Catholic Roundup

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:05 — 17.5MB)

Today is The SECOND (Great) Canadian National Day of Podcasting.  I thought I would take the opportunity to come up from the land of the podfaded and explain that the Catholic Roundup is on extended hiatus and we won’t be doing a Catholic New Media Advent Calendar this year.  Enjoy the show.  I hope to produce others more frequently than quarterly but who knows…

Links:

Catholic Vitamins

Special Chronicles Podcast

Life on Fire podcast

Popple

Mass Confusion

Catholic in a Small Town

1. Send your feedback, podcast, blog and website promos ideas etc… on the blog at http://catholicroundup.com by email to  (catholicroundup@gmail.com) catholicroundup (at) gmail (dot) com.

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

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Brandon Vogt at the Thin Veil has published an unofficial list of the 2011 Catholic New Media Award Winners.

UPDATE: Here is the official announcement of the 2011 Catholic New Media Awards winners.

As is my custom, I have prepared an OPML Bundle of the websites and RSS feeds for all the Winners. I managed to find an RSS feed associated with all of the winning individuals, although in a few cases I linked to the blog of the organization if the award winning site did not have an RSS. Twitter is no longer supporting RSS feeds, so I linked directly to @nunblogger’s blog instead.

Google Bundle of  2011 Catholic New Media Award Winners

 OPML file to Subscribe to all at once to all the winners in a feedreader or itunes.

 
This bundle is also well suited for displaying in the sidebar of your blog, like I have done.


 

You can embed the winning sites into your sidebar using this code.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:46 — 45.6MB)

Shownotes for Catholic Roundup Podcast episode 96

The Third Testament, by John Eklund is a fictional tale about Fred Sankt, a widowed professor at a Catholic college who begins to have recurring dreams which lead him to believe that God is calling him to write the next testament of the bible. As he embarks upon this task, he is faced with crisis in his personal life- he is served with a summons for a lawsuit which could wipe him out financially, and his beloved grown daughter is diagnosed with cancer. Throughout these challenges, Sankt clings to his faith and somewhat obsessively embarks upon the project of writing a third testament of the Bible, a volume written in the style of the scriptures which chronicles the experiences of Christianity over the 2000 years which have passed since the writing of the New Testament.

At first I was very skeptical and a little wary about the premise of this book, and the view on Catholic faith that it may present. After all, it seems to be human nature to attempt to rewrite the bible to suit our own views. I was pleasantly surprised by the book’s orthodox portrayal of Catholic beliefs and of church history. At the end of the novel, Ecklund includes a listing of the 19 books and chapter titles of Sanct’s notional Third Testament. The Third Testament written by Sanct in the novel begins where the New Testament leaves off, with the martyrs of the early church. It proceeds through the life and Assumption of Mary, the trials of the early church and the Church Fathers. It proceeds through the middle ages, with Saints Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis, the protestant reformation, the marian visions at Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima. It concludes with writings from Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II. In this testament, Ecklund provides a fairly comprehensive outline of the history and development of the Roman Catholic faith over the last 2 millenia.

But the story of the writing of the Third Testament serves only as a backdrop to the story of Fred Sankt, his daughter Ellen, and their friends Jerry and Joyce. The challenges of facing an unexpected and potentially devastating lawsuit simultaneously with accompanying his daughter through cancer treatments are vividly portrayed, as are the struggles of his friend Jerry to return to the faith of his childhood. The characters are well developed, and as you read along, you can’t help but become emotionally involved in the very real struggles of these people.

Pervading the book, there is a strong sense that God is guiding and caring for everyone, even when it seems he is absent. This is most clearly illustrated in the unnamed ‘old friend’ who appears in Fred’s recurring dreams. Although Ecklund never names this ‘old friend’ directly it appears to be either Fred’s guaridian angel or Jesus himself.

The real story here is not about some guy who writes a new version of the bible. It is about how Fred Sankt turns to his faith during times of great trial, and finds strength and comfort, despite facing a seemingly hopeless situation. This is a message that bears repeating over and over again.

John Eklund is a practicing Catholic who lives in Chicago with his wife, daughter and two dogs. You can find out more about John and order his book at thethirdtestamentnovel.com .

Some articles, blog posts or songs come very quickly.  Others tend to percolate for a longer period of time.  This post was on my mind for a couple of years, and in my draft folder for about 7 months when Ellen Gable sent me a review copy of her recent book, Come My Beloved: Inspiring Stories of Catholic Courtship, an anthology of courtship and engagement stories from committed Catholic couples.

I love hearing people’s proposal stories, and birth stories, … and conversion stories, … and wedding stories, … and vocation stories.  What do all these events have in common?  They are  milestone moments in a person’s life and people can easily relate to them.  Each of these events is unique.  They are deeply personal and yet anyone can relate.  Because they are so personal, when someone shares one of these life stories with you, it feels very intimate.  Over the past couple of years I have been impressed by the witness to faith offered by several young Catholic couples on their blogs:  Jeff and Natalie, Kyle and Kathleen, and Blaise and Heather.  A common thread in these engagement stories is that each of these couples treated their courtship as a process of discernment, not just in the secular sense of “Is this person The ONE?”, but in a deeper faith context of whether each of them were called to the vocation of marriage and to a call to grow in faith though a lifetime together.

Over a year or so of reading courship stories such as these I began to wonder if I should begin to chronicle such stories of faith filled courtship on my blog or commemorate them during the Celebrations portion of the Catholic Roundup podcast.   Then this winter, Ellen Gable Hrkach, began to feature Catholic courtship stories on her blog, Plot Line and Sinker.  These stories were exactly what I had been contemplating– stories of Catholic couples coming together to discern their vocation to marriage, of falling in love, and of growing deeper in love with each other, and deeper into their love of Christ and His Church.

This spring, Ellen Gable and Kathy Cassanto released  Come My Beloved: Inspiring Stories of Catholic Courtship, a short volume containing interviews with 12 different Catholic couples about their experience of courtship and engagement.  The couples range from young married couples, to those with young children, all the way to a couple married for over 50 years.   They chronicle both the joys and challenges of courtship– of wondering whether there is anyone out there, if this is the one, of struggles with chastity, of challenges with family planning and NFP, and of mixed reactions from family and friends.

Taken together, these stories paint a picture of  living experiences of the Catholic concepts of sexuality, marriage, family and vocation which differ greatly from the secular understanding of marriage which is commonplace in popular culture.  From a Catholic perspective, the ultimate goal of  the sacrament of marriage, is for each person to grow in holiness in their own faith, to call and support their partner to a deeper faith, and to foster the same faith in their children and families.   Indeed, this call to holiness is at the root of all vocations whether to religious life or for laypersons.

Come My Beloved  may be purchased though Full Quiver Publishing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:25 — 45.2MB)

Sorry for the long delay between podcasts.  We did record a podcast about 10 days ago but we had technical difficulties with the audio.  We have been really enjoying a family camping vacation in the Rockies.

Until our next podcast, please enjoy, Letters from Rome, a talk I gave at the PAB2011 conference on June 26.  The talk was a brief introduction to the Catholic Church’s teachings on Social Communication and the annual World Communications Day Letters presented to a secular audience of podcasters, bloggers and media creators.