Tag: featured

Christmas Thoughts

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Those of you who know me will know that I’m someone who is not a very “Christmas-y” sort of person…

Why?

Well, it’s probably partly because all my childhood recollections of school between September to January are dominated by memories of interminable carol rehearsals! I hate shopping at all times of the year, but especially during the Christmas rush. I hate picking up pine needles and I think fake trees are, well, fake. I don’t like the dark or cold which I usually associate with Christmas. I always look forward to the extraordinary liturgy of the Church at Easter, but at Christmas it is largely unchanged. And finally, nothing annoys me more than the saccharin-coated cheeriness which seems to be induced in people every December.

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Tattoo Follow-Up

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Last week I shared links to two other blog posts which discussed the issue of Christians getting tattoos. Needless to say, there was quite a lively discussion on my Facebook page! In the discussion, quite a few of my Christian friends shared the stories behind their tattoos and, despite my personal dislike of tattoos, I found the whole things fascinating so I thought it might be a nice idea to do something of a follow-up post…

So, if you are a Christian and have a tattoo, please contact me. I’d invite you to send me a picture of your tattoo, together with a little bit of the story behind it. I’ll then collect them all into a post for next week 🙂

jesus-shepherd-tattoo

 

What works in your diocese?

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I know that a lot of people who read this blog don’t live in San Diego. I also know that many of you are involved in ministry in some way, especially youth and young adult ministry. Therefore, I thought I’d do a post outlining some of the things we do here in San Diego which have proven popular, in case you wanted to try the same thing in your Diocese.

1. Theology On Tap
I expect most areas of the country have implemented a Theology On Tap programme. Simply put, you take over a restaurant or bar and have a speaker present on a topic for 45 minutes. There’s usually some Q&A and some group discussion. If you want a good turn-out make sure you do a talk on relationships every now and again 🙂

2. The Mega Series
This was something that we came up with in this diocese. Very often Catholics can feel isolated. This is particularly true of young Catholics when most of the people in their parish are significantly older. What the Mega Series attempts to do is bring large numbers of young adults together in traditional devotions, followed by a social. The goal of this is to remind Catholics that they are not alone and are part of a much larger Church. The three main “mega” events we’ve had have been:

(a) Mega Mass

(b) Mega Adoration

(c) Mega Rosary

3. Bible Study
One of the most popular events in the Diocese is the Young Adult Bible study and it’s very often one of the first “spiritual” events new arrivals attend. Given this, it’s important that the Bible study has a strong social and welcoming dimension.

4. Rosary and Adoration
Very often we try complicated, clever things to attract young adults and youths. However, I’ve seen time and again that simply having a night of adoration or recitation of the rosary attracts significant numbers of people.

5. Holiday Parties
The Young Adult Christmas Party in San Diego this is the social event of the year. Everyone gets dressed up, has dinner together and dances the night away. The other major holidays of the year (Memorial Day etc.) are likewise marked with a substantial gathering.

6. Sports
Here is San Diego there is a thriving Catholic Ultimate Frisbee community, in addition to many other sports.

7. Dancing
About four times a year I teach a dance lesson in the Diocese, usually either Salsa or Swing, and there’s always a solid turn-out.

Do any San Diegans have any other thoughts on what works well in our Diocese? What about those of you from elsewhere in the country? What events seem to be most engaging?

Our Traditional Family Meal

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On Thursday I wrote a little bit about John 6 and the Eucharist in response to a conversation I had with Gerry, a non-Catholic. Today I would to take a very brief tour of the belief in the Eucharist in Early Church.

Fathers

The problem with saying that Jesus is only symbolically present in the Eucharist is that apparently nobody told this to the Early Church. Below are a collection of quotations from Christian documents of the 1st and 2nd Century. These demonstrate without a doubt that Christians have, from the earliest times, understood the Eucharist to be a sacrifice performed by priests in which Jesus Christ is truly present:

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Squishing Ants

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Knowing that my interest in the subject of psychology has been increasing recently, last week a friend gave me a paper written by Daniel G. Amen, MD on the subject of Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs). Those who suffer from depression will almost always suffer from Automatic Negative Thoughts, filling their minds of such people are filled with a succession of dispiriting thoughts. They view the world through a dim grey lens and this colours their thoughts concerning both themselves and others. They look to the past with regret, find the present unsatisfactory and look to the future with anxiety and pessimism.

I thought Dr. Amen’s paper contained such solid advice that I would write a short post here summarizing its contents.

fire ant

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My lunchtime trip to defund Planned Parenthood…

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This lunchtime there was the #WomenBetrayed rally outside of Planned Parenthood here in Seattle:Lunchtime

The Pro-Choice Presence

There was very little pro-choice presence at the rally. Only eight counter-protesters were present, and they only turned up in the final five minutes of the rally.

Before I left, I took at look at their, frankly, rather tired looking homemade signs (given the $500 million in annual federal funding, you’d think Planned Parenthood could have coughed up for some better-looking ones). There were a couple of classics, such as the “No coat-hanger” picture and the “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries” slogan.

There was one which said “77% of anti-abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant”. I’m note quite sure where this statistic comes from (does anyone know?), but it’s replete with flaws. I also couldn’t help but wonder that, how the protester felt about the gender make-up of the group who passed Roe vs. Wade…

RoeWade

Remember, men aren’t qualified to talk about abortion, let alone enact laws concerning it…

Another protester had a sign which said “Pro-Lie”, which I thought was a rather “interesting” choice, particularly given all the scandal that Planned Parenthood has recently endured (covering up child abuse, child trafficking, statutory rape, etc) and which promises to continue for many months.

The most bizarre one, though, was one which said “Christian and pro-choice”. It’s a shame I had to get back to work because I would have been intrigued to hear the explanation of that worldview!

“…you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born…”
– The Didache, Chapter 2 (First Century)

The promised apology

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This is my promised apology…

“Okay, Minion, you were right, and I was…less right” – Megamind

Okay, not that kind of apology… On Monday, when I put up the “Lectionary Notes” for yesterday’s Mass Readings, I said that later in the week I would try to do a slightly more apologetics-related post concerning Matthew 16.

Since this is an apologetics entry, if you haven’t read my Ecumenical Apologist post, I would invite you to read that first since it explains something of my perspective and my attempted approach with posts like this.

I was running a little low on time this week so I dug through my email and found a correspondence from a few years ago with a non-Catholic whom we will call “Jay”. Jay raised the question of the Pope early on in our correspondence, but I had resisted talking about the issue of the Papacy until we had covered some more fundamental issues (authority, the canon etc.).

Anyway, here’s what I said in response to his statements about Matthew 16…

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