St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

For an early Christmas present my wife bought me the new MacBook. Now, I’m not going to talk about how much I love it, or how I’m on the cusp of becoming a “Mac-or-bust” kind of guy; rather, I want to talk about about what you all think about this site’s appearance.

Before I got a laptop, I worked on a desktop with a 19-inch monitor. Everything was BIG. Now, everything is small…and I’m especially worried that the font size I have this site set to is too small. It certainly seems especially small now that I’m seeing it through a 13-inch screen instead of a 19-inch screen. I’m thinking about making the font size bigger — and maybe even changing from Georgia to Verdana. But before I do this, I wanted to get some feedback.

So, what do you think of the font size? Should it be bigger?

One reason I took a week off from blogging (though you probably didn’t notice my absence, since I had scheduled daily posts) was to get away and evaluate what I was doing here.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not very satisfied with the direction I’ve allowed this blog to take. Having gotten caught up in daily posting, I overlooked the fact that one of the reasons I started this blog was to write – not to post. Yes, there’s a difference — and I’m pretty sure I don’t need to explain what that difference is, either. 

To rectify this, I’m going to stop posting daily. My goal is to write daily, but to post only when the piece is ready. Oh sure, I might post a couple of short items every now and then, but from here on out, do not expect daily posts, but do expect much longer posts than the normal blog post. 

And for those of you who listen to the Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast, no longer anticipate weekly episodes. I have neither the time nor the energy to produce a weekly podcast with the kind of content I want. My new goal is biweekly, but I’m also not going to hold myself to a strict schedule. If I get an episode finished a few days early, it’s going up. Why wait? And if an episode ends up taking longer than a fortnight, so be it. It’s not the end of the world.

That being said, don’t expect anything until after Thanksgiving. And may you have a happy and blessed one, as well.

The newest episode of the “Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast” is almost ready to go. I need to listen to it one more time to make sure it’s clean. Once that’s done, it’ll be ready to upload and post — by this evening, at the latest.

This next week, I will be posting nothing but some longish excerpts from various sources, which are already written and schedule to appear at 5 a.m. each morning.  No original content, in other words.

Why am I doing this? For a following of reasons:

First, I need a breather. Anyone who is committed to maintaining a daily blog knows that it takes work. So blogging, along with being an at-home parent, a homeschooler, an 8th-grade Confirmation teacher, a baptism class teacher, a podcaster, and now, beginning in December, an RCIA teacher/facilitator — my plate is pretty full. Now, I’m convinced from the amount of time I waste that I don’t have an insurmountable amount of duties to fulfill. I don’t need more time, just more discipline. So I’m refraining from posting original work this week so I can spend some time getting organized.

Second, I have yet to implement a steady writing discipline. For a few years, I worked on becoming a science-fiction writer. To this end, I had various writing goals: 1,000 words a day, a story a week, three pages a day — whatever. The goal is steady production. Now, the nice thing about a quota is that it not only forces you to work, it also tells you when you can stop. Keeping a successful blog requires steady production — but successful living requires you to know when to stop blogging. So another thing I want to accomplish this week is to implement a writing quota.

Third, I need to get back to reading. If successful blogging requires steady production, steady production requires a steady input of ideas. I’ve found that I’ve been pushing my reading time not just to the back burner, but have taken it off the stove and put it in the freezer. That’s not good. As Fulton Sheen points out in his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, to be a successful teacher, you need to be a continuous student. So one reason for non-original posts this week is to give myself more time to get back to reading. In fact, trying to find that necessary balance between reading and writing is, in my mind, the most important reason for taking a week off.

Fourth, I want to take some time away so I can think more clearly about what kind of blog I want this to become. You see, blogs are self-evolving creatures, and if you’re not careful, they can get away from you. I had some pretty set ideas of what I wanted to do here when I started. For the most part, I’ve stayed true to those ideas. But five months of work gives you a certain perspective, and though I’m not unhappy with what I’ve done here, I’m not completely satisfied. I’ve found that the best way discern the slight changes I want to make with my posts is to get away from the whole kit and kaboodle for a while.

That being said, I will be answering email (if you are inclined to email me) and I will be responding to comments (if you feel inclined to comment).

Have a good week.

Like the title says — no podcast this week. Been busy, been tired, and ended up wasting time with trivialities. In stead of rushing to finish one, I decided just to put it off until next Sunday. Look on the bright side: Now you’re free to listen to something else.

I just noticed that my link to Fr. Hardon’s article, “The Divine Office as a Form of Sacrifice,” isn’t working. When I went to fix it, I couldn’t pull up the article. As I looked around the Fr. John Hardon Archives, it seems that only a few of Fr. Hardon’s articles can be accessed. I emailed them, so hopefully it will be fixed soon. The article I link to about the Divine Office is worth reading.

UPDATE:

I just received the following email from The Real Presence — the website that hosts the Fr. John Hardon Archives:

Our Web Server Provider is experiencing problems — they are working on it — said it can take up to 24 hours to fix.  It is goofy — you can get at some of the items on the website and not others. Sorry. Thanks for letting us know. God Bless!

Let’s hope it will be up soon.

Due to a mismanagement of time, Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast: Episode 6: The Trinity, will not be available until late tonight (Sunday, 11/9) — at the earliest. I need to finish writing the episode; I need to edit the script; I need to record it; I need to edit the recording; then I need to prepare the post itself. Come to think of it, hoping I can get it up today is probably a fool’s hope. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The last two posts, with the podcasts of Evening Prayer and Night Prayer, are it for today. I have at least two more posts I want to write on the Divine Office, and then I’ll figure out a way to make all this information easily accessible. Perhaps a new page. But today, I have things I need to do.

I will, however, be at my coumputer throughout the day, so if you have any questions about praying the Office, please feel free to ask in the comment box and WordPress will notify me via email. I’ll get be able to answer  you within a couple of hours — if not sooner.

Regarding the Liturgy of the Hours — I didn’t get as much written and posted today as I wanted. I have podcasts of examples of both Evening Prayer and Night Prayer that I need to edit and get posted. I also have at least two more written posts I need to write: One about the structure of Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer, and another about the role of the “Glory Be” in the Divine Office. My hope is to get these finished tonight and have them up for you tomorrow.

But I also have to finish Episode Six of the Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast, which takes time. And I have a busy day tomorrow, as well.

So we’ll have to wait and see.

• Barack Obama is our next president. As Catholics, we have the moral obligation to support him with our prayers. His position on abortion is evil, but as president he will be making many decisions on many other issues, and he will need God’s help to make those decisions wisely. Furthermore, it is God’s will, as attested to in Sacred Scripture, that we pray for and respect those who have been put in authority over us (1 Timothy 1.2; 1 Peter 2.13; Romans 13.1; HT: Internet Monk). Furthermore, the Church tells us that our sacred duty is to engage in the temporal sphere and work toward building a civilization of love. That being said, we also have the moral obligation to obey God. As St. Thomas More so famously said, “I die the King’s good servant but God’s first.” So our political task is clear. To support President Obama with our prayers first. To work with him, as best we can, when we deem his ideas and courses of actions are correct, and to oppose him when we his decisions and courses of actions are contrary to the natural law.
• I think it’s time for Catholics to become fluent in the natural law. So long as life and family issues are part of the political scene — and I suspect they will be with us for a very long time indeed — we must stop making them religious issues. We mus stop calling them traditional values. You see, the Evangelicals in our country have made every social issue about religion or about traditional values, and that language has become like noisy gongs and clanging of cymbals. The pro-abortion crowd and the pro-same-sex-union crowd won’t listen. And rightly so. Would you listen to someone who makes moral statements based on a religion you don’t hold? No, you would not. The beauty of Catholic Social Thought is that it is build on the natural law. Pope Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum, the first great social encyclical, argued for the human right to own private property from the natural law. In order to get those who disagree to listen, we must engage them with arguments that do not appeal to religion. They are tired of that. On one liberal blog I read, someone challenged: “Can anyone argue against same-sex marriage without appealing to religion?” That’s our challenge. As soon as the words “God” and “Bible” come into play, the discussion is over — from their point of view. So we must, as my old moral theology professor used to say, “put our religion on the shelf” when discussing these issues and argue completely from the natural law. To this end, I highly recommend Charles Rice’s 50 Questions on the Natural Law: What It Is & Why We Need It.
• Though I completely reject the doom-and-gloom scenarios I’ve been reading in the comments of some Catholic blogs, this election has compelled me to look very hard at my own life — most especially with a view to how I’ve been spending my time. Maybe it’s just a coincidence; maybe my conscience has finally caught up with me. After all, I have been wasting a lot of time. But there’s something else, and I can’t really pinpoint it. The best I can say is that I need a kind of jubilant sobriety. I feel that I can no longer take delight in trivial things: sitcoms, popular novels, sports. Not that these things are bad or sinful. But time is precious; the hour I wasted reading an inconsequential novel is an hour I can’t get back. I could have been praying, reading a work of theology, playing with my kids, exercising, rewriting the book on the Trinity that’s been sitting in my drawer for three years. Some of it is work, some of it is play, but all of those choices are better than reading trash fiction. So though I reject the beginning of the end of America has arrived because of this election, I am also aware that this election has somehow affected me.
• Just as the natural law is the key to the social debates that are and will continue to rage in this country, the key to the health of the Church is holiness of life. And maybe this has something to do with my previous “random thought.” If the history of the Church teaches us anything, it should teach us that words are of little consequence . . . especially when compared to the power of a holy life. More people were converted by the life of St. Francis of Assisi than by reading the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas. But I’m not so dim as to say that intellectual work is pointless, or that nobody has ever been converted by reading St. Thomas. Yet, the fact is that the intellectual can relate only to a fellow intellectual, but every life can relate to a holy life. Perhaps this conviction has made me ultra-critical of how I spend my time. Perhaps it is my own conscience convicting me. Perhaps it was the election. Perhaps it was all of them.
• Back to the jubilant sobriety, with a quick thought on the word “jubilant.” I think it was St. Teresa of Avila who said there is no such thing as a sour-faced saint. A joyless life is not a holy life, simple as that. It does us no good — it does our neighbor no good — to live without joy. Therefore, any kind of mortification one imposes upon oneself, any kind of penance, of self-denial, or discipline — if it isn’t done with joy, then, at the least, it is not inspired by God, and at the worst, it is done for the sake of pride and self-love.

I wasted spent most of Sunday searching for a new template for my podcast page and, after finding one that I liked, modifying the elements I didn’t like. I really like the new template (as well as my changes). It’s fundamentally different from the blog — which was what I was looking for — and it has a contemporary feel that I really like. If you’re interested in seeing it, here’s the link: Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast.

Episode 005 — Mary, Mother of God — is now playing.

The second of five episodes on Luke 1.26-38, in which we focus on one question: Which is Mary’s greatest prerogative, her divine motherhood or her fullness of grace? To do this, we get some help from Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s The Mother of the Savior. Also, we dig into Pope Pius IX’s dogmatic statement on Mary’s Immaculate Conception.

Please read: With this episode, I tried something different. After listening to some previous episodes, I thought that I talked too fast and that some of my ideas weren’t well constructed. To remedy this, I wrote the episode and then read it, thereby both allowing myself to slow down and making sure my ideas were complete. However, I’m concerned that I seem a bit stiff. Please let me know what you think.

If you don’t count July, when, thanks to Mark Windsor, Mark Shea, Jeff Miller, and Dom Bettinelli linked to the St. Peter Canisius Apostolate, October brought me my most visitors since I started this apostolate. In fact, this fine month brought me my most visitors in one month since I’ve been blogging — which dates back to October 2006. It was certainly a good way to start this blog.

I attribute this success to three factors:

1. I began publishing the Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast.

2. I was able to post almost every day on a wide assortment of topics.

3. Google, Yahoo, and other search engines are finally starting to notice my humble abode here.

By the end of 2008, I’d like to see this blog double in readers and the Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast double in listeners. According to FeedBurner, about 85 people read this blog and about 15 listen to the podcast.

So here’s my goal for the end of 2008: about 170 readers and about 30 listeners.

What can you do to help? A number of things:

1. If you have a blog, would you mind linking to me in a post? Perhaps find a post you particularly enjoyed and link to it.

2. If you don’t have a blog, would you mind emailing a friend or two who you’d think would enjoy what I do here, and let them know about me?

3. If you don’t already listen to the Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast, why not try listening to tomorrow’s episode, which is on the Blessed Mother, and see what you’re missing?

4. If you listen to the podcast and like what you hear, would you mind sending a friend or two a note letting them know about it?

5. Also, if you listen to the Podcast, would you mind voting for it over at Podcast Alley or leaving a review of it at iTunes? Little things like that help a lot.

I thank all of you for taking your time to read this blog and listen to my podcast. It’s very humbling.

Given the statements made by various U.S. Bishops over the last month, it’s amazing to me that there is still confusion about whether a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for a pro-choice candidate. Yet, confusion abounds. Without a doubt, the Evil One has great influence today, for he’s the only one able to keep Catholics confused on this issue.

If you’re wondering whether a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for a pro-choice candidate — or if you know a Catholic (or any one of any religion, for that matter) who is confused about this issue — then I strongly recommend that you go — or direct your friend or relative to go –  to Fr. John Corapi’s website and watch his three-part talk (30 minutes in all) on why Catholics cannot vote for a pro-choice candidate.

HT: a word on the Word

I’ve spend the last two days setting up a separate URL for my podcast. Apparently, the non-podcast posts on this blog were causing various amounts of havoc with the different podcast feeds. Namely, my non-podcast posts were pushing my podcasts off the feed too quickly. This means that new listeners would not be able to download older podcasts without some difficulty.

To rectify this, I set up this blog: Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast. The only thing I’m posting there are my podcasts. From here on out, I’m only going to post them there.

What does this mean for you? If you’re used to listening to my podcasts here, it means you’ll have to start listening to them there. Don’t worry, I plan to post here, letting everyone known when I have a new podcast up. (Every Sunday, I hope!)

If you listen to my podcast via a reader, then you’ll need to subscribe to the Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast blog.

And if you subscribe via one of the podcasting feeds, such as iTunes, you’ll want to update that pronto, since I won’t be publishing podcasts here. Again, don’t fret, I won’t let you forget.