In which I use this coming weekend’s minor festivities to illustrate how formal catechetical programs are just one piece of a much bigger faith-formation spider wedding cake pie. Or something. Okay, actually the whole post is just a chance to show off how cool my diocese can be. Because yeah. Sometimes we are.
Oh and hey, speaking of cool palmetto-state Catholic things, go subscribe to Fr. L’s newsletter. It’s really quite good. And free.
This week, after you pray for Allie & congratulate our hostess, I send you elsewhere. I scrolled through all my recent +1’s in Google, and picked a few:
1. People come here when they search on “Kolbe Academy”, and presumably when they do that, they also find Kolbe’s blog, Servant of Truth. But in case you had a google-failure, here’s an answer to a question that gets asked a lot: How to Change Pace in a Structured Curriculum.
2. Brad Warthen is aggravated, here, about a homeschooling bumper sticker that he sees as a flagrant rejection of a whole community. (He’s a Mr. Community kind of guy. A Rotarian, no less.) I concede in the combox that he is correct, it is indeed impossible to know what part of “the village” the hostile-homeschooler wants no part of. But I’m going to guess it’s something like this.
3. FTR, I homeschool for the library books. The village never even entered into it. I just want to read. A lot. There aren’t many jobs let you do that. (Also I like teaching my kids, like being with them, like playing outside, like traveling during the school year, and it’s the only Catholic school I’ll ever talk my husband into paying for . . . but it’s mostly for the books.)
4. NFP Apps. I like a pen and a free-in-the-mail calendar myself. (Helps if you don’t particularly need a graph or white baby stickers. About once a year I break out the graph paper to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing. But most of the time, 4/10 of degree shows up real nice just looking at the numbers.) But all you smart-device people can do NFP the Smart Way.
5. Can’t have too many religious education curricula. Read about Healing the Culture’s new high school curriculum, and, completely separately, Loyola Press’s new adaptive sacramental prep program for students with special needs.
Also a Bleg: Anyone have an RCIA text you really love? I’m dumb enough to try to make up an answer to that question, but someone who knows the field would be better suited to give the real scoop.
6. At Public Discourse: the obituary of an honest historian. Beautiful story. Especially if you’re the kind of person who reads a history book, and then rants towards your children about all the dumb ideas the book promotes without presenting any evidence whatsoever.
My kids say I complain a lot. I reply that easily 10-if-not-15% of the time, it’s because there’s something worth complaining about. The rest of the time, yeah, I’m just grumpy. Probably the nicest grumpy person you know.
7. The reason bloggers blog is because we have something to say. Abby Johnson doesn’t play around: If you want to be pro-life, get your act together and show up for work.
Have a great weekend!
(PS: The tiny tiger has persuaded SuperHusband not to haul her to the pet shelter just yet. Cuteness is a powerful survival strategy.)
My awesome niece & goddaughter just started college, and the other day she phoned me. “Do you have an hour or two? I need to get your opinions on higher education for this paper I’m writing.”
I’m pleased to tell you I kept my comments to 59 minutes, a record for me. She e-mailed me some follow-up and some get-the-quote-right questions, and that’s on my to-do list for today.
If you’d like to answer some or all of them at your place, I know she’d be interested in your answers. Leave the link in my combox and I’ll direct her to take a look. Or just answer in the combox here, if you aren’t a blogger yourself.
***
1. What is your opinion of the value of college in today’s society?
2. Do you believe in the theory that everyone should have a college education?
3. According to Louis Menand, author of “Live and Learn”, there are three theories of why people attend college. The first theory is that college is an intelligent test meaning people go to college to prove they are smart. The second theory people go to college is for the social benefits since college should theoretically be getting people ready to enter society. The third theory is that college is job training. How does this align with you own theory of the purpose of college? Do you believe in these some values?
4. Growing up was your value of a college education influenced in any way? If so was it family? Teachers? Or some other form?
5. In recent years the availability of a college education has changed and become more accessible to more people. For example there are online Universities, certain states offer scholarships to many high school graduates, and there is government funding to minorities. Do you agree or disagree with this?
6. What will you teach your own kids about the value of a college education? What influences this?
***
Since she had 6 questions and our theme is 7 takes, how about you add a 7th: What else would you like to say? FYI for those who haven’t heard, Erin at Bearing Blog has a whole series on this topic.
Thanks to our hostess, the always-inquisitive Jen Fulwiler. Pray for Allie Hathaway, then visit Jen’s site, Scorpions Are Us ConversionDiary.com to see more quick takes.
Part two of my conversion story is up at New Evangelizers.
Also, my computer is being weird, so if I’m suddenly useless when you least expect it, that could be the explanation.
Look at me! I’m in the Borg! Just barely. Is it a coincidence that the same day I have reason to remember my review of The Rite, Julie D. invites me to her little den of bookishness at Patheos? She said reprints were good, so I cleaned up my Rite review and stuck it there. Now Larry D.’s going to have create a portal called PathMagistra. It’s the only choice.
Dear Larry D.,
I promise I have not gone over the dark side for mere money. (Which I won’t be getting. HCB is a non-paying gig.) I did it to annoy you.
Okay, actually I did it because Julie asked me, and she’s super nice and she even fed me dinner, twice. My independent investigation confirms her cooking blog is not merely a front for some shady side-enterprise. And it turns out I write a lot of book reviews, so I figured I’d have material for it without too much work. And because it was either that or clean my desk.
Like all good underlings, I promise to sway with the winds and follow which ever dark lord is nearest.
Sincerely,
Jennifer.
[Note to readers, is it just a coincidence that Larry “D.” and Julie “D.” have the same last initial? Hmmn. Presumably their writing all just flows from the same “D.” source. The apparent contradictions in their work are no doubt proof of their mythological origins in the oral traditions of the platform so-called “W”, the scholar’s abbreviation for “WordPress”. Give that parts of the “D.” tradition can also be found on the platform referred to in some texts as “Blogspot”, scholars debate whether those works should be labeled platform “B”, or whether “B” is just a linguistic variation on “W”, or perhaps a separate platform “G.” Research is underway with select people-groups to determine whether “Julie” and “Larry” are different names at all, or merely regional appellations for the same person, variably represented in the Texan and Northern-Midwestern cultures.]
Sarah Reinhard’s giving away a copy of The Rite by Matt Baglio. I recommend this book, and review it here. Go over to her blog, put your name in the combox for a chance to win. I don’t think her contests are huge, so your odds are decent, in light of the 30 seconds it’ll take you enter.
Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who has exceeded himself once again. Go look!
Click and be amazed.
1.
On Tuesday mornings we’ve been watching Fr. Barron’s Catholicism DVD’s at the nearby parish (not ours) that has the most convenient times. Excellent. BUT, episode three is a little a lot abstract for the kids. I’m hoping it goes back to more concrete story-telling type episodes in the weeks ahead.
2.
I could tell my 3rd-grader was not fully paying attention, because her feet were in the air. You know how you raise your hand to ask a question in class? Or you raise two hands in air to communicate secret messages from referee to fans, or from evangelical praise-and-worshiper to God? It was just like that, only with feet.
3.
I’d told the group leader we’d be slipping out right after the DVD, and not staying for the group discussion, so that we could get home and get started on school work. Kids and I discussed the Problem of Evil (subject of episode 3) on the way, and curiously, the boy proposed “God testing us” as one of the possible explanations for evil things in the world.
I challenged that notion, but I’ll tell you I do think it’s one of the explanations for good things in the world. Because as we pulled in, our shy-but-friendly bachelor neighbor, who never comes over, was poking around our entry way, looking for us. Because he’d found this:
3.5
The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error.
True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.
In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them.
But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop.
(Paragraph breaks added for legibility in blog format. See the source here.)
***
I see that I’ve hit my deadline for sidebar updating, so I guess I’ll officially slide that onto my to-do list. But I’m open to suggestions as long as the work in is progress. And of course, Tuesday’s Link Day, which is when instead of e-mailing fun things I ought to post but forget to, you just tell the world all by yourself. Entirely optional.
Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who’s also doing a time-travel edition today.
Click and be amazed.
1.
Blogging Popes. That’s my topic for today. Not the kind you’re thinking of, though.
2.
See, here’s what happened: Saturday night I was bored, tired, and itching for something to read. Something fun and relaxing and novel. Meaning, new-to-me. I usually grab one of my daughter’s library books for this purpose — just enough entertainment to get me through a non-digital Sunday, but not so much that I’ll be out of service, glued to a book, for 10,000 hours waiting for Br. Cadfael to tell me who did it. But I needed novelty.
So I went to Papal Encyclicals Online. I’m sure that’s what you do, too. But before you get too impressed, keep in mind that the three reasons this was a possible source of reading material were:
And the thing is, they tend to cover that same juicy ground as your average Catholic blogger, only you get bonus credit for not being stuck to the computer all day while you work up your angry frenzy at the injustice in the world. Of course, no Star Trek screen shots for illustrations, but look, I was desperate for entertainment.
3.
And the one I picked was Rerum Novarum. Which is basically a series of blog posts on economics. Perfect.
(Let me just say right now, JPII’s follow-up work is not blog-genre. Waaay more wordy. Waaay more. I haven’t finished it yet. But I’m half thinking, “What more is there to say? Leo.Encyclicalpress.com already covered the whole territory. But you know how it is, people need to explain the obvious. Or maybe people needed the obvious re-explained.)
Here’s a sample snippet of the Leonine goodness:
Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition.
And this:
The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men.
Followed by this:
To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.
See? I spent my weekend reading 64 Cath-Econ-blog posts, 19th century edition.
3.5
And although I could pretty much shut my eyes and point my finger anywhere in the document to find a good quotable quote, one of my underlined favorites is
***
Well that’s all for today. Still accepting suggestions for additions to the sidebar, so tell me who to add. But do just one link per comment, because otherwise the robotic spam-dragon will consume the whole lot of them. Thanks!
As I’m writing this on Monday and getting it scheduled for Tuesday, it’s occurred to me that Sept. 11th is a serious day. Also my niece’s birthday. Please feel free to commemorate more solemn matters, and come back here to my trivial comedy of a life some other day.
Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who has never made me laugh during Mass, but often at other times.
Click and be amazed.
1.
You know those movies where the lead characters acquire the run-down house/school/shop/bus/crematorium, and with the help of a fast-forward film sequence and a peppy soundtrack, they all pitch in and get the place cleaned up in about 2.5 minutes? Complete with a spunky sign to announce their new venture?
I walked through my yard Sunday afternoon, and confirmed I am living in the “before” scene.
So now I just need some colorfully-dressed teenagers and a singing nun to descend on the place and fix it up. Preferably before the Tinkerbell-themed birthday party this weekend.
2.
I’m not winning the holiness award. Because if your group stands up at the start of Mass and warms-up by chanting “Yellow Leather Red Leather”? Yes. I’m going to bust out laughing. In church.
3.
But I’ll try do it quietly. At least until I get to the parking lot. Then I’m going to laugh very loudly. And probably use the Lord’s name in vain, but then quickly convert it into a prayer of some nature, to do a kind of retroactive-save on that decidedly un-holy verbal reflex.
My son is 98% holier than me, or at least 1 chromosome better suited for the priesthood (we knew that), because he kept a straight face the whole mass, and afterwards. I was amazed.
3.5
. . . the Spanish Mass. [Where they do not do tongue-twister warm-ups — we’ve changed scenes completely.] We have a new Spanish priest now, and he does not use the words “Jesus-Christo” and “Salvacion” as often as the previous one. Which means I can no longer understand 5% of the homily, like I used to do under the old regime. I do still like the mariachi mass, though. So perky.
***
Still accepting suggestions for additions to the sidebar, so tell me who to add. But do just one link per comment, because otherwise the robotic spam-dragon will consume the whole lot of them. Thanks!
Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who persuades me to write whether I ought to or not.
Click and be amazed.
1.
I’m enjoying being home again. No more book-craziness for a while, kids are back to school and so far it’s going well, and I’m 10% less jet-lagged every day. If life stays normal, I might be a civilized person as soon as 2014.
2.
This past week, Julie Davis kept using the word “economics” in sentences directed at me. I remembered vaguely something about having studied these topics in school, and maybe even having some marginal qualifications, and that I had initially started this blog to be about economics and history . . . sheesh.
But the weird thing: All the whole time I was writing the catechist book, I was thinking, “I just need to knock this thing out so I can get back to my *real* project,” which is the homeschooling book.”
And here’s what . . . I realized this weekend that now the homeschooling book has become the “gotta get this outta the way” project. ‘Cause yes. I wanna write about some Christian money issues. So maybe I give myself a week or two to breathe, then do the homeschooling book and just get it done, and then maybe, maybe?, Julie can have an economics blog back?
I dunno. I don’t predict the future with any reliability.
3.
Over at AmazingCatechists.com, I posted about using Christian LeBlanc’s new book as teaching resource for catechists. (Some people were asking when I’d post the catechist-version of that review, so now you know. I cover different topics than I did here.)
I came home with a pile of review materials from the Giant Catholic Conference Thing-y, so it’ll be review-city for a while here. Or there. Somewhere. Did I mention how much I love getting new books? Love it. Love it.
3.5
I was tooling around the Pauline Media booth, and found this book, which looks very handy to keep in stock at crisis pregnancy centers and the like.
And I was thinking, “Wow, my Spanish has gotten much better, because I can read the whole back cover pretty easily.” Also, I considered the fact that I could read it to be a reliable signal that the reading level was very accessible, which is always a plus in my book. But then my plane was very very late getting home Saturday night, so Sunday I went to
***
Oh, hey, about those links: It came to my attention that my sidebar is due for some updating. If you read here, leave your link in the combox. I’m going to set a goal of doing the update, let’s say . . . September 23rd? Nope, that’s a Sunday, make it the 24th.
–> FYI I’d love to include not just your personal link, but any recommended sites you think fit with the multitude of themes here. But do just one link per comment, because otherwise the robotic spam-dragon will consume the whole lot of them. Thanks!
