Talk #4 concentrates on our desires. What do we most hope for in our lives? How do we come to understand what and who we are called to do and become?

After some reflection time do the following:

1) Listen to the following presentation by Mike Hayes at your leisure. Listen HERE.

2) Take some quiet time, about an hour, to think about how you pray or connect with God in your life. A good way to organize this time might be suggested as:

a) What have I really longed for in my life in the past? How is that different today? What experiences have a I had that have been valuable and what has left me feeling empty?
b) What role does God have in helping me name my deepest desires?
c) Have I prayed about what I desire? How have I done this? What longings to I bring to God and what do I ask for or experience?
d) How do I plan to continue with my discernment process over the rest of the course of my life?
e) Where do I hope to go from here and what experience of the week am I most thankful for?

This week’s prayer resource: The Examen of Consciousness

Talk #3 concentrates on our own particular story of faith. We try to examine where our beliefs came from and where they have developed and how they are still growing.

Some time this week do the following:

1) Listen to the following presentation by Karen Wahl at your leisure. CLICK HERE

2) Take some quiet time, about an hour, to think about your own spiritual history. A good way to organize this time might be suggested as:
a) How did I see God as a child? How did my despiction of God change or get challenged as I grew older and where is my faith today? How different or similar has it been over the long haul?
b) What is the most exciting part of my relationship with God? What am I really thankful for?
c) What is my relationship with God like on a daily basis? Do I check in with God or is God a convenient friend? Examine where you see God presently working in your life this day.
d) What challenges me in my relationship with God? How can I develop this relationship better? What questions might I have for my coach so that I may develop my prayer life better?
e) Where do I hope to go from here and what experience of the week am I most thankful for?

Another online prayer resource is Pray As You Go - an audio podcast on prayer.

Talk #2 concentrates on how we come to name what is important in our lives. We try to examine where our beliefs came from and where they have developed and how they are still growing. Where do we often ignore what we find to be important in favor of other less important things?

After some quiet time do the following:

1) Listen to the following presentation by Kelly Villella at your leisure.

2) Take some quiet time, about an hour, to think about what you consider important in your life. A good way to organize yourself might be suggested as:

a) How have I come to name the important things in my life? Who has helped me decide this and form my opinions about what is important? Have the important things changed over time or remained the same?
b) What do I most cherish? An experience? A friend? A possession? What am I really thankful for?
c) What is God’s role in helping me name what is most important to me?
d) What SHOULD be important to me that isn’t on my radar screen? What challenges me in discerning what is important? How can I better discern and make better choices about priorities? What questions might I have for my coach in allowing God to be part of my discernment process better?
e) Where do I hope to go from here and what experience of the retreat am I most thankful for?

Another prayer resource is Pray the News: by the Carmelite Sisters. We connect with other important events in the news and offer our prayers to the world.

O happy Lent! There’s speculation that B16 will expand use of the Tridentine Mass, although not in an either/or proposition.

I’ve experienced the Tridentine Mass several times, complete with chapel veil, and it was honestly some of the humblest, most spiritually intense moments of my life. The Latin Rite illustrated in a way I previously had never experienced the absolute majesty and stunningness of the concept of God-made-man. It caused me to reflect on the amazing belief that Christ not only died for us, but that He deigns to become part of our very bodies again and again through the Eucharist.

Unfortunately, the nearest Tridentine rite involves about two and a half hours of driving. It is my prayer that it becomes far more available, as I think it will hugely increase piety and a new appreciation for Christ– especially for a generation that has only heard about this liturgy from our parents.

Though noting positive results too, Archbishop Ranjith said that “the post-conciliar reform of the liturgy has not been able to achieve the expected goals of spiritual and missionary renewal in the Church.”

“The churches have become empty,” the 59-year-old said. “Liturgical freewheeling has become the order of the day, and the true meaning and significance of that which is celebrated has been obscured.

“One has to, then, begin wondering if the reform process had in fact been handled correctly.”

Archbishop Ranjith recalled that the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the liturgy does not allow individual priests to modify the Mass.

“In the celebration of the Novus Ordo we have to be very serious about what we do on the altar,” the Vatican official explained. “I cannot be a priest who dreams in his sleep about what I will do at the Mass the following day, walk up to the altar and start celebrating with all kinds of novel self-created rubrics and actions.

“The holy Eucharist belongs to the Church. Hence, it has a meaning of its own which cannot be left to the idiosyncrasies of the single celebrant.”

Asked about a return to the Tridentine Mass or just a reform of the Novus Ordo, Archbishop Ranjith said: “An ‘either-or’ attitude would unnecessarily polarize the Church, whereas charity and pastoral concern should be the motivating factors. If the Holy Father so desires, both could coexist.”

Talk #1 concentrates on prayer and the Holy Spirit in our lives. How are we staying connected to God?

Some time this week do the following:

1) Listen to the following presentation by Andrea Spooner at your leisure. CLICK HERE FOR THE PRESENTATION. NOTE: THIS IS A LARGE FILE AND MAY TAKE 3-4 MINUTES TO DOWNLOAD!

2) Take some quiet time, about half an hour each day, to think about how you pray or connect with God in your life. A good way to organize yourself might be suggested as:

a) How have I prayed in the past? What experiences have I had that have been valuable and what has left me feeling empty?
b) Our God is a God who wants to re-connect with us. How does that make me feel knowing that God always wants to connect with me? Do I honestly feel God’s presence in my life or is it foreign to me?
c) How do I pray? Do I pray at all? What methods do I use when I pray? Do I know any methods of prayer at all? How can I learn new ways to pray?
d) How do I hope to be praying? Do I have a craving for more silence, more interaction, or more explicit tangible experiences of God in my life? What should I do about this? Where do I find myself praying? In church? In nature? Walking? Kneeling?
e) Where do I hope to go from here and what experience of the week am I most thankful for?

Another prayer resource Sacred Space: an online prayer guide from the Irish Jesuits. Check out their Lent page as well as the daily reflection.

Dear glitterwriter,

It’s difficult to give supporting details of all the reasons I’m suspicious of the Virgin Birth in one post, so why don’t I just provide an outline of my arguments, and then we can take on each one bit-by-bit? (I promise my next posts will be much shorter)

1. First, I am a pretty darn observant Catholic, but my status as a believer has nothing to do with the validity of my arguments. They should stand or fall on their own. Second, dogma changes. We hate to admit it, but it does. And the Popes have made quite clear that faith and reason should never contradict, so…

2. The Virgin birth is a common mythological motif that was told all over the place in the Ancient Middle-East and Ancient Rome. Religious belief at that time held that a virgin birth signified the birth of a hero. Just like the star stopping over Christ’s manger probably didn’t actually happen, the virgin birth was probably originally meant to be understood as a symbol.

3. Back then, people obviously didn’t understand genetics. So, it makes sense that folks used an analogy from agriculture: inseminate comes from the word seed, as does semen, and it was believed that a “seed” was “planted” in the woman’s womb. Therefore, the man did all the genetic “work” while the woman gave the seed a place to grow. Of course, we now know both men and women contribute their chromosomes. So, either Mary’s biology was somehow completely different from any other human’s and she contributed no DNA to Jesus, or else Jesus had some weird half-God, half-woman DNA. And what does half-God DNA look like? And if he did have half-God or even all-God DNA—let’s say he was “artificially inseminated” into Mary—then how could he be fully human?

4. Original sin is the most important reason why people believed Jesus had to be born of a virgin who was immaculately conceived, i.e. Mary. Neither Mary nor Jesus are believed to have had original sin. That’s fine. But why is a virgin birth necessary for this? Original sin was once believed to be spread biologically, so Jesus had to be from a Virgin Birth and Mary had to be sinless: ergo, no sin. But do we really believe, now that we know how genetics works, that there’s a DNA molecule for original sin? And if we looked at Jesus’ DNA, we’d be able to say “Wow! Look at that! No Original Sin Gene! Must have been a virgin birth from someone immaculately conceived!” I think, like many modern theologians have speculated, it’s easier to understand original sin as either sociological or as the natural, Darwinian selfishness of all organisms (that’s not one gene, by the way). Could Jesus have not had these traits? You bet. And you wouldn’t even need a virgin birth.

5. Why does Mary’s virginity have to be literal? In the same way that the body and blood of Christ change substance but their accidents remain the same, (that is, according to Aquinas, we eat the real body and blood in the “accidents” of bread and wine, not the “accidents” of actual Jesus-skin), why can’t Mary have lost her “accidental” virginity to Joseph but have kept the “substance” of it? Forcing belief in the actual virgin birth seems as spurious as forcing belief we are eating actual, crunchy human skin at the Eucharist.

6. I have no problem still believing Mary was special, even a virgin-in-substance (ala Aquinas) and that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. The Virgin Birth honestly just doesn’t seem that necessary, except as a powerful symbol.

That’s a lot. Let me know what you think!

So, I’m new to this blogging thing, and I apologize for any neophyte mistakes I make along the way. But here I am, and my name is notacommie, which is because, you know, I’m not a communist. Well, not really.

My girlfriend (who’s Catholic, by the way–though I have something to say to glitterwriter’s post) tells me that I’m actually a moderate and not a liberal, but I think I’m pretty darn liberal and here’s why: my definitions of liberal, moderate, and conservative all deal with how much change you think should happen. Conservatives are pretty okay with the way things are (or were), moderates want some change, and I want a lotta change. So that makes me liberal.

BUT I love Adoration, and I go to confession regularly, and I try to go to Mass often (not quite daily, because that involves waking up early, but in the summer, I’m pretty good about getting to Mass quite a few times a week). So I’m also pretty orthodox about a lot of things, I suppose, but then I’m not too (I’m not sure about the Virgin birth and a lot of other dogma, but we’ll get to that later).

Anyways, enough about me. Fascinating point, glitterwriter. You know, my whole family are a bunch of cradle Catholics, but my brother, er, we’ll call him Luke, is now an avowed agnostic in the full-traditional-sense. He simly doesn’t think there’s enough evidence to believe anything–it’s not that he hasn’t made up his mind: he has. He thinks you just can’t know. So, fine. He’s my brother, I love him, and he doesn’t go to Mass, and there are other things I need to worry about, like why my circuitbreaker always seems to short out just on the circuit that runs my AC. (Landlords!)

But things get tricky when we’re at Mass together for family events. He goes up to get the Eucharist, you see, because he says the tradition is meaingful to him, and to placate our mother, who really doesn’t want to believe her son has left Holy Mother Church. I’ve told “Luke” I’m uncomfortable with him recieving the Eucharist becuase he doesn’t believe it’s really the Body of Christ. It’d be one thing if he were experiencing a period of doubt and recieved anyways–that’s fine, we all go through that. But he flat out does not believe.

He says it doesn’t matter, and I guess I’m not that worried about it, because Jesus, if I may pun, is one tough cracker. (sorry, sorry). If he can survive all he’s been through, he can handle being in my brother’s apostate tummy. Still, it seems quite direspectful. How do you think I should approach him and, for that matter, my mother?

Oh, and glitterwriter, I would say that you and your boyfriend are doing the right thing not to recieve Communion. I know I’m supposed to be all liberal and say everything’s fine, but belief is belief, And most Christian faiths believe very different things about the Eucharist. I believe that that is actually the Body and Blood of Christ, and unless you’re saying it is too, I’m not going to consume it, and unless you think it is too, I’m not comfortable with you consuming. Unless you’re my brother and our tyrannical mom gets in the way.

Help! People! Jesus, my argumentative, self-righteous brother, and my passive-aggressive mother all hang in the balance! I need your advice!

This past Saturday was a celebration of gay pride in Boston. The day began with the 29th annual interfaith prayer service. What made this year’s service different from previous years was the presence of Fr. Walter Cuenin who preached at the gathering. It is believed that this is the first time a Roman Catholic priest spoke at this prayer service. I was heartened to read the article in the Boston Globe that spoke of the stand that Fr. Cuenin took by taking part in this service.
Without speaking out against Church teaching he was able to reach out to a community of people who feel alienated from the Church they have been a part of. Fr. Cuenin will likely face negative repercussions for his willingness to stand up for the human rights of all people but that does not stop him. The Bishops’ document “Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children” speaks to the need to protect the human rights of homosexual persons and that is what Fr. Cuenin is doing. Vatican II calls all Catholics to read the signs of the times and to be open to the movement of the Spirit. As we learn more about homosexuality it is essential for us to follow the lead of people such as Fr. Cuenin and continue to discern how the Spirit is calling us to grow in our understandings of the human person. “Always Our Children” calls all Catholics to “welcome homosexual persons into the faith community, and seek out those on the margins.” Fr. Cuenin did just this by his presence and words at the gay pride service.

Bishop Fabien Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska recently had this to say about the national review board for the protection of children (which was established by the USCCB).

Some woman named Patricia O’Donnell Ewers, who is the Chair of something called “A National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People”, has said that her Board “calls for strong fraternal correction of the Diocese of Lincoln.” The Diocese of Lincoln has nothing to be corrected for, since the Diocese of Lincoln is and has always been in full compliance with all laws of the Catholic Church and with all civil laws. Furthermore, Ewers and her Board have no authority in the Catholic Church and the Diocese of Lincoln does not recognize them as having any significance.

It is well known that some of the members of Ewers’ Board are ardent advocates of partial birth abortion, other abortions, human cloning, and other moral errors. It is understandable then how such persons could dislike the Diocese of Lincoln, which upholds the moral teaching of the Catholic Church.

The words attributed to Ewers seem to confirm the suspicion that the members of her Board are unfamiliar with Catholic teachings, Catholic ecclesiology, and even the basic rudiments of the Catholic Catechism. Rather than concerning themselves with the Diocese of Lincoln about which they appear completely ignorant, Ewers and her colleagues would occupy themselves in a better way by learning something about the Catholic religion and the traditions and doctrines and laws of the Catholic Church.

The Diocese of Lincoln does not see any reason for the existence of Ewers and her organization.

Now this Bishop, in my opinion, with all due respect, might have his Mitre on a bit too tight. What is he thinking making a statement like this? Is there anyone out there who thinks that this board is a bad idea?

Many bloggers out there are stupidly praising him too! Has everyone gone off the deep end?

Lincoln has a high rate of vocations–although I’m not sure how many actually get ordained. I’m also not sure how many of their seminarians are healthy and would even make good priests as opposed to men who simply are power hungry and want to call attention to themselves.

Thoughts?

While we are looking for two new bloggers to start a new month of blogging…I’d like to hear from y’all about topics you’d like to see covered. So feel free to respond below.

I also will be posting various items of interest for comments from all of you until we get started DIABLOGGING again.

Thanks,
Mike Hayes