Author: JenniferFitz

I {heart} Francisco

Because of stuff like this:

Hat tip to Fr. Z, who gets accused of many things, for calling off the dogs on his end of the liturgical spectrum.  And for getting our brains on straight, thank Margaret Rose Realy, who’s posted the Thursday prayer for priests.

Let me just point out that even though I can be the worst of complainers (and I’m sure others find plenty to complain about in me, rightly so), from the day these guys begin to answer their vocation, they spend the whole rest of their lives under constant attack — sometimes from us in the pews, always from the one who hates them most.

Pope Francis

Why would the new pope begin his pontificate by a) praying for his predecessor, and then b) asking us to pray for him?  Because it’s what is needed.

 

Monday Thoughts: The Good Life

1. Study Shows Catechesis Helps, But Not Quite Enough

Here’s a nice article from the National Catholic Register about the differences of opinion on Church doctrine and social issues among Catholic who attend Mass, and those who don’t. That’s not how they describe the article, but it is one thing the study demonstrates. The good news:  Catholics who say they go to Mass every Sunday are also much more likely to say they agree with the Church on counter-cultural issues.  The bad news: Depending on the hot-button topic, between 1/3 and 1/2 of Catholics attending Mass weekly dissent from Church teaching.

(In contrast, this isn’t, say, the good-natured non-Catholic spouse who comes to Mass as a kindness to the Catholic spouse.  These adults who both claim to be Catholic, AND claim to attend Mass every Sunday.)

So.  In the pews next to you on Sunday, think of the three people you shake hands with during the Sign of Peace.  If yours is a typical parish described by this study, you can assume you’ve shaken hands with at least one person who does not in fact believe and accept the Catholic faith.

Thinking of traveling to the far corners of the earth to evangelize?  Your parish pews are mission territory.

2.

In choosing best friends, if you can find one whose besetting sins are utterly different from your own . . . golden.  Just golden.

3.

A Sunday well-spent is truly a foretaste of Heaven.  More coming later. Partly in response to this post.

4.

I read and thoroughly enjoyed The King’s Gambit by John McNichol.  My Amazon review is up, and when I get around to it, I’ll post something longer here at the blog. As always on my Catholic-genre youth fiction reviews, let us remember to ask ourselves: Do my tastes run to Thomas Hardy, or Hardy Boys?  I’m firmly in the latter camp.  I like my adult beverages some combination of bitter, dry, and rarefied; I like my fiction just the opposite.

5.

I can’t remember what else.  Have a great week.  Happy Conclave-Watching!

Things I’d Rather Not Think About

1. My CatholicMom.com article for March is up.  It’s on homeschooling when you struggle with self-discipline. It’s one of those topics where I wish I could be showing off my tremendous compassion for those poor people who just can’t seem to get it together.

I drew the line at posting a snapshot of my kitchen for the photo.  Instead, you get a picture of men hitting each other with sticks.  Same concept, seemlier illustration.

2. Have I mentioned how much it irritates me to have to follow the entirety of the Catholic faith, and not just bits and pieces? I assume others hate it just as much as I do, because so far no one has commented on my post this month at New Evangelizers. In which I take up the topic of whether Cardinal Mahoney ought to attend the conclave, and how that question fits in to a wider question of mercy and evangelization*.  And good administration.  You knew that was going to be fit in somehow.

3. I set the kitchen timer to tell me when to pull SuperHusband’s dress shirt out of the dryer. (Yes.  Dryer.  I know.)  It worked.  I just went and pulled it out and hung it up right away.  I can be very diligent about laundry, IF I’m supposed to be doing the taxes.

4. Taxes, episode 2.  That’s today.  Backside of the 1040, and yeah, it’s the Schedule A I don’t feel like dealing with.  Tired of being responsible.  I get tired of that very quickly.  But I’ll do it, of course. There’s nothing like, “We will seize your house if you don’t mail in this worksheet” to really motivate a lady.  UPDATE: DONE. WOOHOO!

5.  About that NE post.  Whenever I think “conclave”, the plot for a murder mystery pops into my head.  It’s a good thing other people volunteered to answer questions at Dorian Speed’s ElectingthePope.net.

6.  Please pray for the repose of the soul of Mr. W, our elderly farming neighbor who passed away peacefully in his sleep.  Funeral was packed, SuperHusband tells me, not a surprise.  Then pray for this family, who would be very grateful for any number of miracles.

7.  You can discourage the Friday meat demon by quick throwing all your meaty leftovers into the freezer Thursday night.  (Or give to dog if close to spoiling, but not quite inedible yet.)  Pull them out and return to fridge Saturday, when the coast is clear.

And something I’m happy think about:

Señora M., my catechist friend from down the road, reports a big milestone: She led her first English-language religious ed class the other night.  We first met in the Our Lady of Guadalupe room at the big Advent event in December, and since then she’s been helping out as a classroom assistant at her parish.  She phoned me this morning, and I made it through the greetings in Spanish, and then I had to plead, “No entiendo.” She gave me the big news in English.  But she isn’t giving up on me that easy, she’s determined to get my Spanish into working order.  I’m honored.

*Some people equate “mercy” with “giving them a pass.”  Those who have been privy to my ire know that the moment you start bungling on sexual abuse prevention and prosecution, is the moment I become a lady you do not like.  Do not confuse mercy with tolerance.  It’s not about overlooking the trivial flubs.  It’s not about saying, “Really it wasn’t so bad.”  Mercy only has meaning there where we want to give it least.

7 Takes: Some books you can have, and others you can only want with earnest.

1. My book as available for sale!  That is, you can’t actually *have* the book, but you can pay for it.  So I guess it’s not so much a sale, yet, as a series of financial transactions straight out of 2nd 3rd year financial accounting, which is the year when nothing is ever just bought and sold, but always, always, passes through a whole series of special accounts that make perfect sense, I promise, if you can just keep ’em lined up right.

I think sometime this summer it graduates to an Accounting 101 exercise, where you can just pay money and have a book, done.

2. My favorite review-book supplier, MTF, seems to feel I need to get into the Year of Faith thing in a serious way. I broke down when I realized that there was no way I could ever remember on page 962 of Introduction to Catholicism for Adults exactly how I’d felt about Chapter 1, no matter how many little notes I penciled into the back inside cover.  So I’m reviewing it a chapter (or so) at a time, over at the Happy Catholic Bookshelf.  Chapter 1 is up.  Hint: So far, so good.

3.  Also in my candy box, as I mentioned before, was the 7th Edition of their Daily Roman Missal.  I broke Lisa M.’s blog by posting about three-posts-in-one, but my review is up.  With some notes on how you actually use such a thing for teaching kids.  I don’t think the book fairy knew that I am the kind of catechist who reads from this exact book during class, but you had probably guessed that about me a while ago.

4. The post you really want to read at AC this week is this one.

5. I’m trying to improve my Spanish, which is more difficult if you don’t have cable TV.  So I’ve resorted to mining the Spanish-language section of my local Catholic bookstore.  I think you could make a sort of Catechist Spanish Language Evaluation test that grades you by which sections of El Youcat you can read, and which ones leave you absolutely puzzled.  To give you an idea of my junior-linguist credentials, the bold print on Youcat #374 is no trouble at all.  In contrast, that Blaise Pascal quote on the sidebar of p. 191? No comprendo. (I’m okay with that.  I don’t think I much understand Pascal in English, either.)

6. I wish all catechisms came with flip-book animation on the bottom right corner.  Sometimes I just watch the guy doing cartwheels in Spanish.

7.  What I want to do is phone my Spanish-speaking catechist friend and arrange a play date for tomorrow.  What I should do is start on my taxes.  I think?

Bleg – Starting High School Homeschooling Mid-Year

From a reader in the comboxes:

Hi Jennifer,
We have decided to start homeschooling mid year for our son who is in 10th grade. He previously attended a private high school.
I am a newby and i am looking for structure without stress.
Any ideas?
peace~anne

Any suggestions?  Post in the combox or at your place and leave Anne a link so she can find you, please! 

Rebecca Frech I am talking to you.  Bearing, you’ve got a mind from these things, speak up. 

Everyone, Who else should we tag? Darwins?  Brandon? Anna? Christian? Anyone?  Bueller?

***

My thought would be to take his course load from school, and do a subject-by-subject picking of a decent text book?  Something like this:

Math:  Pick an appealing program, ideally something that uses DVD or computer instruction so you aren’t doing it yourself.  Figure out where to start mid-year by doing sampling of the end-of-chapter questions until it gets to new stuff.  (You may need to back-up and review select topics from early chapters that the school was going to introduce later in the year.)  If money is tight, math books is where I’d risk the biggest investment, if you come across something that is good but expensive.

Science:  Do part 2 of his current-year subject (biology probably?), using a text book that meets his general aptitude.  As you read reviews, you’ll hear about some that are more rigorous, some that are “too easy”, etc.  Try to aim for a ‘just right’ for his science abilities, challenging enough to be interesting, but not overwhelming.   If he’s already in chemistry, either continue with it if he’s strong in the subject and knew what was going on, but if he was flailing, abort that mission and proceed with a different subject for the second semester — either morphing in “physical sciences” or going with something like astronomy (just do the first semester of a year-long program.).  I would not try to remediate Chemistry mid-year.  This is the second subject I’d invest in, in terms of quality of materials.

History: Pick up where he left off, time-wise, and just keep on moving.  This is low-stress.  Pick a book or books he likes, and have him write a paper a week (the infamous 5 paragraphs) on what he studied that week.  If there’s no final exam (for example if you just do library method, where grab books on topic and read ’em), have him do a term paper or oral presentation for his final.  If he was doing the government/economics two-semester combo, do the other subject this semester.

English:  If he was doing a particular study (“British Literature” “English Literature”, etc), you can keep going with that, or morph into a generic “English 2”.  You’re looking for a combination of literature study (reading good stuff and thinking intelligently about it), plus vocabulary practice from a vocab book in preparation for the SAT, and a grammar book and/or composition book to work the writing/editing skills.  You may be able to just continue at home with whatever vocab book he was using at school.  I’d look around at the various curriculum providers (Kolbe, MODG, etc etc.) and see what appeals to you and fits the budget.

Cheap alternative:  Go to your library and check out Grammar Girl or an equivalent; one good beginner’s writing book written for aspiring writers (watch for foul language, there are some excellent writing books that have a touch of potty mouth); and a pile o’ classics that are of interest, and work through those for 2nd semester.  There are also some curriculum out there such as the Literacy through The Lord of the Rings and so forth, that build a one-year or one-semester literature curriculum around a single work or genre. (I have not reviewed the curriculum, FYI.)  If you find one that strikes his fancy, this could be a good way to finish out English 2 and cultivate an appreciation of literature that doesn’t involve too much penance.

Foreign Language: Your #1 concern is meeting the college-entrance foreign-language requirements.  So take into account what he’s already studied, how much time he has left, and figure out whether you need to continue with current language, or if you can start a new one, or if this is a subject you don’t need to worry about this semester.  Pick a program that appeals to you and roughly matches up to his current level.  It’s okay to do, say, “Latin 1” or “Italian 3” spread out over odd-semesters, as long as he completes the necessary units of study.  So don’t panic over this one.

You could also wait a few months and do your 2nd-semester foreign language in ‘summer school’.  Language-learning can be brain-intensive, and some students benefit from focusing 100% on the language for a time, and essentially completing a semester or year’s worth of classes in a shorter more concentrated period.  Picking the exact right book/program is not important in 10th grade second semester.  Language-learning is cumulative in a networked, whole-brain way.  Whatever he uses will benefit him, and you can refine your choice next year.  If you aren’t sure what to do, beg a free loaner book off someone to start with, and invest after you are confident of your choice.

Religion:  If you’re looking for suggestions, give us some more details on what he’s done already?  Kids are all over the map in terms of background knowledge, interests and abilities, and you want to strike a good balance in difficulty-level and topics, in order to keep it interesting and appropriate.

Other electives:  What can you knock out this spring that you’ve got to do in order to graduate / get into college, without making anyone cry?  My thought would be to pursue a hobby that he loves and would consider rewarding, ie if he loves to draw than take an art class, or if he plays sports, join a team and give him credit for PE. But I wouldn’t pursue the extras this semester when you are transitioning if it’s going to stress you out or make him miserable.  A man should be made miserable in moderate doses.

If there’s a pre-packaged curriculum that just seems like the perfect thing, go with it.  If not, compile your course of study a piece at a time.  My advice would be, when you read about the curriculum, does it make sense to you?  Can you get your head around it?  You’ve got so much suddenly on your plate, this is probably not the time to slog through an academic approach that is going to stretch your brain to snapping point.  Look for stuff that makes you go, “Oh yes, that! Perfect!”

***

Okay, that’s my guess.   Other people, correct me, hmmn?   Any personal experiences to share?  Cautionary tales?  Bits of encouragement?

Seven Takes: Life, Death, Warped Things Governments Do

No, I’m not back to regular blogging.  But I had approximately seven things to say, and it’s a Friday, so that makes this Seven Quick Takes, right?

1.  Why yes, that was us you saw at the National Vocations Meet-Up March for Life.

Low point:  Children in tears due to experience of being a southern-person whose mother does not know how to dress them for cold weather.

High point: Making a brief retreat into the National Gallery to go potty, rest, and warm-up, then re-emerging to a gentle made-for-TV snow flurry, taking up our signs, and falling into line with these guys.  Who sing beautifully.

Weird Point: The Metronome, as my 3rd-grader calls it, is determined not to take my money.  I kept trying to pay full fare, but the machines refused me at every turn. Fortunately the kind metro-ladies are apparently used to clueless tourists with five children in tow, and sorted me out with a combination of generosity and exasperation that I think must be the hallmark of the metro system.

2. Petersburg National Battlefield is a good place to run the kids and get your history fix all at once.  The ranger does come around checking to see if you’ve paid.

–> Touring tip:  Always ask if you’re supposed to pay.  Because they expect you to pay, even if they never ever tell you that.  And the ranger lady has a gun.  Luckily I had asked.

Discussion Question: Any Particular Reason the Union had to engage in war?  Why not just let the Confederacy secede, and work on patching things up diplomatically?  Put another way:  Did the US Civil War meet just war criteria for the Union?

My boy says yes.  I’m playing neutral professor-person.

In other US history topics: The essay “Smuggler Nation” in this month’s Harpers is really quite good. One more shovel of fodder for that pirates-vs.-privateers topic that’s always coming up around this household.

Our other airline-miles magazine subscription, Western Horseman ran a great piece a month or so ago on the troubles ranchers along the US-Mexican border are having with Mexican smugglers, and the lack of cooperation from some of the US border patrol in keeping their lands safe.  I can’t seem to find an article link.  But let me just say right now, that if you purchase approximately one plane ticket every five years, and want a family-friendly periodical to purchase with your miles before they expire, WH is the one.

3.  My son objects to the strong language in Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter Views the Body.  It pleases me greatly to discover I’ve reared a middle-schooler who complains about words like “damn” and “hell” improperly used.

4.  My January New Evangelizers column was 10 Ways to Support Evangelization Even When Your Parish is Falling Apart.

I picked this photo.

Apparently it grabbed someone’s attention, because the Catholic Vitamins people invited me to do an interview for their podcast.  Which is exciting, in an I-hope-my-phone-battery-doesn’t-die-while-we’re-talking kind of way.  I think I can bribe my kids into being quiet with the promise of Krispy Kreme donuts.  Also, presumably this is just one step on the long road towards true fame? By which I mean, of course, being on Rhett & Link’s Good Mythical Morning? My son doesn’t think I’ll ever be quite that good, but he puts on an encouraging face all the same.

5.  Helen Alvare nails it on the head in her analysis of the new HSS regulations.

Let me observe once again that there would be no moral objection at all if the government merely required employers to pay workers a sum sufficient to pay for the desired contraceptive services — for example, by putting the necessary funds into a healthcare savings account that employees could then use to purchase supplemental insurance if they so chose.

And how exactly is it “freedom of religion” if insurance companies and self-insurance administrators must sell (or give away, per the new iteration of regulations) products they may themselves object to?  Is there no legal right to sell insurance for some but not all health care services?  Will insurers eventually be required to pay for euthanasia as well?  Apparently there is a religious test required in order to enter the insurance industry.

6.  Speakin’ of that constitution thing . . . my boy observes that 2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides.  (Wikipedia’s citing 60%.) Which puts a certain corner of the culture in the odd position of wanting to outlaw something they’re trying to legalize.  Apparently depressed and disabled people should die, but only at the hands of licensed death-care providers?

If you aren’t from Gunlandia, you probably should not visit gunmemes.com. It takes a special red-state redness to enjoy.

7.  You know you live in a warped culture when you feel the need to clarify something like this: “For the record, I’m 100% opposed to all forms of murder and suicide.”

Ooh, oooh, want me to exasperate everybody in one single catechism quote? How about this one?  Enough to make everyone you know get all squirmy-wormy:

2269 The fifth commandment forbids doing anything with the intention of indirectly bringing about a person’s death. The moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger.

The acceptance by human society of murderous famines, without efforts to remedy them, is a scandalous injustice and a grave offense. Those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them.70

Unintentional killing is not morally imputable. But one is not exonerated from grave offense if, without proportionate reasons, he has acted in a way that brings about someone’s death, even without the intention to do so.

Happy February.

Book Review: Forming Intentional Disciples

Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Disciples by Sherry A. Weddell  – Our Sunday Visitor, 2012

There’s been a recurring conversation in my combox discussions over the past year, and I goes like this:

Jennifer: blah blah blah something about catechesis, evangelization, salvation of human souls, etc.

Smart Person: You need to read Forming Intentional Disciples.

So I stalked the review-book list at The Catholic Company, and quick pounced as soon as the title appeared.  Grabbed it!

Part 1: The Church Has a Problem

It’s easy to shrug off the call for evangelization and discipleship by saying, “Oh, we already do that.”  We have a men’s club.  We have religious ed.  Everybody’s happy, all are welcome, Jesus shows up for every Mass – but sure, I’ve heard other parishes are in trouble.  Mine’s fine.

Maybe so.  But Weddell opens the book with extensive and detailed evidence that no, things are not fine.  She defines the scope of the problem both statistically – how many Catholics in the pews don’t even believe in a personal God? – and qualitatively.  Here are the few of the seven “It is NORMAL” statements her parish’s Nameless Lay Group, a group of laymen gathered together to help each other grow in the faith, had to write out for themselves by way of reassurance:

. . .

#2. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be excited Christian activists.

#3. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be knowledgeable about their faith, the Scriptures, the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church, and the history of the Church.

. . .

#6. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to have the fellowship of other committed lay Catholics available to them, to encourage, nurture, and discern as they attempt to follow Jesus.

#7. It is NORMAL for the local parish to function consciously as a house of formation for lay Catholics, which enables and empowers lay Catholics to do #1-6 above.

[Emphasis in the original]

Is this true around your parish?  It should be. Many Catholics don’t even believe in this as an ideal, and Weddell gives some poignant stories of how that pervasive mentality — of viewing holiness as a sort of sideline hobby for the ultra-pious — results in ridiculous contradictions.

She also works through all the objections to intentional discipleship, and demonstrates that yes, it is essential that we practice, at the parish level, the conscientious spiritual mentoring of all parishioners.  This can’t be something we relegate to lay associations and solo study.  This can’t be something we assume we don’t need to implement.  We can’t tell ourselves that because no one has asked for this, all must be well.

Part 2: There Are Things You Can Do To Solve This Problem.

The second half of the book opens by explaining the five steps towards conversion — recognizing that no one can be a disciple of Jesus without first coming to faith in Him.  The five steps Weddell outlines, and these should make sense to anyone who’s been involved in evangelization, are:

  1. Trust.  You have to overcome your suspicions about the faith, and at have some kind of trustworthy connection with the Church.  You won’t join what you can’t trust.
  2. Curiosity.  This is a general interest in the faith — a willingness to learn something about it, the way one might casually go look up facts on Wikipedia about some random topic, without making a decision to do any more than go satisfy an intellectual whim.
  3. Openess.  This is the transition from, “Oh I’m willing to learn a thing or two,” to, “It is possible that the Catholic faith is correct.  I’m willing to accept this faith if it turns out to be true.”
  4. Seeking.  The individual moves from an intellectual acceptance of the possibility, to an inner drive to know God personally.  Seeking versus openness is the difference between, “Oh, sure, evolution might be true,” to “I must know whether it is true, and I will look into the matter until I come to a conclusion.”
  5. Conversion.  This is when one becomes a disciple — the search is over, and now there’s a life of faith to be lived.

Weddell points out that seeking and conversion can be considered together as one continuous process.  How do these stages fit into discipleship?  In the detailed exploration of each of these stages, the book explores pitfalls and opportunities for the parish, and how these experiences can and should be lived out in the life of the Church.

In a final section, the book explores the “What next?”  What do we do with new disciples?  What structures does the parish need to have in place in order to disciple its members?  A significant emphasis is placed on helping new believers — who may be longtime Catholics, or not — to discern their spiritual gifts, and then to find a place in the parish to use those gifts.

Here, as throughout the text, Weddell reminds us we aren’t dealing merely with good management practices or effective processes, but with the active participation of the Holy Spirit in the life of each person.  It is easy to get distracted by methods, and forget that the supernatural — a personal God choosing to act in our lives — is at the heart of Christian discipleship.

Who should read the book?

Gosh, everyone, I guess.   It’s written for parish leadership, and is suitable for anyone who wants to take an active part in Christian life.  It would be foolish to think that somehow the nuts and bolts of evangelization and discipleship are only for church staff, or heads of ministries.  Certainly I don’t think you can claim to have an adult faith if you neither know nor care about these matters — though if you doubt Catholics need concern themselves with this “evangelical” stuff, the book is particularly for you. For some few who’ve been raised to spiritual maturity in the right time and place, you may already have a mastery of the topic; but for most of us Catholics, we’re weak at this and can use all the help we can get.

The reading level is educated-adult — if you can read this blog, and make sense of the usual topics here, you’re good to go.  The tone is conversational, and the writing is enjoyable and full of interesting anecdotes that impart useful information.  If I have a single complaint, it’s that I wish the book were bigger and longer, and treated the how-to’s of discipleship with more exhaustive detail.

Summary: Excellent book, long-needed.  I recommend it widely, but my copy is staying in my hands.

Disclosure boilerplate: This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company.  The Catholic Company is the best resource for gifts for every Sacrament celebration, such as First Communion gifts and Baptism gifts, as well as a great selection of limited-time Year of Faith gifts and resources.  Not boilerplate: As everyone knows, my reviews are honest.  And yes, I do make a point of picking good books for my review selections, because I have no patience for bad ones.

Mid-Month Updates

No Children Left In Ditch.

We made it to Naples and back with exactly the same number and kind of children with which we set out.  Thank you St. John Bosco, whom I did ask for assistance from time to time.  St. Augustine, by the way, is completely awesome.

UPDATED to clarify: Both the saint and the city in Florida are awesome.  Where they each rank within the category of People, Places, and Things Called “St. Augustine” I leave to the reader’s discretion.

Bookstore Management Tip:  Consider not charging admission to your retail venue.

At Castillo de San Marcos, you have to buy admission before you get into the fort, where the bookstore is located.  (This did not stop me from buying books, but not everyone feels the same way about books as I do.  Also, we were going to see the fort anyway.)

In contrast, the Pirate Museum has its gift shop built into its entryway.  Which is handy for parents who do not want to pay admission to the museum, but feel pretty lucky to get off with just looking at the Pirate Merchandise and buying one small pirate book for the trip home.

On the other hand, if early-modern marauders attempt a raid on the seashell-identification books at San Marcos, there are three lines of defense to keep them at bay.

Digital Devices = Road Trip Fever

What with recorded books, DVD’s, and iPods, twenty hours in the car was really quite peaceful.  Causing me to come up with the ridiculous, husband-exasperating plan of going to the national March for Life next week.  Friends with ulterior motives are aiding and abetting.  So I think we’ll go.

And look at this:  Pro-Life Feminist Hot Chocolate. It’s a super-bonus . . . and I get a glimpse of the reportedly lovely and delightful Helen Alvaré, and the kids get hot chocolate?  See, if that doesn’t convince you of the worthiness of the pro-life cause, I don’t know what does.

A Missal.

I’m beside myself with excitement, because MTF slipped a shiny new super-gorgeous Daily Roman Missal in with the other review book I was expecting (Introduction to Catholicism).  You’ll recall I had to glue the old one’s cover back together.  But I’ve been virtuously resisting shelling out for a new edition, even though every time I hear the elegant, poetic lines of the new Mass translation, I’m dying to get my own copy.

The new book is about twenty-time awesomer than I had guessed, because the new edition is beefed up with a pile of handy tables and indexes and bits of mini-catechism. So soon very soon I’ll have a post up at AC reviewing the new Missal, and explaining why exactly my old one needed to be glued back together, because I always, always, shove it into my bag on the way to religious ed, because if you have that one book, you can teach the Catholic faith to anybody at all, ever, no matter what weird scheduling surprises come your way when you arrive at class.

Virtue.

I did not make a single pun on the word Missal in those previous paragraphs.  We’ll just mark that down on in the big white space where my virtues are tallied.  I am the picture of self-restraint.  The St. Therese of resisting bad puns.  Or something.

Science.

The irony is not lost on me. I wrote this great column on winter snow-n-ice appropriate science activities for CatholicMom.com, then promptly spent a week lounging on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.  And swimming.  Outdoors.

This photo taken a different, icier year. And yes, the power was out. For a week. I did not like it. I prefer the beach.

So here’s my experiment: I’m going to write a column for NE (due this week, runs next week), and I think the topic is “Things You Can Do To Evangelize When You Think You Can’t Evangelize”.  Will this cause me to suddenly have many opportunities to evangelize?

You Might Be An Accountant If . . .

You’re goofing off browsing the Mid-Atlantic Congress catechetical conference page (which you are not planning to attend), and you notice all these financial management sessions:

Are you not dying to attend?  I am.  Seriously.  Has anyone sat in on any presentations from these speakers (John Eriksen, Peter Denio, or Dennis Corcoran), and have an opinion on how good the workshops will be?  For all Darwin doubts the use of an MBA, I begin to think that pastoral associates are the one class of people who might could benefit from such a course of study.  Some reputable seminary ought to make a joint MA/MBA program.

Oh That Homeschooling Book

I printed out the whole giant nasty sprawling draft, stuck it in a binder, and it’s waiting for me attack it with my tin of magic markers. So I’m making progress. Slowly.

 

Castello San Marcos:By National Park Service (http://www.nps.gov) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

New Year. Back to School. Writing Stuff. Abuse of Italics. Etc.

Since last I checked in:

Merry Christmas!  We’re still having Christmas, so I can say that.

Happy New Year.  You’ll be pleased to know I took someone’s advice here, and swore off making resolutions.  Which allowed me to limit it to just a couple.

Evangelizing in the Face of Dissent.  My December New Evangelizers column is up, in which I think about a question a friend posed in conversation a few weeks ago: What do you do when you really would evangelize, you really do want to, but your church stinks?  Which creates some awkward problems.

I would like to point out here that the two people I quote/mention in the column do not attend [_insert name of parish that jumped to mind because yes, you’re jumping to conclusions again__]. Anyhow, December’s post is sort of a theoretical framework for thinking about the problem.  I’m thinking maybe for January I’ll follow up with concrete things you can do to evangelize, regardless of the state of your parish / diocese / continent / etc.  Or not.  It’s an idea.

My January CatholicMom.com is going to be on cool science stuff.  It’s already written and just needs the links filled in before I submit it (today – runs Saturday, barring a switch-around), so you don’t get to suggest things for the post.  But you could suggest things in the CMom.com combox when the time comes.

I wrote something just for fun.  I used to write EVERYthing just for fun.  No, that’s not true.  I wrote things for school, and then later I wrote things for school and work, and later, things just for work.  But you know the curling up with a laptop, goofing off kind of writing, purely for my own entertainment?  That used to be 99% of what I wrote.  [Which gives you an idea the proportion of my writing that went into, say, my senior thesis, or my job writing a department newsletter, compared to the amount that went into pure leisure.  Can we say “introvert” much?]  I started blogging just for fun.  To practice writing for someone other than myself.

Anyway, I spent the Octave of Christmas writing a piece of fiction purely for my own pleasure.  Not gonna submit it.  Not gonna promote it.  Don’t want feedback on it. Don’t care that I abused adverbs.  Don’t care that the scenes don’t flow.  Don’t care that the setting is a tad nebulous. Look at me abusing all-caps and italics right here and now.  See, that fun-thing is rubbing off. Vacation is good.  Livens things up.

So that’s what I did for 8/12ths of Christmas.  Back to work now, fun fiction is put away, and I’m going to take stab #276 with renewed vigor on the homeschooling book, which was coming along pre-break, but started to languish right before Christmas.  I’m going to concede that I think the topic I’m biting off is hard to get my head all the way around — the organization for the book just isn’t popping out at me, like it did for the catechist book.  Only way out is through.  Sooner or later a structure will present itself.

Vocation trumps devotion.  Last September I wrote a post on getting the kids to daily mass, which I don’t think ever saw light of day.  But one of my points was that there’s no avoiding the Will of God. If God doesn’t have it on His agenda, it’s not on yours.  Hence, late in the day on the first Sunday of Advent, what I thought was a mild sore throat from teaching Our Lady of Guadalupe classes all day Saturday, turned into Plague Journal Episode #487.  I think we had one child who didn’t get sick all month.  Didn’t see light of day again until the 4th Sunday of Advent, we made it through Christmas Day, and by the weekend had a child sick and parents had to attend Mass in shifts this past weekend and holy day.

This creates an awkward social situation, in which I volunteered to teach at the parish we attend daily mass at, and happened to have just had one of the supply priests in for dinner that week, and then promptly dropped off the face of the earth.  So I would like to publicly assure everyone that:

  1. I do not hate the parish where we go the daily mass when the planets are properly aligned, as happened for months on end until the abrupt halt at Advent.
  2. I am not permanently scarred by the experience of supervising the creation of 80-some paper-bag tilmas.
  3. We’re still Catholic.  Really.  We’re just “contagious Catholics” of the wrong kind.  We love you, so we are avoiding you.

Hey, look, even Juan Diego missed an appointment with the Blessed Mother because he had a sick relative.  It happens.  Vocational hazard.

***

I’ll try to check in again at some point soonish.  Meanwhile, I’m leaving the SuperHusband to guard fort and farm while four kids and I take a joyful, peaceful, entirely uneventful 10-hours-each-way road trip next week.  For fun — going to see my grandmother, who turns 90 this year (but later this year ).  I am wildly excited though, because the way the hotels worked out, I’m obliged to drop in for a field trip in St. Augustine.  I’m so stoked it’s silly.  Love that town.

And see how I cleverly scheduled for St. A to be our last stop on the way home, so that I have a powerful incentive not to turn to a life of crime and abandon my four children in a ditch somewhere after breaking up the 57th argument about which DVD to watch next.  Smart, huh?  I am so completely planning to return to my beloved exactly the same number and kind of offspring as he entrusted to me five days earlier.  I’m the picture of virtue.

That would be why I groaned when I foolishly took up Jen Fulwiler’s recommendation and went to the Patron Saint Generator to see what saint popped up for me.  Yep.  St. John Bosco.  Try not to think about it.

But the holiness — John Bosco would never ever abandon children in a ditch on the side of I-95.  And neither will I. We’re like twins.

And no, I am not going to Disney world.  I’m not even driving near Disney world.  Nope nope nope.  Introvert + Doesn’t Stand In Long Lines = No Disney World.

Until next time, please pray for a reader who is having a difficult time with her faith.  That’s all you need to know, God’ll fill in the details.  And here’s the link to the patron-generator, if you’re up for adding a daily litany on behalf of this particular person, who does need your prayers tremendously.  Thanks.