The CatholiCity Message
Volume III, Number 13 – May 17, 1999
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
Thanks for the prayers and the patience. After nine straight 100+ hour weeks, a car crash that should have killed the author, two suspicious sewage back-ups in two different states, with the help of over two dozen volunteer editors and Saint Jude Media workers, fortified by the prayers of thousands of CatholiCity Citizens, Bud Macfarlane has completed his third novel, House of Gold, on deadline.
By coincidence, he did so on the 54th day of a 54 Day Rosary Novena many of you prayed with us. Everyone who has previewed the manuscript is telling us it's his best novel ever. You can decide for yourself. More on that later. We won't be missing many CatholiCity Messages through the end of this important year in Salvation History. What we've lacked in terms of regularity, We're going to try to make up with sheer volume. Consider this CatholiCity Message a kind of "cleaning out of the attic" of our brains...
1. FIRST NATIONAL CATHOLICITY CONFERENCE EVER
After eight years, the Mary Foundation is sponsoring its first conference, a Men's Conference in Coon Rapids, Minnesota on July 16-18 at the Church of the Epiphany. The first night, Friday, will be for husbands and wives, and the next day, Saturday, will be for men and older sons only. Take a gander at confirmed speakers: Tom Monaghan (founder of Dominos Pizza), Senator Bob Smith (Republican, New Hampshire), Jeff Cavins (EWTN Life on the Rock), Bowie Kuhn (former commission of Major League Baseball), and Marie Bellet (our favorite Catholic singer). Plus we're working on an Family pig roast/dance party for Sunday–kind of like a wedding, but without the groom and bride. Bud Macfarlane will be there, of course, signing copies of his novels, including his new one. In grand Mary Foundation style, there will be no admission fee, though we'll pass the hat to cover expenses. CatholiCity Citizens and out-of-staters are cordially invited. We're working on an online registration form as we speak, and we'll be keeping you updated in future CatholiCity Messages.
4. HOUSEWORK OF GOLD
Regarding Macfarlane's latest novel, House of Gold, here are a few details about availability. Barring unforeseen delays, the book will arrive at our shipping center from the printer the week of June 7th, and we'll start shipping them the day they arrive. Before we can take requests online or through the mail, we have to reprogram and re-engineer our database computers and shipping center, plus we have to rejigger a few things in CatholiCity. These projects will be completed before the end of May. As usual, CatholiCity Citizens will be the first folks in the world to be able to receive the new book. Saint Jude Media will make the official announcement in a CatholiCity Message. Summer interns are filing into our shipping center, preparing for the deluge. We'll ship the day we get your letter or online request, as always. Anyone will be able to get a free copy of the new book, as well as multiple copies for an insanely nominal donation, as usual.
TAKING THE HAT OFF
Our publishing division, Saint Jude Media, produces these books for one reason: to give you and tens of thousands of Catholics around the world a tool for reaching unreachable souls. Only God's grace can change hearts. But God's grace cannot work without your help with one-on-one distribution. We're counting on you, the CatholiCity Citizen, to be play the pivotal role. You, the individual who is reading this message, are the key player in the ongoing drama of salvation. You. You are on the front lines. We're the nerds in the supply room.
PUTTING THE HAT ON
We thank and praise God for the honor to publish these novels. For the first time, during the writing of this book, the author reports he literally felt the power of your prayers as he was writing (along with the prayers and Masses offered up by over 1000 priests, nuns, brothers, and deacons around the world who prayed for him and for "future" readers). He literally broke down into tears many times while composing the story (perhaps this is the Italian side him–the Scotsman in him just kept on typing). By the way, it was a CatholiCity Citizen who suggested the title, after reading the pathetic "working" titles in a CatholiCity Message.
THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU
You may not realize it, but CatholiCity, because of your individual and combined efforts, is now one of the most dynamic and powerful Catholic apostolates in the world. Singers like Marie Bellet become well-known overnight because of you. People find their spouses because of you. Prayers you say for each other are answered. Thousands of souls convert, revert, or discover to the beauty and wonder of Catholicism because of you. Friendships form. Souls transform. Minds are educated. Consciences are rekindled. Babies who otherwise would never exist are born.
The world changes because of you. How cool is that?
Way cool.
Call us proud, call us apostolic workers, or don't call us anything at all, but we envisioned all these things when we first planned CatholiCity in early 1996, when 95% of you didn't even have an email address. We believed then and we believe now in the power of grace, and the power of devout Catholics working together. CatholiCity came within a whisker of dying off forever last year, but you kept us online with your hope-against-hope generosity. You guys blow us away. When Saint Jude Media releases House of Gold a couple weeks from now, we know you are going to blow us away again.
THE SEQUEL-PREQUEL THING
One final note on House of Gold. It has the same characters as Macfarlane's second novel, Conceived Without Sin, taking place ten years later, but it is not a sequel in the sense that you do not have to read Conceived to follow Gold. We won't give away the plot of Gold, other than to say that it is sensational and timely. Chilling, even. Despite this, both books can be read as one book in sequence. And House of Gold is not nearly as long as his first novel, Pierced by a Sword. You still have time to request and read Conceived before Gold is available. It's featured on the CatholiCity homepage, so just go there and click.
5. STRANGE THINGS THAT OCCURRED TO US LAST NIGHT
We have a slight email backlog. There's something about corresponding with 500+ devout Catholics over 24 hour period that gets our minds churning. As we drifted off to sleep, things started popping in...
FAITH AND REASON. Nothing about the Catholic Faith is contrary to reason. God is All-Reasonable. Yet much about the Faith is beyond reason. Such as the concept (much less the reality) of the Holy Trinity. This is what throws off rationalists who lack the gift of faith. They expect a reason for everything, even when they don't expect a weatherman to predict the weather accurately 48 hours from now.
CHESTERTON/PARADOX. G.K. Chesterton was able to express the truths of the faith by using paradox. A paradox is something appears to be contradictory but is actually true. It is a paradox that the Creator and King of the Universe would become a man. It is a paradox that when He became a man, He chose to be born in a smelly animal barn. It is a paradox that He conquered death by dying. It is a paradox that such a majestic Being would willingly submit Himself to the most humiliating form of torture ever devised by the dark heart of man, crucifixion.
MORE PARADOX. There are many souls reading this message today who were baptized Catholics, but have fallen away, and still think themselves a million miles away from the Faith when in fact you are only a few miles or less from a priest who can hear your Confession and bring you into full communion with Jesus from one second to the next.
MAN AND WIFE. Did you ever think about how exotic and weird it is that a man and a woman, born from different families and extremely different by biological design, as different as daytime and night-time, can come together in the sacramental union of marriage? It's a wonder there is one good marriage in the world and a miracle that there are billions.
THE INTERNET. The Internet is quite strange. All your emails and every thing you've ever seen on it are merely...bits of colored light on a glass screen. Unlike the heap of metal in your driveway you call your car, or the chair your sitting on right now, the Internet is not really there. Yet, two CatholiCity Citizens are recently got married in part because of...pixelated bits of colored light on a screen.
USE THE FORCE. Star Wars Part Whatever is coming out soon. For all its amazing technological pizazz and pseudo-religious underpinnings, there won't be one concept or image presented that comes anywhere near as close the sheer mystery, the mind-bendingly and spectacularly wild fact that the Holy Trinity, the Alpha and Omega, dwells in perfect silence under the cloak of a wafer of bread. No mere man, however much he might be created in God's image, could have made up the Eucharist for a movie or a novel. No other world religion can boast of a concept so creative, so un-human, so wonderful as the One Who Dwells in the House of Gold in your local Catholic church.
And you can quote us.
The Eucharist. A good place to stop. We could write about the beauty and wonder of the Holy Roman Catholic Church forever, and if they have word-processing in heaven, God-willing, we just might. It's not that we're good writers here. It's just that we have great Material.
With Christ,
Your Friends at CatholiCity
