Catholic Roundup

My good friend from my seminary days (almost 20 years ago), Father Michel Nault, has graciously offered his Advent Sunday reflections to the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar Project. I am tickled to have Father Nault joining us.

This First Sunday of Advent is a time of real Hope for us as we begin to seriously prepare our hearts to receive the Baby Jesus this Christmas. We pray that we can be credible witnesses of Hope and Peace in this turbulent world and to do so we need to allow our hearts to be touched by God. Invite Jesus not only in your hearts but into your families and homes. Be open to Our Lady’s call to do what He tells you in your life. Pray together as families so that the real Joy of Jesus may reign during the Christmas Season. Only through prayer can we become what God wants us to be!!!!!
God of Hope hear our Prayers!!!!!!!!
Fr. Michel Nault

First Sunday of Advent

. Living God’sWord
For this week’s act of service, there are three choices you as a family can make:
1. As individuals take the time to speak to a member of the parish community you do not know after mass.
Consider a person who you see weekly, but never took the time to say “hello”.

2. Take the time as a family to visit a person in your community who lives alone or does not have family nearby.

3 Each family member writes a letter or email to a person they have not spoken with for a long time. For example, write a letter to a distant friend or extended family member you do not speak to regularly.

Join us tomorrow and every day in December for more reflections produced by great Catholic New Media personalities.

1. Send me your feedback on the blog at http://cc.ductapeguy.net by email at (catholicroundup@gmail.com) catholicroundup (at) gmail (dot) com or by calling 206-337-0611.

2. Go to the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.0MB)

Welcome to Day 1 of A Catholic New Media Advent Calendar. Our family made an audio recording of putting the first Decoration on our Jesse Tree. A Jesse tree is a way to represent the lineage of Jesus and the messianic prophesies of the Old Testament using a “Tree of Jesse”. You can find out more about Jesse Trees and print out Jesse tree decorations at the Diocese of Erie, Pa. homepage: Download Jesse Tree ornaments from Faith magazine.

Our family waits to put out our indoor and outdoor Christmas decorations until Christmas Eve.  Our “Keep Christ in Christmas” lawn sign is the only decoration we have on our snowy lawn yet.

Bonus Content: What a wonderful surprise! My friend from seminary days (in the late 80′s), Father Michel Nault has sent me the first of his Advent Sunday Reflections. Enjoy.

Join us tomorrow and every day in December for another reflection produced by great Catholic New media personalities.

1. Send me your feedback, podcast, blog and website promos ideas etc… on the blog at http://cc.ductapeguy.net by email at (catholicroundup@gmail.com) catholicroundup (at) gmail (dot) com or by calling 206-337-0611.

2. Theme Song: Lost in Christ (©) Bryan Murdaugh

Subscribe to CNMR (RSS).

Subscribe on the Itunes Music Store

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.5MB)

Our family recorded a short promo for the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar last night. Feel free to embed the promo on your blog or website or download the audio version of the promo suitable for podcasts.

The calendar begins tomorrow with the first day of advent. Join us each day in December as a different Catholic New media personality will present a little treat designed to help you put Advent back in December.

Update:  Wow, I submitted this post just before the deadline at 9:56pm EST.  By 10:30 Sarah had Catholic Carnival 200 posted, and it’s a doozer.

Congratulations to everyone involved for 200 weeks of the Catholic Carnival, (the longest permanent floating crap game Catholic Blog Carnival on the Internet).

Reflecting on what to write about for this week’s carnival led me to write a mini carnival of my own.  My involvement with Catholic blogging, podcasting and social media has been a means belonging to a community of believers throughout the world.  The reason I produce the  Catholic New Media Roundup is help foster and grow this community in my own little way.

A few recent posts illustrate this point.  A couple of weeks ago,  The Catholic Journeyman talked about the reasons he blogs in:Just how Catholic are we?

How “Catholic” are we to put study, energy and time into this, ahem “hobby”? I dont see this as fanatical or extreme, and yet my first inclination is to respond citing the convenience of this technology and using it for Evangelization, but thats just a thread in the cloth here. Its a discovery process, growing a community of believers, etc.

I have become a great fan of the Amateur Catholic Bloggers, The B team of Catholic Bloggers.  Their motto is, ” We don’t write books or do speaking tours.  In fact, we barely do our jobs. We’re the B-Team of Catholic Bloggers.”  Their sense of humor and the seriousness with which they undertake the (hobby? passion? addiction?) of sharing their faith using new media greatly speaks to me.  I’ll definitely be applying to join the B-Team.

On Catholic Moments #79 Lisa Hendey interviewed Bryan Murdaugh, a talented Catholic Dad, youth minister and musician, and social media friend of mine.  During the interview, Lisa asked Bryan why he uses social media to reach out to the youth he ministers to.   He gave a long and thoughtful answer, but summed it up with, “After all, the Eucharist is the original social network”.   Amen to that.

I’m trying to grow that social network of the body of Christ in my own little way through my blogs and podcasts.  Please consider contributing to my Catholic New Media Advent Calendar project which will feature content from a different guest blogger, podcaster or musician each day in December.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (30.4MB)

1. Announcing Catholicroundup.com

2. Rant– on people putting Christmas trees up in early November.  My personal goal to experience Advent before 12 days of Christmas.

Check out adventconspiracy.org

3. Announcing Catholic New Media Advent Calendar

4. Soundseeing from Blessed Kateri Shrine– Fonda NY

5. Brand new Catholic Podcasts:  http://web.me.com/neilcummins/Site/Audio_Podcast/Audio_Podcast.html Irish catholic sermons, talks &music

Bryan Murdaugh’s Modern Psalter Blog and Podcast

The Last episode of the Rosary Army Podcast

Celebrations

On the U is on Episode 99.

200 Episodes for Santo Del Dia podcast  Spanish podcast (Saint of the Day).  Congratulations

200th Blog Carnival:  Join in the Fun

The Carnival will be held back at Just Another Day of Catholic
pondering (http://snoringscholar.blogspot.com). To enter is easy, just
pick a post from your blog and email the information below to
(peerybingle@gmail.com) peerybingle (at) gmail (dot) com by 10:00 PM EST on Monday evening.

Blog name
Blog URL
Post name
Post URL
Post description

Please forward this to any other Catholic bloggers who might be
interested.

Also consider hosting a Carnival one week – it’s fun and rewarding
without too much work. The Carnival is better when it travels around
from one Catholic blog to another. For more information, just email
at (jay@livingcatholicism.com) jay (at) livingcatholicism (dot) com.

Song by  Bryan Murdaugh :  All in the family.

No promos this week.

CNMR Big Question: How are you and your family observing the season advent during the busy month leading up to Christmas?

1. Send me your feedback, podcast, blog and website promos ideas etc… on the blog at http://cc.ductapeguy.net by email at (catholicroundup@gmail.com) catholicroundup (at) gmail (dot) com or by calling 206-337-0611.

2. Join the Catholic New Media Roundup Group on Facebook.
3. Let’s not forget about K7 Days. On the 7th, 17th and 27th of the month send some feedback to a blogger or podcaster.
   
4. Theme Song: Lost in Christ (©) Bryan Murdaugh

Subscribe to CNMR (RSS).

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For the past several month, Bryan Murdaugh has been presenting a monthly online virtual house concert on Ustream.tv. This month’s concert is Tomorrow, November 19, 2008 at 8pm EST. You can find it at http://www.ustream.tv/murdaugh. I will be doing an opening set for Bryan beginning at a little after 7:35pm EST at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ductapeguy-live.

Edit: You can view the concert here now. I had a couple of technical difficulties with my camera but I enjoyed being in the supporting spot for my friend Bryan, and he truly rawked the ustream

Free Videos by Ustream.TV

Online video chat by Ustream
That was fun but I had quite a fight with my cameras and audio devices to get them working, then my camera crapped out in the middle of the first song. Fortunately, I had another camera ready to roll, so I just switched over, but my backup camera is of considerably lower quality. I’ll definitely keep doing this ustream thing from time to time. I think I’ll be able to work the kinks out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jean_Hey_-_The_Annunciation.jpg

The week before Halloween, I went looking for Halloween decorations and a costume to wear at my Kindergarten class Halloween party. They were hard to find because most dollar stores had already put away their Halloween items and were beginning to stock their shelves with Christmas decorations. On November 8th, our neighbours put up their Christmas tree. Over the years it seems that our secular consumer culture’s tendency to Christmas Creep has begun earlier and earlier.

Over the past 5 or 6 years I have become very concerned that the ever earlier presence of Christmas in our western society has squeezed out any room that was left for Advent, a season of preparation before the great Feast of Christmas.  Slowly and year by year, my family has taken time to light an advent wreath and explore other advent traditions.  We wait until Dec 23 or 24 to put up both our indoor and outdoor decorations and our tree and we leave them up until January 6.

The Catholic New Media Roundup would like to do our small part to put Advent back in it’s proper place as a season with its own unique traditions, and as a time of preparation for Christmas.

Beginning on November 30, the first Sunday of Advent, and ending on Christmas Day (or maybe on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany) we will be hosting a Catholic New Media Advent Calendar at http://catholicroundup.com .
Every day we will feature a different Catholic New Media surprise by a guest Catholic blogger, podcaster, musician, or videocaster.

Potential surprises behind the mystery door of the day (or link as it were) could include:
music, short podcast clips, short videos, blog postings, fridge art, or whatever strikes the  author of the day’s fancy.  We may have advent songs, explanations of advent traditions in certain countries or family traditions, recipes, reflections on the coming of Christmas, Lolcats, or who knows.

We will be preparing a way to embed a link to the advent calendar on other sites if you are interested in posting the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar on your blog or website. (I’m still working out the technical details of that but it will probably be a snippet of html code and an image map pointing to the main calendar on catholicroundup.com). The magic of RSS will also enable people to subscribe to the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar and have it appear daily in their favorite blogreader or podcatcher.

If you are a Catholic blogger, podcaster, musician, writer, or all round social media type who would like to participate in the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar, drop me a note at catholicroundup (AT) gmail.com with your name and date preferred if you have one. I will forward details of how to send me your contribution as we get this project rolling.

Let’s help each other celebrate both the season of Advent and get to know some of the other wonderful people working in the fields of Catholic New Media.

After 8 months and 10 shows (or 44 if you count the 40 days of Catholic Media during lent), my wife and I thought it was time for the Catholic New Media Roundup to have it’s own domain.  We have registered and set up catholicroundup.com to point back to the blog at cc.ductapeguy.net .  If you are already subscribed to the blog and podcast, there will be no immediate change, but you have to admit that catholicroundup.com is a much more memorable domain name.