It’s Lent, so, if you haven’t already….

watch this.

Some of you long-time readers may remember my first silence retreat experience.

I didn’t take one last year, and I regretted it. Didn’t want to make that mistake again.

So, in April, I’ll be heading to our diocese’s St. Therese Retreat Center for a weekened of silence, prayer and reflection with women from throughout the diocese.

If you live in the Columbus Diocese, and would like to sign up, there’s still time! More information, and a printable, mailable registration form, can be found here.

I am very much looking forward to this, especially since it comes soon after my birthday. It will be a lovely time to pray and reflect.

British Royals can marry Catholics? 1238315521252480.xml&coll=2

He’s having his leg amputated. bishopsurgery.ART_ART_03-28-09_B1_P8DCLB7.html?sid=101

or, The Lightness of Spirit After A Good Confession
Recently I’ve been trying to go to Confession more. Not that I’ve suddenly taken to committing adultery and coveting my neighbor’s goods, but I thought it would be a fruitful spiritual practice. My sins, as they are, are more of the omission type in nature–things I should have done, but didn’t–or things that are small, but erode the soul. Petty things.

But I hadn’t been in awhile. One of the things about doing shows is that time for Confession is usually time for rehearsal. Or time to recover from said rehearsal. So I hadn’t been.

Last Thursday I went to St. Joseph’s in downtown Columbus, and went. The Cathedral offers confession on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it’s about three blocks from my office. So down I went, on a lovely spring day.

There was a bit of a line, so I pulled out my rosary and prayed the Luminous Mysteries. As I prayed, the cathedral organist was practicing in the choir loft. More people joined the line. The sun found its way through the stained glass windows and fractured into rainbow colors on the old floor.

After I finished the mysteries, it was my turn.

My confession was short, and the penance even shorter. But the particular priest who was giving confessions that day did a marvelous job. Through his ministry I felt forgiven, cleansed, ready to head into the second half of Lent with a deeper purpose. The doubts and misgivings I’d had over the past few weeks seemed…lessened. Burdens lifted.

After I left the reconciliation chapel, I headed to the tabernacle to say my prayers.  I particularly love praying before this tabernacle–it’s in a tiny alcove, atop a marble slab carved with DaVinci’s Last Supper. Angels encircle the tabernacle, which is a brilliant gold.

I knelt on one of the prie-dieus and said my short prayers. Adoration that day was truly that–adoring the Godhead in the Eucharist. I wished I could stay for Mass and receive Him!

As I went back to my office, I felt renewed, lighter, happier…more at peace.

Is Notre Dame still a Catholic University, after inviting Barack Obama to give this year’s commencement address? A man who, in his first two months in office, has revoked the Mexico City policy, opened the flood gates for embryonic stem cell research, who wants to rescind conscience protections for health care workers, and has appointed fervently pro-abortion Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to the position of HHS secretary?

Some folks are a bit upset about this. I don’t blame them.

A lot of my relatives, and a few of my friends, went to or currently attend Notre Dame. Notre Dame is big in my family. But I don’t know if it can call itself a Catholic university when this is who is chooses to speak to its graduates at commencement.

If you want to encourage dialogue, then fine. Invite him to speak. But not at commencement. Commencement is highly symbolic. The speakers chosen are the faculty’s way of saying, this is someone you should look up to. This person has virtues, traits, and a character tha tare worth emulating.

Certainly the president has achieved a historic feat. But he is not, in any way, shape, or form, a strong proponent of Catholic theology. He does not embody what the Catholic church believes or teaches. Yet, he has been chosen.

I am disturbed by this.

This is pretty awesome.

If you have a facebook account, go join this group!

If not, be sure to check this page regularly.

Things like this are welcome beacons for the pro-life movement.

What do you mean self-control is something we should practice? (My emphases)

Pope Benedict XVI: condoms make Aids crisis worse

Pope Benedict XVI said that the distribution of condoms ‘aggravates’ the Aids crisis, as he embarked on his first trip to Africa.

By Nick Squires in Rome
Last Updated: 7:58PM GMT 17 Mar 2009

Pope Benedict XVI gestures from the airplane before leaving from Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport for a trip to Africa that includes stops in Cameroon and Angola Photo: AP

While en route from Rome to his first stop, Cameroon, the Pope said that the condition was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.”

Speaking on board his official plane, the pontiff insisted that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids, advocating sexual abstinence and fidelity within marriage as a way of fighting the disease.

During the seven-day visit, which will take Benedict to Cameroon and Angola, he said he would address the continent’s “grave problems and painful wounds”.

Africa is crucial to the Vatican because of its growing number of believers. Within 15 years around a sixth of the world’s Catholics, or 230 million people, are expected to be African. The continent also produces a large proportion of the world’s Catholic priests.

But it also presents huge challenges for the Pope, including tension with Islam in some countries, competition from evangelical churches and opposition to the Church’s ban on condoms in countries where Aids is rife.

Pope Benedict, who has mostly confined his travels to Western countries during his four-year papacy, will first visit Cameroon during his week-long trip, and then Angola.

His only previous visit to Africa was to Kinshasa in 1987 when he was a cardinal.

He will appeal to rich countries which are grappling with the global financial crisis not to forget Africa’s acute needs.

An estimated 800 million Africans suffer from chronic hunger and the crisis is already affecting the level of remittances sent from abroad as African immigrants in Europe lose their jobs.

Although he will only visit two of Africa’s more than 50 countries, he hopes that his visit will “embrace the entire African continent”, he said on Sunday during his weekly blessing in St Peter’s Square in Rome.

He referred to Africa’s “ancient cultures and its difficult path of development and reconciliation, its grave problems, painful wounds and enormous potential and hopes”,

He is expected to meet African bishops, Muslim imams, politicians and women’s advocacy groups.

The six-day tour will be the 81-year-old pontiff’s 11th foreign trip.

He is scheduled to visit Israel and Jordan in May.

(from The Telegraph)

Oh, my goodness. AIDS is not a reason to disband Church doctrine! Whatever will the Pope say next?

What do you do when you feel abandoned? When God doesn’t seem present, and you’re left on your own?

I know that this doesn’t happen. At least, I know this intellectually. God doesn’t leave us. He’s always with us. But I also know that these periods of dryness and blackness are common to the religious experience.

How do you get out of it?

This.

You can say what you want about George W. Bush, but he was an unabashed defender of life, especially the most vulnerable forms of it. While the former president has been misunderstood on many issues, ESCR (embryonic stem cell research) may be one of the largest areas of all.

In his August 2001 address, the president did NOT ban ESCR research. He simply confined it to research lines already in existence. After meeting with a council of ethicists, theologians, and others, he decided that ESCR was not a moral thing to do, and it would not be expanded under his presidency.

While he was president, great promise was shown with adult stem cell research. If you are going to do therapeutic research, and not cloning, them ASCR seems to be the way to go. Not only has it already shown results, but any moral questions are side-stepped.

I have always said that, if you are going to quibble on when life begins, you should decide in favor of something being alive, as opposed to the opposite. Today’s decision by the president continues the Democratic Party’s tradition of disrespect for the tiniest, most vulnerable members of society. The decision also stands in stark contrast to Church teachings on this issue.