The CatholiCity Message
Volume XVII, Number 5 – July 1, 2013
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
Miss me? Ah, you are sweet. If you are new to this message, and even if you have been with us for a while, you are gonna love, smile, and laugh at the Popemobile Bumper Stickers. Let us begin.
PRAYING FOR EACH OTHER
For nearly eighteen years one of our most popular services at CatholiCity.com has been a deceptively simple webpage offering prayers for individual intentions, which are then passed on via email to volunteer CatholiCity Prayer Partners. It is very reassuring to receive an email promising prayers from a Prayer Partner.
If you like, you can become a Prayer Partner by sending us an email. Just type or paste "Make me a Prayer Partner" or similar in the Subject or Message field:
http://www.catholicity.com/about/contact.html
Need prayers? Here is the Prayer Request webpage:
http://www.catholicity.com/prayer/
PRAYER CHANGES THINGS, PART FIFTY-ELEVEN
Over the years, I have had several themes, and perhaps the most common is that prayer, your prayers in particular, no matter how small, distracted, or brief, change the world. Please keep this in mind as you read what follows.
The surrounding culture most of us live in, the post-Christian West, is disintegrating. As I have chronicled in these messages, especially in terms of demographic suicide through the use of contraception, voluntary self-sterilization, and abortion, the implosion is happening at an increasingly rapid pace. The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn the only authentic definition of marriage while demonizing those who champion it is yet another symptom of the cancer eating away at our worldwide society.
Demographic suicide, which leads to economic hardship and collapse, is, at heart, the result of immorality resulting from whole societies living as if God does not exist. Even pagans, Protestants, and Muslims valued children until the mid and late twentieth century. The vast wealth leading to increases in lifespan and material comforts as a result of modern scientific discoveries and human innovation over the past century and a half cannot be sustained in the face of the moral corruption of culture. In approved apparitions all over the world, Our Lady has been warning us about these developments for over a century.
We, as faithful Christians, are realists. We know we are being marginalized. We wonder how long our freedom of not only religion, but also our freedom of speech, freedom to educate our children in the truth, and freedom to participate in society professionally and otherwise will last. In some parts of the world, we are being slaughtered in unprecedented numbers.
As I have also chronicled, wonderful long-term trends within the tiny minority of faithful Catholics in America are changing the dynamics of the Church in very positive ways:
http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/macfarlane/bright-future.html
We continue to have large families, out of our love for children, respect for the divine and natural law, and devotion to our vocation as parents. Faithful priests and nuns--our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters--are finally reaching positions of authority within dioceses. Along with millions of our Protestant brothers and sisters, we care about the truths that really matter: that every human life is priceless, free-willed, immortal, while suffering from Original Sin that can only be cured by divine grace--by Jesus and His Church. We care whether people go to heaven or hell. Most our fellow citizens live as if heaven and hell do not exist or that people cannot suffer eternal damnation even if they believe it might exist.
So the answer to the challenges facing our generation is the same answer as ever: the one, holy, apostolic Catholic Church, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. In short, the answer is Jesus. We are spiritually part of a real body whose head is Jesus. As baptized souls, when we pray, whether we call it to mind or not, we do so as integral organs, cells, and sinew of His glorified resurrected person. Included in this Body are the holy souls who have died and entered eternal life with God, along with their angels. The graces we merit, the virtues we develop, and prayers we pray benefit every soul on earth, just as our sins, vices, and lack of prayer harms all souls on earth.
So, let us pray, tens of thousands of together, along with hundreds of millions if not billions of souls and angels in the Church Triumphant, to change the world, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit:
"Dear Father in Heaven, in union with all the angels and saints in heaven, especially our relatives and their guardian angels going all the way back in history to the to first apostles, and as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we ask you to change the world according to Your Divine Will, right now, immediately, even if it requires suffering and sacrifice, such as happened by your beloved priest beheaded in Syria, or if it requires miracles and direct intervention beyond our capacity to imagine. Please, Father, alter the whole world for the better. Please, Father, change my particular world down to the tiniest and infinitesimal human or material detail of my life for the salvation of those I love and for the salvation of the greatest possible number of souls. Please, Father, O please Father. Father, please. I love you. Amen."
BUMPER STICKERS SEEN ON THE POPEMOBILE
It is kind of a tradition now, but whenever we get a new pope, then you know it's time to bring back this all-time classic, including a few new ones...
Question Authority--Ask Me Anything
Infallibility on Loan from God
God REALLY IS My Co-Pilot
Sin Happens
Honk if You Pray the Rosary
Choose ETERNAL Life
Speak Softly and Carry a Big Cross
Pope Francis Brakes For Animals
Saint Ignatius Would Retreat
Move Along, Move Along...Confession
To Comment on My Preaching, Call 800-TOP-POPS
All Roads Lead to Rome, So Follow
Say Mass, Not War
Keep Back--No, Wait, Come Closer
Give Me Confession or Give Me Death
I Brake for Souls
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
Bible On Board
My Parents' Had an Honor Student in the College of Cardinals
My Other Car is Also a Popemobile
From South America With Love
I Never Get to Meet the Pope Because I Am the Pope
Livin' the Vida Papa!
Hang Up and Pray
Make My Day. Kiss My Ring!
I'd Rather Be Saying Mass
PARTIAL LIST, COOL FEASTDAYS, OF WHICH JULY IS PACKED
July 6, Saturday, Saint Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr
July 11, Thursday, Saint Benedict (Father of Western Civilization, No Less!)
July 15, Monday, Saint Bonaventure, Missionary to Barbarians, Bishop, Doctor of the Church, and heroic inspiration of my second novel, Conceived Without Sin, available free here in paperback and for a song on Kindle:
http://www.catholicity.com/novels/conceived.html
July 16, Tuesday, Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Saint Simon Stock receives Brown Scapular)
July 23, Tuesday, Saint Bridget of Sweden. Read her biography here:
http://www.catholicity.com/encyclopedia/b/bridget_of_sweden,saint.html
July 26, Friday, Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of Mary. (I urge you to pray to Saint Anne for something, for anything. She is the best!)
July 31, Wednesday, Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Good day to pray for Pope Francis.
SUMMERTIME
Gotta admit, I love the long hours of sunlight this time of year, don't you? Thank you thank you thank you for being a part of my life and our work together for Mary. I will continue to pray for you and your children or grandchildren (if you have them) and their spouses and future spouses everyday at Mass, which I enjoy and love doing. Please pray for three special intentions for Bud and change my world. In the spirit of brevity, just one Catholic quote this month:
"The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the existential peripheries: those of the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and of religious indifference, of thought, of all misery, into the existential peripheries."
Pope Francis
With Immaculate Mary,
Bud Macfarlane
Founder
