Catholic Roundup

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Nick Alexander is known as the Catholic Weird Al. He writes wonderful, funny and thought provoking Catholic parodies of popular songs. He also writes Praise and Worship music. His new project is Top Catholic Songs, which hosts a site for user generated voting on Top Ten lists of Catholic Music. Check out their Top Ten Songs for Lent. Nick and I had a wonderful conversation about Lent, the A- word, and desert vs mountaintop experiences.

I also play 2 songs of Nick Alexander’s , This Time of 40 Days, and Too Late Have I Loved You. Enjoy.

On Day 3 of 40 Days of Catholic media, I interviewed Kyle Heimann of Popple about the significance of Lent in a Catholic’s journey. In the intervening 3 weeks Popple have been very busy touring, and recording new music and a new video. First up, is a youtube video of Popple’s Forever Yours produced by Greg Willits of the Rosary Army.

Next Popple and their friend Manuel3 have released a very cool Motownish song for Lent entitled, I will walk with u.

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Don’t forget people, that I have a half hour feature interview with Kyle Heimann of Popple on my For the Sake of the Song podcast scheduled for Release on April 20. It’s all ready and I might just be convinced to let my Catholic Canadian listeners have a sneak listen– if you let me know in the comments on the blog or by email to ductapeguy at hotmail dot com. So far I’ve only had a couple responses.

While we’re on the topic of blatant self promotion, I’m in the Catholic Blog Carnival again this week. This week, the host is Father V at Adam’s Ale . And it’s still not too late to nominate me for Best New Blog at the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards.

Each week the wonderful Catholic author, speaker and blogger Jeff Cavins posts an outline for Family Night, a series of readings, prayers, games, discussion questions, and even snack recipes written by his wife, Emily Cavins as a way for families to pray and reflect together on the week’s Sunday readings.     Although we have not yet made it a weekly ritual, my family has enjoyed using the Family night plans to help us grow in our faith together (and our daughter likes the special snacks).

Since she was four, our daughter has attended Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, also known as the Atrium at our home Parish of St. Margaret’s in Midland, Ontario. My daughter has enjoyed the hands-on and self directed approach to learning about our faith, and our entire family’s faith experience has been enriched by the discussions and questions we have shared following her classes at the Atrium. The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, was founded in 1954 as a way to teach children the Gospel using the methods of Maria Montessori. I formerly taught in a Montessori school so this was of interest to me. There are currently only 28 parishes in Canada using the Atrium program (including some Anglican and Lutheran churches), so we are certainly fortunate to have such a good program for catechism in our home parish.

Pray-as-you-go is a daily podcast containing scripture readings, guided reflections, and soothing music to aid one in their daily prayers.  It is produced by the Jesuits of Britain and was initially launched as a limited run Lenten series a few years back (sort of like this podcast series).  It has been running daily for several years.  I must admit that it is in my podcast feed but I have not listened frequently of late.  I think I’ll add it back to my mp3 player to help me with enriching my prayer life over my Lenten Journey.   You can subscribe to it here.

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While we were at Podcamp Toronto, my wife and I went to mass at St. Michaels Cathedral

which is the cathedral of our diocese and the home of the world famous St. Michael’s Boy’s Choir School. Of course we went to the one Sunday mass that doesn’t have music. It was a good one anyway.

We discussed our visit to St. Michael’s in the car on the way home.

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Daniele Rossi of SuperSpud.com and StutteringIsCool.com podcast has started up a little blog of Good News stories only as written by a cartoon guardian angel named Roderick. It is called Angel Dude.

I spoke with Daniele at Podcamp Toronto about Angel Dude.

I mentioned last week that I’m a volunteer reader for Librivox.org, recording public domain audiobooks. For a while I’ve been participating in a project to record Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, a 1904 adaptation of all the stories in the Bible for young children. The text for the story can be found at the Baldwin Project, a site dedicated to “Bringing yesterday’s classics to today’s children”. The first 3 volumes of Librivox recordings of Hurlbut’s story of the bible can be found here:

Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman. “Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible Part One” ·

Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman. “Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible Part Two” ·

Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman. “Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible Part Three” ·

Tonight I recorded 3 sections for volume 4 (Click on the blue arrow to play or right click the link and Save File as to download it to your computer): 

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So grab a cup of tea and curl up on the couch under a fuzzy blanket. It’s story time.