The CatholiCity Message
Volume XVI, Number 1 – January 31, 2012
"Girding"
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
Welcome to the Year 16 of the CatholiCity Message, the Great Granddaddy of Catholic e-letters, read by tens of thousands, started in 1996 before most of us had an email address, and still achingly but lovingly crafted to surprise you (even if that means with shockingly uneven quality) while girding your love for the one, true, holy, and apostolic faith found in its fullness only in the Catholic Church. Girding? Yes, we gird here. (Deep Voice:) They's a whole lotta girding goin' on.
Aside from our usual stuff at the end (Feastdays for February, Catholic quotes you never heard before, group cyberprayer, and the overuse of words like "gird"), we have three big items to kick off 2012, the first two are short and sweet, while the third item provides a detailed window into the future of Catholicism in America that has been in the works for, well, almost two decades. Let's gird!
1. AND RIGHTLY SO
You probably know about this, but in case you need more background, our bishops have launched a national campaign to defend religious freedom, in particular against the Obama Administration's policy to force "almost every employer and insurer in the country to provide sterilization and contraceptives, including some abortion-inducing drugs, in their health plans." (USCCB President, Cardinal-Designate Timothy Dolan) For numerous daily articles and commentary on this matter, visit the CatholiCity.com homepage. To see a Dolan video and to find out what our bishops recommend we do, go here:
http://www.usccb.org/conscience
2. YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST
Despite a slow start and the financial struggles virtually all of us share, our annual Christmas appeal came very close to our goal with a week or so to go. I can barely wait to match every donation with a dollar of my own. Thank you for girding us financially! We still have plenty of Our Lady of Guadalupe fridge magnets, blessed lapel pins, and art-house prints left if any of you missed it and want to put us over the top:
http://www.catholicity.com/support/donation.html
3. THE FUTURE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA
We recently posted an article I wrote forecasting the coming explosion of authentic Catholicism in America over the next two decades that truly seemed like a culmination of decades of observation, hundreds of hours of consultation with experts and fellow Catholic apostolic workers, thousands of hours of reading and research, meeting or corresponding with tens of thousands of benefactors like you, combined with the supernatural awesomeness of all of our experiences living and suffering with Jesus as the Church took a pounding over the last two generations.
In a real way, you helped write this article because it is about you, your families, and what you mean to the Church in a particular country over time. Your future is, if we got it right, to quote a later verse in Amazing Grace, "bright shining as the sun." I ask you to keep in mind three things before you read the article:
Longtime friend of CatholiCity, Fr. John McCloskey, who essentially agrees with our analysis, has warned in his writings that the coming increased potency of Catholicism in America may be accompanied in parallel by persecution and even martyrdom as the forces of the Culture of Death grow stronger or dominant in society at large.
We really desire for you to comment on the article, pro or con, and to even provide editorial suggestions. A link is provided at the end for your comments. It begins with a five paragraph survey of what happened since the 1960s before it gets into the meat of the "150,000" families and how and why they will affect the future so profoundly.
Finally, we ask you to go all-out to bring this good news to others using your personal email lists, Facebook accounts, and so on, so the ideas can enter a national conversation among Catholics. Here is the article:
http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/macfarlane/bright-future.html
4. FEASTS FOR FEBRUARY, PLUS GROUP CYBER-PRAYER
Groundhog Day and the Feast of the Presentation (and the inspiration for the title of my first novel) are on February 2.
Who doesn't love Saint Blaise on Friday, February 3? (Nobody, that's who.)
Our heroic Japanese brother, Paul Miki and bros, who loved Jesus unto death, on February 6.
February 11 is Our Lady of Lourdes, so start your nine-day Rosary novena on February 2, and since it is on a Saturday, perhaps you can make a day trip to a Marian Shrine if you plan now.
On February 21 to Saint Peter Damian, one of the lesser known Doctors of the Church, reformer during the times of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, and essentially the Babe Ruth of Catholicism a thousand years ago. Have you prayed to him? Let's do it now, tens of thousands of us together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit:
Dear Saint Peter Damian,
Hello. We invite you into our lives, virtually all us for the first time, here in 2012, using cars and cell phones and devices you could not imagine in your day, and ask for two things. First, be a permanent influence for reform and penance in our families, and since this is the first time we are asking for your help, show us that you are with us by interceding with Jesus to provide a beautiful, ideal, and supernatural solution to a particular problem or malady we are struggling with right now. Join with our Guardian Angels in reminding us to be mindful and to try to receive Holy Communion on your feastday if possible. Amen.
Ash Wednesday falls on a Wednesday again this year (ho ho!), on February 22.
Not only because he has the coolest name ever, Saint (ManyFish) Polycarp, but because his martyrdom was so amazing, on February 23.
There is no saint on the official Church calendar for February 29, Leap Day, but we could remind ourselves that the modern calendar itself was a gift of God to the world through Pope Gregory, the only other dude to merit the title Great beside Peter and Leo (time will tell with John Paul II). It was his math and astronomy nerds who came up with the elegant solution of adding a day every four years. A leap of faith, if you will.
CATHOLIC QUOTES
"When we've been here ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun."
John Newton, Amazing Grace
"I wanted to be a good man, so I ended up being a Catholic, and am still falling short with less failure at the one while seemingly endeavoring to be holy with less success at the other."
Joe Wood
"Our nature lies in motion. Absolute rest is death."
Pascal
"When you go forth to find a wife, leave your eyes at home but take both ears with you."
Seumus McManus
"It is a thousand times better to die with Our Lord than to live without Him."
Saint Francis de Sales
"Sad mortality may hide
In his ashes all her pride,
With this inscription o'ver his head:
All hope in never dying here lies dead."
Richard Crenshaw
"It is by the will that we sin, and, live righteously."
Saint Augustine
"The worship of the will is the negation of will. To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose. You cannot admire will in general because the essence of will is that it is particular."
G.K. Chesterton
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Hope it helped. Thank you for being a Citizen of CatholiCity (the only city where taxes are optional). Let us all thank the Father for our beloved Catholic faith. Simply...
With Mary,
Bud Macfarlane
Founder
