As busy as the Pope is you think they could afford a gardener.
On October 2, 2012 Vatican Radio launched its first ever app for Apple’s iOS. The new app can be downloaded for free from the App Store, and offers similar functionality as the Android app that was launched in September.
The app shows an overview of the Pope’s public appointments, and lets you access both text and audio content associated with each event. The app also alerts the user about upcoming live broadcasts.
In addition, the app includes a news service based on Vatican Radio’s own news programs.
The radio section gives access to five different channels corresponding to the network of over 70 daily programs in 40 languages produced by Vatican Radio.
Vatican Radio will continue to work on the app, according to the description in Apple’s App Store: “This is Vatican Radio’s first version of this App. We promise to continue doing our best to improve and update. Stay with us.”
Click here to download the Android version of the app
Click here to download the iOS version of the app
A fairly functional app that even allows you to listen to or watch some live events. Some articles have linked mp3 content. I wasn’t able to stream audio from the radio part of the app – could be a server problem though.
Brandon Vogt reviews a product from ABCatholic a Catholic media company based in Charlotte, NC. As he notes some people have “christened their work the “Catholic Baby Einstein””
Some years ago I did this parody:
As a parent you want your child to grow up and to be healthy, smart, and happy and you seek every advantage to give your child a leg up in this direction. Though while these are goods in themselves you also realize that your most important job as a parent is to help your child get to Heaven. Sin makes you stupid and holiness makes you smart and joyful even in difficult situations.
Though you wonder how best can you help hour child to grow in the Lord and in the Path of holiness? It seems there are so many tools and activities for kids for a range of topics that offer everything except what is most important and the pearl of great price.
That is where our new company Baby Augustine steps in and “Where Holiness Begins.” Baby Augustine offers a plethora of holiness developmentally appropriate products for babies and toddlers.
The Catholic parent is the primary faith educator of the child.and we at Baby Augustine are here to assist you in the role as the first teachers of your children in the way of faith. You can’t outsource your responsibility to others, but Baby Augustine can help you and your child grow along the path of holiness. What makes Baby Augustine products unlike any other is that they are created from a baby’s point-of-view and incorporate a combination of real world objects, music, art, language, liturgy, prayer, poetry, and nature — providing you an opportunity to introduce your baby to the world around them that God has created for us in playful and enriching ways.
We think that if only Saint Monica had access to our products she might not have had to shed so many tears as a young Augustine had fallen in the Pagan world around him and into dualism via manichaeism. Baby Augustine takes advantage of the teachings of the adult Saint Augustine so that your child never has to lament “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!” Don’t let you baby have a restless heart, but a heart that rests in he who created and loves him.
So just check out some of our great product that will open up your baby or toddler to beauty so that he may always seek beauty and holiness.
What better than to start your child off with Baby Augustine’s series of baby-approved Gregorian Chant CDs! Monophonic liturgical chant which originated in Monastic life is the perfect fit for introducing your child to beauty and the liturgy. This music will lift him up and prepare him using plainchant which as the Second Vatican Council said “Should be given pride of place in liturgical services.”
Your child can also learn from our great DVDs such as “Baby Palestrina”, “Baby’s First Latin Words”, and “Baby’s Pilgrimage to Rome.”
Of course reading is an important part of the life of your child and you should be reading to him early on and encouraging him to read. Baby Augustine provide books that your child will love hearing and reading.
What better than the Baby Augustine Baby Bible that is totally interactive. When your child handles the book it will say “Pick it up and read it” just like what St. Augustine heard as he picked it up and selected at random Romans 13:13-14 and finally set him on the path from his sin. Our interactive Baby Bible lets your child do the same. When he opens up a page at random the book then reads it to him! They will be thrilled by the scripture they will hear.
We have many great books in our Baby Augustine store such as “Baby’s First Catechism”, “Moral Theology for Toddlers”, our very popular “Read the black, do the red”, “The Spirit of the Liturgy for 3 to 5 year olds”, “The Child’s Guide to Jesus of Nazareth” by Pope Benedict XVI, and “Theology of the Baby” by Christopher West.
Baby Augustine also has great toys like St. Peter’s Keys which will provide your child hours of fun “binding and loosing.” Let your child learn about the glory of the Church early that that the can learn what St. Augustine meant when he said “You cannot have God as your Father unless you have the Church as your mother” and “I would not believe the Gospels if it was not for the Church.”
You will be amazed at how effective our products are as you see your baby make the sign of the cross before taking their bottle and watch as they reach out the Holy Water font as the enter the Church. What more can you want for your child but holiness and an appreciation of the Church that will never leave them.
Now we can’t guarantee that your child will make it to Heaven because of a little thing called free will. But no doubt we all need a little advantage in living a life of holiness and what better than Baby Augustine who grew up to be on the Church’s most influential saints and a Doctor of the Church. Pope Benedict XVI especially loves Saint Augustine and so will your child. So instead of purple dinosaurs and sponges instructing your children, turn to Baby Augustine.
Baby Augustine is “Where Holiness Begins!”
| Caution: Baby Augustine will be ineffective if your child sees their parents act contrary to the path of holiness as taught by Baby Augustine products. All children are equipped with an especially sensitive hypocrisy detector fine tuned to their parents. |
Imagine society’s collective shock if Hillary Clinton were to join the National Rifle Association, if members of the Westboro Baptist Church were discovered frolicking at a gay bar or if Quentin Tarantino were to announce plans to make a Justin Bieber documentary.
Josh Horn’s friends were hit with a shock wave of that magnitude when Horn, then an ardent atheist, announced his resignation as president of the Secular Free Thought Society, an ASU club known for its skepticism of religion. Horn had committed the ultimate taboo and sealed his self-imposed excommunication with one act: he decided to become a Catholic.
An interesting conversion story reported in a magazine for Arizona State University and is well worth reading. The opening paragraphs are a bit over the top, but the actual story of his life and conversion is more straight-forward. His description of what happened after he had read the Litany of the Sacred Heart is also something I can understand.
“I was actually kind of annoyed that it happened, and scared – not comforted in the least,” Horn says. “I didn’t want it, I didn’t think it was possible. It just happens, and you come out of it realizing that this obliges you to change your life and the entire course you thought it was taking immediately.”
One of the problems with the amazing lives of the saints is that it is easy to put them into another category. Beyond just dubious hagiography there are many stories of the saints right up to modern day full of the miraculous. The stories related to St. Pio certainly come to mind in this regard.
It is easy to start to think of them as a form of Super Heroes or Supernatural Heroes. You might dream of being a Super Hero, but you know you can never really be one. When we place the saints into a kind of “saint box” and category outside of ourselves we can forget that we are all also called to holiness. The canonized saints are recognized as heroic and the presence of heroic virtue is a determination made before someone is declared Venerable.
The performance of extraordinary virtuous actions with readiness and over a period of time. The moral virtues are exercised with ease, while faith, hope, and charity are practiced to an eminent degree. The presence of such virtues is required by the Church as the first step toward canonization. –Fr. John Hardon’s Modern Catholic Dictionary
The comic book Super Heroes receive their superpowers from being born under an alien sun, a power ring and power lantern, mutant adaptations, lab accidents, and even the fully human super heroes had things like access to tons of money to be able to imitate such powers — Batman and Ironman. So again as much as we would like to be super heroes, it is just a day dream.
We make a major mistake when we treat the saints this way. We distance ourselves as just sinners who muddle along as best we can. There is humility involved in this attitude, but also a lack of trust in God. The Church gives us countless examples of the saints who came from every background and culture. These examples of sanctity in action are meant not to be just admired but to help us to imitate Christ. These varied ways of the imitation of Christ are meant to help use not to put saints in some other category, but to join in with them in cooperating with grace. Stories of stigmata, levitating and even flying saints, etc are evidences of God’s power working through his friends but these outwards magnifications of super(natural) powers are not what we are called to imitate.
St. Therese recent feast day reminds us of all of our vocations.
“At last I have found my vocation. In the heart of the Church, I will be Love.”
We won’t be leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but we can love and we can grow in love. Looking at St. Therese and her “Little Way” is a necessary corrective to what heroic virtue really means. Though it isn’t as easy as just waiting around for some radioactive spider to bite us and then having to juggle are private and superhero life. We have to actively cooperate with God’s grace and increasing in the virtues. For myself it is the difficulty of moving from the theoretical understanding of this to the practical application. Moving the “With God all things are possible” from intellectual knowledge into a deeper real knowledge of it. Avoiding the green Kryptonite of vice and pulling our powers from the Son.
Ah so nice to see so many lies packed into a campaign ecard. First off it is not the misnamed “Affordable Care Act” that pays for birth control but the HHS Mandate as currently codified. The HHS used Obamacare as an excuse to ram this down.
The $18,000 figure also seems rather extravagant implying $1500 a month while at school. The figure actually comes from Planned Parenthood (no surprise there) for lifetime costs of hormonal birth control which they estimate as running from $5,400 TO $18,000. So this e-card would then imply that parents are suppose to pay for a lifetime of contraceptive use if the taxpayers don’t – really? What about food costs since that seems a bit more fundamental? Though considering Food Stamps use is rising maybe that is where we are heading.
This ad is also descriptive of the entitlement philosophy. Someone makes the decision to contracept and the responsibility for paying for it is somebody other than the person contracepting.
As if this ecard wasn’t creepy enough.
So much for human dignity, lets reduce people to their genitals because surely nothing could go wrong with that idea.
Via “Creative Minority Report“
I totally agree with Dale Price’s review of this new television show which he titles “A completely impartial TV program review.”
For the moment, I’m going to completely bracket the fact that NBC’s Revolution is a blatant, soulless rip-off of my friend Steve Stirling’s Emberverse series. Instead, I’m going to give it an objective analysis, focusing on the strengths and flaws of the series, as based upon my viewing of the first two episodes.
Just read his whole review which is much more insightful than anything I can really add.
Dale introduced me to this series of books that started with “Dies the Fire” and has progressed through the years. I really love when a cool idea is taken to the logical conclusions and displays great storytelling as this series does. My first reaction when I first heard of the story was pretty much the same as anybody aware of the Emberverse series that the idea was ripped-off. Though the problem with the series goes beyond this in that if you are going to go ahead and rip off an idea then don’t screw it up by not ripping off enough of it. In “Dies the Fire” the consequence of electricity just stopping to work along with chemical reactions such as gunpowder was put forth in a totally believable way once you accept the premise. It was believable because of the way the characters reacted and how they formed social groups to fend off starvation. Revolution has taken a great premise and chops it down to more B-Movie storytelling with plot holes galore.
Back in 2006 the show Jericho told the story of a town in the aftermath of a nuclear war. There was a believability about the characters and story of the first season that is just lacking in Revolution. I just can’t see the future that is painted after such a massive die-off of the human race. Placed 15 years into the future you just get no real idea about the collapse as if it only happened in some suburban neighborhood or two.
…And only one reference to religion? I’m left with the distinct impression of the Apocalypse According to Aaron Sorkin–and no, that’s not a good thing.
One of the things I enjoy about the Emberverse series is that religion is not just left out or just added in at times like an afterthought. The surviving groups coalesce around leaders and some form of religion – which is quite varied in this series.
…Overall, I can see why people would watch it, but only if you don’t think too hard about it.
Do yourself a favor and pick up the books instead. Though this advice rarely fails in general.
I’ve often thought that modern liberalism often has an irony deficit. More proof is derived from this new President Obama campaign ad.
Hello! My name is Brittany and I live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. I am 25 years old (but I will be 26 on October 3rd!). I am a registered Democrat and I have been voting since I was 18. I am one of the 47% of Americans who fall under Mitt Romney’s definition of “entitled” and “unable to take responsibility for my life.” I have Down syndrome.
I started working part-time in 2004 when I was in high school. I graduated in 2008 and have worked at that job ever since. My employer receives money from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare so that I can work, and the public transportation people receive money from them to take me back and forth to work. My mother applied for Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) for me when I was 19. I really want to make lots of money and have a hot tub someday, but SSI subtracts my paychecks from my SSI benefits, so I don’t have much to put into a savings account.
I am now working for a store, folding clothes and doing returns. I like my job a lot! I make $4.98 an hour and I am allowed to work 25-30 hours a week (I have paid $542.72 in federal, FICA, state, and city taxes this year as of August 31st). I just got my own apartment and share it with another girl like me. I get to pay rent now ($325 a month) and pay for my telephone and cable because I like the Disney Channel. I was not allowed to take my dog with me, but I can hang all of my Hannah Montana posters on my bedroom wall. My mother still has to help me with my medications and handling my money and stuff.
First off I did not like Gov. Romney’s comment which was suppose to be red meat for supporters who attended. It is just another form of class warfare and while it is a problem when people who could and should have skin-in-the-game and don’t – citing broad percentages like this doesn’t help. This ad though attacks a position that nobody is against in general and certainly can not be assigned to what the Governor says he plays to do.
Considering just how many children with Down Syndrome are aborted and never given a chance to draw any kind of salary this ad seems like an odd choice for them. Obamacare and future iterations will not be kindly to children with any chromosomal condition or other genetic defects. What I mean by “not be kindly” is that they will be murdered. Obamacare coverage of preventive services include prenatal testing for “genetic or developmental conditions.” The only thing this type of testing will prevent is the child being born. The present culture of death is already doing this and the so-called death panels of IPAB will certainly see the economic possibilities over the dignity of human life. This is just another example of covering something with a cry “for the children.”
The funny thing about Obamacare is that they brag about covering pre-existing conditions and then erect the IPAB so as to not cover existing conditions.
[Source]
ST. AUGUSTINE, September 28, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Although Catholic voters have received mixed signals this election year from some prelates, Bishop Felipe Estévez has sent a clear message to the faithful of his diocese: human life and family issues have top priority when deciding for whom to vote.
In a letter to the Catholics of the diocese of St. Augustine, Florida, where Estévez presides, the newly-appointed bishop urges the faithful to “take your Catholic beliefs, values, and consciences into the voting booth with you.”
While refraining from specific political endorsements, Estévez notes that it is “my responsibility to remind you that, for us Catholics, some issues are simply never morally acceptable,” beginning with those that violate the right to life.
“The taking of an innocent human life, whether inside the womb or not, and up until natural death, is always and everywhere intrinsically evil,” the bishop writes. “Such issues as embryonic stem cell research and attempts at human cloning are also direct attacks against the dignity and uniqueness of human life made in the image of God.”
Moreover, Catholics have an obligation to defend the institution of marriage, the prelate observes, calling the dignity of traditional matrimony “of central importance” which “must never be undermined because marriage is a cornerstone of any stable society.”
“Any attempts to re-define marriage as something other than between a man and a woman, should be vigorously opposed by a Catholic as contrary to reason, the natural law, and the divinely revealed truths of the Bible,” writes Estévez. “Beyond these fundamental issues, and closely related to them is the issue of religious liberty – our ability as Catholics to live our lives publically according to our faith and morals at all levels of society.
Although Estévez doesn’t specify any candidates in his recommendations, he explicitly calls for a “yes” vote on two proposed state constitutional amendments, numbers 6 and 8, which would prohibit public expenditures for abortion or abortion-related services, and which would allow state funding of faith-based organizations.
Estévez, 66, was installed as Bishop of San Augustine in June of 2011 following his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI to replace retiring bishop Victor Galeone. He was born in Cuba, and fled the communist and anti-Catholic regime of Fidel Castro through Operation Peter Pan in the early 1960s.
They read this letter at Mass last week and it is always nice to be able to post something positive about your own Bishop.
This is the 32nd volume of The Weekly Benedict ebook which is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I pull from Jimmy Akin’s The Weekly Benedict. This volume covers material released during the last week for 5 – 27 September, 2012.
The ebook contains a table of contents and the material is arranged in sections such as Angelus, Speeches, etc in date order. The full index is listed on Jimmy’s site.
The Weekly Benedict – Volume 32 – ePub (supports most readers)
The Weekly Benedict – Volume 32 – Kindle
There is an archive for all of The Weekly Benedict eBook volumes. This page is available via the header of this blog or from here.