Dec 26 2007

Catholic Carnival 151

Category: Catholic Carnival,General — Lindsay @ 11:32 pm

I remember when reading the Catholic Carnival was the height of my week. Now I’m excited to finally be able to read one again! Last week’s was up at Aussie Coffee Shop.

Ian of Musings from a Catholic Bookstore comments on a Time article about the rising trend of large families among the affluent. I’m not seeing anyone right now, and discerning my vocation is a whole trial I’m not going to get into, but if I marry, I hope to have as large a family as God wants. Ian makes some good points about the reality of large families, even among the middle class. I can’t quite wrap my head around it, since I’m still a poor college student and my parents are still willing to help me out, but I know from FAFSA experience that when the government tries to make estimates about real people and money, they are often wrong.

Sean at A Catholic Canadian muses on whether online communities can–or should–replace real-life camaraderie. t’s important to think of technology-based communication as a scaffold to relationships, not a substitute. For example, Jim and I have a great friendship. I’ve even asked him to recommend me for grad school. We met on a CSC retreat, and then had Bible study together, but since we don’t see each other in person all the time, our friendship is supported by AIM. Without it, our friendship wouldn’t be as strong. Likewise, I’ve connected with some old friends using facebook. I make it a point to see people in person, though. It’s trickier when you don’t have much money, but sometimes quality time is worth it. Sean also mentions his interest in building community through the Knights of Columbus, which I, CDA Regent, think is a lovely idea.

At Bearing Blog (which is a neat title), Erin offers an analysis of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent document on the need for evangelization. The whole Church could use some good, strong pointers on how to evangelize effectively. As Maura puts it, we need better marketing. I’ll have to keep her pointers in mind, and read the whole document myself one of these days.

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Dec 26 2007

On Hope

Category: General — Lindsay @ 10:40 pm

Even though I should be practicing more math for the GRE (I’m not trying to be a math teacher, but something tells me that Notre Dame will frown on a 34th percentile quantitative score), I am catching up on my reading in many respects. I spent about half of today and yesterday reading the Bible, catching up on the lectionary readings from all of Advent. It was time-consuming, but exactly the thing I needed after the crunch of school pushed me away from God.

ZENIT has changed recently, adding Gospel commentaries and letters to the editor. I like the commentaries; I could do without the letters. Fr. Cantalamessa, the Preacher to the Pontifical Household, gave a sermon to the Roman Curia where he talked about hope in relation to Advent. I wanted to read Spe Salvi for Advent, but of course that didn’t happen. Fr. Cantalamessa’s sermons were a nice short substitute for a long reflection, though. Lately, half the Church has to prepare a defense to the atheist onslaught pushed by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Philip Pullman. As my friend Guy suggested, it would be best if we could just ignore these Jerry Falwells of the atheist world. We can’t, though, because there are too many people who are just waiting to see who “wins” so they know which side to join. As Fr. Cantalamessa said to support the Christian side of the battle, “If a delusion is able to do what Jesus did in history, Dawkins and others had better reconsider their concept of delusion.”

Speaking about hope, Fr. Cantalamessa offered this interesting and elegant imagery:

Hope has been for a long time and is still now the poor relation among the theological virtues. We speak often of faith, more often of love, but very little about hope.

The poet Charles Péguy is right when he compares the three theological virtues to three sisters: two grown-ups and a little girl. They walk along the street hand-in-hand (the three theological virtues are inseparable!), the two big ones on either side, the little girl in the middle. All who see them are convinced that the two big ones — faith and love — drag along the little girl hope in the middle. But they are mistaken: it is the little girl hope who drags the other two along; if she stops, everything stops.

On my first Spring Retreat, our theme was faith, hope, and love. I had the most trouble with hope then as I do now. The point Fr. Cantalamessa is trying to make, I think, is that without hope, we have nothing. I understand hope as trust. With faith, we believe that God loves us and will save us. With love, we adore him for his love and his works. With hope, we trust that he will do what he has promised.