Marc Barnes is Studying, So Watch His Best Film Ever

In need of a Marc Barnes fix? I’ve got just the ticket for you. You see what I said in the title. Marc’s busy at the moment. He’s off aceing his finals, and writing all kinds of epic papers, finishing up his first semester at Franciscan University in Steubenville. [Read more...]

Need Another Reason to Love “the Kid?”

Here are five of them. I’m just glad that when I was Marc’s age, it was legal for me to drink beer.

Remember When Wayne & Garth Got Back Stage Passes & Met Alice Cooper?

That’s sort of how I felt after I was Confirmed. The “backstage pass effect”, see, ushered me into the inner sanctum. Once inside, I started getting schooled in surprising ways, much like how Alice Cooper’s knowledge of Milwaukee, and the Algonquin native culture blows away Wayne & Garth. Whoa. And then, after the 15 seconds of an audience I was expecting, I was invited to hang out too? What a feeling! When that happened, that is where all of my preconceived notions about the Church fell away, and left me hitting the floor sort of like the boys here. [Read more...]

Everything You Wanted to Know about the Banner

Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. What do these mysterious attributes have to do with this blog, or with your humble blogger? Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words, that message is all spelled out for you in the new YIMCatholic banner image you see above. [Read more...]

For Seven Layer Dips of Awesome Like This

Dracula, Sin, The Good News, Prayer, Faith, Forgiveness, Redemption.

Mark Shea does a little hammering on FaithlessnessGo read it all!

If “Jesus Ween” Wasn’t Scary Enough…

Remember that little post? That was nothing compared to the well-meaning goodness that Joe Carter experienced growing up. Courtesy of Jack Chick tracts. Yummy!

“Before Richard Dawkins Was…I Am.”

I think that is what Our Lord would say anyway, much to the consternation of “bright,”militant atheists everywhere. Of course, that is after He spit coffee out on His keyboard laughing. Go read Dawkins attempt to make sense of his brilliant idea over at The Blaze. Truly a more hilarious title (I added a few words) for an article has never been written, [Read more...]

It’s Like Elizabeth Says…

I hope it comes on in my neck of the woods. New idea—I’m going to ask my public library to purchase it!

I got an email tonight from a woman who read this post and realized that the reality of the world “as it is” makes her unhappy.

Well, combating the world “as it is” requires us to teach and admonish, not with the tactics of the world, but “in wisdom made holy” through the love of Christ. If we do that correctly we will — like the early Christians — attract others, and thus assist the Holy Spirit in the turning of the world toward the light.

If we do it incorrectly, we will only repel those who are perhaps in the greatest need to come to know the love of Christ and his salvation. And then we will have to deal with a turned-off, tuned-out world whose heels are stubbornly dug-in to the darkness.

Worse, we will have to answer to Christ as to why we trusted the worldly way of confrontation — the way of anger and distrust and scored points and power — over His way, and the way of His saints, the way of patience, humility and love.

Bl. Pope John Paul II famously said that we Catholics must look at the world clearly and see it “as it is” before we can help to form it into something more perfect-in-Christ.

To do that, we to pray, certainly, and we need more than prayer, but we are not sure what that might be.

I believe this effort by Father Robert Barron’s Word on Fire — its instruction, it’s beauty, it’s passion and it’s profound humanity in exploring the Incarnational Christ and His church — may well be the precise and timely tool we need to learn how to respond to the world “as it is,” because it tells us things about ourselves, our church and our Savior that many of us do not even know, or have perhaps forgotten.

Go read the rest. We’re on a mission from God!

Because Words Matter…

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects. —Blaise Pascal

Yesterday, I shared a post about catechizing the world. That “c” word is one I had never heard of before I was Catholic. It’s a complicated sounding word that I probably could never get right during a spelling bee. But it doesn’t have to be that fancy sounding,  because all it means is “sharing the Good News” and “teaching the Faith.”

What is the power of the words we choose when trying to bring others to Christ and his Church? Do they matter? Of course they do. Especially if they are puffed up so much that they wind up blocking the Son.

H/T to Terry Fenwick for posting this on her Facebook wall.

Postcards from WYD: Hey…I Know That “Kid!”

Remember I told you that Marc Barnes, aka “the Kid” , and blogger at BadCatholic, was in Madrid for World Youth Day? The proof is above. That photograph is one of 106 that Life Teen International has posted over on their Facebook page. Here’s another with Marc and his buddies,

Go check them all out. And while you’re at it, go check out Marc’s post over at Virtouspla.net It’s about Superman, or something.