Association Of Catholic Bloggers

Today is Canada Day. On July 1 2011 Canada celebrates its 144th birthday. One hundred and forty-four must be a significant number, because this year we are honoured with a visit from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who are celebrating with us. O Canada. We have the reputation beyond our shores of being polite, perhaps rather simple, peace-loving, and having cute, folksy accents. Some of those things used to be true, but while our country was founded on wholesome Christian values, our political and social climate has shifted in the last half century. Fortunately we claim St. Joseph as our patron and if anyone can bring about conversion and restoration to this country, it is the foster father of our Lord. This year, our birthday coincides with the great Feast of the Sacred Heart. I believe that Jesus and His earthly father are united in their loving concern for this nation and its people. I earnestly beseech God's mercy on our government leaders. I ask for His guiding hand on al...

 Today is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The video above, produced by the Apostleship of Prayer, tells us something of the struggle of the Venerable Matt Talbot (2 May 1856 – 7 June 1925) with alcoholism. It mentions the fact that he didn't have the benefit of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which hadn't yet come on the scene. But it doesn't mention that he was one of the earliest members of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart . The Pioneer Association, or PTAA, describes its mission and vision as follows:  Our mission is to address the problems in society caused by excess alcohol consumption and drug usage. We do this through: Faith and prayer Self denial Example Activities based on presenting alternatives to individuals, particularly the young Advocacy Our vision - based on the love in the Heart of Christ, as expressed in The Gospels - is to help to build a society where people live to their full potential and alcohol can be ...

"Thank You For the Grace of the Priestly Ministry" VATICAN CITY, JUNE 29, 2011 ( Zenit.org ).- Here is a translation of the prayer Benedict XVI wrote for the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination, which he celebrated today. * * * Lord, We thank you because you have opened your Heart for us; Because in your Death and Resurrection You have become source of life. Make us living persons, Living from your source, And give us the power to be sources ourselves, Able to give to this, our time The water of life. We thank you For the grace of the priestly ministry. Lord, bless us And bless all men of this time Who are thirsty and in search Amen. -Benedictus PP XVI

Holly's post yesterday, Today is a big day for Pope Benedict XVI , prompted me to post the video above. Father Aedan McGrath, featured in the video, loved gadgets and would have been thrilled to know that on the 60th anniversary of the bird's trilling during the ordination of Fr Joseph Ratzinger he, now Pope Benedict XVI, 'tweeted' . I'm still not sure what tweeting is all about and what part it has to play in genuine communication but I'm delighted that the Holy Father sees the importance of using modern forms of communication to spread the Gospel. There is nothing superstitious about seeing incidents such as the bird trilling at the Pope's ordination as a blessing from God. There are many stories from the lives of great Irish monastic saints such as St Columban(us), St Columcille (Columba) and many more that show how all of God's creatures have their part to play in praising him. And we mustn't forget St Francis. St Martin de Porres had the ...

“The most important moment of my life,” he recalls—sixty years ago, 29 June 1951, Joseph Ratzinger was ordained a priest. ~ “We were more than forty candidates, who, at the solemn call on that radiant summer day, which I remember as the high point of my life, responded Adsum , Here I am. We should not be superstitious; but, at that moment when the elderly archbishop laid his hands on me, a little bird—perhaps a lark—flew up from the high altar in the cathedral and trilled a little joyful song. And I could not but see in this a reassurance from on high, as if I heard the words ‘This is good, you are on the right way.’” I know you’ll join me in offering Pope Benedict XVI our best wishes on the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination.  Here are a few tidbits about Pope Benedict XVI you may not know.  Did you also know about the Pope's historic Tweet ?  Sixty years later and now it's the Pope who's doing the tweeting... Source: The VA.NEWS

Fiftysomething Our Deanery Corpus Christi ...

A Columban ordination on the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul Saints Peter and Paul , El Greco, painted 1605-08 Earlier today I attended the ordination of Columban Fr Rodolfo Christopher Kaamiño IV in Immaculate Conception Cathedral, Ozamiz City. The ordaining prelate was Archbishop Jesus A. Dosado CM of the Archdiocese of Ozamiz. As a deacon Father Chris was working in Malate Parish, Manila, which the Columbans have been taking care of since we came to the Philippines in 1929. He will continue to work there as a priest for some months before receiving an overseas assignment. He spent two years in Taiwan as a seminarian on his First Mission Assignment. Among the five Irish Columbans in Malate killed by the Japanese in February 1945 during the Battle of Manila, when around 100,000 died, mostly civilians, was Fr Peter Fallon, the first Columban parish priest of what then was the town of Misamis, now Ozamiz City, when we came to Mindanao in 1948. The first bishop of the Prelature of Ozamiz...

By Allison Salerno  The creature emerging from our nearly 12-year-old younger son is something we already are raising: a teenager. Living as a peri-menopausal woman with two instead of one moody boy in a family, however, is different than coping with one. Already this morning they were bickering before breakfast over who had to walk the dog. Later, a hungry 14-year-old walked by and grabbed waffles off the breakfast plate of the 11-year-old, who is hungry All. The. Time. ("Mom, you've been telling me for years I am about to have a growth spurt"). And it wasn't even 9 a.m. As any parent knows, every child is different. The teen years of our first, a reflective, artistic soul, are going to be much different, I imagine, than that of our family's lone extrovert, who always has had a posse of pals and "met" the principal on his first day of middle school. (The details are dim but something about storming the cafeteria doors when the students ...

(This was originally posted on the website of one of our country's leading newspapers, the Philippine Star . Feel free to follow my posts there every Tuesday, Philippine time. Or you can also follow my blogs: www.trulyrichmom.com and  www.teachermamatina.blogspot.com . Thank you and God bless you all!) Couples for Christ , our Catholic community, just celebrated its 30th anniversary. CFC’s Main Anniversary Celebration was held at Rizal Park last Sunday, June 26. It was a very busy  week  for a lot of us, myself included. I was tasked to be part of the Documentation Team, heading the CFC Writers’ Guild. It was a fun but tiring job, and I missed my two kids a lot during the entire week, as we had to go home late many nights. Typhoon Falcon came and threatened a lot of our activities, but thank GOD for answering our prayers! People still came to the conferences and were blessed by the messages. One such conference that we thought would be greatly affected by the heavy r...

If you have time, please pop on over to my kitchen, on my  Life on the Home Front blog :) I haven't had much time to update it lately, and my readership has gone down, but today I posted some tempting pictures of Cakes and Tea  which I'd love to share with you. I also have a series of posts on Proverbs 31  and Saint Zita . I shall attempt to blog there more regularly from now on... Here's a sneak preview to entice you...

There are days, like this Sunday, when caring for my Mum feels utterly overwhelming. While she is becoming more independent at home, there are still things she can't do for herself, like hanging the washing out, shopping, cleaning or going out. On Sunday I did all of these, and took her out for a coffee in a wheelchair. Not easy, as I am quite weak, physically, and she's very overweight! It all feels too much sometimes, and I struggle with personal tasks such as emptying the commode. Such things never used to bother me, and I was a geriatric nurse for years and coped with all kinds of bodily fluids! But the last few years I have become incredibly squeamish and have no tolerance for bad smells at all, not even BO! But in the midst of all this doing today, I remembered a passage from my favourite book The Nun's Story , and having just read it this last week, it was fresh in my mind... All for Jesus , Sister William had said in the ward pulling on the rubber gloves. Say it...

I’ve been thinking about dreams. Not the ‘lay your head and close your eyes’ kind; rather the ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ kind. It’s good to keep in touch with the little person you were who wasn’t afraid to dream big, brave dreams. The heart of who you are now grew from the seeds that dreamer planted long ago. A friend recently asked me what my dreams were, and I was appalled to not have an answer. I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to do. What had become of wanting or hoping for things, no matter how wild and implausible? There used to be many things I wanted to have a go at: archaeology, hot air ballooning, doo-wop girl, acting, Spanish, travel to Russia, developing elegant penmanship.... It was a long and varied list of things possible, and unlikely; long desired, and impromptu. Then what happened? Life took on a day-follows-day quality and my focus became survival. I chose the path of simplicity and abandonment – both qualities of which are true, good, and b...

As a child, did you ever sing the song, "I've got that joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart... Down in my heart to stay?" That little song that packs a powerful message. If you've got joy down in your heart, you can accomplish anything, go through any circumstance and do it all with a smile. The Word tells us that the joy of the Lord is our strength. The devil knows that, so he is going to try to zap our joy every chance he gets. If he can steal our joy, he can steal our strength. If he can steal our strength, he can infuse us with hopelessness and depression. By the time he is done. we'll be so far down in a hole that we won't even be able to see out. So don't go there. Keep your joy supply full.  Listen to uplifting music while driving in your car. Take a few minutes at lunch to read the Psalms and Proverbs. Make sure you're getting enough sleep; take time to exercise; and take your vitamins (I sound like a mother, don't I?) so that you don...

Words often seem so inadequate when talking about God but once in awhile a word or phrase comes along that just grabs our hearts and we know instantly what it means. A “thin place” is just such a phrase for ... Read more ...

"Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case."                                          Catechism of the Catholic Church  # 1768 All human beings get angry, it is part and parcel of being human. Anger, in itself, is not a sin, it is simply an emotion. Unfortunately, because of our fallen nature it often leads us into sin. We have all heard the expressions: blowing our tops, flying off the handle, or hot under the collar. Anger becomes sinful when we dwell on it and get carried away by it; we fail to bridle our tongue and scream ugly things, yell at our children and act in an unloving manner. Road rage, revenge, and murder....these are all things that begin with anger. Does anger always have to lead to sin? Of course not. Anger ca...

Lots of non Catholics think that our Church devalues women because our Priests and bishops have to be men, this of course is not the case at all. As we catholic women know our place is right at the centre of the church, prayer aid to the parish in all forms and the family are vital roles and what we can do ,no one else can. God made men and women we are different and equality doesn't mean identical. I cannot be a Priest , but I can pray for them, I cannot be a Bishop, but I can pray for them. They cannot be what I am ,a mother and grandmother, but we all are vital and important. Let us be happy in our places in Gods plan ,not agitate uselessly for what we cannot change. I can wear trousers but they don't make me a man! As part of the role I promote the Rosary for the Bishop and recommend it to all fellow ACWB readers and contributors, sign up its easy and the email reminders keep you on track!! http://rosaryforthebishop.org/ "Heaven knows that our good Bishop...

Pope Benedict calls Eucharist ‘antidote’ to modern ills June 26, 2011 3:05 PM Vatican City, Jun 26, 2011 / 02:05 pm ( CNA/EWTN News ).- The Eucharist is the medicine which can heal our individualist society, Pope Benedict XVI said in his midday Angelus address on Corpus Christi Sunday. “In an increasingly individualistic culture in which Western societies are immersed - and which is tending to spread throughout the world - the Eucharist is a kind of ‘antidote’ which operates in the minds and hearts of believers and is continually sowing in them the logic of communion, of service, of sharing - in other words, the logic of the Gospel,” said Pope Benedict to pilgrims in St. Peters Square on June 26. Catholics believe that the bread and wine offered by Christ at the Last Supper literally became his body and blood - and that this same miracle is repeated by priests at every Mass since. Hence the name of today’s festivity – ‘Corpus Christi’ Sunday or ‘Body of Christ’ Sunday. “From the Euchar...

By Allison Salerno  Morning came too early for me; I had stayed up very late at a neighborhood block party and had to rise with the rest of my family as we scattered in different directions - my husband to lector at an early Mass, and our 10-year-old son to a Little League baseball playoff game. That left G. and me at home, where I attempted to supervise his remaining homework before the 11 a.m. Mass, where he was an altar server. This was a morning of poor parenting; my frustration with his disorganization devolved into my raising my voice, speaking to him harshly, and then  dissolving into tears of regret and exhaustion. Mass and the Penitential Rite ("I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault...")  could not come soon enough.

Download the pdf file Here’s a crazy topic to be discussing, but I was so perplexed, I thought I’d throw is out and see what you think.  I’m a bit a news hound, I love a good news story, and I feel like the art of great journalism is fast becoming a thing of the past!  I’m constantly scouring the Internet for relevant, well-written articles, especially those of the Catholic nature.  When … lo and behold, I came across a reference to the L’Osservatore Romano—the Vatican’s daily newspaper.  Oohing and aahing, I ran for my computer to become a subscriber.  Yes, I read about this in a hardback book, imagine that!  Unfortunately, my source refers to L’Osservatore Romano as the world’s dullest newspaper.  I ignored the lack of a ringing endorsement, hopping on the Vatican website in anticipation of viewing a copy within minutes.  Not so fast.   I was first redirected by a notice to subscribers: We would like to inform all our subscribers i...

It is very easy for me to enter the state of Woe Is Me. In fact, I spend so much time there, I'm sure it's an actual place with a zip code. I could have my bills and junk mail delivered there. In my own mind, my problems seem to be much harder than anyone else's. The list of injustices and slights against me is long and repetitive enough to bore even me -- yet another unfairness, because my troubles aren't as interesting as what other people experience. So, after a rather difficult week, and then weekend plans derailed by a cold, I woke up this morning to learn that there was no water. I took it personally and immediately packed my bags for WIM. I'm telling you, the border guards know me on sight I've been there so often. Recounting my troubles becomes a comforting reassurance that I have every right to feel as abused/misused/refused as I want to. I settle into the woeful wallow right there in Woe Is Me and prepare myself for a good old pity party. I survey the ...

Whoever acts on these words of mine! Reading the gospel today I see the inspiration for the fairy tale the “Big Bad Wolf” published in 1843, the tale of the three pigs who huffed and puffed!   The gospel is a real goodie! It contains a wonderful few words from Jesus, words not to be missed! There is a practical reality of listening to and acting upon the words of Christ and this is demonstrated quite beautifully. The listener is left in no doubt about the importance of hearing Jesus’ words and putting them into practice. We all need to reside somewhere, a shelter, a place to base our lives, a sanctuary, a place to call our own, the Englishman’s home is his castle! The home is important whatever way we look at it. If my home is built on sand, the foundations will not keep the house in one piece, a downfall of rain and my home is gone!! So simple and so practical too, this for me is the essence of a good spiritual life simple and practical! Jesus tells us the importance of making a ...

  El Greco, Altarpiece , 1597-99  Readings   (New American Bible, used in the Philippines and the USA) Gospel John 6:51-58 (Jerusalem Bible, used in Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, Scotland) Jesus said to the Jews: ‘I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.’ Then the Jews started arguing with one another: ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ they said. Jesus replied: ‘I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever ...