Catholic Carnival 189

Welcome to another installment of the Catholic Carnival! I've received a group of interesting and varied posts this time around, ranging from serious, reflective, and funny. Without further ado, let's queue up for the bad-for-you Carnival food (funnel cakes, deep-fried sweets such as Snickers bars and Twinkies, and candied or caramel apples, anyone?) and dive right in to the blog entries.

Here is a more healthy appetizer than all those aforementioned treats. ACM at 50 Days After tells you how to adopt a Catholic blog. Go on, you know you want to do it. You might even find some gems no matter if the blog is well known or not.

Appropriately enough: the first "entrée" for this carnival is a reflection on the beginning of the day, and the beginning of the week, penned by Sarah at just another day of Catholic pondering. As the day progressed from sunrise to sunset, Sarah leaves everything - triumphs or stumblings, holiness or impatience, smiles or tears - in God's hands.

Over at Thoughts on Grace, Colleen, who admits she is new to the Carnival (welcome, Colleen!) submitted a nice piece about her love of keeping lists but that she doesn't always put God at the top of her list. Read through her thoughts and see how she concludes that she needs to remember that God is NOT a Thing to DO.

Fellow Chemist Michelle at Quantum Theology submitted a piece about pain and suffering. Well, it's not as painful as you might think. Michelle suggests to offer whatever pain you might be suffering for the souls in Purgatory. The rest of her post relates this concept of redemptive suffering to that of re-purposing, recycling, reusing ... and brings up an apostolic letter, Salvific Doloris that was penned by the late Pope John Paul II. Money quote:

It is certainly time to recycle and reuse my mother’s injunction to "offer it up" for this generation — so they, too, can imagine how to repurpose the pain.

In the meantime, David over at The Apostolate of the Laity blogs on that age-old question, "Why am I here, and what is my purpose?" To be or not to be, that is the question ... and the answer (no, not 42, we're not talking Douglas Adams here):

One exists because out of love God spoke one into creation, and one's purpose primarily becomes a lifelong attempt to love his Creator with all of one's very being.

The rest of his post relates this question to the modern-day issues surrounding protecting your identity from the thieves. How different is safeguarding your passwords and other important data from protecting one's identity as a child of God? David tries to answer these questions in his most insightful entry.

Susie from Musings from a Catholic Bookstore is looking forward to the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady to St. Bernadette Soubirous. His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI will be in Lourdes, France from September 13-15 where he will visit the grotto where the apparitions occurred. In addition to delivering this news, Susie provided a history of this event, and gave a link where you can read articles and other links related to Lourdes, Bernadette, the anniversary and the Pope’s visit.

My dear friend Ebeth from A Catholic Mom Climbing the Pillars provided this lovely litany type of prayer to the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Originally posted during the Lenten season, it is a good prayer to have on hand at any time during the year.

Anyone who has been to a parish staffed by Franciscans will most likely notice somewhere in the sanctuary the San Damiano Cross. Deanna at Notlukewarm states it's a favourite of hers, and wrote a poem about it whilst on retreat.

Tim over at Army of Martyrs submitted a pair of interesting posts. His first deals with the concept of Catholicity - is the Catholic Church truly "catholic"? Tim illustrates his point with a quote from Cardinal Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

His second post deals with the doctrine of apostolic succession. His post stems from a comment he made on another blog on this topic. His point: Apostolic authority exists within the Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox Church) or it does not exist at all. The rest of his post lends support to this statement.

There were some reflections on scripture. Kevin at Heart, Mind and Strength wrote about his thoughts from this past Sunday's readings. Love is the central theme.

Bob at Prepare for Mass also provided his thoughts on the same readings, and also emphasised the concept of love: love thy neighbour as thyself, love one another as (Jesus) has loved thee, etc. The Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy were also mentioned in Bob's post.

Using the New American Bible, Christine the Soccer Mom read the Epistle of James from start to finish in one sitting. She provided her thoughts over at Domestic Vocation. It's a pretty thorough analysis of this epistle, and Christine provides her reactions and thoughts after having read through it.

Until I moved to the East Coast, I always associated the first days of school to occur after Labour Day. So in general, my birthday would fall within the first week or two of school. (Around here, school started the week before Labour Day ... unless you're a UNC-Chapel Hill student, where the first day of school was obnoxiously early, 19th August.) When I was a student at UCSD, we were on the quarter system, and school started even later (to my recollection, mid-September or later). So with all the back-to-school hullabaloo, Evann at Homeschool Goodies suggested four books targetted to the Homeschooling Parent to help keep them on track spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. Check her recommendations here.

Now I'm queuing up at the booth where they are selling popcorn with movie theatre-style butter. Mmmmmm. What better place to enjoy such a treat than at the cinema hall? Lisa at A Life of Benevolence wrote a review on the movie Bella. It won the People’s Choice Award at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival and was released in theaters last fall.

Now for the politically-themed posts. First, a couple of bloggers wrote about Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Jean at Catholic Fire provided a post including photos of Ms Palin and her family, as well as some of her favourite posts and links. She also provides some thoughts about why she greatly admires Ms Palin.

Christine the Soccer Mom's second entry at Ramblings of a Catholic Soccer Mom focused on Ms Palin's 17-year old daughter Bristol. Bristol made the news last month because she was pregnant. Her decision to keep the baby and marry the baby's father with her family's blessing was one of the subjects on which Christine wrote. Money quote:

[...]Family values - Pro Life values - mean that when an unexpected pregnancy comes up, you love that mother and that baby and you deal with it.

I quote this because of an interesting conversation I had with my next door neighbour last night as I was returning from choir practice. She admitted to me that some of the choices she made in her (young) life have not been the best, but two choices she made are those she never regretted: having her two daughters. Both pregnancies were unexpected, but she was determined to have her children, despite the fact that she would be raising them alone, and with the strong support of her family and friends, she is managing to provide for them a stable and loving home. Thus far, she is dealing with her situation admirably. Her eldest daughter, aged 5, is due for surgery early next week; please pray for her recovery.

Secondly, a post about Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama was provided over at Rhymes with Right. The long-running debate questioning exactly when human life begins is the central issue behind this post.

Now for a little levity. Marcel from Texas A&M's St. Mary's Catholic Centre put a challenge on SMCC's blog Aggie Catholics: Pin the Caption on That Photo. The photo depicts the latest rage in perfumery: The Pope's Cologne. Click here to have a look at the photo, as well as the captions submitted thus far.

Brian from Christus Vincit is amused by a graphical depiction of a Chant Workout. Tired of bench presses and bicep curls? Try this new workout. A dose of the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos may be included if you ask nicely.

In parting: I will admit that I like having something in the background whilst working. In general, I have organ music playing in the background (hence the reason why people felt like they walked into a church whenever they visited me in my cubby when I was a post-doc at UNC-Chapel Hill). However, I had a variety of podcasts playing in the background this time around. Here is a shout-out to the Catholic New Media Roundup. Sean does a wonderful job promoting Catholic blogs and podcasts. Give him a go; you won't regret it. Other podcasts I listened to as I compiled this list included in alphabetical order: Fr. Seraphim Beshoner's Catholic Under the Hood, Brian Michael Page's Christus Vincit Anywhere, Fr. Stephen Cuyos' Cuying Podcast (even though he hasn't had any new ones up lately, I still like listening to his reflections), the iPadre, Fr. Jay Finelli, and Secrets of Harry Potter hosted by Fr. Roderick Vonhogen. Three of these podcasters are also members of SQPN, which also has a wealth of other wonderful podcasts.

We've come to the end of another installment of the Catholic Carnival. Until next time ... thank you for reading. Enjoy the links above.

I've discerned that these Carnivals can only be as good as the entries you bring to the party. Please feel free to submit your thoughts to future Carnivals. A handy-dandy form may be found by clicking here. In addition, a list of past and future Carnivals may be obtained by clicking here.