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.
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.
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.
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 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 Bibleby 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:
Continuing with my internexploration of spiritually significant places, great Catholic podcasts, (and apparently alliteration starting with the letter P), we slide through the intertubes to Vatican City to listen to VATICAN RADIO which broadcasts news of the Catholic Church, Papal audiences, and news and social commentary from a Catholic perspective in over 32 languages. Their programs are available in audio and video, through terrestrial broadcast, streaming over the Internet, and as a podcast. Yes, the Pope has a Podcast People! (Sorry, slipped on some p’s again). How cool is that ?
And while we’re in Vatican City anyway, check out the official website of the Vatican: the Holy See and a listing of RSS Feeds for Vatican Radio in a number of languages.
Continuing on my theme of the spiritual importance of place and sacred spaces, today I’m going to highlight just a few podcasts where priests are sharing their pilgrimages through their podcasts.
First up is Father Bill Kessler, who hosts the Technopriest and Technochurch podcasts. In November, Father Bill went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with members of his parish and his family. He shared his experiences in a short series of video podcasts from the Holy Land.
Father Bill Holzinger of the St. Anthony’s Podcast and Fr. Geek’s Video Podcast has been submitting regular audio and blog reports of his parish pilgrimage to the Holy land as well. In one of Father Bill Holzinger’s podcasts from Jerusalem, one of his parishoners remarked how she was overawed to stand in the same place where Mary was visited by the angel in the annunciation. That is truly a place of great spiritual significance.
Father Jay Finelli, the Ipadre, has produced both audio and video podcasts of his travels to Medugorje and Assisi.
Finally there’s Father Roderick, who pioneered the idea of a soundseeing tour in a podcast in The Catholic Insider. He now also produces a videocast of his travels called Godspeed. For over 3 years Father Roderick has shared a Catholic perspective on the places he has travelled including, Rome, Ireland, Georgia, Lourdes, and even my own country of Canada.
There are many other people producing sightseeing and soundseeing tours of their travels throughout the world. I think this speaks to the need for people to make pilgrimages, and of the great spiritual importance we put on places.
For several years, whenever I wanted to find new Catholic Blogs, I have turned to Saint Blog’s Parish Directory. Of course there is no Saint Blog, and it is not a real parish. It is however one of the longest running Catholic blog directories on the internet. They also maintain a Webring, RSS Aggregator of all the St. Blogs Feeds, and the St. Blog’s Parish Wiki. It is great way to get to know other Catholic bloggers and become part of the community. In fact, I signed up for the St. Blog’s parish directory this weekend.
I have also been listed in the Catholic Blog Directory and as I mentioned earlier, I also have been participating in the weekly Catholic Blog Carnival as a way to become acquainted with and join in the conversations in the Catholic blogosphere. Edit: In fact this week’s Catholic Carnival is up over at A Third Way.
Finally, the nominations are open for the annual Catholic Blog Awards. I would be thrilled if one of my readers nominated me in the Best New Blog category. It’s not that I think what I’m doing is exceptional here. I’m just another voice in the St. Blog’s Parish choir. However, a nomination would help introduce me to a number of other Catholic bloggers and potential readers, and ultimately I ain’t to proud to beg.
The other day, I talked with Zina Gomez Liss about the spiritual and cultural significance of places. Zina has been exploring the Catholic heritage of Boston in her videocast, Catholic City with Zina. My town of Midland also has a rich Catholic heritage. Our community is where some of the first Jesuit missionaries to Upper Canada lived and died. It was the home of Saints, St. Jean de Brebuf, St. Isaac Jogues, St. Gabriel Lalament, St. Antoine Daniel, St. Charles Garnier, St. Noel Chabanel, St. Rene Goupil, and St. Jean de LaLande.
The Canadian Martyrs’ Shrine now sits on a hill just outside of the town of Midland. It is the only national shrine in Canada outside of Quebec. People from all over the world come to the shrine on pilgrimage. Our family regularly makes the short pilgrimage (10 min) to the shrine in the summer time for masses. Besides the beauty of the shrine and its grounds, and its spiritual heritage, it is also helping us to teach our daughter about the universal church. Midland itself is a small town with a fairly homogeneous community, but at the shrine we encounter people from all races and nations– all a part of the Body of Christ. This summer we met a priest from Africa, who was fluent in about 6 languages including French, but came to the Martyr’s Shrine for about 6 weeks to learn English. Even in that short time, as he carefully read through the parts of the mass in English, we saw him growing in skill and confidence in the English language. What a gift he has, to be able to communicate The Good News in 7 languages!
Over this 40 Days of reflection on Catholic websites, resources, and media, I’d like to explore more special and sacred places, but I’d also like to hear about your sacred places. Send me your comments or email me at ductapeguy (at) hotmail (dot) com .
For a couple of years, I have been a volunteer reader for Librivox.org. Librivox is an online project that has an amazing mission statement: “To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.” Over a 1500 volunteers all over the world have contributed recordings to over 1000 completed audiobooks. To be recorded for Librivox, books must be in the public domain in the United States, which usually means published earlier than 1923. There are audiobooks of all kinds and genres at librivox. There are a number of volunteers who have recorded a great deal of classic Christian and Catholic works. Here is the results of a search for “religion” on the LibriVox Catalog. You can find recordings of several translations of the bible, some writings of early Church Fathers, and writings of some of the Saints.
This summer, one of our active volunteers found a century old book of bible stories for children entitled Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible. We are slowly working our way through the Old Testament. I have recorded several chapters for each volume of Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible.
Giggling Nuns, teeny tiny railroads, a geek priest who Ustreams his holy hours: the motto of the Ipadre podcast is All Things Catholic and Then Some, and Father Jay Finelli certainly delivers on that promise. He will be recording his 100th episode live on Ustream tomorrow, Sunday February 17 at 5:00 pm EST. Join him and the Ustream irregulars for the festivities here.
You can also check out his scale model railroad page at steamingpriest.com.
a wonderful video podcast which explores the Catholic culture and heritage of her hometown Boston. It is done in a lighthearted humorous fashion with loads of pretty graphics and special effects.
I spoke to Zina for quite a while about her videocast and the spiritual significance of one’s hometown. You can also check out Zina’s Online Live Journal page.
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