I found an updated version of this popular Christmas carol on The Ironic Catholic. I think I like this version much much better 

(to the tune of “Jingle Bells”)
SANCTUS BELLS

Sanctus bells! Sanctus bells! Sanctus all the way!
When they rang them way back then, they got got your att’n (now–pray!)
Sanctus bells! Sanctus bells! Sanctus all the way!
Now we hear them and we smile as we live in the Way…

Dashing through the mass
your mind is on a sleigh
Through the prayer we go
distracted all the way (no, no, no!)

Bells by servers rung
New focus on the mass
it is a miracle, after all,
so go renew your task:* Pra-aaaay! (refrain)

You can read the original post here.

With the bombardment of the sexual revolution all around us, it is refreshing to see some who take their faith and chastity seriously.

Reported by the Chicago Sun Times: So what is it like to kiss a girl for the first time ever, after she has become your wife?

“It was surreal,” said Claudaniel “CD” Fabien… after his marriage to Melody LaLuz Fabien on Saturday….

Claudaniel, 30, and Melody, 28, had pledged to be abstinent before marriage — but went a little further by agreeing not to kiss each other on the lips before their union was official.

Why so strict? They didn’t even want to get close to temptation, instead waiting until the minister said the magic words: “NOW, you may kiss the bride.”…

Both Claudaniel and Melody Fabien are abstinence educators – Claudaniel for the nonprofit Confederation of Spanish American Families. Melody is director of the “What’s Good” program for the LYDIA Home Association, a Christian service agency. Both teach abstinence programs within the Chicago Public Schools. Read The entire story here.

~ Via Jill Stanek.

[Photo credit: Chicago Sun-Times]

H/T: Jean from Catholic Fire

According to WordPress, this is my 100th post. So for this special “occasion” I thought I’ll post about something interesting and meaningful.

I’m not sure why, but somehow Catholics (and even some non-Catholics) have a special fascination with conversion stories and/or vocation stories. I came across this vocation story of Father Philip Powell, OP, as posted on his blog, Domine, da mihi hanc aquam…

I was born a poor white child. . .in rural Mississippi. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Nonetheless, it’s true.

Both sides of my family are Mississippi delta cotton farmers. Though no one farms now, both of my grandfathers planted cotton. My mother and all of her sisters “chopped cotton.” My dad drove a tractor. All of them went to church. My mother’s family went to the Baptist Church and my dad’s family went to the Methodist Church.

My first memory of church goes back to the sixth grade when my mom and dad sent me and my little brother to Vacation Bible School. Mostly I remember being the only kid that week who had not “accepted Jesus into his heart as his personal Lord and savior.” Come Friday, feeling the pressure, I walked the aisle, said the necessary things, and walked back to my pew complete with Jesus. It didn’t take.

For the most part my family back then was not a church-going bunch. We went occasionally, but mostly we spent Sundays working in the gardens, the yards, doing necessary work around the house and farm. Sometime my sophomore year, mom and dad decided to start going to church again. They chose a United Methodist Church in the largest town near us. It was the local “bankers’ and doctors’” church. Lots of old money. Lots of nice cars. Lots of snooty glances at the rubes from the woods. I hated it. We stopped going after about six months.

That next year I went to Mexico with my junior Spanish class. We cut and sold firewood from my family’s property to pay for the trip. Our teacher, a Catholic woman, helped us with the hard labor and with our Spanish. Up until we got to the National Cathedral and the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the trip had been a bust for me. My roommates were jerks. I didn’t have much money. And my Spanish was rotten. When we arrived at the plaza in front of the cathedral, one of a hundred tour buses packed full of tourists, I stood up and started to the front of the bus like a robot. One more stop, one more site, snap a pic, get back on the cool bus. Little did I know. . .

Read Father Philip’s vocation story in its entirety here.

I came across this on Catholic Exchange today. A truly inspirational piece by Karen Rinehart.

Read it in it’s entirety here.

According to the definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, theism means

: belief in the existence of a god or gods ; specifically : belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world

One of the major problems in the work of finding useful complementary interactions among science, philosophy, and theology is the question of divine action in creation: how does God interact with His creation?

Three are three basic schools of thought that address this question:

Classical theism (CT): God is Being per se; He created all contingent beings ex nihilo (from nothing) and holds all creation in existence; He exercises His will according to His nature as Love through instrumental causality (sacraments, people); He allows moral evil as a consequence of His choice to give His human creatures free will; natural evil is a consequence of the fall and the entrance of death into creation; He is Self-limiting, that is, limited only by His own choices and wholly unaffected by His creation. Total transcendence.

Pantheism (P): God is identical with creation, “All is God, God is All”; Spirit is the Soul/Mind of the physical universe, which is God’s body; everything is divine because everything is God, there is nothing “outside” God; God acts in the universe in a way analogous to the human mind acting within the human body; as the universe grows and changes, so does God; God is directly affected by free human choices; moral and natural evil are consequences of physical law, God is unable to intervene; He is naturally limited by physical law. Total immanence.

Panentheism (EN): God contains creation but transcends creation, “All in God, but not all of God in All”; creation is ex nihilo but also on-going; creatures assist in on-going creation through free will and choice; God allows His will to be affected by free human choices; He operates in the world through persuasive human agency; moral evil is a consequences of this agency; natural evil is the consequence of physical law. Transcendent and immanent.