First Friday in August and Blogging Again

I've neglected the blog lately because I've been working on a project. When you're given only 15 minutes for a presentation, I've found you have to work even harder to put it together, mainly because you have to focus on what you really have to say. I've had to keep telling myself that I don't have time for this idea, or that idea.

And the project I've been working on is all about an idea--The Idea of A University, Saint John Henry Newman's great plan for a truly Catholic and truly universal University. I've been concentrating on the historical context of the his efforts from 1851 to 1858 to found, staff, promote, and teach at the Catholic University of Ireland. 

Just putting together this chronological handout for the participants was time-consuming, but it did afford me the pleasure of reading chapters of Father Ian Ker's great biography of Newman again and dipping into Wilfrid Ward's biography of Newman too:

Timeline of Newman’s involvement in the Catholic University of Ireland

'I want the intellectual layman to be religious, and the devout ecclesiastic to be intellectual.’ Newman’s first University Sermon preached in Dublin, “Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training”

In England/Ireland: 1829: Catholic Emancipation Act passed: many but not all restrictions on Catholic worship and citizenship were removed in England and Ireland.

In Ireland: 1840’s: Potato Famine; typhoid, cholera, and dysentery epidemics

            Newman: October 9, 1845: Received into the Catholic Church at Littlemore

In England/Ireland: 1845: The Queen's Colleges (Ireland) Act (An Act to enable Her Majesty to endow new Colleges for the Advancement of Learning in Ireland) passed.

In Ireland: December 30, 1845: the Queen’s Colleges of Galway, Belfast, and York incorporated.

In Ireland: 1846-1855: emigration reached its peak

           Newman: September 1846: in Rome to study for the priesthood

           January 1847: decides to become an Oratorian (member of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri) priest; 

           May: ordained a Catholic priest

           February 1848: opens the first Oratory in England; June: opens the London Oratory

In England: Pope Pius IX announces the Restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy; names bishops

            Newman: November 1851: Archbishop Cullen asks him to become the Rector of a new    Catholic University in Dublin: Newman accepts

Newman in Dublin

·         5/10/1852: First of his lectures on The Idea of a University

·         June 21-24: has to leave Dublin to stand trial for libel

·         October 1852: finalizes the lectures on the scope of the university (part one of The Idea of a University)

·         January 1853: Newman has to return to England for sentencing in his libel trial

·         November 1854: the University opens and classes begin; Newman officially named the Rector; begins publishing the Catholic University Gazette

·         1855: Newman delivers his lecture on “Christianity and Scientific Investigation”, chapter 8 in “University Subjects” (part two of The Idea of a University)

·         May 1856: the University church dedicated (Saints Peter and Paul)—now named for Our Lady Seat of Wisdom

·         March 1857: Newman informs the Irish bishops that he wants to resign as the University’s Rector

·         October 26, 1858: Newman returns to Dublin for last lectures

"My Name is Lazarus": Chesterton's Converts

I haven't been blogging much this month, since late March and early to mid-April (and April is almost gone) was first taken up by Holy Week and Easter and the Octave, and then by two deaths in my circle of friends, one after hospitalization, surgery, another surgery and then hospice, and the other killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking, preparing for the Kansas Camino from Wichita to Pilsen, Kansas.

The latter death, of Laurie Robinson, the founder of our local "Greater Wichita" local Chesterton Society, led me back to this book, which I've dipped into before:

34 stories of converts whose path to Rome was paved by G.K. Chesterton. Edited with an introduction by Dale Ahlquist.

Jewish converts, Muslim converts, former atheists, agnostics, and Protestants of all stripes. Drawn to Chesterton for utterly different reasons. All arriving at the same destination.

A book of curiosity and confrontation and consolation.

Contributors include Bishop James Conley, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Peter Kreeft, Joseph Pearce, Leah Libresco, Kevin O’Brien, Brandon Vogt, Emma Fox Wilson, Carl Olson, Victoria Darkey, Matt Swaim, David Fagerberg and others. An utterly engaging collection of conversion stories. Includes a fascinating “new” account of Chesterton’s own conversion in his own words.

The book features this poem by Chesterton, written after he had been received into the Catholic Church:

The Convert

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

The painting from which the cover detail is taken (Public Domain): 

The Raising of Lazarus by Leon Bonnat (1857)

Many of the essays demonstrate how reading Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man, The Catholic Church and Conversion, etc., influenced the writers' journeys into the Catholic Church. 

Laurie's essay is different, because she describes how re-reading Chesterton's The Everlasting Man, after she had been received into the Catholic Church after growing up and working for years in the Mennonite community--and particularly as a journalist for Mennonite publications--helped her resist some of the pressures she was facing. His words, read while recovering from the flu, were a weekend Mystagogy for her.

She organized our Chesterton group, which meets at Eighth Day Books the second Friday every month, nearly 12 years ago, composing this prayer for the beginning of our gatherings:

Heavenly Father,

We thank you for all your good gifts. We ask you to guide us in this conversation; illuminate our minds and hearts with eternal truth as it was expressed through the pen of G.K. Chesterton. 

Grant us the grace to bring glory and honor to you all that we say and do.

We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We are reading Chesterton's The Everlasting Man currently and our next meeting will be on Friday, May 10. When we met on the Friday after her death on the Solemnity of the Annunciation (transferred to April 8 because of Holy Week and the Easter Octave), we read her chapter from My Name is Lazarus, paid tribute to her influences on many of us, and prayed for the repose of her soul and her family's consolation, and our own.

Eternal rest grant unto to her, O Lord, and may Laurie's soul, and the souls of all the Faithful departed, rest in peace. May Laurie rest in peace. Amen.

A Note on Comments on this Blog

I don't always check on pending comments as often as I should, and I apologize for that. But I will not apologize for not approving a comment that takes the Holy Name of Our Lord in vain. A reader submitted a comment sometime last week blaspheming the Name of Jesus and I deleted that comment. The reader may have been using emphatic language to make a point and did not mean to make offense.

I don't think that Blogger, the template I'm using to publish this blog, provides me any way to respond to the reader without posting the comment and I just couldn't post the comment. I've never had to say this on my blog, but if you wish to make a comment that I'll approve, please keep it clean, proof and review what you want to say, and then submit your comment. I'll try to approve it and respond to it as soon as I can!

As the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus concludes:

V. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
R. spare us, O Jesus.
V. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
R. graciously hear us, O Jesus.
V. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
R. have mercy on us, O Jesus.

V. Jesus, hear us.
R. Jesus, graciously hear us.

Let us pray.
O Lord Jesus Christ, You have said, "Ask and you shall receive, seek, and you shall find, knock, and it shall be opened to you." Grant, we beg of You, to us who ask it, the gift of Your most divine love, that we may ever love You with our whole heart, in word and deed, and never cease praising You.

Give us, O Lord, as much a lasting fear as a lasting love of Your Holy Name, for You, who live and are King for ever and ever, never fail to govern those whom You have solidly established in Your love.
Amen.

Thank you very much.

Image Credit: (Public Domain) IHS monogram, with kneeling angels, atop the main altar, Church of the Gesù, Rome.

How to Follow this Blog

Pardon me while I just do some blogging-housekeeping! The Feedburner app that Google provided so blog readers could sign up for automated emails to receive new posts is going away. 

Now there's a new gadget on the right side of my blog for new readers to sign up for the same service; those of you are already signed up to receive emails will still receive them.

The new app is called follow.it.

I did some checking and it looked like the easiest and safest and it's free. They guided through the process of setting it up and advised me to alert you to the change:

Feedburner stops email services – switch to follow.it now

Google announced that they will terminate Feedburner’s email subscription feature in July. This leaves many bloggers & website owners wondering: what service to switch to?

Why follow.it is the best Feedburner alternative

If you don’t know follow.it yet, please have a look at our intro.

Here are the key reasons why you should switch to follow.it:
`Reliable email delivery: Emails land in inbox, not spam folders, due to follow.it’s excellent sender reputation
`Mature: follow.it (and its predecessor SpecificFeeds) has been around for over 5 years
`Free: follow.it’s “Basic”-plan includes many features, allows unlimited followers & emails, and is 100% free; optional premium plans are priced very fairly . . .

If you are already a subscriber to this blog, your email has been transferred to this new app. I've deleted the emails from the old app, which will be going away soon anyway. You might have received two emails yesterday, but that shouldn't happen again.

If you are not a subscriber to this blog, just look for gadget that says "Get new posts by email"!

Thank you very for your attention. UPDATE: After seeing a couple of the emails, I don't like them very much. If any readers are bloggers and have a better alternative, please let me know. Thank you again.

Lenten Posting and A New Series on the Son Rise Morning Show

Today is Quinquagesima Sunday and I've made some of my plans for Lent.

I'm going to cut back on posting here and on my Facebook pages (personal and book) to exclusively Lenten and English Reformation martyr posts. There are at least 30 (thirty) English Reformation martyrs to remember this Lent (from February 26 to April 8, the Wednesday of Holy Week).

On Monday, March 2, I'll start a new series on the Son Rise Morning Show, offering reflections on sermons and meditations for Lent by St. John Henry Newman in The Tears of Christ: Meditations for Lent.

The book is available from the Augustine Institute and was edited by Christopher O. Blum.

The Tears of Christ is a companion volume to Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas from the same publisher and editor, which I reviewed for the National Catholic Register in 2018.

To introduce the series, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show this week on the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, February 27, at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern.

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here!

Anna Mitchell and I will select a sermon for each Monday's broadcast, and I'll preview it the Friday before. The sermons are all available on-line at the Newman Reader and I'll link the complete sermon from which Blum has excerpted paragraphs in the preview.

I'll be using this volume as part of my Lenten devotions along with listening to a CD I purchased from Aid to the Church in Need (UK): Catholic Meditations with Music for the Season of Lent from the Oxford Oratory:

In this thought-provoking CD, recorded at the Oxford Oratory, Father Jerome Bertram offers reflections for the season of Lent highlighting the importance of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and the spiritual rewards of the Lenten journey. The meditations are accompanied by responsories taken from the Matins of Lent.

Track listing:

1. Hymn: Ex more docti
2. The Season of Lent: Spring-Cleaning for the Soul, Part One
3. Responsory: Emendemus in melius, quae ignoranter peccavimus
4. The Season of Lent: Spring-Cleaning for the Soul, Part Two
5. Responsory: Pater, peccavi in cælum, et coram te
6. Prayer: Opening our Hearts to God. Part One
7. Responsory: Tribularer, si nescirem misericordias tuas, Domine
8. Prayer: Opening our Hearts to God, Part Two
9. Responsory: Derelinquat impius viam suam
10. Fasting, making space in our life, Part One
11 Responsory: Moyses, famulus Dei, jejunauit quadraginta diebus
12. Fasting, making space in our life, Part Two
13. Responsory: Frange esurienti panem tuum
14. Almsgiving: Showing Christ¹s love to the World, Part One
15. Responsory: Abscondite eleemosynam in sinu pauperum
16. Almsgiving: Showing Christ¹s love to the World, Part Two
17. Responsory: Angelis suis mandavit de te
18. The Rewards of Lent
19. Antiphon: Ave, Regina Caelorum

Father Jerome Bertram of the Oxford Oratory died on October 19, 2019. 

Catching Up on my Register Blog

Just in case you haven't seen them, here are two posts I submitted to the National Catholic Register blogroll in the past two weeks:

In the first, May Traditions and the Blessed Virgin Mary, illustrated with this beautiful Maesta from Sienna by Simone Martini, I consider how traditional the month of Mary is, with all its events, and its Marian devotion. I am reading Yves Congar's book on The Meaning of Tradition, and I thought this passage explained the maternal aspects of these traditions:

In his book "The Meaning of Tradition", Yves Marie-Joseph Cardinal Congar summarized the role Tradition plays in Catholic Church doctrine, worship, and discipline. He explored the historical and theological aspects of Tradition (the magisterial teaching Tradition of the Church) and tradition (certain customs) in a two volume study published in 1960 and 1963—"The Meaning of Tradition", which is published in English by Ignatius Press, appeared in 1964.

In chapter one, “Tradition and Traditions” Congar offers us an insight into why May is such a maternal and traditional month. There is an intrinsic connection between the feminine genius, to use Pope St. John Paul II’s term, and tradition. As Congar notes, “We may even discern a feminine and maternal touch in the vital aspect of tradition. A woman expresses instinctively and vitally what a man expresses logically… The woman is the recipient, the matrix and fashioner of life. She creates the surroundings in which life will retain its warmth; one thinks of the maternal breast, of tenderness, of the home. She is fidelity.”

Congar goes on to note how important the home is to security and stability: graduating from high school to perhaps go to college; graduating from college to go into the working world, building a career and our own lives; progressing in our spiritual growth as Catholics as we receive the Sacraments. All of these transitions are supported by security of the home: “A home or milieu possesses a wealth of strength and certainly found nowhere else. Both provide security and with it the possibility of expansion that security affords.”

Looking at May as the month of Mary, I found this little-known encyclical of Pope Paul VI to be inspiring:

Blessed Pope Paul VI wrote a brief encyclical, “Mense Maio”, in 1965 to Catholic bishops throughout the world as the Second Vatican Council was meeting:

The month of May is almost here, a month which the piety of the faithful has long dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God. Our heart rejoices at the thought of the moving tribute of faith and love which will soon be paid to the Queen of Heaven in every corner of the earth. For this is the month during which Christians, in their churches and their homes, offer the Virgin Mother more fervent and loving acts of homage and veneration; and it is the month in which a greater abundance of God's merciful gifts comes down to us from our Mother's throne.

We are delighted and consoled by this pious custom associated with the month of May, which pays honor to the Blessed Virgin and brings such rich benefits to the Christian people…

The escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War (with the possibility of using nuclear weapons), conflict between India and Pakistan, civil war in the Dominican Republic, and other conflicts led Pope Paul to urge prayers for peace:

So, Venerable Brothers, throughout this month of May, let us offer our pleas to the Mother of God with greater devotion and confidence, so that we may obtain her favor and her blessings. Even if the grave sins of men provoke God's justice and merit His just punishments, we must not forget the he is "the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort," (Cf. 2 Cor. 1.3) that He has appointed Mary most holy as the generous steward of His merciful gifts.

He concluded by asking the bishops “to make provisions for special prayers in every diocese and parish during the month of May” and “in particular, on the feast of the Queenship of Mary” (August 22) for peace in the world and the success of the Second Vatican Council.

Please read the rest there.

And this week, the Register published this post on how to listen to Gregorian Chant or other liturgical music. I really appreciate the choice of illustration: the Angels singing from the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck. You can read more about that great altarpiece at The Getty Foundation website here.

I criticize the view that Gregorian chant, particularly, is music to relax to and even fall asleep to:

I try not to listen to Gregorian chant or other liturgical music as though it is background music. Readers might remember the “Gregorian Chant for Relaxation” CDs issued after the great success of the recordings by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silo in the mid-1990’s. Gregorian chant was promoted as calming and perfect for meditation, Christian or otherwise. One critic commented on an anniversary re-release of the CDs:

. . . this is music for reflection, calming down, re-fueling and getting away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life--which may be even more needed now than they were 10 years ago. Texts are not supplied and you won't need them; it's all about reverence and mood. Doing nothing but listening to this in 25-minute chunks will allow your breathing to slow and re-energize you. Each 55-minute CD will probably put you to sleep--and this isn't meant as a criticism.”(Emphasis added)

Since the Latin Biblical texts are the reason that chant exists, saying that they’re not necessary demonstrates a real misuse of this liturgical music. A listener should not be lulled to sleep listening to chant: she should be awakened and inspired to prayer and devotion.

On the other hand, I don’t want to respond to this music as though I’m in a concert hall, applauding a performance.

Please read the rest there.

EWTN's Register Radio

I recorded an interview with Jeanette DeMelo and Matthew Bunson for EWTN's Register Radio yesterday which will air this weekend on EWTN Radio (Saturday at 6:00 p.m. Central and Sunday at 10:00 a.m. Central)--and will also be linked on the National Catholic Register home page.

We discussed my latest blog post for the Register: "Septuagesima, Shrovetide, and Pancakes":

The Super Bowl is over and the next great commercial social event is St. Valentine’s Day, but Easter candy is already sharing shelf space with Valentine’s candy in our stories. We are in a transitional time in our liturgical year too. Last Christmas seems a long time ago.

Before the reform of the liturgical calendar in late 1960’s, there was a name for this transitional time: Septuagesima. For three Sundays, the Church adopted a pre-Lenten period and in parishes where the Extraordinary Form is celebrated today, those Sundays are observed. The priest wears violet vestments, the Gloria is omitted, and the Tract replaces the Alleluia before the Gospel. The loss of the Alleluia, as the liturgical scholar Dom Gueranger explains, reminds us of our situation: “During the rest of the year [the Church] loves to hear us chant the song of heaven, the sweet Alleluia; but now, she bids us close our lips to this word of joy, because we are in Babylon . . . We are sinners, and have but too often held fellowship with the world of God's enemies; let us become purified by repentance . . .”

I like the image the Register chose for the post: Pieter Aertsen's "The Pancake Bakery" which depicts a family preparing Shrovetide pancakes for sale. According to the Rijkmuseum:

Although Pieter Aertsen (1508-1575), known as ‘Lange Pier’, came from Amsterdam, he lived in Antwerp for many years. After he returned in 1556, various Amsterdam churches, his principal patrons, commissioned Aertsen to make large altarpieces. Soon, however, he abandoned religious art and started to paint scenes from peasant life. He was known above all for his paintings of market scenes and kitchen tableaux, which contained an abundance of fruit, fish, poultry, cheese, bread and much besides. His younger cousin and pupil Joachim Bueckelaer also painted in the same genre and developed it further.

The Wikipedia article on this artist, however, provides greater context to his career:

Later in life, he also painted more conventional treatments of religious subjects, now mostly lost as during the iconoclasm of the beeldenstorm several paintings that had been commissioned for Catholic churches were destroyed. Several of his best works, including altarpieces in various churches in Amsterdam, were also destroyed during the days surrounding the event known as the Alteratie, or "Changeover", when Amsterdam formally reverted to Protestantism from Catholicism on 26 May 1578 at the start of the Eighty Years' War. One surviving religious work is the Crucifixion in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp.

Aertsen was a member of Antwerp's equivalent of the Accademia di San Luca. In the official books of the Academy he is known as "Langhe Peter, schilder" (Tall Peter, painter). His sons Pieter, Aert, and Dirk became acclaimed painters, and other notable pupils trained in his workshop included Stradanus and Aertsen's nephew, Joachim Beuckelaer, who continued to develop Aertsen's formula.

Aersten's exact formula of still life and genre figures in the foreground, with small scenes from history painting in the background only persisted for the next generation (or two, as Joachim Wtewael painted some similar works), but history paintings with very prominent and profuse still life elements in the foreground were produced by Rubens and his generation, and in the 17th century both Flemish Baroque painting and Dutch Golden Age painting developed important genres of independent still life subjects, which were just occasionally produced in Aertsen's day.

The Blood of the Martyrs

In my latest post for the National Catholic Register blogroll, I've written about St. Edmund Campion's influence on St. Henry Walpole--and St. Henry Walpole's influence on William Byrd, the Recusant composer:

Henry Walpole was 23 years old when he stood near Tyburn Tree. He was a well-educated Englishman and was a loyal member of Her Majesty’s Church of England. After attending Cambridge University (Peterhouse College) he was preparing for a legal career, studying at Grey’s Inn in London. What he witnessed that December day was the excruciating death of a traitor: Campion and the other priests with him (Father Ralph Sherwin and Father Alexander Briant) were first hanged until barely conscious, then eviscerated while still alive, beheaded, and quartered (their bodies divided into four parts). Their heads and quarters would be displayed as warnings to others not to follow their example.

In Walpole’s case, this brutal execution had the opposite effect: some of Campion’s blood splashed on him. Perhaps Campion’s last words also inspired him: “I am a Catholic man and a priest. In that faith have I lived and in that faith do I intend to die, and if you esteem my religion treason, then I am guilty. As for any other treason, I never committed. I stand condemned for nothing but the saying of Mass, hearing confessions, preaching and such like duties and functions of priesthood.”

Please read the rest there, and share if you like to facebook or twitter! Thank you!

Frances Chesterton @ Aleteia

Head over to Aleteia.org to see my guest blog post on Frances Chesterton, G.K.'s wife. I used the adage "Behind every great man is a great woman" to demonstrate instead how Frances was sometimes beside her husband, sometimes ahead of him and sometimes behind him:

If Frances Chesterton had been behind her husband, we would never have seen her. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a giant of a man in stature and personality. Instead, Frances stood beside him and even sometimes in front of him and thus we seen both her and her influence on him, especially through the efforts of Nancy Carpentier Brown in her 2015 biography, The Woman Who Was Chesterton. . . .

Frances and G.K. Chesterton met in 1896 at a literary debating society. His immediate admiration and growing love for Frances meant that she led him to greater faith in Jesus Christ and attendance at Church of England services. In 1911 Chesterton dedicated his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse to her: “Therefore I bring these rhymes to you/Who brought the cross to me.” He would return the favor 26 years later when he became a Catholic in 1922 and led her to join him four years later.

They were engaged in 1898 and married on June 28, 1901. Frances stood beside Chesterton in his professional work but also led him to a healthier lifestyle as they moved away from London and the pubs to live in the country. They wanted to have a house full of children—hoping for “seven beautiful children”—but bore the crosses of infertility and ill health.

Please read the rest there! IF you like it, please share it and comment on it so the team at Aleteia might ask me to write for them again! Thank you.

Saint Mother Teresa: "The Princess and the Saint"

I'm blogging now for the National Catholic Register and I offered these reflections on Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Princess Diana, especially commenting on their very different funerals in 1997:

Nineteen years ago from August 31 to September 6, you could not avoid the media coverage of the death of Princess Diana, the former Princess of Wales (except by turning off the television and radio). Debate raged about who was to blame for her death after a car crash in Paris: the drunken limousine driver, the paparazzi, or the Royal Family. Stephen Frears’ 2006 film The Queen, with Helen Mirren in the title role, depicts the public outrage when Elizabeth II does not respond with the demonstrations of grief her subjects demand.

 

Diana’s funeral, held in Westminster Abbey, included both tradition and innovation, with Sir Elton John singing a special version of “Candle in the Wind”, originally written about Marilyn Monroe, and her brother’s eulogy which attacked the press and criticized the Royal Family. English pomp and circumstance combined with celebrity status. Hundreds of thousands watched the services on screens in Hyde Park and the funeral was carried live on TV and radio. The media tones were hushed and reverential for “the people’s princess”.

 

Reports were that Diana was buried on the family estate holding in her folded hands a rosary given to her by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta had died the day before Diana’s funeral, on September 5, 1997. While she was granted the honor of a State funeral in India, ABC News with Peter Jennings chose to have Christopher Hitchens, her most virulent critic, add his commentary to the broadcast of her funeral Mass. 

Mother Teresa commented on the different kind of poverty she had found in the United States and in Western countries:

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”

Mother Teresa probably saw in Diana what Charles Spencer called his sister's great insecurity and feeling of unworthiness. We know she saw Jesus in Princess Diana, as she saw Him in everyone who suffers--and everyone suffers!

Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us.

Updates and Deadlines

I apologize for the lack of blogging: I'm working on a project with a fast approaching deadline! I'm writing an article for the Tudor Life magazine about The Pilgrimage of Grace, exploring the meaning of that title and the banner of that pilgrimage depicting the Five Wounds of Jesus.

In the meantime, I've updated my "Presentations and Interviews" and by "Other Publications" tabs. The former includes a teaser from the Spiritual Life Center of my presentation on Blessed John Henry Newman on Faith, Family, and Friends, which I think went well. The latter includes the announcement that my article on Papal Bulls and other official documents will be in the September/October issue of OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

A Clerk of Oxford Honored

From History Today:

This year’s Longman-History Today award for Digital History went to Eleanor Parker for her blog, A Clerk of Oxford.

Parker writes regular blog posts on an astoundingly wide range of subjects relating to Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian history and literature. Her academic work as a researcher at The University of Oxford focuses on the interaction between Anglo-Saxon and Viking culture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries following the Norse settlement in England.

The blog posts and her Twitter account, however, are much more wide-ranging. As History Today's editor, Paul Lay remarked in his speech at the award ceremony: not a morning goes by where she has not shared some fascinating and insightful new piece of medieval miscellany.
Her skill lies in making medieval topics – texts that are considered esoteric even by medieval specialists’ standards – engaging, accessible and fascinating to an audience of non-specialist readers. It is an added bonus that they have the same effect on specialist readers, too. Her inclusion of medieval texts in their original language as well as in translation means many of the misconceptions surrounding them are completely bypassed and her readers can engage directly with the material, guided by her expert commentary. The sources she draws on are wide-ranging, and always presented and discussed with humour, insight and passion.

This blog is a treasure trove of grounded in exemplary scholarship and is a much appreciated contribution to the field of history online.

I have her blog linked and reference it often. Quite an honor!

Support a Catholic Speaker Month (SCSM)

I'm participating in the 2012 edition of Support a Catholic Speaker Month hosted by Brandon Vogt. On my C.V., I cite one of my few speaking engagements (with a full-time job, I don't get around that much:)

Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri Diocese’s Bishop Helmsing Institute Apologetics Conference Presentations: "How Catholics Survived the English Reformation" and "Church History and Apologetics", March 13, 2010

The Keynote Speaker at the Apologetics Conference was Jim Burnham of St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers :

Jim Burnham is an internationally known cradle-Catholic author and speaker. He is the second-born of ten children. Jim and his wife, Lisa, have been married 11 years and have five children.

In 1989, Jim graduated as valedictorian from Michigan's Hillsdale College with a degree in philosophy.Questions from evangelical class-mates forced Jim to rediscover the amazing biblical and historical basis for his Catholic Faith.

Shortly thereafter, Jim and his father founded San Juan Catholic Seminars, a lay organization devoted to explaining and defending the Catholic faith. At first, it only presented out-of-town speakers. Then Jim teamed up with a local priest, Father Frank Chacon, to give local seminars themselves. Since then, San Juan Catholic Seminars has grown into a full-fledged apologetics ministry, offering seminars, tapes, and the hugely popular series of Beginning Apologetics booklets.

Jim has given "practical apologetics" seminars all over the world. He is on Catholic Answers' speaking bureau. He has appeared on EWTN's "Carpenter's Shop" series, as well as many Catholic radio shows. Jim is the co-author, with Steve Wood, of Christian Fatherhood.

When I contacted Jim, he remembered meeting both me and my husband, Mark. I reviewed my notes from his talks and would highly recommend him as a speaker. He integrated Church history into his apologetics talks very well and with his practical background in apologetics, he provides both experience in delivering and knowledge in conveying the truth.

Paulo Coehlo and Me

According to Paulo Coehlo in the Wall Street Journal:

The act of writing allows me to feel truly alive. Knowing that I have sold 140 million books worldwide (and given an average of three readers per copy, have reached half a billion people), I have always wondered who these readers were who understood so well what I was saying. How could countries with such different cultures, like Israel and Iran, for example, be interested in my books? When I started using social media, without any assistance or planning, two things guided me: the curiosity to find out who reads my work and the challenge of writing on such a different platform.

My participation in social communities has carried on instinctively. But, to my surprise, when I recently logged on to Facebook, I noticed I had more followers than Madonna. At the moment I am writing these lines, the singer I admire and respect has 6 million “likes”, while I am close to 6.5 million. How can a writer—relatively unknown in the USA—reach so many people?

He then goes on to offer some rules he developed for using social media. I looked at one of his books at our local Borders Bookstore a few years ago and thought it was not for me. (How's that for delicacy and diplomacy?)

Then he concludes:

Currently I dedicate three hours of my day to this interaction. While the vast majority of a literary career like mine is delegated to people who belong to my universe—such as my agent, my editors, and the booksellers—I have time for and take pleasure in this direct contact.

I think he discusses his rules or notes for using social media with a very strange tone of pride and self-congratulation! When I made my presentation at the Catholic Writers Guild Conference in August, I think I touted my success--on my incredibly much smaller scale--and you can see for yourself here in this summary article I published on Associated Content, but he seems to be without any limitation! Seems to me that Paulo Coehlo is mistaking the three hours he spends on facebook, twitter, and whatever other social media he uses as real contact and a real measure of knowing who his readers are. Certainly the Catholic New Media Conference, which was held this past weekend in Kansas City, Kansas (Sept. 30-Oct. 2) recognizes that the practitioners of the new media still want to get together and see each other face-to-face. What do you think?

Catholic Writers Guild: Blogging Historical Fiction

My friend Elena Maria Vidal posted these great recommendations on blogging at the Catholic Writers Guild Blog: Catholic Writers Guild: Blogging Historical Fiction:

My historical fiction blog is called Tea at Trianon. I post daily on matters of faith, culture and history, with an emphasis on the French Revolution. The blog has about 65,000 hits a month, with roughly 20,000 unique visitors a month. It has led me to meet fascinating people from around the world, authors and scholars, many of whom contribute to the blog with their own writings and commentary. . . .

She gives ten (10) great tips for blogging. Elena Maria Vidal is the author of the historical novels Trianon, Madame Royale, and The Night's Dark Shade, which I blurbed and reviewed. Please visit Elena at her Tea at Trianon blog. She often kindly links to my posts and we share many of the same historical interests.

In King of Prussia, Ready for the Catholic Writers Guild Conference

I'm in Valley Forge~King of Prussia, Pennsylvania at the Valley Forge Convention Center and hotel complex near the King of Prussia Mall. (I don't know where the border is between VF and KoP!) The Catholic Writers Conference Live (CWCL) starts tomorrow morning!

BTW: How King of Prussia got its name, according to Wikipedia: "The community took its name in the 18th century from a local tavern named the King of Prussia Inn, which was named after Frederick II, King of Prussia."

I'll be posting updates on the conference here and also on the Catholic Writers Guild blog. The theme of the CWCL this year is MARKETING and there are several presentations on marketing, including mine. The Catholic Marketing Network Trade Show (CMNTS) is set up in the lower level of the Scanticon Hotel and our Conference sessions take place in different meeting rooms on the main floor of that hotel. The CMNTS hosts events in the evening in the Radisson Grand Ballroom--tonight there is a showing of a new movie on St. Philip Neri, Blessed John Henry Newman's patron! They also offer Mass and Eucharistic Adoration, and I'm sure with all the priests in attendance there might be opportunities for Confession. Catholics have invaded this little part of PA!

I met Theresa Thomas (Every Day Catholic) and Christine Gorth (Divine Mercy Publications) and two other ladies coming to the conference and the trade show on the shuttle from the airport to the hotel. My flights from Wichita to Philadelphia, through Houston (?) were smooth. I was upgraded to First Class on the Houston to Philly flight!