Category: Catholic Topics

Catholic Mother’s Companion to Pregnancy – Book Tour & Giveaways

Welcome to Sarah R.’s stop at my place on her book tour!

Click to Enter the Nook Giveaway

We’ll start with some info from the publisher and from Sarah:

To celebrate the launch of her new book, A Catholic Mother’s Companion to Pregnancy: Walking with Mary from Conception to Baptism, Sarah Reinhard invites all of us to spend her blog book tour praying the rosary together. Today, she shares this reflection on the Nativity:

The cave in Bethlehem probably isn’t what Mary had in mind for her Son’s birth. Straw as bedding and oxen as companions, with shepherds and townsfolk dropping in to wish her well?

Maybe it wasn’t so shocking to her, after being told she would be the Mother of God, that it didn’t go at all how anyone would picture it. Even so, I’m sure it wasn’t that comfortable even by standards of the day. She gave birth with animals all around, in the chill of winter, in a town far away from home.

So often, things don’t go the way I plan. I struggle with my knee-jerk reaction to the wrenches in life, to the natural temper tantrum I want to give in and throw. It’s hard to see God at work in the up-close of a situation turned differently than I think it should be.

But he is at work. Jesus being born in the most humble of circumstances made him accessible to all of us. It also makes Mary someone we can all turn to for comfort: if anyone knows what it’s like to go with the flow, it’s Mary.

As we pray this decade of the rosary, let’s hold all those brave women who have said yes to difficult and challenging motherhood in our intentions in a special way. Don’t forget, too, that we are praying for an increase in all respect life intentions as part of our rosary together this month. (If you’re not familiar with how to pray the rosary, you can find great resources at Rosary Army.)

Our Father . . . 

10 – Hail Mary . . .

Glory Be . . . 

O My Jesus . . . 

You can find a complete listing of the tour stops over at Snoring Scholar. Be sure to enter to win a Nook (and any number of other goodies) each day of the tour over at Ave Maria Press.

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And a few quick comments from me:

  • This is an excellent book.   (Yes, I wrote five paragraphs of it.  But all the paragraphs are good, not just mine.)
  • When you’re pregnant, you naturally turn towards spiritual things.  This is the book that meets that need for Catholic moms.
  • It’s absolutely devoid of the drivel-n-feel-good nonsense of other pregnancy books.  Tackles the hard topics with maturity and clear thinking.
  • From here on out, it’s my go-to book any time I know a mom who could use it.

And for those of you local to the Diocese of Charleston, SC, we’re up to four copies for the giveaway from the Office of Family Life this coming Sunday, October 14th, at the Blessing of the Unborn Mass in Columbia, SC. See you there!

(For internet friends, check out the other stops on the book tour, there will be giveaways all over the place.)

 

Book Giveaway at SnoringScholar.com: The Rite by Matt Baglio

Sarah Reinhard’s giving away a copy of The Rite by Matt Baglio.  I recommend this book, and review it here.  Go over to her blog, put your name in the combox for a chance to win. I don’t think her contests are huge, so your odds are decent, in light of the 30 seconds it’ll take you enter.

 

3.5 Time Outs: The Distracted Life

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who has exceeded himself once again.  Go look!

Click and be amazed.

1.

On Tuesday mornings we’ve been watching Fr. Barron’s Catholicism DVD’s at the nearby parish (not ours) that has the most convenient times.  Excellent.  BUT, episode three is a little a lot abstract for the kids.  I’m hoping it goes back to more concrete story-telling type episodes in the weeks ahead.  

2.

I could tell my 3rd-grader was not fully paying attention, because her feet were in the air.  You know how you raise your hand to ask a question in class?  Or you raise two hands in air to communicate secret messages from referee to fans, or from evangelical praise-and-worshiper to God?  It was just like that, only with feet.

3.

I’d told the group leader we’d be slipping out right after the DVD, and not staying for the group discussion, so that we could get home and get started on school work.  Kids and I discussed the Problem of Evil (subject of episode 3) on the way, and curiously, the boy proposed “God testing us” as one of the possible explanations for evil things in the world.

I challenged that notion, but I’ll tell you I do think it’s one of the explanations for good things in the world.  Because as we pulled in, our shy-but-friendly bachelor neighbor, who never comes over, was poking around our entry way, looking for us.  Because he’d found this:

New Kitten

3.5

The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error.

True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.

In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them.

But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop.

(Paragraph breaks added for legibility in blog format. See the source here.)

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I see that I’ve hit my deadline for sidebar updating, so I guess I’ll officially slide that onto my to-do list.  But I’m open to suggestions as long as the work in is progress.  And of course, 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.

Book Giveaway – Catholic Mother’s Companion to Pregnancy

 

Look what just came in the mail for me:

Two copies.  Free from Ave Maria, as a tie-in to Sarah’s virtual book tour, which will be stopping at this blog on Monday October 8th.  So how do you win a free copy?

Well, it doesn’t involve me mailing you things, that’s for sure.  I got a call last week from the Office of Family Life at the Diocese of Charleston, saying, “Would you please help serve cookies after the Mass for Expectant Parents on October 14th in Columbia, SC?”

And I said, “Yes, I’ll be happy to do that, but only if you agree to give these books away, because it is much easier for me to turn up for mass someplace than for me to go to the post office.”

We think there might be pregnant people coming to that mass.  Because the bishop will be giving the exceedingly cool Blessing for the Child in the Womb.  But you can come put your name in the hat for the drawing, even if your plan is to win it for some other person who is pregnant, or who hopes to be, or who just likes to read fantabulous devotionals for Catholic pregnant ladies.

Also there’ll be an NFP table.  And cookies.  Did I mention cookies?

Up at AC: We’ve Got a Sexual Abuse Prevention Policy, Now What?

http://amazingcatechists.com/2012/09/weve-got-a-sexual-abuse-prevention-policy-now-what/

More belaboring of points.  Or perhaps my accountant-training beginning to show.  Between a love of procedures, and hammered-into-head lessons about keeping lawyers at bay, yes, these are the things I have learned to think about.  It’s not good enough to have the policy.  You have to teach people what it says, and make sure they know how to apply it.  And then actually follow the steps.

Otherwise you get this.  Which nobody wants.

Up at AC: Just Tell the Police

In which I belabor what ought to be an obvious point.  Sheesh people.  Okay, listen, I get the nervousness.  You don’t want to do more harm than good.  But seriously. It’s not. complicated.  It’s not.  Can you really look a kid in the face and say, “I’d hate to bother someone about this if it turns out you’re wrong?”  You’d do that to your kid?  No.   Don’t do that to your kid. Call the police.

3.5 Time Outs: New Things

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who’s also doing a time-travel edition today.

Click and be amazed.

1.

Blogging Popes.  That’s my topic for today.  Not the kind you’re thinking of, though.

2.

See, here’s what happened:  Saturday night I was bored, tired, and itching for something to read.  Something fun and relaxing and novel.  Meaning, new-to-me.  I usually grab one of my daughter’s library books for this purpose — just enough entertainment to get me through a non-digital Sunday, but not so much that I’ll be out of service, glued to a book, for 10,000 hours waiting for Br. Cadfael to tell me who did it.  But I needed novelty.

So I went to Papal Encyclicals Online.  I’m sure that’s what you do, too.  But before you get too impressed, keep in mind that the three reasons this was a possible source of reading material were:

  • I’d never read most of them before.  Strike one against my Catholic-nerd credentials.
  • They’re usually very short.  This is why I’ve read the minor prophets, but *still* never gotten through all of Isaiah.
  • There was no chance I’d let the cat starve, or grouse at my children for interrupting me during an especially gripping scene.

And the thing is, they tend to cover that same juicy ground as your average Catholic blogger, only you get bonus credit for not being stuck to the computer all day while you work up your angry frenzy at the injustice in the world.  Of course, no Star Trek screen shots for illustrations, but look, I was desperate for entertainment.

3.

And the one I picked was Rerum Novarum.  Which is basically a series of blog posts on economics.  Perfect.

(Let me just say right now, JPII’s follow-up work is not blog-genre.  Waaay more wordy.  Waaay more.  I haven’t finished it yet.  But I’m half thinking, “What more is there to say?  Leo.Encyclicalpress.com already covered the whole territory.  But you know how it is, people need to explain the obvious.  Or maybe people needed the obvious re-explained.)

Here’s a sample snippet of the Leonine goodness:

Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition.

And this:

The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men.

Followed by this:

To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.

 

See? I spent my weekend reading 64 Cath-Econ-blog posts, 19th century edition.

3.5

And although I could pretty much shut my eyes and point my finger anywhere in the document to find a good quotable quote, one of my underlined favorites is

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Well that’s all for today.  Still accepting suggestions for additions to the sidebar, so tell me who to add.  But do just one link per comment, because otherwise the robotic spam-dragon will consume the whole lot of them.  Thanks!

How’s the parish doing? Depends on who you ask.

OSV reported the other week on CARA’s most recent survey of parish leaders.  The money quote:

The latest survey shows that parish ministry leaders, for the most part, are satisfied with their work, which they see as a calling, and believe that their individual parishes are meeting their communities’ spiritual needs.

And this is what you’d hope. I’ve never met someone in ministry who was going at it indifferently.  Church staff work hard and give it their best.  Volunteers pour out their time and energy, a free gift, given in love. They can see that what they do matters.

When I teach religious ed, I’m encouraged by the number of students who think my classes are fantabulous.  But then there’s the other ones.  The kid who quietly disappears mid-year.  The mom that told me this summer, “My daughter dreaded your class.”  (It was an easily fixable problem — nervousness about the test — but one I could not know about, until someone told me.  I’m glad Mom told me, however belatedly.)

The parish leadership survey unwittingly uncovers a terrible problem, though: Most parish leaders think they’re doing just fine.

Well, we aren’t.

It’s easy to dismiss the person who pew who “won’t get involved”.  Those types must not care about their faith, we say.  They just want to complain. They don’t want to be part of the solution.  Hmmn.  Maybe.

But really?  Do people come to Mass each week, hoping to avoid the community of the faithful the other six days?  “Lord, I got up early on my day off to come to this place,  please don’t get me interested in learning about You, or serving You, the other hours of the week.”  Is someone kneeling in the pew before Mass, praying, “Dear Jesus,  I sit every week next to these other Christians . . . please keep me from becoming friends with any of them.  I already have all the friends I can stand.”

No.

Lapsed Catholics are a thornier situation yet.  A vast and complicated problem, with no single answer.  But I know Catholics — earnest, lifelong, pious Catholics — who leave the Church.  Because it stinks.  Because they were in a crisis and nobody noticed, let alone cared.  Because the Church-ocracy demon is out of control, creating a thousand bureaucratic hurdles in the name of “efficiency” or “thoroughness”.  Because the liturgy makes them want to hide under the pew until it’s over — or as happened once years ago when Jon and I were on vacation, my then-protestant husband turned to me and asked, “Are you sure this is a Catholic church?”

Are these good reasons to leave the Church?  They are understandable reasons.

We have the Eucharist, that’s reason to stay.  Have that, all the rest is details.   But goodness, the details.  We kid ourselves if we count only the satisfied customers.

3.5 Time Outs: The Sitcom Life

As I’m writing this on Monday and getting it scheduled for Tuesday, it’s occurred to me that Sept. 11th is a serious day.  Also my niece’s birthday. Please feel free to commemorate more solemn matters, and come back here to my trivial  comedy of a life some other day.

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who has never made me laugh during Mass, but often at other times.

Click and be amazed.

1.

You know those movies where the lead characters acquire the run-down house/school/shop/bus/crematorium, and with the help of a fast-forward film sequence and a peppy soundtrack, they all pitch in and get the place cleaned up in about 2.5 minutes?  Complete with a spunky sign to announce their new venture?

I walked through my yard Sunday afternoon, and confirmed I am living in the “before” scene.

So now I just need some colorfully-dressed teenagers and a singing nun to descend on the place and fix it up.  Preferably before the Tinkerbell-themed birthday party this weekend.

2.

I’m not winning the holiness award.  Because if your group stands up at the start of Mass and warms-up by chanting “Yellow Leather Red Leather”? Yes.  I’m going to bust out laughing.  In church.

3.

But I’ll try do it quietly.  At least until I get to the parking lot.  Then I’m going to laugh very loudly.  And probably use the Lord’s name in vain, but then quickly convert it into a prayer of some nature, to do a kind of retroactive-save on that decidedly un-holy verbal reflex.

My son is 98%  holier than me, or at least 1 chromosome better suited for the priesthood (we knew that), because he kept a straight face the whole mass, and afterwards.  I was amazed.

3.5

. . . the Spanish Mass. [Where they do not do tongue-twister warm-ups — we’ve changed scenes completely.]  We have a new Spanish priest now, and he does not use the words “Jesus-Christo” and “Salvacion” as often as the previous one.  Which means I can no longer understand 5% of the homily, like I used to do under the old regime.  I do still like the mariachi mass, though.   So perky.

 

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Still accepting suggestions for additions to the sidebar, so tell me who to add.  But do just one link per comment, because otherwise the robotic spam-dragon will consume the whole lot of them.  Thanks!