Contrariwise

I started entering Catholic Carnivals again, which is how The Catholic Underground found my post. Last week’s carnival included a link to Fighting Irish Thomas, who mentioned a Eucharistic Procession at Notre Dame last Sunday. That sounds so cool. I wish we could do something like that here at UMD, but I doubt it. That sounds like the kind of thing campus officials would want to stop. We can use campus facilities, being an officially registered organization that’s open to everyone (like the Church itself). I can see the hecklers organizing now.

Also, Musings from a Catholic Bookstore posted a great rebuttal of a recent Newsweek article on B16’s papacy since his election two years ago. Lovely birthday present, guys. It’s a long post, but the gist of it is this: The Pope is responsible for keeping the Church Catholic, not for changing things willy-nilly, no matter who thinks he should. Period. (But go read it anyway.)

You know, I never do old-fashioned “what’s going on in my life” posts anymore. Let’s fix that.

It’s almost the end of the semester, so I am dying accordingly. Reading for class still puts me to sleep. I go to class almost every day now having done only part of the reading assignment. As I continue in upper-level classes, the reading volume only increases. Last semester, I got so far behind that I honestly just gave up. This semester is turning out to be very similar. My days are scheduled so tightly that I have very specific chunks of time for studying. Unfortunately, those are often the very ends of my day, so I’m either not awake enough or far too tired to concentrate. I can’t figure out what else to do, though. I don’t know any other way to do school.

We had CDA elections two weeks ago. The nominating committee only picked one person for each office. Attendance dropped so dramatically this year that I’m kind of impressed they came up with that many people. Cathy had mentioned that she would consider a nomination for Vice Regent again if she knew the Regent wouldn’t resign like last year, but I guess they didn’t ask her. So, Kaitlyn will be Vice Regent, Maura will be Recording Secretary, Kait L. will be Financial Secretary, Maureen will be Treasurer…and I’ll be Regent. xD After we finally managed to have a business meeting in October, I realized that I wanted to run for Regent. Cathy isn’t graduating, so I promised myself that I wouldn’t step on her toes if she ran for reelection, but she didn’t. This spring, she herself suggested I consider taking the regency. I told Myca, swearing her to secrecy, and she was all for it. When Fr. Bill told me he hoped I’d become Regent, that pretty much sealed the deal.

On Monday evening, we had what Cathy swears is her last CDA event as Regent. (We still need to do a financial review, though.) Having inducted a whopping three new Daughters on Divine Mercy Sunday, we wanted to try to bring together as many current and new Daughters as possible for an orientation. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to plan enough, so I went to the CSC on Monday evening for Mass as usual with only a very fuzzy idea of what we’d be doing.

Cathy spent Mass in the kitchen preparing dinner. She did a really good job considering that she was working by herself (though Jess N. made the cake). We ate first, then had dessert while Gina led our attempt to go over parliamentary procedure. When you do it right, parliamentary procedure is a really good way to get decisions made with discussion, especially with large groups. We’ve never quite managed to do it right, though. I did manage to get people used to standing when they spoke during business meetings, though. That helps a lot with order, because no one wants to raise her hand and stand up just long enough to say, “That’s a great idea!”

After dessert, we did a (late) icebreaker game of “Do You Love Your Neighbor?” One person stands in the middle while the rest sit in a circle of chairs. She picks a girl and asks, “Do you love your neighbor?” She answers, “Yes, and I especially love people who…” and fills in something about herself. (You can also play it, “No, but I love people who…,” but there is negativity allowed in CDA. Ha.) Then, all the girls who share that characteristic have to change seats. You have to move at least two seats away, and the last person standing starts the next round by introducing herself. Of course Cathy started with me. I picked people who have siblings. Gina needed clarification (”biological or “People who converted” wasn’t thrilling, because there were only two (including my future new roommate, Sarah). Myca picked “I love Catholics,” so that was a complete melee of elbows and squeals. Jess M. couldn’t talk because something was wrong with her throat, so I interpreted her notes.

After the train wreck ended, we played Kait L.’s Circle of Love game. She is a very creative girl. Cathy talked about St. Maria Goretti in the absence of both our Spiritual and Chastity Chairs. We ended by making cards for hospitalized children, and then we all went home. Attendance was pretty good considering our track record; we had about 12 girls (including one who isn’t actually a Daughter). And I got a super-neat saints + JPII bracelet blessed by the Holy Father!

Wednesday night dinner was even more fun than usual because I missed last week, and because we got to eat outside with minimal bug nuisances. It was also the Feast of St. Mark, and I had a wonderfully enlightening Holy Hour.

Earlier this afternoon, I had a phone interview for a summer job. I applied to Johns Hopkins’s Center for Talented Youth Summer Program back in February. I wanted to be a TA, knowing that my chances weren’t great because they’d already been reviewing applications for over a month. I interviewed today for an RA job. I don’t think it went that well. I don’t have much experience as an RA. That aspect of my job with Portz last summer was my weakness. My interviewer asked me what topics I might consider inappropriate for discussing with adolescents as opposed to my peers, and I totally blanked. It’s been a while since I’ve really talked to kids, I guess.

Mary (and Fr. Bill) sent me links to the newest OotP trailer. I’d already seen them, but I appreciated the gesture. It was only a few days ago that I realized that taking this job I interviewed for (if they even offer it to me) means missing out on EVERYTHING Harry Potter this summer. I can’t guarantee I’ll even be able to get DH, let alone read it. How sad is it that Harry Potter is seriously affecting my work this summer, and it’s not even summer yet?

I’ll be leaving for the CSC in a few minutes. The Missionaries of the Eucharist are leading a discussion tonight on the Pope’s Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis. I actually managed to read the right sections of it, so this should go much more smoothly than my classes lately, where I tend to go without having read and then doze off for an hour and a half.

Our beloved Archbiship Wuerl gave an address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast that addressed faith and politics. I’m not a big fan of politics, but I love my Church, so I was intrigued.

To explore the developments in the relationship of faith and public policy we need to begin with a recognition that in recent years we have witnessed a movement in some public opinion forums away from an appreciation of the basic religious values that underpin our laws—religious values accepted and expressed by a great variety of faith communities—to the assertion of the need to substitute a so-called secular frame of reference within which public policy should be articulated.

This is so important. Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. Rosie O’Donnell recently expressed her dismay at the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban by lamenting that, since the five Supreme Court Justices who voted in favor of the ban are Catholic, the country is losing its sense of the separation of church and state. That’s not what “separation of church and state” means. It doesn’t mean that you have to divorce your church life from public life, even if that public life includes handing down legislation. To be a truly faithful person in any tradition, your faith has to inform every aspect of your life. “Separation of church and state” means that there is no official Church of the United States. It means that the U.S. government can’t define religion. It does not and has never meant that there must be a chasm between faith and law.

The reason Rerum Novarum is highlighted so regularly is because it was the beginning of a long series of papal encyclicals and statements constantly developing the theme of human dignity and social justice. [...] Religious faith has played and continues to play a significant role in promoting social justice issues.

What faith brings to our world is a way of seeing life and reality, a way of judging right and wrong, a norm against which we can see our life measured in light of the wisdom of God.

We simply cannot put aside all of this conviction of how we live and make important decisions and still be who we are as Catholics and as heirs to the American dream of personal freedom, faith and the common good.

We cannot divide personal morality and ethics from political life any more than we can separate spiritual values from human values. It is an unnatural and unhealthy condition for the individual and society so to compartmentalize our most firmly held convictions that they are not allowed to affect our public lives. Such a schizophrenic approach to life is, at best, unhealthy. Closer to the truth—it brings devastation to the person and to society.

Some day, maybe our country will recognize that what is popular—or rather, what the new would have you believe is popular—is not always right. May God be with all of us, all the time, in all the aspects of our lives.

My first super-cool blog moment was being mentioned in the National Catholic Register, albeit under my old title and at my old URL on Blog*Spot. Today I had my second: I’m in a podcast! I submitted my entry on the Eucharistic Congress to the Catholic Carnival, and The Catholic Underground mentioned it in their podcast! Clearly, I needed to re-add that “About Me” section to the sidebar sooner, but still. I’m in a podcast! Yay!

Well, sort of. I would still like to have the navigation in nice little tabs in the header, as well as putting the search bar there, but this will do for now. If only I could figure out how to get my fanlisting code rotator working again, and add cute little pixel icons for the time and date, and get those single-page navigation links aligned properly,…. and stop being such a perfectionist.