Contrariwise

This week’s Catholic Carnival is up at TomReagan.com. Those of you with particularly good memories may remember that he wrote the Rosary series I love so much. I was excited that he was hosting the carnival the first week I submitted a post for inclusion.

Highlights of this edition:

• Owen (host of the Catholic Catechism Dialogue Blog, a concept I like but didn’t latch onto) describes his conversion through poetry for a friend. It may be the best conversion story I’ve ever read, and I love reading conversion stories.
• A Penitent Blogger comments on Monday’s Mass readings. I read them aloud to myself every day for lectoring practice and because I think they’re experienced best when read aloud. I was surprised to see an entire chapter as a reading, but the story of Jeremiah versus Hananiah really can’t be split into parts.
• Louis of A Catholic Hart muses on God’s infinite love for us. It really is impossible to imagine how anyone could keep loving us despite all the terrible things we do.

Vatican changes dates for 2008 Annunciation, St. Joseph feasts: Whoa. I’m okay with moving the Feast of St. Joseph. Its tie to a particular date isn’t as strong. The Annunciation, however, is supposed to be a specific date. Nine months before Christmas Day: it makes sense that way. I’d expect a homily for the Annunciation to make note of that correlation, but now that option will be gone in 2008. Sure, the octave of Easter is important, but can’t the Annunciation share one day of that time?

An old editorial from Ignite Your Faith (Christianity Today for teens) struck me as particularly insightful. The point she makes about missing parts of our spiritual lives is worth noting.

Lorelle (what a pretty name!) wrote a good blog post commenting about how not to comment. Along with the Harris Twins Blog Commenting Policy, that’s pretty much all you need to know to make commenting happy and fun (or at least useful).