Other

When it was first announced that Envoy
Magazine would return to print it was nice to hear considering how
difficult the magazine market is for Catholic magazines.  For
example Crisis  magazine recently went to web only because of
publishing costs.  The first new issue of Envoy Magazine was
quite solid, but it did carry content that was written a couple of
years ago when they had shut down.  If the content
 in the latest issue Volume 7.5 is indicative of the future
for Envoy than I think it will have a bright future depending on how
well it gets marketed.  This issue was just so chock full of
good articles it is hard to single out just one.

There is now a real nice balance in the
type of articles.  Apologetics, Bible study, interviews, and
many articles on helping you to live the faith.  I really
liked the article “The Real Pius XII.”  This time though
instead of debunking the ridiculous charges leveled against Pius XII in regards to the Jewish people during WWII it is focused more on the man himself.  I have seen plenty of good articles showing what he
did behind the scenes to help the Jews, it was nice for a change to get a better idea of the man himself, his humility, and his sense
of humor. I just had never thought of him as someone with a good sense
of humor since his photographs usually make him look so severe.

There is another article by Peter
Kreeft on the meaning of the fear of the Lord that was also excellent.
 I just love anything written by Peter Kreeft, though I was
disappointed that this article was only one page (as a Peter Kreeft junkie I want my fix), but he fit a lot in
that one page.  Christopher West also has an excellent
introduction to the Theology of the Body that runs several pages.
 I was also happy to see a column by Steve Ray on St Paul’s
Letter to Philemon that really enlightens the shortest book in the New
Testament.  All this and several other worthwhile sections by
people like Fr. Apostoli, Fr. Wilson,  and of course Patrick
Madrid.

They  currently have
a free issue offer and I
would highly recommend you check it out if you are not aware of Envoy.

This morning did not exactly start out
with a bang.  After my morning routine I go to my PC to find
that not only could I not get on the internet, but it wouldn’t see my
local network.  Though my iMac could see the Internet and my
network.  After troubleshooting cords and my router I
determined it was neither and then it dawned on me that my computer had
rebooted as a result of Windows Update and Patch Tuesday. After
uninstalling the latest updates I was back up and running.



Then I found out that I had maxed out
disc space on my server used for my blog and couldn’t post or even
clean out spam on the server to get some disk space back.
 Thankfully after emailing my server provider he doubled my
disk storage to 1.2 gig and over the years he has made other increases
in disk space for me, though this was the largest.  It is so
nice to have such great and prompt customer service.

Having recently bought my first Apple computer, an iMac, I decided to create a new blog to chronicle my experiences.  Though I am not a switcher (someone moving exclusively to Mac), but a slider (someone who moves between both a PC and a Mac).  During my lifetime I have worked on mainframes,  Altair 8800, military aircraft computers, Commodore 64/128, Commodore Amiga, many PCs and have run operating systems like DOS, all versions of Windows since 2.0, OS/2, and Linux and my most pleasing and best experience has been the last two weeks on my iMac (though I have quite fond memories of the Amiga).

I am running both a Mac and a PC on my desktop with multiple monitors
since I make my living developing Windows applications. The focus of my new blog will be mainly on Macs and OSX software, but also about
working with both systems and interoperability.

So for those that are interested it is called
href=”http://macpcslider.wordpress.com/” target=”_blank”>Chronicles
of a Mac-PC Slider

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Today being Priesthood Sunday I would like to once again thank the
wonderful and holy priests that I have known.  I have written
before about my pastor Antonio Leon and Father Keene.  We have
a new assistant pastor that I am also quite impressed with.
 Fr. Ed Murphy gives wonderful homilies and is not afraid to
bring up the topics of abortion and contraception.  In the
short time he has been at my parish he has started a Courage Chapter
and a Tuesday night class in apologetics.  We have been quite
blessed with good and holy priests at my parish including Fr. Powers
who ran the RCIA class I attended before moving to another parish.

In another parish I sometimes attend they now have a new pastor who
took over this month.  He is originally from Poland and is an
organist with a degree in music.  I heard that he wanted to
have the organ in the parish fixed since it hasn’t been used in years.
 

The previous Pastor, Fr. Sullivan I must admit use to drive me crazy.
This parish use to have a convenient evening daily Mass until they got
rid of it so I heard a lot of Fr. Sullivan. He  could
certainly be described as a man of the left, but for the most part he
kept these leanings out of the homilies.  What use to so annoy
me is that he would deliver his homilies by leaving the sanctuary and
coming out a good distance into the pews. While giving the homily he
would swing his robe belt constantly in a circle which was quite
distracting.  Once on Ash Wednesday he described how he forgot
about the fast and had cooked up a pot of chili with meat for a class
he was giving that night.  He then said he cooked some more
chili and would label them liberal chili and conservative chili.
 On the Sunday after Josef Ratzinger was elected Pope he gave
a rambling homily that fully showed all of his progressive leanings.
 He described his election like being in a car wreck –
something you just had to accept and to get use to.  He then
rambled about divorce and remarriage and homosexual marriage.

Now you might be wondering what a rant against a priest in a post about
Priesthood Sunday is doing here.  Like I said Fr. Sullivan use
to drive me crazy with his constant irreverence, but he also had quite
some good things to say in his homilies and there are quite a few
things from his homilies I still remember that were quite good.
 Some time ago I also started to pray for him as I try to do
for the priests of the parishes I attend.  A couple of months
ago I was surprised to find how my attitude had changed towards Fr.
Sullivan. Before seeing him with his idiosyncrasies and casual
treatment of the Mass could cause me to get rather heated inside, but
instead I started to become more aware of the positive things that he
did and the negative ones made less of an impression on me or I could
more easily ignore.  He is now retired after 80 years of
service to the Church with several of them as a missionary in Korea.

Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP has been asked by his province to study philosophy in Rome. If anybody can help him regarding information on the license/doctoral programs at the Gregorian, John Lateran, the Angelicum contact him at neripowell(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Via Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP

If you are a Preacher (of any sort!) you will benefit tremendously from Fr. Hinnebusch’s meticulously researched homilies and powerful teachings on following Christ in the modern world. In my own research for homilies, I frequently run across Fr. Hinnebusch’s marginalia in texts ranging from popular spirituality to the latest work by the giants of biblical scholarship. The archive includes both texts and mp3 recordings.

The homily archive is available at Suscipe fiat.

Causa nostrae laetitiae was nice enough to give me a Mathetes Award for Excellence in Discipleship. Though I must admit that normally the only disciples I look for are someone’s funny bone.

Mathetes is the Greek word for disciple, and the role of the disciple (per the Great Commission) it to make more disciples. So the rules for accepting the award are such:
Winners of this award must pick five other "disciples" to pass it on to, and provide links for
(1) the originator of the award (Dan King of management by God),
(2) the person (and in my case, the other person )that awarded it to you, and then
(3) name and sites of the five people that you believe are fulfilling the role of a disciple of Christ.

Here are just five of the blogs which have been dicipling me.

1. Mark Shea. I have learned a lot from Mark from both his books, blog, and his fine podcast over the years. I don’t always agree with Mark on political matters, but he has helped me keep a healthy skepticism on them.
2. Tom at Disputations. Another person that helps me to maintain balance.
3. Julie at Happy Catholic. Spirituality, common sense, and humor – hard to want more.
4. Fr. Philip, OP. The Gospel fully preached.
5. Christopher Blosser. Before I was reading blogs I was reading the Ratzinger Fan Club and since then Christopher has provided valuable perspective on theology and politics as they concern the Church.

This list could be much, much longer.

A.M.D.G covers the upcoming women’s faux ordination occurring next month in St. Louis and the backgrounds of the people involved. As is almost always the case these women are quite active in their parishes and diocese and have been involved in teaching things that should have sent out alarm bells long ago.

He also notices the connection between one of these women and another previously faux ordained women as authors/staff for Liguori Publications.

One of the women is from the St. Louis area so I don’t think we will have to wait long after the faux ordination for Archbishop Burke to act.

Catholic Fire tagged me with the Heaven Meme which asks but one question.

How do you envision Heaven?

Interesting question and one I have thought about. But I really don’t envision Heaven in any visual materialistic ways.

I mainly think of Heaven about what it means. Too often we are shown all those visions of heavens with clouds, cherub’s, Angels with harps etc. So much of the visual imagery of Heaven really does it a disservice and it is no wonder that many think of Heaven as something boring. In fact eternal boredom. We of course think of life by what we know via our senses and try to draw a parallel when we think of Heaven. So we try to imagine what we are doing now and continuing for ever or we see it as some utopia. St. Paul said "We see now in a glass darkly, but then face to face" and also that when he was taken up into the third heavens that he couldn’t describe it. Not having the same wisdom we try to describe what we haven’t seen.

When it comes to thinking about Heaven all my trust is in God. He knows us perfectly and also knows perfectly how to make us happy. The truth is that we were made for Heaven and we keep thinking we were made for the Earth. The idea that Heaven could be boring certainly shows a lack of faith in God. But maybe it is because so often we equate excitement and entertainment with sin. That it is the lack of sin that makes Heaven boring. That we see Heaven populated by Goody Two-shoes and we forget that to be fully human means to be without sin.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie The Passion of the Christ is the one with the playfulness of Jesus and Mary with Jesus splashing water on Mary. I for one would like to see more statues of Mary without her looking so dour. Sure some statues of her should show her sorrows, but I would like to see more that also shows her joy. St. Teresa of Avila was supposed to have said "God deliver us from sour-faced saints!" and I surely agree. Somehow we have confused holiness with grave seriousness – Mr. Spocks with halos.

What I do know about Heaven is simply that if I do make it see God face to face it will be with a smile on mine (at least after the resurrection of the body) and that whatever he has in store for me will be anything but boring.

Barbara Nicolosi and Karen Hall art both quite enthused about the new movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Though they both have just one caveat – the casting of James Carville. Barbara quips "I think "casting James Carville" is going to replace "jumping the shark" as a new euphemism for doing a stupid thing just because you can." I really recommend reading Barbara’s review of the movie.

The book the movie is based on was written by Catholic Deacon and novelist Ron Hansen. I have read several of his book including this one, though oddly I have not yet read his Mariette In Ecstasy about a nun who receives the stigmata while in a convent. I really enjoyed his novel Atticus which has the theme of the prodigal son.