworship.com

Does God Exist?

2010-02-02T13:14:00.001-06:00

Interesting video....

Does God Exist?

On that same note...

Mark your calendars for March 4th at 7pm. Dr. Peter Kreeft, amazing Christian author and apologist will debate the head of the philosophy department here at UL, Dr. Keith Korcz on the subject of Does God exist. It's gonna be amazing.

Whats going on this semester...

2010-01-20T09:38:00.002-06:00

Well, 54 of us are about to get on a plane to Washington DC. We are attending the 37th annual March for Life. Taking a stand for life! Please pray for us and our travels. If you'd like to do your part in defending life we'll have more opportunities for you this semester but the first one (and most important) is tonight. We will be having our own Pro-Life Vigil in Church at 7pm. And yes, we will still have dinner at 6pm. Come to both and stay for the slumber party. Some will be staying until our Bus pulls out at 3am tomorrow morning.

If you are looking for other things to boost your community and spiritual life this semester, here is a list of the weekly events that go on around here!

Monday Night (starting January 25th)
6:45 Comass (Peer Ministry, topic, Gospel Reflection, discussion)
8:00 Praise & Worship in the Church
8:00 LOGOS (21 and Older Ministry) Topic,Discussion, wine and cheese. In the upper room. (meets every other week starting Jan 25th.First Topic: Homosexuality

Tuesday - Starting January 26th
3:30 - Girls prayer, reflection group led by myself and sister mavis.
In the upper room
Guys Group Time and Place - TBA

Wednesday- Starting this week
4:00 - Girls group led by mrs. robin -upper room
6pm - Newman Night (dinner and some event - different every week)

Thursday - Starting January 28th
12:45 - Brown Bag Bible Study - Meet at my office and we will move according to size.
6:30 - RCIA - Adult Catechesis - in the Cafe Every Week
8pm - CandleLight Mass followed by adoration

Friday-
1245 after Mass
Free lunch

www.ourladyofwisdom.org

http://ragincajuncatholics.blogspot.com

we update these with event info daily (or atleast weekly)

see you soon!

A funny prayer for those taking finals...

2009-12-08T15:19:00.002-06:00

23rd Psalm for Students

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not flunk
He keepeth me from lying down when I should be studying
He leadeth me beside the water cooler for a study break
He restores my faith in study guides
He leads me to better study habits
For my grades' sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of borderline grades
I will not have a nervous breakdown
For thou art with me
My prayers and my friends, they comfort me
Thou givest me the answer in moments of blankness
Thou anointest my head with understanding
My test paper runneth over with questions I recognise.
Surely passing grades and flying colours shall follow me
All the days of my examinations
And I shall not have to dwell in this exam hall forever.

--- Author Unknown

Do you know Jesus?

2009-12-01T09:41:00.005-06:00

Christmas season always brings with an interesting dynamic for Christians. We have a sense of defense for the season because it is in fact a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and yet it seems like Jesus is not quite as marketable as the Christmas feeling that is thrust upon us earlier and earlier every year.

A friend of mine tells the story of her sister in line at a store during the weeks before Christmas. When seeing a sign near the checkout that said "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" a woman in front of her exclaimed "Ugh, they have to put religion into everything these days!". This story makes me aggitated and yet I have to ask myself, do I really understand the meaning of Christmas?

I think there is a much more fundamental question there....Do I know Jesus? I mean do I really know who he is. Do I believe in Him? That He existed? That He did the things we say He did? Sometimes we're afraid to ask these questions because if the answer to them is Yes then it demands on us that our life become something quite different than what it is today.

One of my favorite authors, Fr. Lorenzo Albacete, speaks of the reality of the presence of Jesus. He says, if this Jesus is real then he's got to be something or someone that has a REAL presence. We cannot change our lives and live as daily martyrs for a 'nice idea' or a 'warm feeling'. If He is real then he's got to be something, someone that has a very real presence.

If He is real, have you encountered his presence? Do you know Him? Is he transforming your life? With the coming of Christ into the world, everything changed and our eternal salvation was made possible. Are you sharing this news with others?

Tiger Woods hit a fire hydrant in his driveway this week and the whole world new about it within hours. Not only did we know about it but the media wont stop talking, speculating and forcing the non eventful updates down our throats. This is the kind of news that we find so easy to spread these days. But Jesus, we keep to ourselves, and that is a tragedy.

Advent (which is the season in the Church that comes BEFORE Christmas)" blends together a penitential spirit, very similar to Lent, a liturgical theme of preparation for the Second and Final Coming of the Lord, called the Parousia, and a joyful theme of getting ready for the Bethlehem event." Are you preparing yourself for the celebration of the birth of the one who made new life possible in you? Are you preparing yourself for the time when He comes again?

Here are some daily reflections for Advent.

http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/Advent/index.htm

Thanksgiving & Eucharist

2009-11-25T17:13:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving & Eucharist
By: Marcellino D'Ambrosio

For Americans, the term “Thanksgiving” conjures up images of turkey and cranberry sauce, parades and bowl games. These “traditions” have come to mark an event made a perpetual institution of American life by President Abraham Lincoln.

But why did Lincoln proclaim the last Thursday in November as a national holiday? Because it was clear to him that the blessings of food, land, family, and freedom enjoyed by Americans are all gifts from the Creator. But Americans, he realized, had forgotten this. A special day was needed for us to forget our differences and remember our blessings. And from remembering naturally follows giving thanks to the Source of those blessings.

The Israelites had an annual Thanksgiving Feast, as well. It was actually a combination of two feasts, Passover and Unleavened bread, and occurred in early spring. This is when the first grain began to be harvested and when the ewes gave birth to their lambs. The pagan Canaanites had already celebrated the feast of unleavened bread at this time to thank the gods for the harvest and offer them the first fruits as a sacrifice of gratitude. The pagan bedouins, wandering from place to place with their flocks, celebrated the spring gift of lambs by sacrificing some of them to the gods in gratitude for the gift of fertility.

The ancients did not need divine revelation to know that divine forces brought about the world and all its creatures. That’s just plain common sense. That we owe these divinities a debt of gratitude is justice, pure and simple.

But for the Jews, Passover was not just giving thanks for the blessings of creation. For them, God was not just the author of nature with it seasons and life-cycles. No, God was also the master of history. Among all ancient peoples, only the Jews believed that God entered into human history, manifested his love and power, and acted decisively to save his chosen people. So while the pagans thanked their gods each Spring for the blessings each Spring for food and fertility, the Israelites thanked the Lord for food, but even more, for freedom. They remembered not only that creation comes from Him, but that salvation from slavery as well. This remembering happens each year in a solemn way in the Passover Meal that is the climax of the Jewish year.

On the night before he died, Jesus celebrated this solemn memorial by deepening its meaning yet further. Liberation from Pharaoh’s oppression was certainly something to sing about. But there was a crueler slavery that a change of geography and regime could not alter. This slavery to Satan was kept in force through the shackles of sin. Just as he acted through Moses to free his people from Pharaoh, God was now about to act decisively to liberate his people from the ancient curse. But this time, he would act personally, not through proxies.

And this liberation would be more costly. The only way that it could be won would be if God were to give not only his blessings, but His very self. To do this, God had become man, capable of offering the supreme sacrifice. And before he did it in actual fact, he did it in sacrament by offering himself under the unassuming forms of bread and wine. Before delivering himself into the hands of the Romans to be their victim, he delivered himself into our hands to be our nourishment.

For his aim was not just to open the way to future bliss in heaven. His plan was to pour into our wounds the balm of Gilead that would begin the healing process here and now. The bite of the serpent had injected venom. His body and blood would be the antidote, the “medicine of immorality” in the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch.

Blood brings nourishment and life to every cell of our bodies. It also carries away impurities that poison our system. The Eucharist offers us a transfusion–we put aside our old life and receive his ever-new life. His divine vitality for our tired, toxic blood. The life of a thing was in its blood. It was poured out at the foot of the altar and could never be consumed, for it belonged to God alone. But here God pours out his own blood at the altar of the cross gives it to us as our drink, for the transformation of our lives.

“Do this in memory of me.” We are commanded to remember the supreme love of Christ for us that holds nothing back, that gives everything for our freedom. So naturally the sacrificial banquet of remembrance is called the Eucharist, or “thanksgiving.” The priest introduces the great central prayer of the celebration with these words: “let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” And we respond “it is right to give him thanks and praise.”

During the Eucharistic Prayer, I always silently add thanks for my personal blessings. I think of the natural blessings of home and work, of food on the table and the health of my family. I also thank God for my own salvation history, especially for plucking me out of the dangerous crowd I was running with as a teenage. I thank God for bringing me together with a woman who loves him and loves me, and for having kept us faithful to him and each other for many years and blessed us with wonderful children who love him. I thank him for our own family’s salvation history.

If you haven’t already established the habit of adding your personalized thank-you’s to the priest’s Eucharistic Prayer, try it next time you’re at Mass. It’s a very appropriate mode of participating in that part of the Eucharist.

But true thanksgiving is not just a matter of words and warm sentiments. Gratitude for a gift means offering a gift in return. He gave his whole, entire self to us–his body, blood, soul, divinity. The only adequate response would be to offer ourselves. Note what Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1).

So thanksgiving cannot be separated from sacrifice. The Mass is a celebration of his love and the freedom it won for us through his sacrifice. Through it, the love of God is poured into our hearts and enables us to love with his love. In the power of that love, we offer ourselves back to him and enter into that sacrifice which we celebrate.

True thanksgiving means self-giving. This is the meaning of eucharist.

Marcellino D’Ambrosio, Ph.D., directs the Crossroads Initiative, which produces Catholic Resources for adult faith formation, RCIA, and teen evangelization. For information on his resources for the year of the Eucharist or 2005 pilgrimage to Rome or to read Abe Lincoln’s original Thanksgiving Proclamation, visit www.crossroadsinitiative.com or call 1.800.803.0118.

The Media and The Message.

2009-11-24T09:32:00.004-06:00

Throughout my life as a theology student and now as a Campus Minister I've been interviewed a number of times here and there for various papers, news programs and even a book or two. My experience thus far with 'the media' is not something I could say was overall bad or good, pleasurable or agonizing. Each situation has been different and the journalists have varied quite a bit in their approach and candor. The one unifying factor in every one of my experiences has been that I have always been misquoted. Now, I understand how difficult it is to adequately express the sentiments of another person exactly as they wished themselves to be expressed and sometimes people have an unrealistic standard about the light that they would like to see themselves portrayed. I don't think I'm beyond those faults by any means. It is however very obvious in matters of morality and the Church (which is almost always what I'm being questioned about) when what ends up in ink is not even remotely what came out of my bumbling mouth.

I bring all of this up because I've been interviewd twice this week, once for The Advertiser and once for The Vermilion. Both journalist were extremely cordial and patient with me and allowed me to answer their questions. The Advertiser interviewed me about our upcoming International Thanksgiving Celebration tomorrow night which short of getting the time and place wrong I'm not really worried about him having serious errors in his article. The Vermilion interviewed me about Homosexual Marriage and the Church's teaching on Homosexuality in general, a topic that the Vermilion has been overly saturated in as of late.

I tried my best not to give 'soundbites' or to us analogies that could be contorted easily. It's not that I think this young lady would falsly represent me intentionally but I know how easily it happens and I know that I'm already going to be portrayed and perceived somewhat as the 'the bad guy'. Something I did try to express to her accurately was that I think this particular topic is extremely difficult to talk about outside of the realms of friendship or at the very least a sincere conversation. One sentence statements and stereotypes cause unfair labels to be slapped on people of both sides of the issue and then the dialogue ends and people get hurt.

Thus far I have refrained from posting anything about homosexuality on our blog, not because I am afraid of speaking my mind or sharing the teaching of the Church but because I know that an issue that speaks of something so sacred and so fundamental to the human person carries with it strong emotion and sometimes the written word cannot portray the charity needed in such a delicate situation. Quite a few people who I love have Homosexual tendancies and I am always willing to sit with them and talk about the issue rather than have my thoughts known solely through the blogasphere.

I'm sure I stumbled on my words and rambled while I was being questioned,as I tend to do,but for the most part I feel like I represented myself and the Church accurately and with the utmost Charity and Truth. In any case nomatter what I could have said would have come out a little inadequate so I'm interested to see how this particular story comes out and who else will have been interviewed on the topic.

In the meantime I'm posting an interview with Cardinal Justin Rigali who is much more adept at speaking the Truth in Charity. Enjoy.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Archbishop of Philadelphia is always ready to answer questions, even the hard ones. He spoke with LifeSiteNews.com last week at the International Eucharistic Congress about the Church's teaching on sexuality, in the context of the current attack on the traditional definition of marriage.

Asked why it has become more common to see some elements within the Church promoting what is contrary to official Church teaching on homosexuality, Cardinal Rigali was quick to point out that it is not 'the Church' but members of the Church which do so at times.

"This goes back to the time of St. Paul," explained the Cardinal, "St. Paul says they will be teachers with itchy ears." He added: "They will come up with all kinds of doctrines and this is what's happened in the history of the Church and the history of the world and this will continue to happen."

Cardinal Rigali said however that it was an "aberration" to justify "homosexual conduct and worse than that homosexual marriage."

"The Church accepts people as they are," he said. "Jesus says the church is like a net, it pulls in everybody, everybody belongs to the church, there are sinners, there are saints, there are people with wrong ideas. But the Church continues to proclaim what Jesus taught."

"There is no room in the Church for the acceptance of aberrational ideas," he said. "There is room in the church to accept, to understand and to love people whoever they may be. Not to tell them that what they are advocating is right, not to justify it. That is quite different. That is totally, totally different."

Cardinal Rigali, who is also the President of the Pro-Life Committee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, suggested that no amount of pressure would get the Church to alter its position.

"There are some people that say the church is intolerant - no! We accept people but we cannot be unfaithful to Christ. We will not accept gay marriage. The church has explained this over, and over and over again and she will have to continue to explain it."

Addressing people with same sex attraction he said, "these are good people and our way of treating them is very important. The respect we show them and even the understanding of their personal situations. But just because someone is in a personal situation does not mean we can change our teaching to accommodate the person."

On getting the teaching of the Church across in today's culture, Cardinal Rigali said "The Church has to continue, St. Paul says, ‘praedica verbum’, preach the word in season and out of season and that's what we do."

However, he added, "This is something we have to teach in the most effective way possible, with clarity yes, with fidelity yes, with sensitivity. We can't take people and choke them and say you're going to be doing it and you're going to follow the teachings of the Church and this is the teaching of the Church. No. St. Paul says in omnia patientia doctrina, speaking to Timothy, ‘with all patience and following the teaching’, following the teaching, these are the two elements."

"We present the beauty of human sexuality," he said, "we explain God's plan. We try to understand people who have the same sex attraction we try to help them; try not to speak platitudes to them but tell them what God's plan is and how they are to face their life."

The Philadelphia Archbishop concluded: "That's why we have organizations like Courage and Encourage because for parents it's a very, very difficult thing. But God's plan is to be presented in all its beauty, all its power with fidelity."

this article was originally posted on lifesitenews.com on June 27th, 2008

Christ the King

2009-11-23T10:59:00.002-06:00

Last night after 6pm Mass we had our annual Christ the King procession around campus with the Blessed Sacrament. It was a beautiful and prayerful experience in which we took a pilgrimage around campus praying for all of the students and those studying in specific areas by praying near their respective buildings.

I found this link to another procession in Kansas City where 22,000 young people followed the Blessed Sacrament in Prayer. Check out the pictures.

Here's a little bit of info on the feast of Christ the King.

Christ the King Sunday celebrates the all-embracing authority of Christ as King and Lord of the cosmos. Officially called the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King, it is celebrated on the final Sunday of Ordinary Time, the Sunday before Advent. This year it was on November 22, 2009.

Basic Facts
Liturgical Color(s): White
Type of Holiday: Solemnity; Holy Day of Obligation
Time of Year: Final Sunday of Ordinary Time (Sunday before Advent)
Duration: One Sunday
Celebrates/Symbolizes: Jesus as King, Messiah, and Lord
Alternate Names: Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King
Scriptural References: Psalm 23; Matthew 25:31-46; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28

Introduction
Pope Pius XI universally instituted The Feast of Christ the King in 1925 in his encyclical Quas Primas. Pope Pius connected the denial of Christ as king to the rise of secularism. At the time of Quas Primas, secularism was on the rise, and many Christians, even Catholics, were doubting Christ's authority, as well as the Church's, and even doubting Christ's existence. Pius XI, and the rest of the Christian world, witnessed the rise of dictatorships in Europe, and saw Catholics being taken in by these earthly leaders. Just as the Feast of Corpus Christi was instituted when devotion to the Eucharist was at a low point, the Feast of Christ the King was instituted during a time when respect for Christ and the Church was waning, when the feast was most needed. In fact, it is still needed today, as these problems have not vanished, but instead have worsened.

Pius hoped the institution of the feast would have various effects. They were:

1. That nations would see that the Church has the right to freedom, and immunity from the state (Quas Primas, 32).
2. That leaders and nations would see that they are bound to give respect to Christ (Quas Primas, 31).
3. That the faithful would gain strength and courage from the celebration of the feast, as we are reminded that Christ must reign in our hearts, minds, wills, and bodies (Quas Primas, 33).

Today, the same distrust of authority exists, although the problem has gotten worse. Individualism has been embraced to such an extreme, that for many, the only authority is the individual self. The idea of Christ as ruler is rejected in such a strongly individualistic system. Also, many balk at the idea of kings and queens, believing them to be oppressive. Some even reject the titles of "lord" and "king" for Christ because they believe that such titles are borrowed from oppressive systems of government. However true these statements might be (some kings have been oppressive), these individuals miss the point: Christ's kingship is one of humility and service. Jesus said:

You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to become great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:42-45, NAB).

and

Pilate said to Jesus, "Are you the King of the Jews?"... Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here." So Pilate said to him, "Then you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world,to testify to the truth (John 18:33b, 36-37).

Thus, Jesus knew the oppressive nature of secular kings, and in contrast to them, he connected his role as king to humble service, and commanded his followers to be servants as well. In other passages of Scripture, his kingdom is tied to his suffering and death. While Christ is coming to judge the nations, his teachings spell out a kingdom of justice and judgment balanced with radical love, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. When we celebrate Christ as King, we are not celebrating an oppressive ruler, but one willing to die for humanity and whose "loving-kindness endures forever." Christ is the king that gives us true freedom, freedom in Him. Thus we must never forget that Christ radically redefined and transformed the concept of kingship.

Christ the King Sunday used to be celebrated on the last Sunday of October, but since the calendar reforms of 1969, the feast falls on the last Sunday of Ordinary Time, which is the Sunday before Advent. It is fitting that the feast celebrating Christ's kingship is observed right before Advent, when we liturgically wait for the promised Messiah (King).

History
The earliest Christians identified Jesus with the predicted Messiah of the Jews. The Jewish word "messiah," and the Greek word "Christ," both mean "anointed one," and came to refer to the expected king who would deliver Israel from the hands of the Romans. Christians believe that Jesus is this expected Messiah. Unlike the messiah most Jews expected, Jesus came to free all people, Jew and Gentile, and he did not come to free them from the Romans, but from sin and death. Thus the king of the Jews, and of the cosmos, does not rule over a kingdom of this world.

Christians have long celebrated Jesus as Christ, and his reign as King is celebrated to some degree in Advent (when Christians wait for his second coming in glory), Christmas (when "born this day is the King of the Jews"), Holy Week (when Christ is the Crucified King), Easter (when Jesus is resurrected in power and glory), and the Ascension (when Jesus returns to the glory he had with the Father before the world was created). However, Pius XI wanted to specifically commemorate Christ as king, and instituted the feast in the Western calendar in 1925.

In the 21st century many Western Christians, Catholic and Protestant, celebrate Christ the King Sunday, including Anglicans and Lutherans. Unfortunately, in some mainline Protestant churches, "king" language is not popular, and the feast is downplayed. However, in a chaotic and unjust world that seems to scorn any kind of authority, many Christians proudly celebrate Christ the King Sunday, where the loving and merciful - and just - king of the universe is praised and glorified.

Confessions of an Ex-Feminist

2009-11-19T10:39:00.002-06:00

From Catholicism to Radical Feminism and Back |
An Interview with Lorraine V. Murray, author of Confessions of an Ex-Feminist

Lorraine V. Murray is the author of Confessions of an Ex-Feminist. Carl E. Olson recently interviewed Murray about her book and her journey from Catholicism to radical feminism and then, many years later, back to the Catholic Church.

Ignatius Insight: What are some of the main reasons you ended up walking away from the Catholic Church as a young woman? In looking back, what might have kept you from making that decision?

Lorraine Murray: When I went away to college, the dragon of nihilism pounced on me. I was extremely naïve, having led a very sheltered life until that time. Although I had attended Catholic schools for nearly my entire childhood, no one had prepared me for the onslaught of atheism that awaited me at the University of Florida. One thing might have helped me: Some knowledge of the arguments against theism and Christianity, and ways to counteract them.

Ignatius Insight: The term "feminist" is sometimes used in a bewildering number of ways. What sort of feminist were you and what were the essential beliefs of the feminism you practiced?

Murray: I was a radical feminist, championing the belief that there was no such thing as innate masculine and feminine natures. I believed that social conditioning produced the obvious differences between male and female behavior. Thus, to equal the playing field between men and women, one had to tweak the conditioning of children. For example, take away toy guns and adventure tales from little boys, and encourage them to play with dolls. Downplay ruffles and dresses for little girls, and deck them out in pants instead. Today, I look at my little nephews, who fashion guns with their hands, and see the utter insanity of these beliefs. However, at the time, I based my conclusions entirely on books.

Also, like many radical feminists, I believed that men were extremely violent towards women and enjoyed subjugating them. This piece of "wisdom" certainly wasn't evident in my own life, since the men I knew were mostly gentle souls, and my own father had sacrificed plenty so I could go to graduate school. But the feminist agenda emphasized that conflict, unhappiness and misery were part of every woman's journey, and then placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of men.

Ignatius Insight: How essential is "free love," contraceptives, and abortion to that sort of feminism?

Murray: "Free love" is crucial to the feminist agenda. Sex is seen as just another physical act that brings pleasure. It doesn't require love or commitment or emotional involvement. Radical feminists generally disparage marriage and family, seeing them as restricting women's freedom, so sex without commitment is somehow a positive thing. This poisonous belief began in the 1960s, but is still apparent today, especially on college campuses where many young people talk about "hooking up" with someone, i.e., having sex with strangers. Contraceptives are another crucial part of the free-sex puzzle because contraceptives are an attempt to break the connection between sex and its God-given function, which is reproduction. Many people today are surprised when they use contraceptives and still get pregnant, because they believe contraceptives never fail. Sadly, abortion becomes the back-up method of birth control.

Ignatius Insight: Why do so many feminists despise the traditional understanding of femininity and womanhood?

Murray: Perhaps the deepest sin of feminism is envy. So many feminists think that men have a better life and see them as somehow conspiring to keep women unhappy. Feminists deny what the average woman on the street will attest to: Women like being women! We like dressing differently from men, wearing make-up and watching romantic movies. We know it is nearly impossible for women to separate sexual intimacy and love. Women who give themselves to a man know, in the inner recesses of their hearts, that a baby might be the result of such intimacy. This is part of our God-given nature, and it is beautiful. However, radical, gender-bending feminists want to deny the heart of true femininity.

When Betty Friedan collected stories for The Feminine Mystique, she failed to talk to the mothers who were happy! After more books like hers hit the market, many women left the home and sought jobs in the "real" world, as if creating a home for the family was not real. In the past few decades, we've seen the fall-out: Many women now realize that the male experience has its own stresses and suffering. Many career women who put off having children find it is now too late. Many mothers who put their children in daycare regret missing the early years with them.

Ignatius Insight: In what academic field did you pursue graduate studies? Why? Who were your intellectual heroes and guides?

Murray: As a child, I dreamt of writing fiction and becoming one of the big names in the literary world, so I majored in English in college. Unfortunately, I soon became discouraged because I felt I could never match up to the authors we were reading. Tabling that dream, I went on to philosophy, because I was seeking the meaning of life. Sadly, it didn't occur to me that I had once found that meaning in Catholicism. My favorite philosophers were 20th century atheists like Jean-Paul Sartre and the feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir.

Ignatius Insight: In general, what is the relationship between the secular academic world and radical feminism?

Murray: Generally, in the secular academic world, women's issues have become synonymous with a rigid creed of associated beliefs. If you walk into a self-proclaimed women's bookstore, you will see sections on lesbianism, transgender, paganism and bisexuality, which are topics often explored in women's studies departments. Abortion is seen as part of the radical feminist agenda, and anyone who questions it becomes the enemy. Catholics and other Christians point out the blinding light of the obvious, which is that abortion destroys a human life. But this is not something that radical feminists will accept, because they believe women's freedom should be entirely unrestricted. So they tend to see traditional religion as some monstrous conspiracy to keep women unhappy. They often lump together anyone who is pro-life or pro-family under the umbrella of "Evangelicals" or "fundamentalists." The average woman on the street can't identify with the typical feminist agenda because it is far removed from the realities of everyday life. This topic is explored beautifully in a book by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life.

Ignatius Insight: How did you finally start to make your way back to Jesus Christ and His Church? What issues did you struggle with the most in that journey?

Murray: My husband, who had little knowledge of Catholicism, startled me one day when he returned from New York and mentioned stopping in at St. Patrick's Cathedral to light votive candles in memory of his father and my parents. In that moment, I realized I had never prayed for the repose of my parents' souls, although they had been dead many years. I also read Merton's Seven Storey Mountain, and was very moved by his journey. I began to experience a mysterious sense of someone reaching into my life and tugging at me.

I struggled on my journey because I was still a feminist when I returned to the Church, so I brought my baggage with me. I wanted to continue using contraceptives, for example, and did so for many years. I also thought of myself as a "pro-choice" Catholic. In short, I was the classic "cafeteria Catholic," and looking back, I am humbled that Christ drew me back to the Church anyway.

Ignatius Insight: When and how did you finally realize, "I want to be a Catholic—a practicing, serious Catholic?"

Murray: After my diagnosis of breast cancer in 2000, life started changing quite drastically. I truly thought I would die soon, and I longed for someone to help me, so I sought out a spiritual director. Father Richard Lopez, who is a religion teacher at a local Catholic high school, was at first my emotional and spiritual life-line in terms of cancer, but I also began asking him questions about why the Church espoused various teachings. He gave me books to read and carefully explained the Catholic perspective. Once I understood the rationale and history behind Church teachings, I could accept them. Until then, I was woefully ignorant.

Ignatius Insight: You mention several thinkers and authors whose works helped you, including C.S. Lewis, Augustine, and Thomas Merton. But you have a special affinity and love for Flannery O'Connor. What attracted you to her writing? What did you learn from her?

Murray: Father Lopez is a great Flannery O'Connor fan. I had read Flannery's stories, but was unaware that she was Catholic (since, alas, her faith was not mentioned in my college classes). As he instructed me in the faith, Father Lopez pointed me toward her letters in "The Habit of Being," and I was thoroughly fascinated with the woman who came to life in this book.

In her letters, she ardently defended and explained Catholicism, and this was in the fifties and sixties, when nihilism was pervasive. Also, despite sharp criticism from critics, she continued writing her fiction. As a Catholic columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, there are times when I get plenty of criticism from readers and get discouraged. Her advice has helped me, especially her point that anything that depresses a writer to the extent that he wants to give up writing comes from the devil.

Ignatius Insight: What are some of your current and future projects? Murray: I continue to write two columns a month for the secular press and two for the Catholic newspaper, The Georgia Bulletin. I'm also working on a book about Flannery O'Connor's Catholic journey. It is a huge undertaking and I hope that it will actually be published. Please ask your readers to keep this intention in their prayers!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Confessions of An Ex-Feminist

Lorraine V. Murray

Confessions is the honest and heart-rending account of a woman who was born into a Catholic family, attended parochial schools and fully embraced the beliefs of her faith, but ran into major roadblocks in college. Amidst the radical feminist college environment of the 1960's, she lost her faith, and her morality, jumping aboard the bandwagon of "free love." She indulged in a series of love relationships in college, all of which crashed and burned. Despite the obvious contradiction between feminist teachings and her own experience, Murray still believed she had to free herself from the yoke of tradition.

Attaining a doctorate in philosophy, with an emphasis on the feminist writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Murray taught philosophy in college. For many years, she launched a personal vendetta against God and the Catholic Church in the classroom, trying to persuade students that God did not exist, mocking values Catholics hold dear, and touted feminism as the cure for many social ills. When she discovered she was pregnant, Murray followed the route that feminists offer as a solution for unmarried women. Much to her surprise, her abortion was a shattering emotional experience, which she grieved over for years. It was the first tragic chink in her feminist armor.

After her marriage in 1982, she anguished over the decision to have children, but became an advocate of the "child-free" movement, believing children were burdens and life could be happy life without them. Later in her forties, Murray experienced a mysterious series of events in which it seemed that "someone" was inviting her back to God. The mysterious calls came from different ports, including nature, books and other people. Gradually, she realized that the One seeking her was Christ, and the place He was calling her to was the Catholic Church. Eventually realizing it was only in the Church that she would find what she was seeking--the person of Christ and his love and mercy--Murray returned to the Church, and finally found healing and forgiveness for the abortion.

• Warning: This Is a Dangerous Book | Lorraine V. Murray | Introduction to Confessions of an Ex-Feminist

Pope John Paul closer to being declared venerable

2009-11-18T16:42:00.002-06:00

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The cardinal- and bishop-members of the Congregation for Saints' Causes voted unanimously Nov. 16 to recommend that Pope Benedict XVI formally recognize that Pope John Paul II heroically lived the Christian virtues, Italian newspapers reported.

The Vatican did not deny or confirm that the vote took place because the process is supposed to be secret until Pope Benedict signs the decree recognizing the heroic virtue of his predecessor and declares him venerable.

Pope Benedict generally signs a dozen or more decrees three times a year: in April, in June or July and in December.

Members of the saints' congregation meet regularly to study the life stories, eyewitness testimony and other documentation promoting the causes of proposed saints. The information is contained in a "positio," or position paper, prepared by the promoter of the individual's cause.

When the cardinals and bishops are satisfied that the "positio" is complete and demonstrates that the sainthood candidate lived an extraordinarily holy life, they recommend the pope sign the first decree.

Once the promoter of a cause identifies a potential miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession, the documentation is turned over to the saints' congregation. A panel of physicians, a panel of theologians and the members of the congregation all must recommend the pope sign a second decree recognizing the miracle.

When the decrees recognizing the heroic virtues and the miracle are signed, a date is fixed for the candidate's beatification.

As the miracle for Pope John Paul's beatification, the promoter of his cause has proposed the healing of a French nun. She allegedly was cured of Parkinson's disease, the same disease from which Pope John Paul suffered.

END

Pheromones and contraception....

2009-11-17T14:58:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow Night's topic at the LOGOS meeting (our 21 and up ministry) will be 'Contraception?' So, if you're of age, bring yourself and a healthy hunger for cheese. 8:10 pm in the upper room. The topic below also became somewhat of a topic with the girls in the cafe today so I figured this was an appropriate post.

Opening Pandora's Box

by Vicki Thorn

Over the past several months, a number of stories have been circulating in the print media and online that have to do with the impact of chemical contraceptives on mate choice in humans. It seems that most of the coverage is appearing in foreign media – curiously, very little media attention has been given to the issue in the United States.

In the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom, an October 8 article summarizes findings in a research paper published in the journal “Trends in Ecology and Evolution.” Researchers Alexandra Alvergne and Virpi Lumma entitled their study, “Does the contraceptive pill alter mate choice in humans?”

The following is from the paper’s abstract:

Female and male mate choice preference in humans both vary according to the menstrual cycle. Women prefer more masculine, symmetrical and genetically unrelated men during ovulation compared with other phases of their cycle, and recent evidence suggests that men prefer ovulating women to others. Such monthly shifts in mate preference have been suggested to being evolutionary benefits in terms of reproductive success.

How does this all work?

It all has to do with pheromones – the chemical signals, or scent molecules, that communicate to males a female’s most fertile time for reproducing. While there has been debate in the past about whether this means of communication exists in humans, and not just animals, many scientists who have been pursuing the elusive pheromones are certain of their existence in humans at this time. For instance, in 1995, Swiss researcher Claus Wedekind discovered that women who are not chemically contracepting preferred the odor of males whose MHC complex (Major Histocompatibility complex) – immune system markers indicated via smell – were dissimilar to theirs.

In other words, these non-contracepting women were attracted to the scent of men genetically compatible with them. To increase the possibility of fertility with a mate, we need dissimilar immune systems. This is why we do not marry our first cousins. Such an immune system similarity could lead to offspring that are not as healthy.

The use of chemical contraceptives blocks this natural phenomenon by inducing a state of “faux pregnancy,” a suppression of the normal cycling of hormones associated with ovulation. This change in a woman’s body results in changes in her attraction to a potential mate. She is now attracted to a mate whose MHC complex is quite similar to hers, more like that of her father or her brother. It seems to eliminate the adaptive attraction to a male with whom there is an increased possibility of fertility. Furthermore, chemical contraceptives eliminate the normal pheromone shift that alerts males to the woman’s time of fertility. Men find the scent of ovulating women to be attractive and arousing. A consistently infertile woman elicits no such response.

The article summary continues, “New evidence is emerging that taking the oral contraceptive pill might significantly alter both female and male mate choice by removing the mid-cycle change in preferences.”

This alteration may impact relationship satisfaction, in addition to reproductive outcomes. There is growing concern in some quarters that we may have a generation of children with compromised immune systems because of this shift in partner preference caused by chemical contraceptives.

“There is evidence that genetic similarity between couples might be linked to infertility,” Dr. Lumma – one of the co-authors of the journal articles – summarizes. From that, she says, “The ultimate outstanding evolutionary question concerns whether the use of oral contraceptives when making mating decisions can have long-term consequences on the ability of couples to reproduce.”

“If this is the case, Pill use will have implications for both current and future generations, and we hope that our review will stimulate further research on this question,” Dr. Lumma continued.

keep reading...

Super Pope

2009-11-16T10:35:00.004-06:00

Something lighthearted on this Monday of Mondays. Hope you enjoy it. Kevin, this one is for you :)

Super Pope

How to pray better....or at all.

2009-11-10T14:27:00.003-06:00

Great article about Prayer from Dr. Peter Kreeft. I'll be reading his book 'Prayer for Beginners' while I'm on retreat for the next two days and I thought I'd leave you with this article to reflect on as well. If you're like me you could use some practical powerful advice when it comes to prayer. So....here it is.

Lesson One in Prayer
Let's get very, very basic and very, very practical about prayer. The single most important piece of advice I know about prayer is also the simplest: Just do it!

How to do it is less important than just doing it. Less-than-perfect prayer is infinitely better than no prayer; more perfect prayer is only finitely better than less perfect prayer.

Nancy Reagan was criticized for her simple anti-drug slogan: "Just say no." But there was wisdom there: the wisdom that the heart of any successful program to stop anything must be the simple will to say no. ("Just say no" doesn't mean that nothing else was needed, but that without that simple decision nothing else would work. "Just say no" may not be sufficient but it is necessary.)

Similarly, no program, method, book, teacher, or technique will ever succeed in getting us to start doing anything unless there is first of all that simple, absolute choice to do it. "Just say yes."

The major obstacle in most of our lives to just saying yes to prayer, the most popular and powerful excuse we give for not praying, or not praying more, or not praying regularly, is that we have no time.

The only effective answer to that excuse, I find, is a kind of murder. You have to kill something, you have to say no to something else, in order to make time to pray. Of course, you will never find time to pray, you have to make time to pray. And that means unmaking something else. The only way to install the tenant of prayer in the apartment building of your life is to evict some other tenant from those premises that prayer will occupy. Few of us have any empty rooms available.

Deciding to do that is the first thing. And you probably won't decide to do it, only wish to do it, unless you see prayer for what it is: a matter of life or death, your lifeline to God, to life itself.

Prayer is like Thanksgiving dinner. It takes one hour to eat it and ten hours to prepare it.

Is this exaggerated? Are there more important things? Love, for instance? We need love absolutely; but the love we need is agape, the love that only God has and is; so unless we go to God for it, we won't get it. And going to God for it means prayer. So unless we pray, we will not love.

Having got that clear and having made prayer your number one priority, having made a definite decision to do it, we must next rearrange our lives around it. Rearranging your time, preparing time to pray, is like preparing your house to paint. As everyone knows who has done any painting, preparation is three-quarters the work, three-quarters the hassle, and three-quarters the time. The actual painting is a breeze compared with the preparation. The same is true of prayer: the hardest step is preparing a place, a time, a sacred and inviolable part of each day for it. Prayer is like Thanksgiving dinner. It takes one hour to eat it and ten hours to prepare it. Prayer is like Christmas Day: it took a month of preparation, decoration, and shopping to arrange for that one day. Best of all, prayer is like love. Foreplay is, or should be, most of it. For two people truly and totally in love, all of their lives together is foreplay. Well, prayer is like spiritual love-making. God has waited patiently for you for a long, long time. He longs for you to touch the fringe of his being in prayer, as the woman touched the hem of Christ's garment, so that you can be healed. How many hours did that woman have to prepare for that one-minute touch?

The first and most important piece of practical preparation is scheduling. You absolutely must schedule a regular time for prayer, whether you are a "scheduler" with other things in your life or not. "Catch as catch can" simply won't work for prayer; it will mean less and less prayer, or none at all. One quick minute in the morning to offer your day to God is better than nothing at all, of course, but it is as radically inadequate as one quick minute a day with your wife or husband. You simply must decide each day to free up your schedule so you can pray.

How long a time? That varies with individuals and situations, of course; but the very barest minimum should certainly be at least fifteen minutes. You can't really count on getting much deep stuff going on in less time than that. If fifteen minutes seems too much to you, that fact is powerful proof that you need to pray much more to get your head on straight.

After it becomes more habitual and easy, expand it, double it. And later, double it again. Aim at an hour each day, if you want radical results. (Do you? Or are you only playing?)

You have to say no to something else, in order to make time to pray.

What time of day is best? The most popular time—bedtime—is usually the worst possible time, for two reasons. First, it tends not to be prime time but garbage time, when you're the least alert and awake. Do you really want to put God in the worst apartment in your building? Should you offer him the sickest sheep in your flock?

Second, it won't work. If you wait until every other obligation is taken care of first before you pray, you simply won't pray. For life today is so cruelly complicated for most of us that "every other obligation" is never taken care of. Remember, you are going to have to kill other things in order to pray. No way out of that.

The most obvious and usually best time is early in the morning. If you can't delay the other things you do, you simply must get up that much earlier.

Should it be the very first thing? That depends. Some people are alert as soon as they get up; others need to shower and dress to wake up. The important thing is to give God the best time, and "just do it."

Place is almost as important as time. You should make one special place where you can be undisturbed. "Catch as catch can" won't work for place either.

What place? Some people are not very sensitive to environment and can even use a bathroom. Others naturally seek beauty: a porch, yard, garden, or walk. (I find praying while you take a walk a good combination of spiritual and physical exercise.)

You probably noticed I haven't said a word about techniques yet. That's because three-quarters is preparation, remember? But what about methods?

I can only speak from my own experience as a continuing beginner. The two most effective that I have found are very simple. One is praying Scripture, reading and praying at the same time, reading in God's presence, receiving the words from God's mouth. The second is spontaneous verbal prayer. I am not good at all at silent prayer, mental prayer, contemplative prayer; my thoughts hop around like fleas. Praying aloud (or singing) keeps me praying, at least. And I find it often naturally leads to silent prayer often, or "mental prayer," or contemplation.

Most advice on prayer focuses on higher levels: contemplative prayer. But I suspect many of my readers are prayer infants too and need to learn to walk before they can run. So these are some lessons from one man's prayer kindergarten. Let's "just do it" even if "it" is only crawling towards God

Rehabilitating our thoughts on Sex...

2009-11-09T12:45:00.005-06:00

I've been thinking and praying alot about the post I put here a few days ago spotlighting an article about Sex and the Campus. After some self reflection and thought I realized that this young woman's lack of knowledge of the Church's beautiful and real teaching on sexuality is a fault of those whose job it is to teach it in a beautiful and approachable way. (i.e. myself and people like me). So I decided that I should perhaps contact Ms. Julia and give her some resources to atleast begin with. In doing some research on where to contact her I found out a few interesting things. First, the article that I quoted her in was written in 2004, almost 6 years ago. For all I know she could have gained a whole education in life experience and knowledge regarding sexuality by now. Also, If she was a 'young adult' in 2004 then she is an older 'young' adult now and in my estimation we are probably about the same age. Besides all that, I noticed that in the original location of the article there were many many comments left in response to her, many written by very compassionate knowledgeable adults pointing her in the direction of teachings on the Theology of the Body and other amazing things. I was happy to see that and even though I found no contact information for her I will continue to pray for her and for others like her who need compassion and truth in a real and approachable way in their lives, a catagory I no doubt fall into daily.

For those who need guidance please know that while I am not an expert on the subject by any means, I have been blessed to have been able to study amazing information on the subject and have been doubly blessed to have encountered real people who live a powerful life of virtue because of the grace God has bestowed upon them. I am ALWAYS happy to share what I know and what I have lived with anyone and I am humbled to journey with others about things that I do not yet know. I hope that this list below will continue to grow but for now here are a few places that you can begin your journey. Happy Travels!

http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2TBIND.HTM
- the Wednesday audiences given by John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate on the ‘good news of the body’

http://www.theologyofthebody.net/
-source for articles and speakers on the subject of sexuality provides a good summary

http://www.johnpaulii.edu/
- school of graduate studies founded by John Paul II in the Theology of Marriage and Family

http://www.christopherwest.com/
- website for Christopher West a well known speaker on the subject in America at this time.

http://www.tobinstitute.org/
- source for courses on and instruction in the Theology of the Body

http://theologyofthebody.com/
-source for books, videos and courses on the subject of Theology of the Body – also includes information about the curriculum for ‘Theology of the Body for Teens’

www.demandyourdignity.com
- a website for young women focusing on real beauty.

Pro-life organizations celebrate Stupak amendment, warns of existing risks on health care bill

2009-11-08T10:37:00.003-06:00

If you're confused about all this 'health care stuff' don't worry. I think most people are (including those that wrote the bill). In any case you may have heard that the bill passed in the house last night in a 220 to 215 vote. The good news in all this, weather you support the bill or not, is the passage of an amendment that would remove funding of abortion in this bill. In my opinion, the passage of this amendment shows the growing (or maybe just increasingly vocal) support of political figures (and of the American people in general) of pro-life issues. Prayer is powerful. Keep letting your voice be heard in the streets and in the heavens :)

*If you didn't hear about this amazing news last week, take a look.

Our own Rebekah Zeringue and Annie Conolly have started a UL chapter of Students for Life. Ask them how you can get involved.

No Bones About It! The Relics of Saint Mary Magdalene

2009-11-04T09:42:00.004-06:00

Tomorrow the Relic of Saint Mary Magdalene is visiting our own Church and Catholic Student Center here at UL and if nobody has told you yet, it's a pretty big deal! If you're a little weirded out by the whole thing though, don't fret....you're not alone. I encourage you to read this short course on what a relic is..and then go to Wisdom's website and read about the Relic coming tomorrow. Then come by tomorrow and say some prayers with the relic of the one who was the first to see Christ risen from the tomb!

What is a Relic?
A relic is something connected with a saint or blessed, including a part of their body (e.g. hair or a piece of bone), their clothing, or an object that the person used or touched. Relics are classified as 1st Class – a part of the person’s body, for example: blood, hair, or bones; 2nd Class an article touched by the person or touched directly to part of his or her body; and 3rd Class something touched indirectly to the person, that is, to a 1st or 2nd Class relic, to the tomb, etc. It is not the kind of relic or how big it is that is important, but rather the faith and prayer that the relic occasions. By the communion of saints, it is that person who is close to us, blessing and praying for us.

Why Do We Venerate Relics?
The veneration of relics is an ancient custom dating from the reverence shown at the graves of the martyrs even in the time of the apostles. Miracles have been worked by God in association with relics – “…not that some magical power existed in them, but just as God’s work was done through the lives of [holy people], so did His work continue after their deaths. Likewise, just as [others] were drawn closer to God through the lives of [holy people], so did they (even if through their remains) inspire others to draw closer even after their deaths. This perspective provides the Church’s understanding of relics.” (Fr. W. Saunders, “Keeping Relics in Perspective”, © 2003 Arlington Catholic Herald)
“In all, relics remind us of the holiness of a saint and his cooperation in God’s work; at the same time, relics inspire us to ask for the prayers of that saint and to beg the grace of God to live the same kind a faith-filled life.” (Saunders)
What Do We Express When We Venerate Relics?
“To venerate the relics of the saints is a profession of belief in several doctrines of the Catholic faith: (1) the belief in everlasting life for those who have obediently witnessed to Christ and His Holy Gospel here on earth; (2) the truth of the resurrection of the body for all persons on the last day; (3) the doctrine of the splendor of the human body and the respect which all should show toward the bodies of both the living and the deceased; (4) the belief in the special intercessory power which the saints enjoy in heaven because of their intimate relationship with Christ the King; and (5) the truth of our closeness to the saints because of our connection in the communion of saints — we as members of the Church militant or pilgrim Church, they as members of the Church triumphant.” (Fr. W. Saunders, “Church Teaching on Relics”, © 2003 Arlington Catholic Herald)

Is the Veneration of Relics Scriptural?
Keep in mind what the Church says about relics. It doesn’t say there is some magical power in them. There is nothing in the relic itself, whether a bone of the apostle Peter or water from Lourdes, that has any curative ability. The Church just says that relics may be the occasion of God’s miracles, and in this the Church follows Scripture.
The use of the bones of Elisha brought a dead man to life: "So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood on his feet" (2 Kgs. 13:20-21). This is an unequivocal biblical example of a miracle being performed by God through contact with the relics of a saint!
Similar are the cases of the woman cured of a hemorrhage by touching the hem of Christ’s cloak (Matt. 9:20-22) and the sick who were healed when Peter’s shadow passed over them (Acts 5:14-16). "And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them" (Acts 19:11-12).

Relics in Early Christianity
The veneration of relics is seen explicitly as early as the account of Polycarp’s martyrdom written by the Smyrnaeans in A.D. 156. In it, the Christians describe the events following his burning at the stake: "We took up his bones, which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place, where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together, as we are able, in gladness and joy and to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom."
In the fourth century the great biblical scholar, Jerome, declared, "We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore Him whose martyrs they are" (Ad Riparium, i, P.L., XXII, 907). `

Then the disciples returned home. But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" She thought it was the gardener and said to him, "Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni," which means Teacher. Jesus said to her, "Stop holding on to me, 10 for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," and what he told her. (John 20:1-18)

Sex and the Center

2009-11-03T09:54:00.002-06:00

I ran across this article on BeliefNet today and it definitely put a bug in my bonnet.

It's a pretty lengthy article and I'd love for you to read it in its entirety but for those of you who have other things to do (like go to class and stuff) I've put a small excerpt here that will give you the basic idea.

"There is a trend among people my age to separate their faith from Church teachings on issues of sexuality. I believe one of the main reasons for this disconnect is that the Church does not provide any guidance regarding sexuality for unmarried young adults other than "Don't do it!" Although remaining chaste until marriage is no doubt a beautiful and romantic experience for those who choose it, not everyone follows this path. In my experience, premarital sex on college campuses is not the exception, but the rule.

So how does a predominantly Catholic student body at a Jesuit school justify disobeying this tenet of the Church? The answer seems to be that they don't. I don't believe young people are simply ignoring this teaching so they can do what they want and go to confession later."

She goes on (and on) to say that instead of imposing these unrealistic standards on young adults the Church should in fact make the distinction between debaucherous one night stands and pre-marital sex in committed relationships. Yeah. I find it especially interesting that she begins her article talking about how difficult it is to go out and get drunk every week and then still make it to Mass on Sunday and how because everyone her age is doing that same thing the Church is clearly misguided on the kind of support they should be giving her generation. Ugh. I don't think I really need to pontificate on how rediculous this all sounds but you know I will anyway.

Look, it's not like I'm denying that this lifestyle and thought is the mindset of the majority of young adults...of Catholic young adults even. Shoot, it was my way of thinking in college for sure, and I'm not so naive to think that it's not the lifestyle and though of many who frequent our very own Catholic student center. My point is, since when do the misguided passions of the majority suddenly make it ok to change truth?

Is it a struggle? YES. Is it something that needs to be handled with love and patience? YES. Is the Church doing all she can to guide her children in charity and truth. YES, theologically anyway. I will be the first one to admit that sometimes the 'people' in the Church can be jerks about things. But it only takes a search bar and google to find out that she has given mountains and mountains of beautiful relevant teaching on the matter, far far surpassing "Don't Do it".

Instead of throwing in the towel on the subject and saying "ah well, they're gonna do it anyway, atleast it's with someone they 'love'. Lets give young adults the benefit of the doubt that if they are smart enough to be in college in the first place, they are smart enough to realize that the things that they 'feel' like doing arent always the good, true and beautiful. A little bit of prayer and some redemptive suffering can go a long way and I promise you'll be a better and happier person for it. Lets learn to forgive ourselves for the sins of our past and forgive others for the ways in which they've hurt us, repent, move on and begin again on the path to sainthood.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me." 2Corinthians 12:9

NB: The article I quoted was written by a young adult named Julia Tier who writes for a young adult Catholic website called Busted Halo. A website run by the Paulists that lets just say I would never use as a source or inspiration for any event here at the Catholic student center. I'm not saying EVERYTHING on it is horrible but some of it is questionable at best. The concept of the site is excellent actually and I wish that it were a place we could trust to be faithful on all fronts but as they themselves have said their "journey has little to do with traditional religious institutions" (from their mission statement). Feel free to email Ms. Julia with your opinion, and me too for that matter.

Praying for the Dead

2009-11-02T10:06:00.004-06:00

Today is All Souls Day a day when we remember and pray for those loved ones who, baptized in Christ have gone before us, the holy souls in purgatory. Many people go to the graves of their loved ones today and clean and/or bring flowers. If at all possible get to Mass and pray for those you have lost. The first reading is particularly beautiful. Take a gander: Wis 3:1-9

Here is an excerpt from the homily that Pappa Bene gave today:

"Let us today renew our hope in eternal life, one really drawn in the death and resurrection of Christ. "I am risen and now I am always with you," the Lord tells us, and my hand sustains you. Wherever you might fall, you will fall in my hands and I will be present even at the gate of death. Where none can accompany you any longer and where you can bring nothing, there I await you to transform for you darkness into light.

Christian hope is never something merely individual, it's always a hope for others. Our lives are deeply linked, one to another, and the good and bad each one does always impacts the rest. So the prayer of a pilgrim soul in the world can help another soul that continues purifying itself after death.

And for this, today the church invites us to pray for our beloved dead and to spend time at their tombs in the cemeteries. Mary, star of hope, make stronger and more authentic our faith in eternal life and sustain our prayer of suffrage for our departed brothers".

Read the whole thing here.

All Saints Day! A party in the heavens!!

2009-10-31T23:02:00.003-05:00

"After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.They cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation comes from 7 our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb." All the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They prostrated themselves before the throne, worshiped God,and exclaimed: "Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen."Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, "Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?"I said to him, "My lord, you are the one who knows." He said to me, "These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."For this reason they stand before God's throne and worship him day and night in his temple. The one who sits on the throne will shelter them.They will not hunger or thirst anymore, nor will the sun or any heat strike them.For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water,and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." Rev 7

who is your favorite Saint and why? I love stories!!!

All Hallows Eve and Catholics

2009-10-30T10:01:00.002-05:00

All Hallows' Eve

Issue: Is the celebration of Halloween a pagan feast? May a Catholic celebrate Halloween in good conscience? What is the history of this popular American holiday?

Response: We celebrate Halloween on the evening before All Saints Day. The word itself is a shortened form of "All Hallows’ Eve," which quite literally means "the eve of All Saints." From the earliest days of the Feast of All Saints (mid 700s A.D.), Catholics observed October 31 as the vigil of this November 1 celebration. This feast commemorates the lives of Christians who lived exemplary lives of faith. Pope Sixtus IV introduced an octave to the feast day in the 1400s, which was celebrated until 1955.

In the United States, the secular celebration of Halloween combines the diverse holidays and cultural practices of the immigrants who settled here. The Church has not issued any prohibitions on celebrating Halloween, so Catholics remain free to participate in accord with their conscience. Naturally, such participation must not conflict with the faith or Christian charity.

Discussion: As noted above, "Halloween" is a shortened term for the English title "All Hallow’s Eve." A title given to the vigil celebration of the Catholic feast, All Saints Day. The secular practices in the United States associated with this night represent a mixture of practices taken from the various cultures represented in the United States. Christianity itself, Catholicism included, has contributed to these practices.

An Initial Caution

Some hold the opinion that Halloween represents an occult holiday. Catholics and other reasonable Christians should take these accusations with a grain of salt. Many pamphlets, tracts, and books written against Halloween are written by anti-Catholic writers whose purpose is to discredit the Catholic Church! They assume that Catholicism itself is (at least partially) pagan and demonic, especially regarding the veneration of God’s saints. Because Catholics hold vigil on the feast of All Saints, such writers believe our practice to be evil. Other writers attribute the practices of Halloween to the Druids. However, the commemoration of Christian martyrs predates Christian contact with Druids, and celebrating the vigil of All Saints, All Saints Day itself and All Souls Day (a feast on November 2 which commemorates all the faithful departed) is certainly not "pagan." Finally, anti-Catholic writings are notorious for their historical inaccuracies.[1] Be cautious about giving quick credence to such writings.

The History

There are several influences, independent of each other, that contribute to the current practices celebrating Halloween in the United States.

Because they considered the beginning and end of seasons important, the Israelites celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles at the time of the harvest. The feast recognized God’s blessings and recalled His promise to care for them in need (Lev. 23:39; Dt. 17:7). Furthermore, as an agricultural community, certain laws and practices of the Israelites involved the use of the land and animals under their care (cf. Lev. 25). Similarly, the ancient Celts of Britain and Ireland did have a festival on November 1. This date was the "beginning of a new year" and "the end of summer." According to the mythology of these agriculturally minded Celts, the beginning of winter was also the time when the dead of the year were taken to the underworld, and awareness of mortality became acute because the coming winter season was dangerous.[2] The cultural recognition of the beginning and end of seasons is found in virtually every agricultural society. American Thanksgiving represents such a "feast." It is no wonder that Christians have kept such important symbols, especially given the Jewish recognition of seasonal events.

Unrelated to the Celtic festival, Pope Gregory III dedicated an oratory on November 1 that commemorated all the saints (circa 731-41). This date became popularly adopted as "All Saints Day" in Ireland and Britain. Within a century, Gregory IV extended the November 1 celebration of All Saints Day throughout the Western churches. Christians have long commemorated vigils of special feasts, e.g., Christmas Eve Mass and the Easter Vigil, a tradition rooted in the Jewish practice that a day begins at dusk, not midnight. The October 31 vigil of All Saints Day was recognized from the earliest days of the feast.

Contrary to what some writers say regarding Halloween, historians are unable to substantiate a simple importation of "pagan" customs when the Irish and the Scots (who had been Christian for centuries) immigrated in great numbers to the United States during the 1800s. The American holiday has roots which have no connections with the long past Druids.[3]

Costumes

Masquerading and wearing costumes associated with death began in the 14th and 15th centuries. During that time, the bubonic plague broke out repeatedly in Europe. This incurable disease that severely decimated the population caused a keen awareness of human mortality. Men return to dust (Gen. 3:19), and the things of this world and the works of men are fleeting (1 Cor. 7:31; 2 Pet. 3:8). Although we have hope of resurrection in Christ Who has destroyed death (1 Cor. 15:54-55), it is good to be aware of man’s mortality to keep priorities straight. For this reason, art often depicts monks and hermits with skulls—"memento mori"—reminders of death.[4] The mortality of man was popularly illustrated during this period through the "Danse Macabre" or "the Dance of Death." These songs, poems, prints, and paintings depicted men of every age and social state being led by a skeleton into the grave. The Danse Macabre was a Christian allegorical theme warning that all men, young and old, wise and foolish, rich and poor, honored and shunned, die sooner or later (Eccles. 2:16, 5:15, 7:2). Over time these illustrations became "living." People started to act out the Danse Macabre by dressing up—as men of all kinds in every stage of life, and even stages after death—on All Souls Day.[5] The New Catholic Encyclopedia notes the survival of the Danse Macabre theme in Halloween customs of the United States. Danse Macabre themes can also be seen in the Spanish and Hispanic decorations for "Los Dias de los Muertes," ("the days of the dead," November 1 and 2). Mexican crafts for those days include skeleton brides, grooms, nuns, priests, etc.

Conclusion

There is nothing intrinsically "pagan" or "evil" in celebrating All Saints Day or its vigil, dressing up in costumes, playing games, having parties, carving vegetables, reminders of mortality, or collecting candy from willing neighbors. You are free to do any or all of these things if you wish, because none of them are intrinsically disordered, provided that there are no evil intentions in the act (Mk. 7:18-23). Halloween is not a philosophy or system of belief, good or bad, but a set of American customs and practices derived from European ones. And it should be noted that Christianity has externally borrowed from pagan customs—e.g., wedding rings, bouquets, brides wearing white, Christmas trees, and Easter eggs—but has transformed their interior meaning to conform with Christ. Just as the Church baptizes pagans and makes them into Christians by God’s grace, Christians can give old customs good, new, and richer meaning, e.g., Christmas and Easter replaced pagan feasts associated with winter and spring, respectively.[6] Halloween, given its legitimate Christian connections, can actually be an occasion to help others discover the significance of All Saints and All Souls Days, just as many point out at Christmas that "Jesus is the reason for the season."[7]

On the other hand, we do not want to use our legitimate freedom to alienate or scandalize our Christian brothers, which would be a violation of charity. St. Paul says that even though Christians may eat meat sacrificed to idols (a practice which wasn’t even Christianized) without sinning, they should choose for the sake of charity not to do so in front of those who do not understand this liberty (Rom. 14; 1 Cor. 10:23-31). We should not be a stumbling block for others. If your family members or friends choose not to celebrate Halloween, respect their decision and do not do anything in their presence which they would find offensive. If you choose not to celebrate Halloween in the common customs, you might consider replacing it with a celebration of All Saints Day or adapting the common customs to highlight All Saints Day, e.g., handing out holy cards with candy and/or dressing up your children as saints.

Halloween can be legitimate fun, but this kind of fun is not worth causing a brother to stumble. The decision of whether to celebrate Halloween should be made prudently, charitably, and in conformity with the faith. As St. Augustine said, in essential things there must be unity, in matters of opinion there may be diversity, but in all things there must be charity.

Some say that Halloween is simply an occult holiday of the Celtic Druids which has been foolishly adopted by Christians. They also say that Halloween is a celebration of demonic power and death in which Christians should not participate. Is this accurate?

props to CUF for the article. Read the whole thing here.

More ality please sir!

2009-10-19T15:04:00.003-05:00

Catholic Ethics and Morality

Making moral choices in our modern world can be confusing and difficult. With so many temptations and influences pulling us in all directions, and the pressures of life driving us towards the seemingly "easy" path, it is comforting to know that Jesus Christ, through His Church, has blessed us with clear moral framework to guide us towards a happy, fulfilling life.

The Apologetics group this week will be covering 'moral issues' which is always a favorite topic for most (love and hate). Ask some questions and make sure you come to the session either Thursday at 6:45 or Sunday at 4:15.

check THIS out for more info...

What is the Catholic Church's big deal about using contraception anyway?

2009-10-07T10:31:00.005-05:00

*Note- These 'notes' are originally posted on the blog website for the Catholic Student Organization on UL's campus. They are linked to facebook to raise awareness about the site.

Ok so I realize this is an 'awkward' topic. It's one of those issues that nobody wants to talk about but in my opinion needs to be talked about often. If your first reaction to this topic is anger then I ask you to take a deep breath and read the article below with an open mind. Then feel free to write me with your questions and I'll be happy to learn more with you about this issue. If you think it's not a big deal then read the article and see if you still feel the same way at the end.

Read this article called 'Contraception Why Not' by Dr. Janet Smith

“The heart has become a battlefield between love and lust. The more lust dominates the heart, the less the heart experiences the nuptial meaning of the body. It becomes less sensitive to the gift of the person, which expresses that meaning in the mutual relations of the man and woman.”

~ Pope John Paul II, (General audience, July 23, 1980)

Is the Eucharist just a symbol?

2009-10-06T11:01:00.002-05:00

In Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22, Jesus says of the bread, "This is my body." He says of the wine, "This is my blood." Not "this is symbolic of," or "this represents," He says "this IS." In John 6, He repeats Himself, like He does nowhere else in Scripture, to emphasize the fact that He expects us to eat His flesh and drink His blood and that His flesh is real food and that His blood is real drink.

Anyone who says He is speaking symbolically, and not literally, simply is refusing to look at all of the facts. Fact #1: The Jews took him literally, verse 52. Fact #2: His disciples took him literally, verse 60. Fact #3, the Apostles took him literally, verses 67-69. If everyone who heard him speak at the time took Him literally, then my question is: Why does anyone today, 2000 years after the fact, take him symbolically?

Also, in verse 51, Jesus says that the bread which He will give for the life of the world is His flesh. When did He give His flesh for the life of the world? On the cross. Was that symbolic? If you think Jesus is speaking symbolically here when He says that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood, then you must also conclude that Jesus' death on the cross was symbolic...it wasn't really Jesus hanging up there...it was symbolic flesh and symbolic blood.

Jesus is clearly talking about the flesh that He gave for the life of the world...He did that on the cross. Those who believe He is talking symbolically here in John 6, have a real problem when it comes to John 6:51. Did Jesus give His real flesh and blood for the life of the world, or was it only His symbolic flesh and blood?

In the words of Catholic author Flannery O'Connor...

“I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater… She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual…. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the most portable person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it. That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.” - Flannery O'Connor

The Saints are amazing this year....the football team I mean. Whats up with praying to those other guys in heaven?

2009-10-05T10:22:00.002-05:00

1 Timothy says that Jesus is our sole mediator. Aren't we going against the Bible if we pray to Mary and the Saints?

1 Tim 2:5 reads as follows: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus..." "You see," we Catholics are told, "there is only one mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ. Therefore, praying to the saints goes against the Bible because you are making them mediators between God and man, you are diminishing Jesus' role as the sole mediator!"

Is that an appropriate interpretation of that passage? No, it's not and let's see why not.

In the O.T. we see that Moses, Abraham, and Job interceded on behalf of others... that's mediating between God and man. We know that it is okay to ask others here on earth to pray and intercede for us.... that's mediating between God and man. So, I think, once again, we have a situation where a passage of the Bible is being misinterpreted and misunderstood.

There is only one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, but as members of the Body of Christ, He allows us to share in His mediation.

Also, Scripture tells us that we have only one foundation, Jesus Christ (1 Cor 3:11); but, Scripture tells us that there is more than one foundation (Eph 2:19-20). Scripture tells us that we have only one Lord, Jesus Christ (Eph 4:4-5); but, Scripture tells us there is more than one lord (Rev 19:16). Scripture tells us that we have only one Judge, Jesus Christ (James 4:12); but, Scripture tells us there is more than one judge (1 Cor 6:2).

Contradictions in Scripture? No! Not when these passages are all properly understood in context. Jesus is the only foundation; Jesus is the only Lord; and Jesus is the only Judge. But, we are members of Jesus' Body. Therefore, we are able, according to the graces given by Christ, to share in Jesus' role as foundation, as lord, and as judge, and in other aspects of Christ, as well. Another example, as a father I share in God's role as Father, by His grace. And, so also, we, and the saints in Heaven, and the angels in Heaven, can share in Christ's role as Mediator.

Make sure you actually read all those passages. Get fluent in Scripture! Saint Jerome tells us that 'Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." So get crackin!

Thanks again Catholics Come Home