Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who’s got the best hurricane photo going.
1.
SuperHusband & I went to the state Catholic Charismatic Conference this weekend. Friday evening began with such a promising start that we dragged the kids along Saturday so we could both attend all day. Yes, I bribed them. They seem to be okay with that.
I don’t actually have a charismatic bent, but it’s comfortable enough once you’ve traveled in Evangelical circles for a while. Here’s what we liked:
- All the songs were about God, and directed to Him.
- The guest speaker taught the Catholic faith.
- The people were friendly.
Yep. I will totally turn out for that.
2.
The retreat leader was Fr. Peter Sanders from New Pentecost Catholic Ministries. The topic was “The Character of Christ”, the focus being on using the cardinal virtues to conform your life to Christ. Knowing nothing else about the guy than what I saw and heard Friday and Saturday, I’d recommend him if you are looking for a guest speaker. 100% Catholic, no patience for New Age nonsense, and no patience for the showboating that can swirl around certain Charismatic circles (not something I’ve ever seen from a local, FYI).
Recall that SuperHusband reverted to the Church less than two years ago, though he’d been attending Catholic churches for all his vacation/travel church attendance for years prior. This was the first time he’d ever heard of the cardinal virtues. Next day at dinner he was telling some friends about the talks. “What a great framework! Apparently it’s this well-established thing. Very useful. I wonder why I’ve never heard a sermon about it? You’d think it would be the kind of thing priests would teach in their homilies.”
I’ve been Catholic much longer, and I think I’ve heard a priest mention the virtues in passing one time. Note to priests and deacons: “The Cardinal Virtues” isn’t being overdone these days. You could preach about that. Thanks.
3.
Because homework is not his charism, our boy is currently living the iPod-free lifestyle. Which means he needs some kind of other music to listen to when he does dishes. So he’s taken to composing fake VBS theme songs. Yesterday’s was, “I’m a Little Bitty Platypus in a Great Big World”. Took me hours to get the tune out of my head.
3.5
I went crazy and volunteered my own house for the annual homeschool All Saints Party (long story), because certain of my children have been planning their costumes for months. Eldest daughter did a saint-change on account of how even though it’s very cool to carry around eyeballs on a platter, St. Lucy is just too easy to guess. She’s going with a more obscure saint. And the youngest is of course going to be
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Well, that’s all for this week. Tuesday’s Link Day, which is when instead of e-mailing fun things I ought to post but forget to, you just tell the world all by yourself. Entirely optional. I’m pretty swamped with real life but I’ll try to post at least once more this week as I work through my review-backlog. Have a great week.
st. monica mother of st. augistine of HIPPO!
Siblings aren’t supposed to guess!
By an interesting coincidence, I just finished talking about the cardinal virtues in my Ethics class. This being Texas, I get quite a few Catholics, but they usually haven’t heard of them, which long ago used to surprise me, because they’re in the Bible, at Wisdom 8:7. But I also use IV Maccabees (which is an old Jewish philosophical treatise on the cardinal virtues, which is based on the stories from II Maccabees) to make some points about them, and I started realizing that most of my students, even the Catholic ones, don’t know who the Maccabees are. (In fairness, while the Jewish students usually can tell me, they’re usually pretty hazy about details.) And these are fun and exciting parts of the Catholic heritage; it was quite startling to have to adjust to it at first.
Brandon, where and how were you educated that you *had* heard of these things prior to your own college ethics class? I can’t think of a single non-catechist, other than a few homeschooling parents and a philosophy professor or two, and one SCA history/ethics geek, that I’d expect would know the answers.
(And I can think of a number of catechists that I would expect would not know of these things — not out of negligence, but because who is there to teach us?)
I was almost going to say that I didn’t know — I grew up Southern Baptist, not Catholic, so I wouldn’t have had the book of Wisdom going for me on the Cardinal Virtues, for instance, and wouldn’t have grown up with a Bible that had two whole books named after the Maccabees — but then I realized I probably can pin the Cardinal Virtues down pretty well: C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity has a chapter on them, and that’s almost certainly the place I would have first come across them, since I read everything by Lewis I could get my hands on in middle school and high school. With the Maccabees I don’t know, but it might have come up in several different ways (I had an interest in high school in mythology and comparative religion; and it might also have come up in some bible study somewhere).
I suspect this contributed to my naivete — having grown up Evangelical Southern Baptist I had learned what the cardinal virtues were, and so was caught completely off guard by the fact that Catholics, of all people, often didn’t even have a hazy notion. (I don’t think, however, that Southern Baptists generally pick this up; but Evangelicals often read C. S. Lewis, so many have at least been exposed to one brief discussion of the cardinal virtues. I’ve often found that having grown up Evangelical was good preparation for becoming Catholic, but I think on issues like this picking it up had more to do with my own tastes and inclinations. But it’s notable that it was available to be picked up.)
Ah. That explains it. Yes, CS Lewis does seem to be the bridge into the Catholic Church for a bazillion evangelicals. Even those that just stay standing on the bridge end up with a look inside.
I think sooner or later most of my male+intellectual+evangelical friends go that route, reading Lewis and the like.
And yes, it’s there. For people who read books, all the important stuff has been available for the taking for a long time. Some of my favorite books (popular works, readable) on the faith are mid-20th-century or earlier.
It does create the weird disconnect, like the conversation I once had with a Catholic priest who was sure I couldn’t know anything about the Catholic faith because I didn’t have any formal training, and I suppose he was sure it wasn’t being gotten at his parish either. But like you say, reading. Makes a difference.
She could always come to Yule event dressed like St. Lucia with the platter… 😉
Here is my link this week… people dressed in costume? Technically yes but not for Halloween… this was from the folk village in Suwon… the Farmer’s Dance is always my favorite to see. The audio from my camera doesn’t do it justice though…
http://youtu.be/ko7l9bvuHwQ
I am totally in love with Korea thanks to your pics of the folk history center. I had no idea. I guess I should have known. But I didn’t.