The CatholiCity Message

Volume XIX, Number 1 – January 21, 2015

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

Welcome to the recording-setting nineteenth year of CatholiCity Message—the longest-running and most popular Catholic email newsletter in the world! I'm humbled by your loyalty.

After a final update on our annual Christmas Appeal, I have a message packed with jam, including a consoling Bible passage that will make your day (and hopefully your year), a cool poem, upcoming Feast Days, the inside scoop on what really happened at the first Synod on the Family, and of course, our first group cyber-prayer of 2015.

Will You Be One of the Two Hundred?
All of us here are beyond grateful to the many CatholiCity Citizens who participated in our annual Christmas Appeal (including those of you who mailed in donations). As of today we are only $18,000 shy of what we need to keep our doors open--but way ahead of last year.

$18,000 may seem daunting, but I'm optimistic because just 200 more of you contributing $30 to $100 (including just a few dozen $10 to $20 monthly donors) will get us there. As an extra incentive, I'm going to donate $10 for every gift we receive over the next 48 hours:

https://www.catholicity.com/support/donation.html

I know you're going to love the Thank You gift: the St. Benedict Medal, powerful protection against demonic attacks. Blessed by a priest, I've personally touched each one to my Relic of the True Cross and my first class relics of Saints Jude, Joseph, Therese of Lisieux, Anthony, Maximilian Kolbe, and Francis Xavier.

Making a Spiritual Donation
If you can't afford to send a monetary donation (and I know some of you simply can't), reply to this email, include your address, and pledge at least one Rosary or offer one Holy Communion to help us reach our goal, and I'll send you this St. Benedict Fridge Magnet.

If you feel comfortable putting in a good word for us, email this message to your family and friends and post a link on Facebook and other social media. Share how the CatholiCity Message and our materials have helped change your life.

How to Guard Your Heart and Mind in Jesus
Hey, I know what it's like. Within four steps of walking out of Mass it becomes impossible to recall the readings. So before you read the following gem, from the October 5, 2014 Sunday Mass readings, pause first to ask the Holy Spirit to let it sink in deeply, then give yourself a chance to let Saint Paul's divinely-inspired words impact your life by reading it slowly, then reading it again:

Brothers and sisters, have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Saint Paul, Philippians 4 (emphasis mine)

What Really Happened at the Family Synod?
It would take too long to fully recap what happened at the Synod of the Family in Rome last October, which was a kind of preparatory meeting of the heads of national bishops conferences for an even bigger synod scheduled for October 2015. Perhaps, like me, you followed it closely at the time, but there was confusion, misreporting in the mainstream press, and some ugly insider manipulation among factions of bishops and by administrators of the proceedings. The best summarization I've read to date comes in an article by George Weigel.

Weigel explains why Cardinal Kasper and his faction lobbied for Catholics remarried outside the Church to be able to receive Communion: money. The Catholic Church in Germany receives several billion dollars every year from an optional government tax that non-practicing Catholics are opting out of in increasing numbers. As Weigel recounts, our African bishops resisted successfully; the final synod document changed no teaching. As a wise priest friend of mine assured me during a discussion of the synod: even if the Pope wanted to change infallible doctrine (and those who think he does are mistaken), he cannot and will not because the Holy Spirit will not allow it.

Additionally, because the actual votes on individual sections of the final document by synod participants were released to the public, it was interesting to discover that roughly one-third of the synod voting members, who themselves are a sample of all the bishops in the world, seem to favor doctrinally suspect positions on marriage, same-sex attraction, and other hot-button issues. This is not necessarily bad news: I assure you the percentage of liberals was much, much higher decades ago when John Paul II began his papacy.

A close friend of mine, a devout Catholic who has been laboring in the fields of evangelization for decades, felt deeply betrayed by the almost bizarrely heterodox "draft" released in the middle of the October 2014 synod because it undermined the efforts of devout Catholics and sent a false message that the world mistook (and still mistakes) as moral surrender on absolute divine and human truth. I doubt it was the pope's goal, but the draft did expose a disturbing liberal element within the Church. Since my days dealing with (and to a certain extent, infiltrating) the oily liberal administration at the University of Notre Dame three decades ago, nothing surprises me.

It is clear (and should be obvious) that Pope Francis, who is not in the best of health, is determined to address the situations of those struggling with homosexual inclinations, those in irregular marriage situations, et al, and other "family" issues while he still has time. Even so, I strongly believe that the overarching challenge the Church is facing are the lack of support for the formation of the very small minority of truly devout Catholic families, and the struggles these families face in our antagonistic post-Christian secular cultures. This was not addressed at the 2014 synod. Any of you who has read my optimistic booklet, A Bright Future for the Catholic Church in America, knows how important these families are to all of mankind.

There is No Giant Building with Pillars
I'm writing you today while wearing my winter coat because our shipping center's ancient heating units get overwhelmed when it falls below 30 degrees. My own oddball office is crazily narrow because it's a converted storage closet, while my right hand man, Tim Harrison, works with three giant pallets of books stacked in front of his desk because storage space is tight—a good sign because this means we're shipping a lot of CDs, booklets, and novels (with 2014 setting a record!).

Even so, we adore our humble digs. Our landlord is wonderful and the extremely low rent is even lower than it should be—so our run-down, cold, cramped, but supremely practical building is one of many reasons we're able to ship free super-effective CDs, booklets, and novels to every potential convert who contacts us for a ridiculously small fraction of what it costs anybody else in the Catholic (or secular) world. As just one example: your $100 gift allows us to print 1,100 Going Back to Confession booklets!

Nevertheless, our computers run state-of-the-art software and we've designed the most efficient shipping system on the planet. My point is that there is no giant building with marble pillars in New York or Washington or Houston. After twenty-four years, we're still waiting for someone to send us a check for half a million dollars (and if you can, please do!).

We remain the same struggling, creative, and miracle-based apostolate in Cleveland (of all places) with a gigantic worldwide reach because a relative handful of faithful, cheerful Catholics like you give up something to send us twenty or fifty bucks.

And I love you for it, and I love how together we helped more people go back to Confession over the past year than any organization in America. We burn for souls! Treasure in heaven, I tell ya. Treasure. In. Heaven.

I hope you will become one of the two hundred heroes we need today. Back in the olden days of the 1990s, I dubbed our original Christmas appeal the "CatholiCity Tax Drive." Get it? It's a Catholic City on the Internet. Kinda dumb—associating a fundraiser with taxes. Still, CatholiCity is the only city I know where taxes are voluntary.

https://www.catholicity.com/support/donation.html

Some Upcoming Feastdays

• Thursday, January 22. March for Life. Anniversary of Roe v Wade, and Day of Prayer for the Protection of Unborn Children. Join us in a Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet on that day. God bless all marchers, including all the Catholic college students around the country, especially my sons Jude and Buddy and practically the entire student body of Thomas Aquinas College marching in San Francisco.
• Saturday, January 24, Saint Francis De Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. Did you know we uploaded his entire spiritual classic (an all-time Catholic Bestseller), Introduction to the Devout Life, online on CatholiCity?
• Wednesday, January 28. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Smartest Holiest Guy Ever. My hero. My friend.
• Saturday, January 31. Saint John Bosco. The Italian priest who took care of poor children. Did you know his Salesians are the largest religious order in the world? Or that their official name is the Society of Saint Francis De Sales (see January 24)?
• Monday, February 2. Presentation of Our Lord. Simeon's prophesy to Mary, "Your soul too a sword shall pierce..." inspired the title of my first novel.
• Tuesday, February 3. Saint Blase. Don't forget to get your throat blessed.

Poem About a Woman Praying After Mass
Instead of quotes, I give you a poem about a woman praying after Mass. Can you tell who the "me" is at the end?

The Slowest Speed of Light

A tabernacle closes
--then her eyes.
She kneels, still
in the cathedral
as afternoon begins
and the stained glass
sifts and softens
her hues,
until the earth turns,
and she opens her eyes
to me.

One Prayer, Tens of Thousands Praying
Inspired by Saint Paul's advice above, tens of thousands of us together, let us begin 2015 in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

Our Father, we bring you every need, great and small, present and future, of my family and of all the CatholiCity Citizens praying with me today, thanking you even before you take care of these needs, trusting You know the number of hairs on my head when I cannot. I seek—we seek—the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. With your Son, we say, I love you, Father. Amen.

And thar she blows. As always, hit reply to let me know your reaction and your prayer needs. 2015 is going to be the best year ever, for you, for me, for our families. Oh, the "me" at the end of the poem is Jesus in the tabernacle. It's hard to believe, but Lent is less than thirty days away. See you before then.

With Mary,

Bud Macfarlane