eBook

St. John of Avila Free eBook

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Recently Pope Benedict XVI formally announced the selection of two new Doctors of the Church.

The Spirit, who “has spoken through the prophets”, with the gifts of wisdom and knowledge continues to inspire women and men who engage in the pursuit of truth, offering original ways of understanding and of delving into the mystery of God, of man and of the world. In this context, I am delighted to announce that on 7 October, at the start of the Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, I will proclaim St John of Avila and St Hildegard of Bingen Doctors of the universal Church. These two great witnesses of the faith lived in two very different historical periods and cultural environments. Hildegard was a Benedictine nun in the heart of medieval Germany, an authentic teacher of theology and a profound scholar of natural science and music. John, a diocesan priest in the years of the Spanish Renaissance, shared in the travail of the cultural and religious renewal of the Church and of all society at the dawn of modern times. But the sanctity of their life and the profundity of their doctrine render them perennially relevant: the grace of the Holy Spirit, in fact, projected them into the experience of penetrating understanding of divine revelation and intelligent dialogue with that world which constitutes the eternal horizon of the life and action of the Church.

When I originally found out about this announcement in regards to St. John of Avila some months back it sparked my interest in this saint and I wondered if any of his writing were online? One book containing many of his letters was available on archive.org, but like many public domain scanned-in books the formatting was messed up. So I have cleaned it up and am making available as an ebook. This book of letters of spiritual direction are quite good, not exactly surprising for someone picked out as a Doctor of the Church.

ePub Version – Most e-readers
Kindle Version

5 comments
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Prayer

Outward piety

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

I get quite annoyed by people who wear their scapulars on the outside of their clothing.

Though the real reason I get annoyed is that I would like to show how pious I am by wearing mine on the outside also. But I am too prideful to want show how prideful I am of my piety. I wonder if I am blogging about this to mention that I wear the Brown Scapular? Or am I simply blogging my struggles with prideful piety? I don’t know, but darn my prayer life seems too much like the movie Inception at times in how convoluted my motivations are.

I really should be quite humble considering just how many opportunities God provides to humble me. For example some talk about the “gift of tears”, I seem to have that at times when at Mass or praying alone tears will come to my eyes. This is really quite annoying since I am usually quite distracted with my thoughts anywhere but deep in worship and prayer. I seem to have the “ironical gift of tears” that do not synchronize with the inner self. As a sign it only sharpens how distracted I usually am and I find it embarrassing to be providing a false sign of my inner self. Maybe this “gift” is just another reminder to get my house in order.

I guess wanting any outward piety to match the inward disposition is a good thing and recognizing how unmatched they usually are is a step towards unity of the two.

15 comments
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
The Weekly Benedict

The Weekly Benedict eBook – Volume 20

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Weekly Benedict

This is the 20th 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 23 May – 3 June, 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 20 – ePub (supports most readers)

The Weekly Benedict – Volume 20 – 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][weeklybenedict].

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Punditry

Pope-Attractor

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Vatican City, 3 June 2012 (VIS) – At midday today, after having celebrated Mass in the presence of almost one million faithful at Bresso Park in Milan and before praying the Angelus, the Holy Father announced that the eighth World Meeting of Families will be held in Philadelphia, U.S.A. in the year 2015. “I send my warm greetings to Archbishop Charles Chaput”, he said, “and to the Catholics of that great city, and look forward to meeting them there along with numerous families from all around the world”. (source)

I really need to move to wherever Archbishop Chaput is at the time. When he was in Denver they had World Youth Day there and not that he is in Philadelphia they are going to have the “World Meeting of Families” there.

5 comments
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Other

Captive Dreams

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

One of my favorite SF authors is Michael Flynn and I have read his whole catalog. The fact that he is a faithful Catholic certainly adds to my esteem of the author – but foremost he is a great SF author. I write this because his new book of short stories “Captive Dreams” which is coming out in August is available now on the publishers site for $7.99 and it will be $9.99 when it is released.

“Prometheus Award–winner Flynn (In the Lion’s Mouth) assembles six tales delving into deep melancholy and moral ambiguity. Each story builds from scientific what-ifs to a reality of human fragility and despair. In “Melodies of the Heart,” genetic conditions have a young girl aging too quickly and an old woman too slowly. In the title story, ideological differences hinder a young boy’s ability to make sense of afterimages and echoes floating in his brain. “Hopeful Monsters” pulls back the curtain on the world of designing babies. In “Places Where the Roads Don’t Go,” a lifelong friendship is strained when a heated debate over the nature of mind becomes more than talk. “Remember’d Kisses” explores science that offers to absolve emotional pain. In “Buried Hopes,” buried objects keep hope alive. While great writing, vivid scenarios, and thoughtful commentary outshine the scientific concepts, the stories will linger after the last page is turned.”—Publishers Weekly

Phoenix Pick is a publisher I have been aware of for awhile. For one each month they offer a free book if you signup. While not every book they had free was of interest to me, many were. So if you like SF and Fantasy it is quite worthwhile to signup. What is also nice is that they offer all their books in multiple formats with no Digital Rights Management (DRM) so you can easily read them on any device.

The only problem with Phoenix Pick is that there site seems to have been created in the 90’s and never updated format-wise. Thus making it look rather amateurish and wonky, but it is a real publishers site.

Mr. Flynn blogs at Mike Flynn’s Journal and The TOF Spot.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Pro-lifePunditry

Murdering your child based on gender is a very personal and private decision.

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

WASHINGTON (AP) – The House on Thursday fell short in an effort to ban abortions based on the sex of the fetus as Republicans and Democrats made an election-year appeal for women’s votes.
The legislation would have made it a federal crime to perform or force a woman to undergo a sex-based abortion, a practice most common in some Asian countries where families wanting sons abort female fetuses.

It was a rare social issue to reach the House floor in a year when the economy has dominated the political conversation, and Republicans, besieged by Democratic claims that they are waging a war on women, struck back by trying to depict the vote as a women’s rights issue.

“It is violence against women,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., of abortions of female fetuses. “This is the real war on women.”

The White House, most Democrats, abortion rights groups and some Asian-American organizations opposed the bill, saying it could lead to racial profiling of Asian-American women and subject doctors who do not report suspected sex-selection abortions to criminal charges.

Because there is no worse sin than racial-profiling. Killing a child because they are the wrong sex is acceptable just as long as there is no possibility of racial-profiling. Good thing our culture has its head screwed on right and all the priorities correct.

“The administration opposes gender discrimination in all forms, but the end result of this legislation would be to subject doctors to criminal prosecution if they fail to determine the motivations behind a very personal and private decision,” White House spokeswoman Jamie Smith said in a statement. “The government should not intrude in medical decisions or private family matters in this way.”

Ah, so they have seen the light in regards to hate crime laws now also. Oh wait you can prosecute people on motive in regards to race, but not in regards to gender-based abortion. Yeah totally consistent. Though on a practical level such a law would have been difficult to enforce.

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House’s No. 2 Democrat, said he thought the bill was introduced because “somebody decided politically that this was a difficult place to put people in.”

No doubt this is certainly true to some extent, but that is because if you have an inconsistent opinion it is really annoying to have the inconsistencies shown to light.

This is an area where even abortion supporters become uncomfortable. Then Sen. Clinton who ironically called the Partial Birth Abortion Ban a “slippery slope” has spoken out against Gender-based abortion before.

Clinton: “…Obviously, there’s work to be done in both India and China, because the infanticide rate of girl babies is still overwhelmingly high, and unfortunately with technology, parents are able to use sonograms to determine the sex of a baby, and to abort girl children simply because they’d rather have a boy.” (Hat tip: Thomas Peters)

Well it is not just India and China since it happens here also (but to a much lesser degree). The designer family is more and more of a mindset where ideally you have one of each – a kind of matched set. Two of the same kind spoil it and having three children or more is of course destructive to the environment.

The inconsistencies of the abortion supporters queasiness with this form of abortion selection is partly a real moral queasiness and the discomfiture of knowing that they can’t justify it based on their pro-abortion viewpoint.

  • If’s it only tissue mass, a result of conception, or any of the other obscuring phrases. Then it does not matter if the chromosomes are XX or XY.
  • If the women has total autonomy over her body, than she also has total autonomy to make a decision regardless of the reasons or motivations.
  • If it really is not a human being until born, than the gender of the fetus is also a non-issue. It is not like it is a “real” human female or male.
  • If viability is the determination to accept abortion, chromosomes don’t affect this viability.
  • If the ability of a woman to have control of her body is critical to civil rights, than gender-based abortion is also a civil right.
  • If personhood begins at birth as abortion-advocates proclaim, then once again what is the big deal?
  • Some have argues that abortion reduces crime. So aborting male-children helps the crime rate since males commit most of the crimes.
  • If women can choose an abortion for financial reasons such as financial inconvenience than if it is true girls cost more to raise than boys – choosing to kill a girl is perfectly acceptable.

Now you can almost admire the President for his evil consistency. I only wish we could have a President as pro-life as President Obama is pro-abortion. That might be difficult to do for even a very pro-life candidate. When it comes to abortion the President will let nothing get in his way including the First Amendment.

(article)

75 comments
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Link

Africa eBook Project

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Check out this worthy project to send 2,000 CDs to all the seminarians in Cameroon, each loaded with Catholic eBooks such as:

  • The Holy Bible
  • The Catholic Encyclopedia
  • The complete writings of the Church fathers
  • St. Thomas’ entire Summa
  • Classic books by authors like G.K. Chesterton, St. Therese of Lisieux, and Cardinal John Henry Newman
  • Modern titles on preaching, the priesthood, and new media by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop Jose Gomez, and several by Pope Benedict XVI

 

11 comments
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Other

Blogging and the Ten Commandments

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

TJ Burdick is putting together an ebook and asks me the question “In your opinion, what are the ‘ten commandments’ that Catholic bloggers should keep in mind while pressing on in their digital mission?”

Well considering the name of my site a more humorous replay comes to me at first. In fact this is from a post written almost ten years ago on the blogging Ten Commandments.

  • I am the LORD your God, you shall have no other blogs before me.
  • You shall not blog the Name of the LORD your God in vain.
  • Keep holy the blogosphere.
  • Honor thy Father and Mother blogs (Mark Shea and Amy Welborn)
  • You shall not kill thy users comments unless in self defense or to keep civil thy blog.
  • You shall not commit blogdultery by spending more time on thy blog then thy spouse.
  • You shall not steal thy neighbors links without given him credit.
  • You shall not misrepresent thy fellow bloggers especially thou shall fully read their post before ranting.
  • You shall not covet the quality of thy neighbors blog
  • You shall not covet thy neighbor’s blog visits and page views.

Really though the ten commandments Catholic bloggers must keep in mind are of course the original ones and they also collapse into the same Catholic both/and of loving God and neighbor.

The different forms of media including new media all have their inherit temptations and difficulties when it comes to preaching and commenting on the faith. Specifically I will speak to though temptations of pundit bloggers such as myself.

For one is is quite easy to conflate a person with what they say and write and then end up attacking the person more than responding to what they say. I try to take up the example of G.K. Chesterton who could publicly take on the ideas of people who were his friends while remaining friends with them. He never compromised his opinion of their ideas, but his writing also never devolved into personal attacks. I am certain I have failed in this regard, but this is the example I try to adhere to.

The use of parody and sarcasm is also an area fraught with difficulties to keep from descending into callousness and mean-spiritness. You really have to evaluate what your trying to say and while doing parody. Parody can validly have an edge to, but that does not mean you have carte blanche permission to be uncharitable. Even being generally aware of this you can still fall into the problem by admiring what you see as the wit behind it and not its effects. If others take you to task for the way you have said something you really must give it some serious weight in evaluating if your really have transgressed. While I have not had to pull many posts over the last decade, I have pulled some upon reevaluating them. Pride can easily be a barrier in this regard as I well know.

Another inherit danger is our own bias in taking sides. Often we are only able to see the details of a story via the lens of a story from the media. Yet rarely knowing the people involved we jump to conclusions that may or may not be attached to the truth. Lots of Catholic red meat stories are not always as straight-forward as they appear. So a certain healthy skepticism needs to be developed in the way you respond to a story. This needs to ben taken in account since often there is a low certitude level involved. When a story does take such a turn you also need to post about it, especially when it goes against your initial diagnosis and the way you wanted a story to fit.

Blogging can be quite a humbling experience or just another way to feed your ego. Their are plenty of opportunities for that humbling experience if we are open to them as avenues of grace. To say the least bloggers are generally quite opinionated and not afraid to let loose those opinions on the internet public. We will concede that the Pope is only infallible within a narrow scope with specific conditions, but less willing to reduce the scope of our own infallibility when opining.

Like most things there is a spiritual battle involved and your really need to constantly verify your motives. For Catholic bloggers are we really motivated to spread the Good News and to help spread the faith along with giving encouragement to other Catholics? Or is it just an ego trip where you constantly check your site statistics to see if somebody is linking to you or approving of what your wrote. It is also easy to almost think the Catholic blogosphere exists to link to your own posts. To be annoyed when another blogger posts on a subject and gets linked to even though your own analysis was posted first. I know from experience how petty I can be and what imagined slights I can make in regards to whether a post gets linked to or not. It’s very funny to reflect on, but not so funny to look more closely at.

In other words blogging is prone to same problems of the spiritual life and require the same remedies. Prayer, fasting, examination of conscience, the sacramental life, spiritual reading and so forth. If prayer isn’t a serious part of your life than why are you involved in the Catholic blogosphere. This is a question I have certainly put to myself during these years as my prayer life has waxed and waned based on moods and the desire to rely on spiritual feelings instead of steadfastness in prayer despite not feeling spiritual “goodies.”

So do onto other bloggers as you would want them to do on to you. If you want to be linked by others, than be generous in linking to others and to give proper attributions to where you first noticed a story. If you want others not to jump to conclusions about what you write, make sure you are not doing the same.

Now hardly any of us have to be concerned that after we die a group is going to be looking over our blog posts in an investigation into our sanctity. Heroic punditry is currently not a category they look at. Though really if we worry that the first think Jesus says to us after we die is “..about your blog” or you ponder the years in purgatory based on blog entries – you just might need to reevaluate things. While we really don’t need to worry about that future investigation of our blog posts, really there are people investigating them right now and if some level of sanctity is not coming through – something is seriously wrong. This does not mean that a blog just say pious things and quote scripture and the Fathers of the Church, but it does mean that what is said is said with charity when a post takes a more serious turn. We know that they are Christians by their blogging – won’t be a slogan anytime soon, but it at least should be a possibility of one.

2 comments
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Punditry

Choosing between your faith and a leadership conference

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Here is a rather interesting story on a couple of levels.

A Umatilla teenager said she was forced to choose between her Catholic faith and serving as a delegate to Florida Girls State, a government-in-action leadership program for teen girls.

“I was shocked. This is basically discrimination,” said Margeaux (Mar-go) Graham, 16, a junior at Umatilla High School, who was told that she would not be allowed to attend Sunday Mass while Girls State is hosted June 15-23 at Florida State University in Tallahassee, even though a Catholic cathedral is across the street from FSU.
Graham’s mother, Mary, offered to make the trip to escort her daughter to church.

“The girls are not allowed to leave our program for any reason,” said Robin Briere, department secretary-treasurer of the American Legion Auxiliary, who noted it would be an insurance liability to allow any of the 300 delegates to leave the premises.
Briere said a non-denominational Sunday service is provided for the delegates.
As a faithful Catholic, Graham said it would be a mortal sin for her not to attend Mass, as it’s her religious and moral obligation to attend Mass every single Sunday.

“Missing Mass is not an option,” added Jackie Smart, director of religious education at St. Mary of the Lakes Catholic Church in Eustis, where Graham is a parishioner.

“If you’re Catholic, you’re obliged to gather with your fellow Catholics on Sundays to celebrate Mass and it’s not something that we can choose not to participate in, if you’re an active Catholic,” Smart said. “If you really believe what our faith teaches, there would be no way to keep you from Mass and that’s the way Margeaux feels…

“Good for Margeaux for not being afraid to stand up for her faith. There is so much pressure on these young men and women nowadays that it’s not cool to embrace your faith, and I think that it’s really great that Margeaux is willing to stand up for that. …She is just a very determined young lady. She has a very strong grasps of her faith and what it means to be a Catholic.”

A friend of the Graham family, Carl Ludecke, commander of American Legion Post 21 in Umatilla, called Robin Briere at the state American Legion Auxiliary and proposed the idea of allowing a priest or university chaplain to come to Girls State to celebrate Mass for the Catholic delegates.

“I thought, why not bring in somebody in at the same time as they were doing a service in another room?, Ludecke said, recalling the idea was immediately rejected.

“I was absolutely flabbergasted. I was just trying to get this resolved so everybody could be happy,” he said. “We had a screaming match on the telephone and I didn’t get anywhere, because I really don’t have any jurisdiction to do it.”

Briere said this is the first time in her 19 years on staff with Girls State, a privately-funded program, that religion has become an issue.

“We are a non-denominational program and intentionally keep religion out of our program out of respect for the 300 girls that come from many different faiths,” she said. “We set aside time on Sunday morning, from our very busy schedule, to allow each girl to honor her faith silently and the girls collectively put a program together to honor all faiths.”

The Sunday service is written and executed by the delegates, she said, adding it’s something that they enjoy doing.

What I find interesting is that this had never been seen as a problem before and surely a percentage of Catholics had participated in this program during all these years. Offering only a ecumenical Sunday service is certainly of the Protestant mindset where they think there is not any actual obligation in the first place. A non-sacramental mindset that reduces worship to a sermon that could just as well be heard on TV or the internet.

The keystone of the article is the subject of missing Mass on Sunday.

Canon 1247

On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass; they are also to abstain from those labors and business concerns which impede the worship to be rendered to God, the joy which is proper to the Lord’s Day, or the proper relaxation of mind and body.

Canon 1248

  1. The precept of participating in the Mass is satisfied by assistance at a Mass which is celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the holy day or on the evening of the preceding day.

  2. If because of lack of a sacred minister or for other grave cause participation in the celebration of the Eucharist is impossible, it is specially recommended that the faithful take part in the liturgy of the word if it is celebrated in the parish church or in another sacred place according to the prescriptions of the diocesan bishop, or engage in prayer for an appropriate amount of time personally or in a family or, as occasion offers, in groups of families.

With missing Mass requiring a “grave cause”. Of course illness or having to take care of a family member are often given as examples that meet this criteria. Being on vacation in an area with no convenient access to Mass is another example and there is no requirement to drive a long distance in these circumstances. Now whether attending a leadership conference and not being allowed permission to go to Mass is a sufficient “grave cause”, I certainly could not be definitive on. This would be an area that would be best discussed with their parish priest. Though I also think while possible this could fall into that category, it is more meritorious in taking this requirement obligation seriously.

It is also very nice to see a director of religious education at her home parish (Jackie Smart) say something like “Missing Mass is not an option” since the serious obligation to attend Mass is something that many serious Catholics seem to think has been done away with since Vatican II. I like Jackie Smart’s comment “If you really believe what our faith teaches, there would be no way to keep you from Mass and that’s the way Margeaux feels..” So often you hear Mass proposes as an imposition, something to get out of the way. That actually being told to go to Mass is rather mean or troublesome – a view I think bishops unintentionally reinforce when they do things like move the Ascension to Sunday.

The other interesting thing about the story is how the staff of Girls State will not make the simplest compromise on the subject. They wouldn’t even allow the mother to come in an take her to Mass across the street. If this is the type of leadership this organization is demonstrating then it is a good thing this young women is missing out on it. Why is this rule so unbreakable and no compromise possible. The staff of Girls State might have a promising career working for President Obama’s HHS.

“I’m just amazed at the uproar over this,” added Briere, who also is Catholic by faith. “It’s not like she’s forced to go to this program and we’re denying her religious rights. … What has surprised me the most, through all of this, was having the Umatilla American Legion commander call and demand that we had to do it.”

Briere said she does not feel less of a Catholic when she misses Mass while being involved in leading Girls State.

Because the objective state of something is based on what you feel. I don’t feel this is a sin, so thus it isn’t. The cry of “Officer I didn’t feel this was a crime” would be laughed at, unfortunately similar protestations are taken seriously. Besides is it really the case that Briere is not allowed to attend Mass when these conferences happen?

She goes on to say:

“I respect her religious beliefs, and certainly I share them as we’re the same faith,” Briere said. “The Catholic religion that I know is not that narrow thinking, but I do respect how she feels. I’m not disrespecting her in any way. I just feel bad that she is being put in the position to choose between the two. Unfortunately, because of this, she has lost her opportunity to go to Girl State and that cannot be changed now. She’s out of the program, and it was her choice.”

She is being put into that position simply because they refuse to make any compromise. Funny how so many will deride you for not making a compromise when they would not offer a compromise themselves.

(source)
(Via GetReligion)

14 comments
0 FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
Newer Posts
Older Posts