A Catholic Round Up

2008 Catholic Blog Awards are now taking nominations.

I’m not clear on the changes this year…I think there will only be one chance to vote once the nominees are named. Check it out and nominate your faves!

Barbara Nicolosi of Church of the Masses has founded a program to prepare Christians for Hollywood careers.

Writes Barbara:

The program takes place in the heart of the Hollywood entertainment industry with intensive classroom instruction and mentoring from a world-class faculty of over 50 top-notch TV and movie writers, agents and producers. Among those you will learn from include Hollywood pros like Dean Batali (That 70s Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of
Emily Rose), Monica Macer (Lost, Prison Break), Bill Marsilii (Déjà Vu) and David McFadzean (Home Improvement, What Women Want).

Sounds great. Information about the Act One Program and an application can be found here.

Have you thought of your marriage as a vocation, recently? Here’s a good piece:

Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. She hears the monastic bell many times during the day and she has to drop things in mid-sentence and respond, not because she wants to, but because it’s time for that activity and time isn’t her time, but God’s time.

I just know someone out there today needed to read that. H/T Et-tu.

Curt Jester reports that Rosaline Moss, a Jewish convert to Catholicism is founding a religious order of sisters dedicated to evangelizing. They will be called The Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope. The springtime continues.

On the 150th Anniversary of the Marian visits to Lourdes, France, the BBC sent a reporter to visit the site and snark about it. If you want to read a moving account of Lourdes in the 21st century, try this book.

On Julie’s recommendation, I bought Anthony Bloom’s Beginning to Pray.

Julie wrote of it: This book is written with complete simplicity but yet somehow contains depths that one thinks of for some time afterward. I have found that to be exactly right.

I started it last night and am finding it to be one of the most remarkable, enlightening and humbling books I’ve ever read. I’ve never read a book were even the introduction (a short interview with the author) was both gripping and instructive, and the bit I’ve read from the book proper is just rather stunning, and it has stayed with me throughout the day and created such a longing within me…

A few excerpts:

The Realm of God is dangerous; you must enter into it and not just seek information about it…”

The day when God is absent, when he is silent – that is the beginning of prayer.

Speaks to me, anyway. This Orthodox Archbishop – also a medical doctor and monk – has a great deal to teach even as he writes:

“I would like to point out what one should be aware of, and what one can do if one wishes to pray. As I am a beginner myself, I will assume that you are also beginners and we will try to begin together.
[…]
…prayer is an encounter and a relationship, a relationship which is deep, and this relationship cannot be forced either on us or on God. The fact that God can make Himself present or can leave us with a sense of His absence is part of this live and real relationship.

Of course, that made me immediately think of Mother Teresa’s Decades-long Dark Night.

Do check out Julie’s intriguing Lenten reading suggestions. My wish list for Mother’s Day will include at least two of them, including (unexpectedly) one of the science-fiction books.

Wondering about confession for Lent? Believe me, there’s nothing you can confess that hasn’t been heard before. Deacon Greg has a practical guideline and advice about the sacrament.