Other

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – Dear
young people, this city of Rome is in your hands. It is up to you to
make it spiritually beautiful with your testimony of a life lived in
the grace of God and far from sin, responding to all that the Holy
Spirit calls you to be, in the Church and the world. In this manner,
you will become visible signs of the grace of Christs abundant mercy
that flows from His side, pierced for us on the Cross. This was the
exhortation given by Pope Benedict XVI to the youth gathered in St.
Peters Basilica in the evening on Thursday, March 13. The Holy Father
heard the confessions of several of the young people present, mainly
from the Diocese of Rome, in preparation for the 23rd World Youth Day,
that will be celebrated on Palm Sunday with the theme: You will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be
my witnesses (Acts 1:8) and that will culminate in Sydney in the
world-wide encounter in July. 

…Recalling one of his own meditations on Pentecost, as Archbishop of
Monaco-Frisinga, the Pope continued, A human being cannot throw away
his own soul, in a literal sense, because it is the soul that makes him
human… Yet he does have the frightening possibility of being inhuman,
of remaining a person but at the same time selling or losing his own
humanity. The distance between the human person and the inhuman being
is immense, yet it cannot be demonstrated. Likewise, the Holy Spirit
cannot be seen with the eyes. Whether it enters into a person or not,
it cannot be seen or demonstrated; but it changes and renews all the
perspectives of human life. The Holy Spirit does not change the
exterior situations of life, but the interior…This afternoon, the
Holy Spirit wants to descend into our hearts, to forgive us our sins
and renew us interiorly, filling us with a power that will make us,
like the Apostles, courageous in announcing that Christ has died and
risen!.

The Pope later encouraged the young people to prepare themselves well
for their confession, enabling them to experience true joy, the joy
that derives from the mercy of God, flows into our hearts and
reconciles us to Him. He told them to be bearers of this joy,
offering a testimony with their lives to the fruits of the Spirit.
Always remember that you are ‘temples of the Spirit’. Allow Him to
dwell in you and humbly obey His commands, in order to make your own
contribution to the building of the Church and to discern the type of
vocation to which the Lord calls you.

Over the years I have used several RSS feed aggregators to
manage th large number of feeds I watch.  A couple of years
ago I switched to online aggregators – first Bloglines and then Google
Reader.  Every once in a while I will check out a software
aggregator when a new one comes out, but never found a free one that I
liked.  Recently the Mac only NewsFire
became free and so I decided to check it out.  It has a
simple, but effective interface that really makes it very easy to go
through feeds.  The feature that really sold me is the ability
to easily go through new feeds.  The space bar is used to
advance through the feeds and all aggregators have a shortcut key to do
the same.  What makes NewsFire better is that if the page you
are reading scrolls down you also use the space bar to advance through
the document.  So you can do all of you reading pretty much
only using the space bar.  On a partial feed where only a
snippet of the feed is used you can just use the Enter key to open the
current feed into the browser.  I keep NewsFire in a window on
one monitor and my web browser in another browser and this make a very
effective setup.  I was surprised at how fast I could go
through reading new items from the 600 plus blogs and other news
sources I subscribe to.

Certainly everybody has particular tastes when it comes to aggregators, but for me NewsFire does what I want it to do quite elegantly.

I just watched the fourth season of EWTN’s “G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense” and it is excellent as usual. The great thing about a series on Chesterton is that it is about impossible to run out of material and Dale Alquist does such an excellent job of presenting the thinking and writing of G.K. Chesterton.

This year is the 100th anniversary of Orthodoxy and I am current rereading this great book. Though this book should be read on it 100th anniversary and its 101,102,103,… and so on. What I love about Chesterton and especially his book “Orthodoxy” is that he writes in such a way that you see things anew and realize just how off you were in seeing reality. Sure his turns of phrase and effective use of paradox is one of the charms of Chesterton, but it is his ability to let you return to a childhood wonder that hooks you.

I have a question for my knowledgeable readers. Today during Mass at a parish I visited during the Third Scrutiny for the elect of R.C.I.A. the priest did an imposition of hands on each of the elect followed by a women doing the same thing. Now of course the laity doing this is certainly mistaken, I am just wondering if this was appropriate for the priest to do so for the Third Scrutiny?

A reader requests prayers for his nephew, Joseph Gallagher, who is
critically ill from cancer. Please pray for him.

World
of Good – USMC Canine Rescue Dogs

Catholic
Carnival 161

Carnival of
Homeschooling

Jean at Catholic Fire tagged me with the Book Memory meme.

1. Do you associate reading particular books with the places you read them or events of the time you read them?

Pretty much. I can usually remember where I was when I first read a book and the same goes for music and movies. I don’t usually tie them to specific events except for perhaps the extremely influential books that helped me out on my way into the Church. "Theology and Sanity", "A Handbook of Christian Apologetics", and "A Father who keeps his promises were prominent books for me during this time.

2. Do you remember the books you read or do they fade quickly? Or do you remember some better than others? How about remember details like character names, not just overall plot?

Fade somewhat quickly. Though the general plot pretty much stays with me. Character names don’t stay with me for the most part, but then again I have the same problem remembering names of people in real life. Though this fading is find since it makes rereading a great book much more fun. I also have difficulties remembering titles. This is annoying when it comes to series and if I see a new book in a series I don’t quite remember if I had read it or not. Now I keep track of everything I read to avoid this problem.

3. Have you ever forgotten you’ve read/own a book and borrowed/bought it again?

I once borrowed the same book from the library within a three week period of time. I returned the book the second time around and was surprised when I got a notice for never returning the first book. I of course didn’t realize this at the time and my arguing with the librarian that I already returned it turned to embarrassment when she showed me that I had checked it out twice and the books had two different SKUs.

Fr. Philip Powell, OP has a great post on confession advice that starts with:

I. Starting point:

1. Sin. When we sin we abuse a gift from God. Just about every sin we commit can be traced back to a disordered use of some grace we have received from God. Abusing God’s gifts is a dangerous practice b/c it is through the charitable use of our divine gifts for others that God perfects His love us. If you are not using your gifts for the benefit of others then God’s love is not being perfected in you.

2. Forgiveness. When we ask for forgiveness we are not asking God to do something He has not already done. All of our sins are forgiven right now. All of them. Then why go to confession? God gives us forgiveness always, constantly, without ceasing. We go to confession to receive His forgiveness. Let’s say I call you up and tell you that I’ve purchased a nice Easter ham for you at Central Market. It’s a gift from me to you and your family. I give you this ham. For the ham to be a proper gift, you have to go get it. Once you have received the ham, it is a gift. The ham is no less real b/c you haven’t picked it up yet. The ham doesn’t materialize out of thin air when you go to Central Market and ask for it. The ham is just sitting there waiting for you to come ask for. The same is true for God’s forgiveness. Just ask and you will receive.

3. Charity. Once you have received your gift of forgiveness, you need to put it into action as a gift for others. We do not have the option of failing to forgive. We are commanded to love and when we love, we forgive; i.e., You give your gift of divine forgiveness away by forgiving me my sins against you. In this way, you enact your most basic ministry as Christ to me.

His post continues with advice on a number of subjects common to the confessional.

Mulier Fortis tagged me with yet another book meme.

1)
Which book do you irrationally cringe
away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?
Henry Nouwen – Once going to a retreat house I went to their book store
and found books like Hitler’s Pope,  Gary Wills stuff, a bunch
of dissident garbage plus a lot of books by Henry Nouwen.
 Sure it is irrational guilt by associations but there are
lots of books to choose from.

2) If you could bring
three characters to life for a social event
(afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would
they be and what would the event be?
Well the event would obviously be a world cruise since you then would
get to spend the most time with them.   Just off the top of my
head the characters would be Gandalf (great to have around for smoke
rings),  the noble dark-elf ranger Drizzt Do’Urden,
 and Chesterton’s Innocent Smith.


3) (Borrowing shamelessly
from the Thursday Next series by Jasper
Fforde): you are told you cant die until you read the most boring
novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for a while,
eventually you realise its past time to die. Which book would you
expect to get you a nice grave?
Well I have no idea what the most boring novel on the planet.
 Such a novel wouldn’t get much publicity if it was truly
boring.  Even badly written and poorly researched novels like
The Da Vinci Code don’t commit the sin of being boring.  Now
if you have a category of books that would be quite purgatorial than I
think it could be any of Fr. Andrew Greeley’s bodice ripper novels.

4) Come on, weve all
been there. Which book have you pretended, or at
least hinted, that youve read, when in fact youve been nowhere near
it?
I never pretend to read something.

5) Youre interviewing
for the post of Official Book Advisor to some
VIP (whos not a big reader). Whats the first book youd recommend and
why? (If you feel like youd have to know the person, go ahead and
personalise the VIP).
Orthodoxy, if he doesn’t like it I probably would not have wanted to
work for him anyway.

6) A good fairy comes and
grants you one wish: you will have perfect
reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which
language do you go with?
Too obvious – Latin.  Then I could start a new blog with one
of those cool Latin names.

7) A mischievous fairy
comes and says that you must choose one book
that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can
read other books as well). Which book would you pick?
Well I don’t know exactly why such a fairy would be labeled
mischievous?  If a book isn’t worth reading yearly it probably
is not a good book. There are already several books that I read
yearly.  Orthodoxy, Everlasting Man, Theology and Sanity, The
Hobbit and the LOTR series. Than there are other books that I seem to
have on two or three year cycles.

8) I know that the book
blogging community, and its various challenges,
have pushed my reading borders. Whats one bookish thing you
discovered from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new
appreciation for cover art-anything)?
One thing I love about St. Blogs is that book recommendations from
various bloggers has opened me up to multiple books that I would
probably never have read.  For some dumb reason I had the idea
that Dean Koontz was a second-rate Stephen King till I heard such good
things about the Brother Odd series and his other books; boy was I
wrong.  From fiction to theology I have been introduced to a
bunch of great books.


9) That good fairy is
back for one final visit. Now, shes granting you
your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leather bound? Is it
full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a
few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your
imagination run free.
Well I would like to have a room with a dedicated library with walls of
shelves with leather bound books instead of having satellite libraries
all over the house.  Though a dream library would also have
one of those big Print-On-Demand machines so I could dial up any book I
wanted.  I would really like the library to have a secret
passage and when you grab the right book opens up to
another library!

Clayton tagged me with the Book
Meme Rules.

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people

Well the nearest book is The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd and
the sentences read.

Carthusians and a famous Hall of St.
Mary
which was filled with
tapestries emblazoned with the Virgin’s heavenly splendour.
 At the time of More’s visit the city was seized by a
particularly severe fit of Mariolotry , with a Franciscan monk
preaching
the
good news that whoever recited “psalterium beatae virginis” (by which
he meant the rosary) each day could never be damned.

It is pretty interesting that out of the
whole book which I really liked that this meme zeroed in on one series
of sentences that I didn’t quite agree with.  This would be
considered Mariolotry  if someone strictly believed that this
devotional
practice on its own outside of Christ would lead someone to be saved.
 This should be seen as a bit a hyperbole in that everyone who
is faithful to praying the Rosary as a devotional practice likely will
be saved when there is a conformity of their prayer life to their
actions. 

Well at least that is a bit more
interesting than what was in the second closest book to me “Cocoa
programming for Mac OS X.”

If anybody want to joint in to this meme
in the comment box, fire away.

SF Signal asks several SF authors If you ran Hollywood, what changes would you make? What would stay the same?

John C. Wright has an excellent response which centers around his complaint of "philosophical product placement" a term I find perfect in describing how so many films are ruined.

…Bollywood, movies from India, are more wholesome, more family-friendly, have better song and dance numbers, and notably more attractive actresses. The weft of the Culture of Death hangs over our Hollywood films, which I do not scent from these overseas films. It has been many a year since I have seen a Hollywood film that does not use "philosophical product placement" to thrust one or another particularly annoying little ad for their materialistic, mildly pinko, morally relative, or anti-American world view in my face. We see such things as would make Cicero or Marcus Aurelius blush with anger, not to mention John Adams and Tom Jefferson.

I am not talking about deliberately politicized films whose anti-American bias is bold and clear, like V for Vendetta or Starship Troopers. I am talking about a universal atmosphere. Even lighthearted kiddie fare like Happy Feet or space opera like Revenge of the Sith or epics like Beowulf cannot be told in a straightforward and honest fashion, a story for the sake of a story, but some little message has to be inserted either mocking religion, or sneering at George Bush, or belittling Christianity. I call it "product placement" because it is the intrusion, never where needed, of one extraneous line or extra quip that allows the film-maker to display his political correctness. And we all know that moral relativism and multiculturalism are good right? Because only a Sith would speak in absolutes.

His comments are not all negatives and lists that almost all of the top 20 films are science fiction and fantasy extravaganzas and that the quality of Babylon 5 and the new Battlestar Gallatica match anything else quality wise. He follows up his interview with a post on his blog answering a complaint.

…The first comment in the comments box chides me for not admiring the healthy dissent and vibrancy created by the willingness of mainstream cinema to call into question the core values of the society. Myself, I would retort that this is exactly my complaint: the core values of society are countercultural, and they are expressed with a lockstep uniformity I find both non-vibrant to the point of boring and non-healthy to the point of morbid.

In the past, the values of the culture and the counterculture were at odds, but were not necessarily enemies. The culture prized things like modesty, fidelity, sobriety, and thrift; the counterculture was kept in check until holidays or late nights after work was done, and it was permitted to express itself. The counterculture prizes things like bragging, sexual nonchalance, wild fun, and immediate self-gratification: it is the culture of Just Do It and of Fa-La-La Live For Today. The counterculture expressed itself in off-duty hours and drinking songs in much the same way the culture expressed itself in hymns and austere public monuments. The speeches made at graduation ceremonies are solemn (and forgettable) precisely because they are the most pure expression of the culture: graduation speeches are the last opportunity for the elders of the tribe to impart their wisdom to the next generation, to transmit the values of the culture. The ribald lyrics, mocking altar and crown, that workingmen sing over their mugs of beer at the public house after the children are abed, were an expression of the counterculture.

In terms of religion, the culture believed in things like the Holy Ghost, and the counterculture believed in things like ghost stories. No one wants to hear about saints when they are drinking a pint; but they don’t mind hearing about some eerie Oriental spiritualism. It is no coincidence that rock stars and film stars go in for Zen Zoroastrianism or the study of Wiccan Cabalism rather than Rotary Club Episcopalianism.