Thinks I find along the way
“Ours is a time of continual movement which often leads to restlessness, with the risk of ‘doing for the sake of doing.’ We must resist this temptation by trying ‘to be’ before trying ‘to do.’”
~ Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Inuente
Awesome picture and quote from David Kanigan at To Be – Lead.Learn.Live..
“On May 18, 1920, Karol Jozef Wojtyla is born in the Polish town of Wadowice, 35 miles southwest of Krakow. Wojtyla went on to become Pope John Paul II, history’s most well-traveled pope and the first non-Italian to hold the position since the 16th century. After high school, the future pope enrolled at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, where he studied philosophy and literature and performed in a theater group. During World War II, Nazis occupied Krakow and closed the university, forcing Wojtyla to seek work in a quarry and, later, a chemical factory. By 1941, his mother, father, and only brother had all died, leaving him the sole surviving member of his family.
Although Wojtyla had been involved in the church his whole life, it was not until 1942 that he began seminary training. When the war ended, he returned to school at Jagiellonian to study theology, becoming an ordained priest in 1946. He went on to complete two doctorates and became a professor of moral theology and social ethics. On July 4, 1958, at the age of 38, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Krakow by Pope Pius XII. He later became the city’s archbishop, where he spoke out for religious freedom while the church began the Second Vatican Council, which would revolutionize Catholicism. He was made a cardinal in 1967, taking on the challenges of living and working as a Catholic priest in communist Eastern Europe. Once asked if he feared retribution from communist leaders, he replied, “I’m not afraid of them. They are afraid of me.” via Pope John Paul II born — History.com This Day in History — 5/18/1920.
Truly one of the great men of our time. I’m currently reading a book about him and Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan called The President, The Pope and The Prime Minister which I highly recommend if you’re interested in recent history…
Social media is not only here to stay but should be recognized and used as a “new form of pastoral ministry,” U.S. bishops were told Nov. 15 in their annual meeting.
“Social media is proving itself to be a force with which to be reckoned. If not, the church may be facing as great a challenge as that of the Protestant Reformation,” said Bishop Ronald P. Herzog of Alexandria, La., a member of the bishops’ Committee on Communications, in an address to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore.
Bishop Herzog noted that although social media has been around for less than 10 years, it lacks the “makings of a fad” and is “causing as fundamental a shift in communication patterns and behavior as the printing press did 500 years ago.”
“I don’t think I have to remind you of what happened when the Catholic Church was slow to adapt to that new technology,” he told the bishops. “By the time we decided to seriously promote that common folk should read the Bible, the Protestant Reformation was well under way.”
The Rev. Robert Barron, a Chicago-based Roman Catholic priest, has made himself a new-media messenger for the church, bringing a Catholic perspective to topics from “Avatar” to atheism to the use of steroids in baseball.
The author of 10 books, he has posted more than 180 cultural commentaries on YouTube and delivers a weekly homily on Relevant Radio (WNTD-AM/950 in Chicago). He contributes guest blogs to CNN.com and ABC.com, adding pithy, pointed commentary to hot topics. He has filmed a 10-part documentary, “The Catholicism Project,” which he hopes will air on public television next year.
On Sunday, he will begin presenting a half-hour television show, “Word on Fire with Father Barron,” on WGN America. It’s paid programming, the airwaves’ equivalent of vanity publishing; his messages, from earlier DVDs, will air nationwide for 13 weeks (at 8:30 a.m. Sundays in Chicago). The airtime will be paid for by private donors; he declines to reveal the cost.
“My job is to bring the Catholic perspective to bear,” says the Rev. Barron, 50. Catholicism, he says, “has been underrepresented in the conversation.”
Here’s one priest who’s taking the Holy Father’s admonition to start blogging seriously! What about you others? Let’s use the internet to spread a little Gospel and Community! Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your parish…
…for the excellent job they are doing with the ‘Catholics come home‘ campaign — a great combination of traditional and new, online media. Discussing this with my good friend Jim Kelleher of Kelleher Creative in St. Louis, I was pleased to see the church hasn’t lost it’s sense of humor, either.
For those of you who didn’t attend Catholic School, the thing that amuses me is the search box. St. Anthony is the patron saint of “lost things”…
;-)
Bright, shiny objects! 
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