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Where is This Eucharistic Revival?

  /   Saturday, December 16, 2023   /   Comments(0)

I’m sure you’ve heard the 2019 Pew Research poll that suggested that around two-thirds of Catholics (however they defined a Catholic) do not believe what the Church teaches about the Eucharist. Because of this, we now are supposed to have a Eucharistic Revival going on. If you don’t believe me, here’s the website. However, I have to ask – just where is this revival, and what is being done?

Not only am I at Mass every Sunday, but I’m there a lot of weekdays as well. I’m usually at my own parish on Sunday and other places during the week. I follow Catholic news (though I don’t spend hours looking over it). If we have such a serious problem as unbelief in the Eucharist, and we are trying to do something about it, why have I heard so very little about this supposed revival? I mean, something occasionally comes up, but it isn’t anywhere close to anything that would constitute an attempt at a full scale revival.

I see there is a Eucharistic Pilgrimage going on. However, if it went through the area where live, I don’t recall hearing anything about it. There is also a Eucharistic Congress planned. However, the cost to attend is way out of many people’s price range. Merely having these events does not constitute a serious, widespread effort at a badly needed revival in my opinion. Besides, the only people who are going to be interested in these are people who *do* believe what the Church teaches. How are we reaching out to those who lack faith in this great gift of Our Lord?

An interesting turn in this is that a new study shows that, while there is still a serious problem here, the actual number of Catholics who do not believe in the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist is about one-third. The discrepancy is suggested to have been caused by the options on the original poll asking if the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ or if they are a symbol. I’m not sure what to make of this because I really don’t believe a lot of Catholics really understand that the Eucharist, despite the fact that the bread and wine actually do become the Body and Blood of Christ, is also a symbol. It’s just that the Eucharist actually is what it symbolizes and therefore is not merely a symbol. So, there could be other explanations (e.g. who was polled) for the change.

However, I digress. My point is that, if we are serious about bringing forth greater faith in this great gift of Our Lord of his very self, I can’t tell by what I have seen of this Eucharistic Revival. Like Pope St John Paul II said in Ecclesia de Eucharista (article 61), there is no danger of excess in our care for this mystery. If people do not believe or do not have enough fervor, an all out effort needs to be made.

While I would not likely be one to lead a widespread revival, there are things I can do, and so can you. Be at Mass as often as you can be. Don’t be afraid to speak of Our Lord and his gift of his very Body and Blood. Show reverence at Mass. We can let people know we are serious about our faith simply by showing how Jesus Christ works in our lives through the very sacrament he instituted. We may make only a small impact, but the combined effects of a lot of small impacts will be tremendous.

Category: Catholic, News, Uncategorized


Onward to Advent

  /   Thursday, November 30, 2023   /   Comments(0)

The month of November will be over soon, probably by the time most people read this. As we have been remembering our beloved dead, now we can prepare for the coming of the king who will bring them eternal life. It’s time to think about this and how death is not the end but is the way in which everyone who isn’t alive at the second coming is going to get to meet God face to face.

As I’ve said before, the Church knows better than to allow these great feasts, like Christmas, to just happen. We prepare. By preparing, we have a fuller celebration when the feast day arrives.

Advent is kind of difficult for me because I’m not exactly sure what to do during Advent. It has never been all that clear. Besides that, these times can be ridiculously busy.

An important thing to do is to try to live our life and especially our faith as intentionally as possible. Don’t be carried by the wind. We have to deliberately set aside time to reflect on what we are about to celebrate and do everything in our power not to let anything interfere. No matter what this world throws at us, we must remember that, though we are in the world, we are not of the world.

Category: Spirituality


Praying for the Dead

  /   Sunday, November 12, 2023   /   Comments(0)

November is the month where we especially remember to pray for those who have gone before us in the Church. We often hear at (or in anticipation of) someone’s funeral about how someone who has died is not suffering anymore. The truth is that they may be undergoing their final purification, and they will still be suffering.

For some reason, 2023 has been a year where a lot of people I have known have died. I’ve had my uncle (and my godfather), a coworker, a childhood friend, a former manager, and two priests whom I knew die this year. Because of this, it’s been important to me to make a point to offer a Rosary, Divine Mercy Chaplet, Mass intention, and whatever I can remember to pray for them.

If they are indeed in Purgatory, there is nothing they can do for themselves. Once in Purgatory, the time for cooperating with or rejection the grace of God is over. Because of this, it also means that, once there, Hell has been avoided forever. They now have only to wait for God’s purifying fire to cleanse them so that they are able to be in the presence of God for all eternity.

While they can’t help themselves, we, the living, who can still choose to cooperate with or reject God’s grace, can help them with our prayers and sacrifices. We can aid their purification. It has long been an important part of my prayer life to do this. I’ve heard one priest say that, if we don’t offer assistance to the souls in Purgatory, we won’t be able to receive any assistance when we are there. I don’t know where he got this or if it is exactly true, but if it is, then I can certainly see God’s justice in it.

One simple thing to do is to pray every time you pass by a cemetery for he people there. On our fall break, our route to our destination took us by a number of cemeteries near Protestant churches. I find it especially important to pray for those souls. Since nearly every Protestant is ignorant of or rejects the fact that there is a final purification, it’s unlikely that these congregations are praying for their dead. So, when I pass their cemeteries, I figure that I’ll pray for them.

Don’t forget that, if you were a help to someone during their final purification, they are not going to forget you when they reach Heaven. You better believe that people in the presence of God for all eternity are capable of talking to him. They will be praying for you so that you will be able to join them someday.

Category: Cathechesis, Catholic, Spirituality


Fun with Autocorrect

  /   Saturday, October 28, 2023   /   Comments(0)

Autocorrect on my iOS devices is often annoying. I might be trying to write a proper name or something known mostly in Catholic circles, and it changes what I wrote to something else. Sometimes it does it three or four times. I’ve also yet to figure out why it capitalizes e-mail addresses on my iPad when I use my physical keyboard.

I’ve seen a web site that shows some supposedly funny things the autocorrect produces, but many of those are rather risqué. So, I had some better ones I wanted to share just for fun.

I recently bought some adjustable dumbells. However, my iPad apparently thought that I now have “adjustable dumbness” as it corrected one of my entries to this. I’m wondering why I’d want to adjust that.

Last week, I needed to register for a one day retreat. Before hitting send, I realized that instead of telling the person in charge that I had sent in my registration, autocorrect was going to tell her that I had sent in my resignation. No, folks, I didn’t quit my job.

This next one is a bit harder to understand unless you are Catholic and know people in religious life. Members of orders use post-nominal letters after their name. For example, a Dominican will use “O.P.” The name will be written as “Fr Firstname Lastname, O.P.” Benedictines use “O.S.B.” However, a sister once told me that the autocorrect rearranged the letters to say “S.O.B.” Whoops!

Category: Uncategorized


What About Philosophy?

  /   Saturday, September 30, 2023   /   Comments(0)

In my last post, I wrote about how we needed to consider the practical aspects of how one will learn to practice his or her chosen profession and make a living while receiving a classical education.  There’s another side of the coin that I want to present here.  If I have a choice between my kids studying advanced calculus in high school or studying philosophy, I want them to study philosophy.  I don’t want them to waste time with asinine questions like “How do you know the sky is blue?”  Rather, I want them to learn to think.  I want them to gain wisdom.

Many people accuse religious believers of just believing what they are told and not really thinking.  If they weren’t serious, it would be hilarious!  Such people should see the ridiculous groupthink that nonbelievers seem to accept without question these days.  I grew in my critical thinking skills by leaps and bounds when I took more time to study my Catholic faith, especially in the field of apologetics.

The groupthink is precisely what I don’t want my kids to fall for.  I want them to have at least a basic understanding of the aims of their life and why they should attain them.  I don’t want them to settle for the superficial.  As for how I know the sky is blue, my answer would be “I don’t, and I do not care that I don’t.”

Category: Catholic, Response


What About Making a Living?

  /   Saturday, September 30, 2023   /   Comments(0)

Let me start by saying that I am very much opposed to utilitarian education.  In fact, I would even go so far to say that, if you think that the purpose of getting an education is to learn how to make a living, then you don’t have a proper Catholic view of education.  I definitely don’t think that we should be educating people with the end of college, which may land in the trash bin of irrelevance at the rate we are going.  We should be forming the person.

I’ve been interested in writings that advocate for a return to Catholic education.  I read with interest the book entitled Renewing Catholic Schools:  How to Regain a Catholic Vision in a Secular Age.  The book clearly advocates using a classical model of education, forming a community, and making God the center of everything.  These are all aims that I would support.

However, whenever I encounter someone writing about this, there is one thing I find missing.  At some point, people need to learn a skill that they can use to earn a living.  They need a skill that makes a contribution to society.  At what point is this taught, and how?  While I’m no fan of the career mentality of our society, the fact is that many of the professions that are practiced in the world are needed.  Where would we be without doctors, engineers, electricians, plumbers, etc?  So, while I am in total agreement that education should not be utilitarian, I think it’s important that advocates of classical education address the practical questions that arise from their writings.

Category: Catholic, Response


An Easy Way to Get Some Catholic Reading In

  /   Thursday, August 31, 2023   /   Comments(0)

In order to be able to fully live the faith, doing regular Catholic reading is vital.  We really need to be filling our mind with the things of God, and reading is one of the primary ways in which we can do it.  However, I’ve had a number of times when it has been very hard to find time to read a good Catholic book. I’ve found an idea that I want to share that may be helpful to people in that situation.

There are a number of good solid books with short chapters (or sections of chapters.  They are usually pretty easy to read, and even in a pinch, it’s often possible to read these one section at a time.  Here are a some examples:

I’m sure there are a lot of others out there also.

Anyway, to make it easier to have it with you whenever you have a moment to read, I’d actually recommend having them on your phone and/or tablets as e-books.  They are usually less expensive that way, and you can have a number of books on one device.  If you choose to do this, I highly recommend buying them as ePubs directly from the publisher rather than going with Amazon, Nook, or Kindle whenever possible.  Avoid anything sold as an Adobe Digital Edition like it’s bubonic plague.

The reason for this is that books bought with the services mentioned above contain digital rights management (DRM) copy protection.  It limits you to reading the book on their proprietary software (except for Adobe Digital Editions, but you are still more limited even here than with a non-DRM ebook).  More importantly, however, is that your rights to read the book are dependent upon your account on a particular server.  The publisher could pull the plug on your rights to use the book easily.   With today’s cancel culture, who knows when some woke company employee will decide that they don’t want to keep providing access to a Catholic book.  With a plain ePub, you can download the file and back it up and install it on anything that can read an ePub file.

I’ve been able to get more reading in doing this. It does mean that, when I do this, I’m reading lighter reading, but at least I’m able to do something.  Recently, I’ve been doing this while also working on a longer or more complicated book just to allow me to maximize the amount of reading that I can do.

 

Category: Catholic, Resources


Explicit Lyrics

  /   Tuesday, August 22, 2023   /   Comments(0)

Sometimes I like to poke fun at something while also asking a question. You see, it has long been my decision not to buy music that is labeled as explicit lyrics. I might buy a non-explicit song off an album that was “stickered,” as I used to call it, but I would avoid the actual songs with the label. However, in looking through some recent music, I’m not so sure what to make of it anymore.

Now, I have to wonder what constitutes explicit lyrics and if I can even use that standard. Take the song, for example, named I’m Offended by John Rich. It’s labeled as having explicit lyrics. The only line that I can find in it that contains profanity is when he talks about how he prays to God and says to the atheist something like “You don’t believe he exists, so why are you so p*****?” I hear that word from people who don’t use other cuss words on a number of occasions.

Another curious example is the now-famous song “Try That In a Small Town” by Jason Aldean. He starts talking about how one day “they” are going to round up all the guns and says “That s*** might fly in he city . . .” Well, maybe you could argue that one shouldn’t play that for one’s kids, but that’s hardly explicit lyrics in my mind. In any event, I found that there is a clean version from Jimmy Levy that says “That stunt might fly in the city.” It has a little different sound to it, but it’s obviously the same song.

What makes the labeling of “Try That in a Small Town” more interesting is Oliver Anthony’s now famous “Rich Men North of Richmond.” I counted four uses of the “s” word, and it’s not labeled as containing explicit lyrics. Honestly, I have a bigger issue with the way he uses the words “Lord” and “God” in the song than the profanity itself. It just goes to show that there may not be a standard that is being applied here.

The funniest thing I saw on an online store was this album being labeled as explicit: Benedicta: Marian Chant from Norcia. No, I am absolutely not joking.! This album is literally Gregorian Chant, but one of the songs was listed on two different music services as having one song with explicit lyrics. The name is “Sequence Ave Maria . . . Virgo Serena.” Search for it if you don’t believe me. I really don’t think the Benedictine Monks are dropping F bombs in Latin.

As a disclaimer, I’ll add that this info is accurate at the time of this writing as I know that sometimes the labels get changed. However, my point is that, while there is a lot of music labeled as explicit that is clearly garbage, the label itself might not be much of an indicator of anything in particular anymore. It’s worth checking out the lyrics online to see if they really are or aren’t offensive and making the decision from there.

Category: Response


And Then There Was Summer . . .

  /   Saturday, May 27, 2023   /   Comments(0)

If you have kids, and they are not already on summer break, they probably will be soon.  I’m pretty grateful to have made it here.  It seems we push academics pretty hard around here, but I think it’s good to take a step back.  Academics are not the only way to learn, and for many things, they are not the best means.  They certainly should not be treated as the ultimate key to success.

This is our chance during the summer for the kids to learn what they can’t learn as well in a classroom.  The kids may go to summer camps or mission trips (not to mention vacations), and these are good.  Even just taking time to socialize with each other provides a great opportunity.  I hope to take my sons out on some bike rides during the summer just to get them out and active.  All of these are valuable opportunities that we don’t want to lose.

I think of this when I remember that there was a drive in my home town to increase the length of the school year by 20 days.  It was touted as a great opportunity to improve education in our town.  I don’t think that was really the case, and I still don’t think so.  I’m ready for my kids to experience more out of classroom growth.

Category: Uncategorized


God Has a Plan, but Is It That Simple?

  /   Saturday, May 13, 2023   /   Comments(0)

For many years of my life, I’ve heard people say “God has a plan.” Some people say that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Well, I do believe God has a plan, but it seems to me that people who throw these phrases out seem to have forgotten that we are not marionettes that God has been keeping on a string. We really do have free will, and I find it difficult to fathom that God gives us free will but didn’t really intend for us to have any agency in our lives, even in accomplishing his plan. To think so would to suggest that God has intended every aspect of our lives to be some kind of decoding scheme where we are constantly trying to decode the one exactly right thing that God wants us to do.

To me, there have to be some things that are coincidental. If I run into a friend I haven’t seen in a long time, did God arrange the meeting? He might have. However, it’s still possible that both the friend and I simply made decisions in our free will to be at a particular place. This doesn’t preclude the action of God at all. He could then work in a myriad of ways through this. In fact, nothing happens that God doesn’t at least permit, and he did permit the meeting. This is why we can “accept all things as coming from God.”

We have an interesting example of God’s providence in our free actions that is found in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary – the Visitation (Luke 1:39-56). Mary is informed of her calling to be the Mother of Our Lord by an angel. Joseph is told in a dream not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, and he is also told when to take the family to Egypt. However, in the Scriptures we do not find Mary having been commanded or even suggested to visit Elizabeth. She hears of Elizabeth’s pregnancy from the angel, and off she goes.

Through this, God does a work that begins with Mary’s greeting of Elizabeth. The infant John the Baptist leapt in the womb of Mary. Theologians tell us that John was redeemed in the womb of Mary. While God didn’t tell Mary to go to her relative as far as we can see, he allowed it and then worked a great work through it. We don’t know what would have happened if Mary had chosen not to go, but I would presume that she could have made that choice without having offended God.

Another thing to consider is that God can even use our sins to do the great work he wishes to do. This doesn’t mean we should sin so that God can work through it. However, if you look at the linage of Jesus, you will find that not everyone in his ancestry was amazingly holy. Even Bathsheba, with whom King David committed adultery, was in the linage (not to mention King David himself). Obviously, our sins are not willed by God. There is no way that God arranged for sin to be committed, though he may allow it with the intention to accomplish a greater good.

With all this being said, it is impossible to deny that God had definite plans for John the Baptist, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and King David. They had a definite calling that was made clear to them. All of them, especially Mary, had major roles to play in the salvation of the world. The will of God was definitely made manifest, and it will be in our own lives in the way God intends.

However, I think more could be said about our free will and the agency we have in accomplishing God’s plan. I don’t claim to have figured out how it works. I doubt we will figure this out this side of eternity. What I do know is that God created a real world and gave us a real role in it. God may even allow us our preferences in many circumstances. Our own choices may shape the way God accomplishes his will. However, we know that we can do nothing without God and his grace.

Category: Spirituality


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