You look around at the world about you and can’t help but feel a twinge of concern mixed with anger and frustration.  The world seems to be spinning on an unstable axis, wobbling ever closer to Babel than Jerusalem.  The world tells you there’s nothing you can do and no reason you should try.  God, however, has other ideas.  Improve the world by improving yourself, then those around you, always with charity.  It’s time we take this responsibility seriously.

Tonight was our last RCIA session of the year and, as per usual with this group, we ran off into some rather interesting topics and some pretty deep water.  In what was supposed to be initially a discussion about prayer we spent the first half hour talking about the abortion case in Phoenix and how excommunication works and what it is.  It quickly digressed to a discussion based largely on nuance and detail.  This has been making me think – in an age of Twitter and soundbite journalism are people really ready for nuance and fine details?

One question though really struck me as symbolic – “how can someone get excommunicated?”  It’s a question with seemingly a thousand answers, all different and all correct.  But yet saying “it’s complicated” seems to translate into “it’s an arcane holdover without an ounce of Christian charity”.  Somehow there needs to be a way to answer questions like this without delving into heavy theological and ecclesiological issues.  I think in many ways it’s the inability to provide these Baltimore Catechism-style answers to common questions that has helped put the Church into the corner it finds itself trying to fight out of modern days.  What do you think?

The Bible is, after all, a Catholic book.

I don’t normally go for overstatement (*ahem*) and in this case I don’t entirely think I am.  Sometimes you come across something where the only reaction you can come up with is stunned agreement, your mind torn equally between silently absorbing what you’ve taken in and the urge to yell out in your finest Southern Baptist twang, “Preach it!“  Adoro’s post Souls in the Balance is without a doubt one of those.  I echo here her closing sentiment: “Christ did not die a horrible death on the Cross so that we could be comfortable. Who, around you, is hanging in the balance? Go get them!”

Matthew Warner has a post that anyone who cares about evangelizing in this modern world has to read.  The numbers are stark and sobering.  Particularly for someone whose parish scores very low on the social networking scale.

Via NLM:

His Eminence Antonio Cardinal Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, announced this monday his intention to ask the Holy Father, in this Year for Priests, to extend the Feast of Jesus Christ the Eternal High Priest (D.N.J.C. Summi et Æterni Sacerdotis) to the Entire Church (source: Religión Confidencial).

From one man in white to another.  In his General Audience yesterday Pope Benedict discussed, albeit briefly, the life and work of St. Dominic Guzman, the founder of the Order of Preachers, more commonly known as the Dominican Order.  If you don’t follow me on Plurk, let me only say that the life of this great saint has become the subject of considerable interest for me in the past several months.  Starting with, of all things, a childrens’ book, I’ve found myself fascinated by this man who saw the hurt and pain that poor formation and catechesis can cause and set out without a care for himself to preach the Truth.  St Dominic, ora pro nobis!

There was a time not so long ago when the ringing of church bells to mark the major hours of the day was as common as the sunrise.  Now we come to find out that in some places it can get the pastor of that church thrown in jail.  It may well be that this will be overturned on further appeal and will simply blow away as the dust of another silly judicial decision.  Or it may indeed be, as Fr. Zehnle suggests, the beginning of a new level of persecution.

For my part, let me just ask this:  if we as Catholics hadn’t given away this tradition, both in building new churches without bell towers and in a concession to the surrounding culture, would this even be a question of the free exercise of religion?  Put another way, when we decide to drop a tradition en masse, how can we later claim its practice to be an important part of the practice of our faith?  Lesson learned:  be careful when deciding something isn’t important to the faith – you might just have a problem getting it back later.