PathToHoliness

If you have been watching college football bowl games you probably saw Coach Lou Holtz urging Catholics to come home. I think it’s a great ad and hope it will make all Catholics think about their faith.

They say football is like a religion for some die hard fans, that’s why Catholics Come Home® plans to air a new national television commercial during college football bowl week, and ending with the BCS National Championship (Notre Dame vs. Alabama), Jan. 7, 2013.

Catholics Come Home® Founder and President Tom Peterson says, “Faith is not a spectator’s sport; it must be lived…it’s interactive!” This is why his non-profit is trying a new play with the goal of winning loyal fans for Jesus and the Church.

Coach Holtz from Catholics Come Home on Vimeo.

All Catholics are called to witness. That’s part of being a good Catholic christian. Here’s an organization I just became aware of that takes the call seriously. I like what they’re doing from all I can see on their website. Catholics Called to Witness

Catholics Called to Witness is a faith-based organization dedicated to upholding and promoting the following three non-negotiable principles as stressed by Pope Benedict XVI, while encouraging the Catholic community to participate in the public arena.

I especially like their “Non-Negotiables.”

• The Right to Life »

Protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death

• Sanctity of Marriage »

Recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family – as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage

• Parental Rights »

The protection of the right of parents to educate their children

I like an app that does one thing very well. The Evangelizo App fits.

Catholic service: Daily Gospel, the gospel, the readings, the saints, the prayers, in 10 languages : French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, German, Arabic, Italian, Polish, Armenian

You can find it:

iTunes Store
Android Market
Mobile Browser Friendly Version

I’ve got it on my iPhone and Droid Razr.

Here’s an example of how social media is being used to help spread the Gospel as called for by Pope Benedict. I found a reference to it in today’s Vatican Information Service email which mentions a conference taking place in Rome titled, “From Parables to Twitter.” Not that sounds interesting all by itself. Here’s what ALETEIA is about:

ALETEIA is the first multi-lingual online community that offers Questions and Answers about the Catholic faith, life and society.

Aleteia is a Rome-based private initiative of lay Catholics who wish to answer Benedict XVI’s appeal to spread the Gospel through new media. To this end, Aleteia cooperates closely with the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.

Follow on Twitter or Facebook.

For those of you who are wondering how you can use social networking and new media as a mechanism to evangelize in today’s digital world, consider an event like the 2012 CatholicConExpo. I’m planning to attend since those dates are open on the calendar right now. Here’s what the event is about.

At the Second Vatican Council, we are taught that Jesus Christ and He alone fully reveals man to himself. Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, is the Perfect Communicator of God, His creation, His plan, and our place in it.

At CatholiCon 2012, we will meet Christ, The Perfect Communicator through the Church’s Liturgy, both Ancient and New, through the teaching of the Catholic Faith in the Theology of Communications Track, through the concrete skills of evangelization in the Content of Communications Track and through the nuts and bolts of making the tech work in the Methods of Communications Track.

The schedule is still being created at this time but you can go ahead and get registered now.

This almost seems like a no brainer but how hard do you think this will be to accomplish? It is a national campaign to make Good Friday a national holiday. If you want to support it then sign the petition and/or plan to attend the rally in Washington, DC.

The Campaign to Commemorate Good Friday as a National Holiday will hold an official launch rally that is open to public on April 22nd, 2011 at 12:00 PM to 3:30 PM on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. located between 7thStreet and 14thStreet. Shown during the rally on the National Mall will be a screening of ‘Passion of the Christ’ beginning at 12:00 PM. The campaign seeks to generate nation-wide support and collect 1 million signatures which it will use to petition the U.S. Congress to officially commemorate Good Friday as a National Holiday in the United States.

For more information please visit, www.GoodFridayCampaign.com or contact Sharon Jones, Director, (212) 731 – 4080 phone.

Daughter Chelsea is featured in a YouTube video for Catholic Vote called, “We Are The Catholic Vote.” You can see her at 1:07 in.

CatholicVote.org is a community of patriotic Americans who believe our nation’s founding principles are good and true, and worth fighting for.

BTW. Her Mom, Dad and sisters are the Catholic Vote too!

Please exercise your right to vote and be a voice for the unborn who can’t.

I came across the iPadre iPhone app while looking into the 3rd Annual Catholic New Media Celebration. So let’s make this the next iPhone app to bring to your attention.

First check out iPadre Catholic Podcasting with Fr. Jay Finelli.

Father Jay Finelli is a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence in the state of Rhode Island. He began building web pages in 1995 and started podcasting in September of 2005. This is a great new means of evangelization. Pope John Paul II said that we are in need of a new evangelization. Podcasting is a small part of this new work of evangelization. All of us need to do our part in spreading the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He’s got a blog along with other information on his website. I’ll be subscribing to some of his feeds and will let you know what I think when I get time. Feel free to leave your comment if you’re already a subscriber.

The 3rd Annual Catholic New Media Celebration will be held near Boston, Massachusetts on August 7, 2010.

The Catholic New Media Celebration (CNMC) is an international conference which focuses on evangelization of the Roman Catholic faith using new media. It is a day to Learn, Share, and Explore how New Media can help the Catholic Church in the New Evangelization called for by Pope John Paul II.

* To support and enhance evangelization through the use of New Media
* To provide information and support for New Media Producers
* To foster community among producers and consumers of Catholic New Media

Register here. Look at the program here.

At the evening of recollection I attended this week I had a chance to talk with Fr. Jay Alvarez, Wespine Study Center, who conducted our meditation talks. I didn’t know he has a YouTube Channel.

Here’s one of his videos which is a “Music video about two early Christians, Junia and her brother Marcus, around year 140 AD, in Rome. Based on the books of Michael E. Giesler. Video, Music and lyrics by Jay Alvarez.” I think he’s taking the Holy Father’s call to use the digital media to evangelize to heart!

The Bishops of the U.S. have created a new website/initiative to be a resource for men and women who are discerning a vocation. It provides “an aid for promoting a vocation culture within the home, and a range of tools for educators, youth leaders and vocation directors.” The website is titled For Your Vocation.

Vocations to the Priesthood and Consecrated Life are tremendous and essential gifts to the Church, and it is the bishops’ desire that their two goals for this initiative are achieved:

To educate all Catholics on the importance of encouraging others through prayer and activities to promote vocations.

Follow along on Facebook, YouTube and their blog.

It is great seeing our Holy Father embrace digital media and the internet as mechanisms to witness to our faith and evangelize the message of Jesus Christ. According to a note in my latest Vatican Information Service update, Pope Benedict spoke to a conference on, “Digital Witnesses. Faces and languages in the multi-media age”. The congress was organized by the Italian Episcopal Conference, the president of which is Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa. Here’s what he said.

“The time in which we are living is seeing an enormous expansion of the frontiers of communication”, said the Pope. “The Internet is by nature open, tendentiously egalitarian and pluralist, but at the same time it also represents a new gulf. Indeed, we talk of the ‘digital divide’, which separates the included from the excluded, and this must be added to other separations which already divide nations, both from one another and within themselves”.

Benedict XVI also noted “the dangers of conformity and control, of intellectual and moral relativism, which are already evident in the diminution of the spirit of criticism, in the truth reduced to an interplay of opinions, in the many forms of degradation and humiliation of individual intimacy. We are witnessing a ‘pollution of the spirit which clouds our faces and makes them less prone to smile’.

Read the rest of this post…

In today’s homily the priest started out by saying, “Happy Birthday,” as in today is kind of like the birthday of the founding of the Church when the Apostles received the Holy Spirit and were sent to spread the Gospel.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

That’s from today’s Pentecost Mass reading, Gospel of St. John, 20:21-23.

One of the ways we can all do this today that’s very different than back then is with online communications tools like Twitter, blogs, podcasts and other forms of social networking like Facebook. Now that we have an iPhone app which allows us to view or listen to Vatican video (wifi connection only) the Pope is calling on young people in particular to use these mechanisms>

It falls, in particular, to young people, who have an almost spontaneous affinity for the new means of communication, to take on the responsibility for the evangelization of this “digital continent”. Be sure to announce the Gospel to your contemporaries with enthusiasm. You know their fears and their hopes, their aspirations and their disappointments: the greatest gift you can give to them is to share with them the “Good News” of a God who became man, who suffered, died and rose again to save all people. Human hearts are yearning for a world where love endures, where gifts are shared, where unity is built, where freedom finds meaning in truth, and where identity is found in respectful communion. Our faith can respond to these expectations: may you become its heralds!