Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

It’s almost time for Advent!

Are you ready?
If not, head over to Karen’s and read her Guide to Advent (the No-Panic way!).

Happy All Saints’ Day, friends. Don’t you love this feast?
I do–as a kid I always thought it was weird to be juxtaposed with halloween (sacred and profane, and all that), but as I grew older and realized how important the saints are to us, and how close they are, I’ve really grown to love this feast.

Here are the three saints I’m celebrating this year:

St. Therese of the Child Jesus, as always. She was the saint I chose at my confirmation, and the more I learn about here, the more I fall in love with her. She’s the most popular saint of modern times for a reason. If you’re looking for a good book on her, I recommend this one.  And there’s the movie!

St. Francis is the saint I have been studying this year. I got the idea from “Around the Year With the Von Trapp Family” to pick a saint every first Sunday of Advent that you will study during the year. I chose St. Francis since, at that time, I was applying to Franciscan University and wanted to learn more about St. Francis and the order he founded. This book is a good introduction, and this movie (also featuring St. Clare) is fantastic. (Also, in my family, my grandfather’s name is Francis, and it is my brother’s middle name.)

And finally, St. Dominic, whom, as we know from here, I have been studying. Right now I don’t have any books or movies to recomment, except–say the rosary! This great gift was given by Mary to St. Dominic, and is such a powerful prayer.

In addition to these, there is also St. Emily and St. Michael the Archangel, who are my name saints (Michele is my mom’s name, and my middle name.)

What about you? Who are your special saints?

So…I just ordered a chapel veil.

I’m 27, which means I am a post-Vatican II baby. I never heard Mass in Latin, and the only time my head was covered in church was for my first communion.

But I’ve seen a lot of women veiling lately–of all ages. And I’m a really girly girl. I like anything lacy and pretty.

So when I was at a new church this week, and saw veiled women, I started searching the internet for things on veiling.

Wow. There’s a lot out there.

This is the one I purchased. And I also purchased this to keep it in. (Course you can’t get it now, because I got the last one–ha!–but I think she’s planning on making more.)

Next week will probably be the first time I try this out at Mass. Hopefully it goes OK–as in, stays on.

What do y’all think about veiling? Have you ever wanted to try it? (If you’re a girl) Do you see folks do it?

Talking about new religious avenues for myself over here.

In Cincinnati, there’s things a-brewing, since the archibishop has told a nun she can no longer teach, due to her support for female ordination.

Now, a supporter of the nun’s, an OB/GYN who teaches 6th grade Old Testament at her parish, has been asked to stop teaching, because she, too, supports women’s ordination.

I was going to do a write-up about this, but, as usual, Fr. Z does it so much better than I. He also includes article links.

Jeb on his brother’s faith–and faith in politics.

(h/t The Corner; taken from an NY Times article)

Re: Vigilance in the Defense of Life [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

It is good to see Ross Douthat’s reflection on two Kennedys in the Times today. He writes, in part:

For abortion opponents, cruel ironies abounded in this sibling disagreement. Because of Eunice Shriver’s work with the developmentally disabled, a group of Americans who had once been marginalized and hidden away — or lobotomized, like her sister Rosemary — was ushered closer to full participation in ordinary human life. But because of laws that her brother unstintingly supported, that same group was ushered out again: the abortion rate for fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome, for instance, is estimated to be as high as 90 percent.

In 1992, Eunice participated in the last significant effort to push the Democratic Party away from abortion on demand, petitioning her party’s convention to consider “a new understanding” of the issue, “one that does not pit mother against child,” but instead seeks “policies that responsibly protect and advance the interest of mothers and their children, both before and after birth.” That same summer, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court upheld a near-absolute right to terminate a pregnancy — a decision made possible by her brother’s demagogic assault on Robert Bork five years earlier, which helped doom Bork’s nomination to the court.

At times, Ted Kennedy’s fervor on abortion felt like an extended apology to his party’s feminists for the way the men of his dynasty behaved in private. Eunice, by contrast, had nothing to apologize for. She knew what patriarchy meant: she was born into a household out of “Mad Men,” where the father paraded his mistress around his family, the sons were groomed for high office, and the daughters were expected to marry well, rear children and suffer silently. And she transcended that stifling milieu, doing more than most men to change the world, and earning the right to disagree with her fellow liberals about what true feminism required.

It’s worth pondering how the politics of abortion might have been different had Ted shared even some of his sister’s qualms about the practice. One could imagine a world in which America’s leading liberal Catholic had found a way to make liberalism less absolutist on the issue, and a world where a man who became famous for reaching across the aisle had reached across, even occasionally, in search of compromise on the country’s most divisive issue.

A reflection on Truth (h/t Praying for Grace)

A great interview with Steelers’ safety Troy Polamalu, on what’s important in life–Family and God. (And hockey.)

He and his family are Orthodox Christians, but the way he talks about grace, and the monastic life, definitely have parallels with Catholicism. And his take on family life is for anyone.

This is something we’ve all experienced, even the Great Saints. St. John of the Cross called it “the dark night of the soul”.

So what do we do about it?
Jen has some great ideas.