PathToHoliness

I subscribe to a blog on advertising called Adjab. It’s all about new advertising that they find interesting. A recent post was titled, “The Pope as ad man.” Chris, the writer, has an interesting take on how important it is to companies to have the Pope wear, use or exhibit their product. It’s called product placement in the advertising world.

The post includes a link to a Wall Street Journal article on the subject. Chris also points to a story about Polish television banning erotic and violent advertising when he visits. Too bad the Pope can’t be everywhere at once, eh?

I think I’ve tried to approach this website like I do my professional news blogs and it just doesn’t work. I think this needs to be more about personal reflections along the path to holiness. So that’s what I’m going to try next. It takes a while to find your voice.

Today I was reflecting on how much people, our culture and the media seem determined to find someone to blame for everything. It’s always got to be someone else’s fault that something happened that they don’t like. It doesn’t even have to be a disaster.

As a media professional I’m completely ashamed of the way the industry has evolved. It doesn’t matter to me if we’re talking about CNN, Fox News or the local newspaper or radio station. I’ve even watched CNN and Fox side by side while working out in the gym. More than once they’ve had the exact same stories on at the same time. Maybe the slant is a little different but not really that much.

It really doesn’t matter what topic you pick though. They’re all playing the blame game. Politicians are the worst too. How sick are you of one investigation after another? Who even cares anymore? One of my favorite sayings of Josemaria Escriva is that, “At best, it’s a waste of time.” In other words, it’s probably worse than that.

Part of our call to holiness involves doing “our” work the best we can. Not wasting time wondering if someone else is doing their’s the best they can. I sure hope more people do this. Instead of focusing on who did what and to whom, let’s pray for that person or entity that we don’t like or who we think did something wrong. Let’s make the first thing we do when we see something we don’t like a positive prayer. Then secondly we can realize our own failures and shortcomings before we start to cast blame.

The Pope had a wonderful message of peace for Easter. Here’s an excerpt from his Urbi et Orbi:

May the Risen Lord grant that the strength of his life, peace and freedom be experienced everywhere. Today the words with which the Angel reassured the frightened hearts of the women on Easter morning are addressed to all: “Do not be afraid! … He is not here; he is risen (Mt 28:5-6)”. Jesus is risen, and he gives us peace; he himself is peace.

This past week was a very busy and interesting one. I attended the Biotechnology Industry Organization convention in Chicago. It was huge and easy to see that this is a growing business area. There are so many good things that people are doing with biotechnology research. Especially in the food and agriclture arena. At the same time it’s very easy to see a negative side. For us Christians that’s most evident in the push to do embyonic stem cell research. As a reporter at the meeting my focus was agriculture but it was easy to see the messages from companies touting their stem cell initiatives as essential for human health. This is troubling. In those cases it seems like money is ruling over the science and just plain common sense.

It gave me a lot to pray about.

It’s a beautiful Palm Sunday here in mid Missouri. Holy Week has started and we’re getting close to the anniversary of the greatest event in the history of the world. That’s how the priest on my retreat describes Easter. Having the God made man, Jesus, die for our sins and then rise from the dead so that we might have eternal life has got to be the biggest event in history. No other event has such long lasting effects. Nothing is longer than eternity.

Here’s a link to the Vatican’s Holy Week 2006 web page. It says today is the 21st World Youth Day. Pope Benedict has a message for our youth.

My dear young friends!

(Full Text of Message)

I pray that you may have a very blessed Holy Week.

After a nice peaceful retreat last week it has sure been a busy week and Holy Week promises to be more of the same. I’ll be blogging the BIO 2006 Convention in Chicago starting tomorrow night. This is going to be interesting.

Why do convention planner have to include Sunday activities? I try to avoid it as much as possible. In fact, most of my day on Sunday will be driving to Chicago but there are activities going on there. I just won’t participate in them until the official opening reception in the evening. I know that a lot of companies and organizations I participate in really do try to avoid Sunday. We need that day to spend some time with God!

Hopefully on my drive I can review my notes from the retreat and my resolutions. I’ve been trying to keep them. That’s always the hard part.

I just got back from my annual retreat led by Opus Dei from their Wespine Center in St. Louis.

We were at the Cedar Creek Conference Center. What a beautiful weekend.

I took a few photos which you can see in my Flickr photo album here: Cedar Creek Photos

Today I was reminded how fleeting life can be. Indy race car driver Paul Dana died from injuries he received in a pre-race warmup before the Toyota Indy 300 in Homestead, FL. He died before the race and they still ran the race. I find that pretty insensitive to say the least.

This hits home because I had just interviewed Paul by phone yesterday afternoon for my company’s website, Domestic Fuel. As it turns out that was Paul’s last media interview. I can’t express my sadness that a young life had to end this way but as I’ve learned in so many ways, there is a reason and we may not ever know it.

I pray for Paul, his family, friends and teammates. He will be missed. The picture is me interviewing Paul at last year’s Indy 500 race when he was recovering from injuries earlier in the season.

This is turning into a series of church pictures but that’s okay for now. This past week I had to stay in Omaha, NE and got to attend Mass at St. Stephen the Martyr.

I’ll be going on retreat next weekend so hopefully I’ll have some more before then.

If I’m going to post pics of the churches I visit I guess I should certainly include my own home parish. It’s the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Jefferson City, MO. This is a side view with our newly installed statue of St. Joseph who greets you as you walk up to the church.

You can find out more about our diocese here.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. With all the travelling I do why not write about the church I visit for daily Mass?

This week it was north Kansas City not far from the airport. This is St. Therese Parish.

I got to attend Mass on two mornings. Very nice new church.

Here in Jefferson City, MO we’re blessed to have a wonderful group of cloistered Carmelite nuns. They have a recently remodeled public chapel with daily Mass.

It’s a beautiful day in mid-MO. I know the nuns like to garden so I’m betting they’re outside getting started on a new growing season.

They will answer the phone and have a visitors entrance where they can speak with you through a screen. They pray constantly and take prayer requests. If you need prayers you can’t ask for anyone better to help you out.

Tonight was Knights of Columbus meeting night. We had 10 guys become members. That’s a pretty big group for us. We’re nearing 300 members in Council 12992. One of the things I do for the council is host and maintain our website and as you might guess. It’s a blog. You can find it at: http://kofc12992.blogspot.com.

There’s a new biography out about the founder, Father Michael J. McGivney. It’s titled “Parish Priest” and may be ordered from Amazon.

This has got to be the story of the week. At least for me. Pope Benedict now has an iPod Nano. He received it from Vatican Radio employees. You should read the release.

I’ve already seen the story on a number of websites like Engadget. Check that one out and read the comments.

For example. I thought an interesting one was simply, “iPope?” Another one made a comment about how Apple now has the POTUS and the Pope carrying around a Nano and getting serious free publicity. You can’t buy that kind of advertising.

Bottom line though is that iPods and other brands of digital audio players can become a useful part of your spiritual life. There’s great stuff to subscribe to like the Vatican Radio programming.

It’s fast and abstain day, the beginning of Lent. I was very happy to get a phone call from one of my college daughters who was checking in to double check on this. Good going babe.

I’m waiting on a flight in Dallas, heading to Anaheim and decided to have a slice of cheese pizza. As I was perusing the food offerings it just struck me again how blessed we are in this country with such an abundance of food. In fact, an over-abundance even. We hear and read so much about people with health and weight problems and I think a lot of it can be attributed to a food supply that’s so accessible. We’re almost never more than about 5 minutes from food somewhere, of some kind. The temptations supplied by the packaging and convenience of it all are extremely difficult to handle.

That just makes doing a true fast today and abstaining from meat that much more beneficial I think. So I encourage you. I’m trying and it’s not going to be easy since I have a corporate dinner tonight that I’m sure is not sensitive to the Catholics who will be attending.

Is it just me or do you feel persecuted by the media? I’m speaking in general here of course about what I refer to as the mainstream media (msm). ESPN, CBS, etc. You may wonder what I mean by mentioning ESPN. I will watch it for a game I want to see but it’s unbelievable what a bunch of junk is on there a lot of other times. I work out at the YMCA and it’s usually on a couple of the tv screens. Lately it seems like it’s just one story after another about some poor multi-million dollar athlete who’s in trouble. I don’t see any outrage from the reporters though. Most of them seem to only care about how they play and not about their conduct. They make excuses for them and want us to pity them for the troubled childhoods they’re escaping from.

At today’s Mass Father talked about the persecution of early Christians and how that came from many sources including even family. Well, after having to see stuff like on ESPN or all the other junk that’s being pushed through the media and on the internet I’d have to add what I can only call “the persecution by the media.”

What do you think?