I haven’t updated my blogroll in quite a while. When I find new blogs I like I bookmark them in a new blogs section and it had gotten quite large. Some people like to keep their blogrolls short and I can understand that, but I like to blogroll those I read. The added blogs are in the extended entry section.
Almost all of the blogs I read have a syndication feed that I can read through an aggregator (Firefox’s Sage extension). There were still a handful of older blogs that I read that never enabled the use of ATOM when blogger added it. Weekly when I would read these blogs I would always test to see if they had added a feed and this week I noticed that I. Shawn McElhinney’s Rerum Novarum finally did. Now if only he would do something about his template. Whenever I visit his site the color scheme makes me feel like I have been transported back into the days of BBS (Bulletin board system) my hangout before my first text based access to the internet via Telnet, Gopher, etc.
And De Fidei Oboedientia also now has a workable feed (the previous external feed didn’t work).
Here are the blogs still on my naughty list for not having a feed.
Thoughts of Apolonio Latar III (Brilliant theological blog) Update: He now has a feed 
Steve Ray’s blog Defenders of the Catholic Faith.
Envoy Encore (They had one at one time but it broke)
Momentary Update: She now has a feed
Oblique House
SecretAgentMan’s Dossier (Whose blog won’t even display in Firefox anymore (at least for me), but SAM is so good I am willing even to use IE)
Sunny Days in Heaven
man with black hat Update: He now has a feed
puritas cordis
The Great Commandment
Heart, Mind and Strength doesn’t have a feed but a reader provided me with a feedburner feed for it.Feed.
Voting has now opened up for the 2006 Catholic blog awards. Somehow once again I have been overlooked under most intellectual and surprisingly nominated under most bizarre blog, most bizarre post, most humorous, best design, and most creative. So a warm thanks for those who voted for me in the various categories.
I am pretty much aware and visit almost every single blog nominated in the various categories. The only ones I weren’t familiar with were some progressive Catholic bloggers.
This year it is slightly different since my nemesis, I mean friend and sorely missed Fr. Sibley, is not on the ballot this time under most humorous blog. I nominated Maureen Martin’s hysterical CatholicNews.org for this category. Dale Price’s Dyspeptic Mutterings is another wonderful blog. When I grow up I want to write and fisk like Dale. In fact I would rather hunt with the Vice President than be the object of one of Dale’s fisks. One overlooked blog in this category was Rich Lugari’s great parody blog Musum Pontificalis. I was also glad to see Credibility nominated in the category for best design. One great blog not nominated for this category is Luminous Miseries which has both great design and writing. Reading his blog reminds me that I can’t write worth a darn, but then again reading most blogs reminds me of this.
Pretty much all of the categories make for some tough picks. Next year we need to add a new category for most overlooked blog Eve Tushnet.
By the way you are allowed to vote once a day. You can also vote if your are dead and live in Chicago.
In my podcast reviews some have mentioned the Cardinal Arinze podcast.
When I first saw this graphic at American Papist I though it was a good joke, but not an actual podcast. My mistake since the good cardinal is actually podcasting. This is great news since I so enjoy Cardinal Arinze who is straight shooter. You are always sure what he says and where he stands when he replies to something. So it is pretty cool to have the
Prefect of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments podcasting. The only thing that would be cooler would be a Popecast. He could podcast about marriage and call it Pod Casti Cannubii. That would be a great aPODtolate.
I have been meaning to do some reviews of Catholic Podcasts. Unfortunately the term podcast has stuck since it really has nothing to do with iPods and specifically and just refers to audio files like mp3s and video files that have a feed and can be subscribed to. A podcast reader like and iTunes and others is used to subscribe to a feed and to automatically download it to your computer when a new podcast is available. I first started listening to podcasts some time ago with Jayson Franklin’s Catholic Cast. Jayson is currently not podcasting, but he has been influential in getting some other Catholic podcasters started. I am only mentioning Catholic podcast that I personally listen to. There are probably other good ones that I have not got around to.
Catholic Insider – Fr. Roderick of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, The Netherlands is probably the most well know Catholic podcaster and he has been interviewed by Vatican radio and many other media outlets. He is now podcasting Monday through Friday with the Daily Breakfast. His show covers news, gaming, movies and TV shows, and answers about the faith. His show is both fun and informative. The Catholic Insider show is now dedicated to sound scene tours where he has in the past given descriptions of Cathedrals and pilgrimage sites.
Catholic Mormon Podcast This is done by a couple Sarah and Rob. Sarah is a former Mormon and Rob is a lapsed Catholic who rediscovered his faith. The show discusses both of their journeys and the difficulties involved in a family when one leaves the faith they were brought up on. The show also discusses Mormonism and tries to be fair to what the Mormon’s teach and at the same time contrasts and compares it to the Catholic Church. The show is well done and the banter between them is fun. This is definitely a good example of the new evangelism and what can be done using modern media. They don’t bash Mormon’s and if they make a mistake in telling their beliefs they correct it on later podcasts.
Rosary Army This is a Catholic couple Greg and Jennifer who have turned their apostolate of making and giving away Rosaries into a podcast. I was aware of their podcast for a while, but didn’t listen to it. I though it might be too POD (pun always intended) and perhaps piously boring. Boy was I wrong. Their show is both fun and serious. Greg at times does some very funny musical numbers and they talk about their daily struggles in life and in their spiritual life. The show is very well produced and the interaction between the two is fun to listen to. They have also just started another podcast which will lead through the prayers of St. Louis de Monfort’s total consecration to Mary.
Mark Shea’s Rock Solid This is a short podcast usually ranging from 3 to 4 minutes that covers the liturgical calendar, history, and other subjects. This is Mark without the snark, but it is very informative and he was even able to talk about the Jesuits with no snide comments. One of my favorites.
Catholic Under The Hood This one is done by Fr. Seraphim Beshoner, TOR and is the PODest podcast. He has done shows on The Jesus Prayer (one of my favorite – both his show on it and the prayer itself), covered icons, and done interviews. His icon show is now a videocast where he shows an icon and then discusses the theological aspects of it. He also blogs at Friary Notes.
Catholic Rockers George Leite interviews Catholic musicians in the genre of hard rock, modern, alternative, rap and jam bands and plays some of their songs. This show has made me aware of some Catholic bands that I like. George also runs Catholicjukebox.com.
Word on Fire Great homilies by Chicago priest Fr. Barron. You can also listen to his homilies over the last three years. Especially good was his two part one of Pope Benedict after he was elected. Part 1, Part II
Fr. Philip Powell’s Homilies Fr. Powell who blogs at Domine, da mihi hanc aquam! has recently started podcasting.
The Word Made Flesh St. Blogs sorely missed Fr. Sibley has a series of very good talks.
Universal Call Jim Merante emailed me previously about his podcast and asked me to listen to it. I am glad he did because it is very worth listening to. He does a series of interviews and I have listened to all of his past shows. All of the shows are good but I would especially recommend the one he did with Mother Antonia. He has currently finished part 1 of a two part interview with Renee Bondi.
Vatican Radio Has short clips of interviews they do and coverage of the Pope. I just love hearing Pope Benedicts XVI’s voice even when I can’t understand the language.
Verbum Domini Daily scripture readings from the liturgical calendar.
EWTN’s podcast. EWTN is podcasting a variety of their shows including Open Line (which recently added Patrick Madrid to the lineup), the daily homily, and the majority of their evening shows.
Catholic Answers They are not technically yet podcasting (though they will be in the future), but they can download mp3 files for their shows on their calendar page. They now broadcast for two hours and have separate files for each hour.
Latin Podcast – Gerald Augustinus is still working on getting a feed for his new podcast, but the show looks very promising especially for those who know little Latin such as myself.
Update: Here is one mentioned by others that I should have added.
When I first saw this graphic at American Papist I though it was a good joke, but not an actual podcast. My mistake since the good cardinal is actually podcasting. This is great news since I so enjoy Cardinal Arinze who is straight shooter. You are always sure what he says and where he stands when he replies to something. So it is pretty cool to have the
Prefect of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments podcasting. The only thing that would be cooler would be a Popecast. He could podcast about marriage and call it Pod Casti Cannubii. That would be a great aPODtolate.
Amy Welborn tagged me with this meme.
Four Jobs I’ve Had (In fact the only jobs I’ve had)
Four Movies I Watch Over and Over Again
Four Places I’ve Lived
Four TV Shows I Watch
Four Places I’ve Vacationed
Four Websites I visit daily (more like 400)
Four of My Favorite Foods
Four Places I’d like to be right now (Besides Heaven)
Tagging The Lair of the Catholic Cavemen, Small But Disorganized, The Daily Eudemon, Dad29
Dave at Improvised tagged me with the guilty pleasures meme.
Music: Staind, System of a Down, Seattle grunge. Classic rock and I even like some of the eighties hair bands and groups Dave mentioned. Though I draw the line at Def Leopard. They peaked on High n’ Dry and got progressively worse. It is only within the last five or years that I have developed a taste for Classical music and Gregorian chant.
Movies: Horror flicks and Kung Fu movies.
Politics: Watching the Kos kids and Howard Dean direct the Democratic party.
Church-related: Watching Episcopalians do things like propose Thurgood Marshall for sainthood.
Chow: Ice cream.
Clothing: Pretty much unconcerned with clothing other than that it covers my body. In fact if I could wear the same set of clothes everyday like I did in the Navy I would.
Hygienic: Keeping my fingernails clipped really close.
Reading Fr. Powell’s post on listening to a homily yesterday I was both intrigued and skeptical on this part.
Repeat every word in your head. Yup, that’s what I said: repeat every word. I do this all the time. I have what the Buddhists call “Monkey Mind.” Just about the only way I can pay attention to a homily is to close my eyes (no visual distraction) and then repeat every word of the homily in my head. This is how I am able to stay on track, follow the homily’s “argument,” and not end up daydreaming about bread pudding, Battlestar Galactica, and the Pope’s new encyclical all at the same time.
Now I often closes my eyes during Mass to concentrate better or at least to reduce the number of distractions. I tried the repeating every word of the readings and the homily in my head and I found that I was able to pay much more attention and in fact even remembered key parts of the homily later. Usually I am lucky to remember any parts of the readings or the homily by the end of the Mass. The effort to repeat the words in and of themselves kept me on track and my mind wandered much less during the liturgy. Considering that Fr. Keene is such an excellent homilist the more I can retain the better. So I would recommend this technique to see if it works for you.
Earlier this week somebody sent me a like to League of Eucharistic Guardians. Now this sounds like a great name for a graphic novel to me. This appears to be another excellent apostolate originating out of the Philippines. One of the signs of renewal in the Church is Eucharistic adoration especially perpetual adoration. This movement can do nothing but bear good fruit for the Church. My parish doesn’t have perpetual adoration, but they have adoration after mass regularly and an all night vigil on first Fridays. Since adoration is schedules pretty much while I am at work my wife and I regularly go to a parish whey they do have perpetual adoration in a chapel. It is so convenient to be able to go anytime you want to and they have a security keypad you have to use to get inside. They also have a very beautiful monstrance. It brings me such joy and peace to pray before the Blessed Sacrament and the absolute quiet is so conductive to prayer. I also really enjoy seeing people as they come in and out of the chapel and it reminds me that all around the world people are always coming to spend time with Christ. That people try to take the "Can’t you spend one hour with me" seriously.
We were in for a surprise as we left adoration today. As we were headed out we saw Fr. Mitch Pakwa sitting by himself in the back row. I knew he was in town this week for a conference, but didn’t expect to get a chance to see him. I was tempted to go up to him, but wisely left him alone. Since my conversion I have always enjoyed watching and listening to him on EWTN and enjoyed both his Biblical expertise and wry humor. It was also nice to see this old school Jesuit spending time before the Blessed Sacrament. I was kind of thrilled to see a Catholic celebrity and being close to someone famous. But I then realized that I had just spent an hour or so with our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and he is even more famous – plus you can talk to him anytime without feeling your interrupting.
I have been memed by Catholic Fire.
Rules: "The first player of this game starts with the topic "five weird habits of yourself," and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says "You are tagged" (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours."
Pass on to Ipsissima Verba, De Civitate Dei, Mixolydian Mode, Holy Fool, Aliens in This World.
I recently finished reading Mother Angelica – The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles
by Raymond Arroyo. I started watching EWTN in the summer of 1997 when I first moved to a location that had EWTN available.
I first ran across their website in 1996 which I learned from this book was launched the same year. When I first saw a picture of Mother Angelica on their site I thought she looked like the stereotypical nun who didn’t look all too friendly to me. Channel searching the new channels for the cable system I saw Bishop David E. Foley of Birmingham, Alabama doing his weekly catechism class.
Considering that I had pretty much decided by that time that it was the Catholic Church is would be joining this was pretty thrilling to me. It also made me pause for a second that a bishop on a television show could illicit something out of me besides the desire to change the channel.
I quite remember the first time watching Mother Angelica’s live show and I was hooked. She was quite different than what I had expected
and that was for the good.
The book itself is an excellent read which takes you from here childhood with many trials up through the present day and with many more trails along the way. I was aware of bits and pieces of her story from watching her network, but the book filled in many pieces of information that I had wondered about and giving the background story of what was going on behind the scenes. There were also many surprises for me in the book considering the changes she had made in her order during the council and in it’s aftermath. Raymond Arroyo describes their habit at one point resembling a costume from Star Trek. I had heard her before allude to an event that caused her to change the habits to the more traditional ones they use today. I always wondered what the event was the precipitated the change and the book had the answer. I won’t give any spoilers considering that I really recommend the reading of this book.
This book is in no way pious hagiography, but really displays Mother Angelica warts and all. The book also details some of the battles with the bishop’s conference considering that the bishops had started up their own network around the same time as EWTN. Of course the fact that the bishop’s network is not around today and that it had a relatively short life is no surprise to anyone who follows the bishop’s conference. They in fact scrambled their signal (an apt metaphor for the teachings of some bishops) and it was used only for diocesan offices instead of being available for any cable stations to use. I found the history of the conflicts between the bishop’s conference and EWTN to be interesting and the politicking that was going on to curtail or possibly event take control of EWTN. The usual suspects were some of the fiercest critics. Archbishop Rembert Weakland, Bishop Thomas O’Brien, etc. It is no surprise that these disgraced bishops were critical of the orthodoxy of EWTN’s programs. From this book and from what I have read before the bishops network was not exactly a bastion of orthodox Catholic programming.
Of course her most famous run in was with Cardinal Mahony. I remember watching the program where she had a very short critiqued his pastoral letter on the Eucharist and went a step too far in an off hand comment saying if she lived in his diocese she would give him zero-submission. Besides being against canon law this statement of course was a major mistake and just plain inappropriate. The Cardinal who will gladly accept almost any dissent from the magisterium would not do the same for Mother Angelica in regards to himself and went to considerable effort over the period of a year to get a public apology. Of course Mother Angelica’s style was that after the initial complaint from Cardinal Mahony she apologized for her previous comments and then did an in depth verbal fisking of his pastoral letter the following week It was great television and she confined itself to the actual contents on this very poor pastoral letter which basically relativized the various presences of Christ by downplaying Christ in the Eucharist.
Mother Angelica reminds me a lot of St Teresa of Avila. They had very different childhoods but later addressed similar situations. They both were brilliant organizers who could get things done. They both had an acute business acumen and great common sense that enabled them to work well with others in getting things done. They both were heavily involved in the various building projects involved in expansion and were very keen on not only was involved but were able to suggest better ways to do things. They both suffered physically throughout their lives but never let that slow them down. St. Teresa set her eyes on reforming her order in light of both laxity and the effects of the reformation and ended up founding not only a new order and affecting the Church up to the present day. Mother Angelica sites were a little broader since her eventual aim was more at reform of the universal Church in light of rampant heterodoxy. Though modern media helped Mother Angelica to have the broader aim and I can easily imagine St. Teresa availing herself of modern media in the same way. Of course they both also had run ins with some in the Church’s hierarchy who disapproved of what they were doing, but again they also both had protectors higher up to help to keep them out of trouble.
St. Teresa left us a legacy of prayer concerning the mystical life that stands the test of time and time will tell what Mother Angelica’s legacy of a world wide Catholic media network will turn out to be. It can be of no doubt that in the short term that EWTN has had a major effect on both education Catholics, bringing back fallen away Catholics, and attracting converts. I am deeply thankful for many of the programs they have aired. Fr. Dubay’s wonderful series on St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila informed me and attracted me to Carmelite spirituality. There series on G.K. Chesterton is one of my favorites as with anything with Fr. Rutler in it. There are literally thousands of testimonial of people of which EWTN has touched.
So if your want to read an intriguing history of a very colorful nun who with 200 dollars started a monastery in the South and became not only a cable pioneer but spawned a network that literally reaches world wide, then I would highly recommend this book. Raymond Arroyo for the most part tries to lay out the history without inserting personal opinions and really works to be fair in reporting some of the more controversial episodes.