Monday morning I swallowed hard when a post popped up on a small internet discussion group I run: Latin Mass trouble in Texas. I don’t need this. A flame war over this could get my group shut down. I didn’t ask the original poster to delete. I did ask that we refrain from discussing the situation until the purloined letter could be authenticated, and the diocese had time to issue a counter-statement. Meanwhile, I did a little poking around to... Read more
Meat Demon reports to duty at midnight tonight. He prowls around every Lent, quietly working behind the scenes six days a week so that come Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays, all you can think about is meat, meat, meat. You are not helpless in this fight. In addition to the grace of God, you also posess the ability to think, plan, and act. 1. Have a cheeseburger on Thursday. Meat demon will try to convince you that you are... Read more
What is the Christian response to suffering? We can take the question from any number of angles, and in time I’m hoping to hit most of them. It’s a thorny — meaning, “Ouch!” — topic, and as Joe Paprocki observed, it always comes up. Sooner or later everyone passes by way of the Cross. Today’s topic: What do you do when it’s your turn to hang? I’m going with the straight-up What Did Jesus Actually Do? answer on this one: 1.... Read more
Heads up for those who didn’t follow me over here from the Happy Catholic Bookshelf: We’ve got a book discussion group underway for Papal Economics. Theodore Seeber has gotten the discussion rolling with this post. He’s way ahead of me, but I’ll work through his thoughts bit by bit, and we’ll leapfrog each other as real life dictates. Seeber writes of the parable of the workers in the vinyard: This reading gives us a very basic idea of what Christian... Read more
Ash Wednesday’s around the corner, and you can go all over the internet to find out How To Do Lent Exactly Right. Not my territory. We’re much more beginner than that around here. To which end, I want to put to rest the four biggest Ash Wednesday fears that seem to come up every year. 1. Ash Wednesday is not a Holy Day of Obligation. You, the ordinary lay Catholic pew-sitter, don’t have to go to Mass. You do not. ... Read more
When is your parish like my garden? Most of the time. Now up at New Evangelizers, my latest installment in the Rethinking Religious Education conversation: This is how God sees us. Not because He’s a lousy gardener, but because we’re lousy gardeners. He gives each of us free will, and He gives each of us a share in the work of the Kingdom of Heaven. And He lets us do that work, even though it means we’re going to forget... Read more
My name is Jen and I like to write about stuff. 1. I write Catholic stuff. 2. It’s all Catholic. 3. I’ve been at this for a while. I write regularly for New Evangelizers, CatholicMom.com, Amazing Catechists, and the Catholic Writers Guild. Patheos regulars might recognize me from my smattering of book reviews at the Happy Catholic Bookshelf, or my recent contribution to the Rethinking Religious Education Discussion. 4. This is all the intro you’re going to get. It is... Read more
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