The CatholiCity Message
Volume XIV, Number 10 – November 15, 2010
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
We have more items than usual today. Our themes turned out to be Stuff Coming Soon, Evangelization, and Animals. Feel free to browse! But make sure you participate in the prayer with tens of thousands of your fellow readers near the end...
THE NADA DOCTRINE
"Nada" is Spanish for "Nothing," and the Nada (or Nothing) Doctrine, according to Saint John of the Cross and other Catholic mystics, is the first law for successful contemplative prayer and for becoming a saint. Put simply the Nada Doctrine states: You can allow nothing to come between you and God or between your will and His will for you. We need to ask ourselves, if we are not saints, what stands in the way of putting the Nada Doctrine into effect in our lives?
THE LION AND TIGER METHOD
Try this for helping your little ones clean up their toys. Have your child sit on your lap pretending to be a lion or a tiger, and then, with you acting as television nature-show narrator, help him imagine that the toys around the room are prey. "The Tiger spies the Buzz Lightyear Doll, which sits near the ottoman, unaware of his impending demise..." Giggling and gowling, periodically unleash The Tiger into action to snag the toy and store it away. Upon returning to your lap, repeat until the room is cleaned up. The Lion and Tiger Method has been successfully tested on boys, but let us know if it works for little girls, too.
BETTER LATE THAN EARLY, OR, TURTLE BEATS HARE AGAIN
One of our (and by extension, your) secrets to success is our purposeful adopting of the "latest" technology later. In other words, after it becomes cheap and is accessible to regular folks who live in the real world. Do not misunderstand: we love technology. Some version of "e-books" have been around for fifteen years. We proudly announce, late, that Saint Jude Media novels will soon be available for the Kindle and the iPad for what we love to refer to as a "ridiculously low" donation. Stay tuned.
THAT GUY WAS SOMETHIN' EVEN BEFORE HE WAS POPE
"Believing Christians should look upon themselves as such a creative minority and ... espouse once again the best of its heritage, thereby being at the service of humankind at large."
Joseph Ratzinger
FREE CATHOLIC BOOKLETS? IMPOSSIBLE.
But not for us. Starting in early 2011, we are planning to do for Catholic booklets what we have done for Catholic CDs and novels: give them away for free or for ridiculously low minimum donations for large quantities. Right now, just about every organization out there charges a whopping $20 (with shipping) for fifty pamphlets (even those flimsy one-page fold-ups). And believe you me, our premium quality sixteen-page CatholiCity Booklets will NOT be the wishy-washy stuff you find in the back of most parishes nowadays. Our first booklet will dramatically change the life of any person who reads it with an open heart. The best part: as a CatholiCity Citizen, you are going to be on the ground floor for helping reach hundreds of thousands, and eventually, millions, of souls, using this proven tool for evangelization. Stay tuned.
RUNNING OUR USUAL DEFICIT, OR, TREASURE IN HEAVEN
By this time every year, we're running a significant deficit—usually between $50,000 and $100,000. This is because we give away free books and CDs that normally cost anywhere from $50 to $70 elsewhere to every soul who comes to us for help. Plus, not only have we NOT raised our ridiculously low minimum donations for larger quantities in almost two decades, but we actually cut them in half a few years back. Early next month, we will begin our annual Christmas Appeal, so please be generous. Even if you do not personally give out our Catholic CDs, books, (and see above) or booklets, your gift will definitely subsidize your fellow CatholiCity Citizens who do and cannot afford to reach so many people without your financial sacrifice.
STATS AND SOULS
Most people do not realize this, but the vast majority of Catholic converts in America come into the Church through marriage. We are psyched about this, and leave it up to God to figure out how many of these conversions are nominal or serious. Even more people "convert" to Catholicism by being born, in a cool little soul-changing-miracle known as Baptism, which is, after all, Our Lord's ideal plan for all babies. God is a Family Guy, even in His Trinitarian existence. Adult non-marriage converts come into the Church through people like you, who actually care enough about another person's soul to evangelize them through friendship, love, and prayer.
WE LOVE THE OTHER J-Z
John Zmirak is a writer-in-residence at Thomas More College in New Hampshire, and his weekly articles are posted on CatholiCity.com by way of our good friends at InsideCatholic.com. Years ago, we once had the pleasure of staying up all night into the morning yakking with him, in particular about the morality of the death penalty. Agree with him or not, Mr. Zmirak faithfully fulfills your author's requirement that writers should not pussy-foot around while telling you stuff you do not already know. We found his post-election insights, entitled "A Thumb in Leviathan's Eye," particularly interesting. You can read it here:
http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/zmirak/08643.html
And catch up on John's other articles here:
http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/zmirak/
WHY YOUR FORTHCOMING PRAYER WILL CHANGE THE WORLD
Prayer is an act of your will, which is free, and your free will, according to the best philosophers and theologians, is just about the only thing you have on this mortal coil which is truly yours. Even your body is owned by God, if "owned" is the correct term. God also has a free will. Plus, He is all good. So, when you pray, you exercise your free will to engage with an All-Good Father, and, the world not only does change, but the world has to change. When you pray with us below, concentrating on each word, you will change reality, because God will act upon your decision to contact him, and unleash grace. When we all pray together, tens of thousands of us reading this, the world changes. So let us begin...
"Dear Father in Heaven,
Oh, to be honest, I have fallen short of your will for me. I have not fully lived the Nada Doctrine. It is not that I have not tried hard to be a good son or daughter, a good father or mother, a good brother or sister. It is that I have sinned so many times, usually the same stupid, selfish sins going back for years on end, and I have been tempted to just give up in frustration. I know I can do better if You help me. I resolve to do better. I resolve to let nothing get in the way of Your Holy Will for me. But I also know, from disappointment and experience, that this change I promise requires your help, your grace, and your guidance. Help me, Father, I beg you! Help me, Father, I repeat. Enflame the tattoo of the face of Jesus from my baptism inside my soul! Help my brothers and sisters in Christ who are praying this prayer with me! I have fallen, so I raise my arms to You, like Saint Therese, the Little Flower, and ask You, with the faith You have given to me, Lift me up! Lift me up and kiss me on the forehead! Amen."
QUOTATIONS, JOSEPH SOBRAN, RIP
"Tyranny seldom announces itself. In fact, a tyranny may exist without an individual tyrant. A whole government, even a democratically elected one, may be tyrannical."
"In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college."
"If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion."
"After tens of millions of abortion 'procedures,' has America lost anything? Another Edison, perhaps? A Gershwin? A Babe Ruth? A Duke Ellington? As it is, we will never know what abortion has cost us all."
"Freedom is coming to mean little more than the right to ask permission."
"War is just one more big government program."
"The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself."
"Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized."
"If our furry and scaly friends were still evolving, none of them appeared to be gaining on us."
"The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government."
"When a politician wrestles with his conscience, he usually wins."
"Yet I know that my own horrible spiritual habits will keep drawing me downward every hour. Like most men, or maybe more than most, I am my own worst enemy, constantly tempted to repay my Savior with my self-centered ingratitude. When I think of my sins, the debt of thanksgiving itself seems far too heavy to pay. No wonder He commands us to rejoice. It's by no means the easiest of our duties."
"Your chances of meeting an IRS agent are far greater than your chances of meeting anyone you voted for."
Yeah, it was long message, but we did offer the option to browse, and hopefully, shared some stuff that you are grateful to be reminded about or did not already know. Thanks for reading. We remain...
With Our Lady,
Your Friends at CatholiCity
