Calling All Spiritual Warriors!

A couple of extreme traditionalists have been criticizing and persecuting devotion to Jesus’ Divine Mercy. How many likes of reparation can we get for Our Lord? Praised be Jesus’ mercy! Let’s start a spiritual bouquet for the conversion of these souls and the comfort and guidance of those being persecuted in the comment section below.

How to Save a Country According to St. Faustina

Source: How to Save a Country According to St. Faustina

Voting the Faith

Even though election day is still a while away, it seems like as good a time as any to discuss this topic.

As a passionate Catholic, I vote Catholic. It doesn’t matter to me what the political party in question is, and my priorities are arranged according to my Faith. (That being said, I don’t tend to vote in favor of liberal Democrats since they almost never support authentic Catholic values and I do tend to favor conservative Republicans because they usually support some key Catholic values. I have to do my homework, though because every once in a while a “conservative Republican” will turn out to have a secret anti-Catholic values agenda.) What matters is that the candidate values religious liberty and doesn’t support any of the five “non-negotiables” that we Catholics are obliged to vote against in order to remain in God’s grace.

Note of warning: Not all politicians who claim to be Catholic or Christian live that faith or support the values Christ would want him/her to. Another reason research is key.

Here are some links I find helpful when researching candidates:

• The candidate’s official website.
• http://www.gilbertwatch.com/index.cfm/blog/would-your-candidate-support-life-marriage-and-family-religious-freedom/
• http://www.sonoranalliance.com/2014/07/23/voter-warning-on-republican-candidates/
• http://votesmart.org/
• http://azvoterguide.com/register/
• http://www.christianvoterguide.com/voting-clergy-resources
• http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm
• https://www.conservativereview.com/
• http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/
• Wikipedia

Perpetual Rosary For America

Source: Perpetual Rosary For America

This post is dedicated to St. Isaac Jogues.

Another One of My Many Mottos

If you can’t find it, make it.

Understanding Catholicism

Catholics and Protestants–what we have in common:

We believe in the Trinity.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p2.htm

We believe in a personal relationship with Jesus.

http://www.catholicbasictraining.com/apologetics/coursetexts/2k.htm

We don’t worship Mary or the Saints.

http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/customs/rosary/mary_worship.asp

We believe grace can’t be earned.

A Clarification of Good Works

We believe Jesus rose from the dead.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p122a5p2.htm

We believe marriage and having children are good things.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/why-not-married-priests-the-case-for-clerical-celibacy.html

We believe in praying from the heart.

http://www.fromtheabbey.com/keys-chapel-christian-prayer/christian-spirituality-rote-prayer-vs-spontaneous-prayer/

We believe Jesus died to save us.

http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2012/03/us-and-our-salvation

We are Christians.

http://catholicbridge.com/catholic/are_catholics_christian.php

We love the Bible.

http://catholicbridge.com/catholic/bible_catholics.php

We participate in community worship and Bible reading on Sundays.

https://stpaulcenter.com/studies/lesson/lesson-one-a-biblical-introduction-to-the-mass

We believe in the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage, the humanity of the unborn, and only voting for those who will respect these truths.

http://www.stjoseph-marysville.org/faqnonnegotiables.html

We believe in serving the poor and all the “least of these”.

http://www.loyolapress.com/corporal-and-spiritual-works-of-mercy.htm

We believe in the Two Great Commandments and the Ten Commandments.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2.htm

We believe God is the Creator of all things.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p4.htm

We have a passion for evangelization.

http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/how-we-teach/evangelization/

We believe faith in Christ is necessary for salvation.

http://www.shsu-catholic.org/are-catholics-saved.html

We celebrate Christmas and Easter.

http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-articles/the-catholic-liturgical-year/article/208/sort/relevance/productsperpage/12/layout/grid/currentpage/1/keywords/calendar

We believe in living a virtuous life.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a7.htm

We believe in Heaven and Hell.

What are the Four Last Things?

We believe in angels and devils.

Catholic Teaching on Angels

We believe in the Virgin birth.

http://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/virgin-birth-of-christ

We believe in miracles.

http://catholicism.org/category/miracles-and-apparitions

These are simply a few of our many common grounds.

8 Tips for Consecrating Your Facebook

  These tips here are ways I’ve learned to make sure Facebook isn’t meaningless or selfish, but a way to glorify God and encourage others.

1. Consecrate your Facebook. By using a Marian consecration prayer and applying it to your social media, naming a patron saint for your FB account, and/or otherwise praying to Our Lord over it, you can take an important first step in putting things in perspective and opening yourself to heavenly inspirations you can add to these tips and that will help you make sure everything in your account glorifies the Creator. As you work with the Holy Spirit on your account rather than by yourself, God’s grace will do the rest and help you to use social media as a tool and not a toy, to take advantage of opportunities to evangelize, and to use your account responsibly to praise God and bless your loved ones so that instead of being a distraction from the important things in life it will serve as an instrument for fulfilling your life duties.
2. Unfollow pages, friends, and groups you don’t need to be hearing from in your news feed. If you’re someone like me who loves to friend everyone you’ve ever known, like every page you want to show support for, and join every group you admire, but don’t want to have to be frantically catching up on the home page every five minutes, then it may be time to start unfollowing some people and things. Don’t worry, no one will receive a notification that you aren’t following them anymore (I tested that.) so no one’s going to get insulted. It’s your private business. A true friend will be the first to understand and applaud you if you need to start lessening your Facebook time, anyway. By unfollowing, you’ll still have your thumbs up on that awesome page you saw, you’ll still be a member of that group that has such a great cause, and you’ll still be friends with that super amazing person, but you won’t have to deal with hundreds of new posts every day. Plus if you ever have a bunch of time to kill and not many other ways to kill it, you can use your Facebook  search bar or favorites list to start reading posts from some of those pages, friends, and groups directly from their timelines and see what’s up. There are also many other ways to keep up with your favorite people and organizations besides via Facebook (phones, emails, Skype, newsletters, other social media accounts of yours).
3. Take advantage of that options arrow in the upper right corner of each post in your news feed. Let’s say you’ve decided to keep following this young teen named “Mary Jane” because she’s going through some tough times and you wanna keep yourself posted (pun intended) in every possible way, but she’s constantly sharing posts from her favorite movie “Attack of the Aliens From Planet Zuigli”‘s page and you don’t want stuff from that page cluttering up your news feed since it has nothing to do with her struggles anyway. You can click the options arrow in one of those shared posts and select “Hide all from Attack of the Aliens From Planet Zuigli”. There. Now you’ll won’t see posts from that movie anymore but you can still hear everything else Mary Jane has to say.
4. Adjust your notifications settings. Select the notifications Earth symbol and click “Settings” in the upper right corner of the little screen that pops out. There you can look at all the things you’re currently able to receive notifications for and start turning off the ones you don’t need.
5. Follow more religious pages and groups rather than ones you don’t need. If you want suggestions, I’ve got a few groups and pages of my own and can recommend others according to what you feel called to pursue.
6. Go on a quest for hobbies. Reading, writing, art, sports, scouts, apostolates…. The possibilities are endless. Not only will additional hobbies help make you a better person and serve as a competing interest so you don’t spend too much time on FB, but finding just the right hobbie(s) will also give you more and more interesting post ideas.
7. Make social media truly social. Instead of being something that takes you away from your friends and family, make Facebook something that takes you to them. When you see a hilarious picture in your news feed, don’t keep the laughs all to yourself. Turn around and see if there’s a loved one nearby who will enjoy it as much as you did and show it to him/her, or maybe call out for a specific someone. Make Facebook a thing you can bond over with someone in person.
8. Pray. Make Facebooking responsibly and for God’s glory one of your prayer intentions in your daily Rosary, assistance at Sunday Mass, and/or community Bible study/prayer group meeting. There could be few better tips for reforming a part of your life than to take it up in prayer. It is in God’s grace that you will find all the wisdom, courage, temperance, and prudence you’ll ever need.

God bless you!

Unicorns

http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/12336/the-unicorn-as-a-christological-figure

Tabby: The Marian Cat

http://homeandholidays.com/the-legend-of-the-christmas-cat-and-the-not-so-silent-night/

http://www.bethanyroberts.com/LegendoftheCat.htm

https://www.bronners.com/topic/cat+-+legend.do

What Altar Boys Can Do That Altar Girls Can’t

another good post: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2009/11/mantilla-the-hon-on-girl-servers.html

 

liturgy guy

This past week the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released the findings from the 2014 Survey of Ordinands to the Priesthood. Prepared by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) for the USCCB, the survey was completed by 365 ordinands, which constitutes a 77 percent response rate. At nearly 30 pages, there is a great deal of data to digest.

While the USCCB press release focused on areas such as the ethnicity and median age of this years ordinands, something far more interesting was tucked in at the bottom of the release.

Of the 365 men surveyed this year, a whopping 80 percent had been altar boys during their formative years. In comparison, only 52 percent of ordinands had been lectors, less than a third had been youth ministers and only 15 percent had ever attended a World Youth Day or a Steubenville Youth Conference.

Don’t just…

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