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Blessed John Paul II

#PrayforthePope

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My husband Joseph and I have just been in shock this morning about the news of Pope Benedict XVI resigning.

My first tweet this morning was retweeted a few times, so I’m sharing it here:

Looking for another intention to pray for this Lent? @pontifex resigning and the election of a new Pope is a good start.
— Nancy Piccione (@readingCatholic) February 11, 2013

How interesting, too, that this news breaks on the World Day of the Sick and Our Lady of Lourdes.

From the Holy Father’s letter announcing his resignation:

“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.”

My husband, with his interest and knowledge of all things Catholic, starting sharing about the last pope to resign.  New Advent has the Catholic Encyclopedia about the last pope to resign, Celestine V.  It’s not unprecedented, but it is really surprising.

We’ve had an interesting discussion here.  On the one hand, as Joseph mentioned, Pope Paul VI spoke about how it was important for people to see the Holy Father die in office.

Consider how Pope John Paul II’s decline and death showed a generation the beauty and nobility of that.  On the other hand, Pope Benedict XVI resigning shows that stepping down is also a viable option, and strength and holiness can be shown through that.

This may not seem like the best way to say this, but there are many ways to grow old.   Blessed Pope John Paul II showed us one very public way, and perhaps Benedict XVI is showing us another, quieter way, more suited to his quiet personality.

Here’s a brief article from Vatican Radio (and update, here is Rocco Palma’s first, thorough analysis) detailing some of the specifics: Benedict XVI will not participate in the conclave to elect the new pope (and he is also too old to vote in any case).   He will move to Castel Gandolfo after his resignation becomes effective, and he will live in private apartments at the Vatican.   Joseph and I both thought he might have moved back to Germany to live out his final days there.  We just watched Cardinal Dolan interviewed on the Today Show, and he appears just as surprised as everyone.

Consider, too, that the Holy Father won’t be like a former president.  The media won’t get to interview him and ask how “the new guy” is doing. He will be living a completely private life.

Can we join in prayer as we approach Lent? I will be considering how prayer for Benedict XVI, as well as the new pope, will be part of my Lent.

Any special ideas you have to make this a fruitful Lent in prayer for the Holy Father and his successor?

Worth a Listen: Blessed John Paul Autotuned

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(Sharing great songs that are inspiring, uplifting and/or are otherwise “worth a listen”).  Explanation (of a kind) here.

HT Hell Burns, the blog of Sister Helena Burns.  The maker of this video is asking for suggestions about other videos to autotune, and some of the commenters suggested Cardinal Dolan’s prayer at the end of the Democratic National Convention.

This reminds me a little of a video (I didn’t actually realize it was a video until I Googled it.  I have the audio version in iTunes from way back when BXVI was elected, and a French girl living with us at that time shared it with me).

Quotable, Venerable Fulton Sheen: Books

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Today is the Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Mary’s Cathedral.  I think it should be an inspiring morning.

Here’s a quote for today.  I have so many great ones, but when I came across this I thought, Yes!  Now here’s another reason why Fulton Sheen is one of the patrons of this blog:

“Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.” 

–Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Thoughts for Daily Living

After the Revolution, Rotten Fruit, Discouragement–And Hope

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During my college years in the 1980s, I was a (nominal) cradle Catholic, and fairly immersed in the college culture of the time.  I was especially drawn to various trendy, or what we called back in the day “politically correct,” ideas and philosophies.

Exhibit A: I thought Gloria Steinem, who spoke at our campus, was glamorous and made terrific sense.
All joking about Gloria Steinem aside, by far the most memorable speaker was a beautiful young woman, a former porn film worker, who gave a speech  (from a feminist perspective) on the evils of pornography.
It gave me–to this day–an implacable hatred of porn as something bad for women and corrosive to society.
I’m incredibly grateful for that speaker, who opened my eyes at such an early age of the high cost of “anything goes.”  But it was awful to sit through and to hear.

Mary Eberstadt’s Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution reminds me of hearing that speech.  This book is not enjoyable –in fact, reading it can be downright discouraging.  But it is a must-read in understanding, “the moral core of the sexual revolution (is) the abundant evidence that its fruits have been rottenest for women and children.”

Every single essay-chapter is important and stands alone.  It’s hard to pick out a best chapter, but “The Will to Disbelieve” is crucial in setting up the notion that society at large is largely ignoring the clear results of the sexual revolution, much the same way the “the moral facts about the Cord War remained disputed at the highest intellectual levels, especially on American campuses, until about two seconds before the Berlin Wall came down.”
Perhaps the only hopeful chapter of Adam and Eve After the Pill is “‘Pedophia Chic’ Then and Now” which outlines how just a few short decades ago, pedophilia was more in vogue and even defended in the public square such as mainstream magazine articles.  Ebertstadt writes that it is “a small case of small but real moral progress that bodes a little better for the youngest and most innocent among us, even as it confirms that the sexual revolution has made the world a more dangerous place for them.”
Hope may be hard to come by when reading Adam and Eve After the Pill, but hope and peace suffuse My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints by Catholic convert Dawn Eden.

In many ways, My Peace I Give You is a personal testimonial to the rotten fruits documented in Adam and Eve After the Pill.  As a child of divorce, Eden experienced sexual abuse in various settings, then as a young adult lived promiscuously to “take control” of her sexuality.  But wholeness and true happiness remained elusive.

In Eden’s 2006 international bestseller, The Thrill of the Chaste, Eden wrote about discovering the appeal that modesty and sexual restraint offer, but had not yet come to terms with the legacy of abuse in her life.
During and after her conversion to Catholicism, Eden sees that healing from those sexual wounds is ongoing and a work of the Holy Spirit, through specific saints who provide solace on the journey.
As she writes to the many who are childhood sexual abuse victim, “I want you to know you are not alone, you are not forgotten, and you have more friends in heaven than you realize.”
My Peace I Give Youis part memoir and part meditations on what the saints can teach us about wholeness of body, mind and spirit, even in the face of searing memories and experiences.
Some of the saints in My Peace I Give You are victims of sexual abuse; some are not; but in Eden’s heartfelt and careful reflection, all have something to offer those who have undergone abuse, or those whose hearts breaks for them.
This column appears on the book page of the print Catholic Post this weekend.  It’s an interesting, I would venture to say providential, “coincidence,” that this review appears here on the feast day of St. Maria Goretti.  Eden in particular has an insightful chapter in her book My Peace I Give You on this much-known but little-understood saint. 

Catholic App Spotlight Update: Confession

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 I first wrote about the Confession App earlier this year, at that time getting a lot of press.  I did download it and check it out, but wondered at the time if I would find myself using the App during actual confession.
Let me “confess” that I’ve become very fond of the Confession App, developed by Little iApps.  So much so, that last month when the App told me it had been two months since my last confession, I felt compelled to share with our parish priest, “While my iPhone says it’s been two months since my last confession, I know I’ve been here twice without my phone.”  He laughed.  And then when I got home I tweeted about doing that.  Am I geeky enough to have a Confession App?  Oh, yes I am.
Many months ago, the very first time I used it in confession, I showed my phone to the priest at a Franciscan parish in Peoria.  Somehow it seemed wrong that he not be aware that I was reading from the examination of conscience the App prompts.  He laughed and said he had heard about it, but it was the first time he heard an App-aided confession to his knowledge. 
Joking aside, I find the Confession App very spiritually helpful in a few key ways:
*the examination of conscience  is keyed to your state in life.  When I first set up my password-protected account, it asked if I were married, etc.  And the examination of conscience relates to that.
*a neat feature that follows the sacramental nature of Confession and what it does for your soul: after you go to confession, your sins, like in actual Confession, are literally wiped away—there’s no way to go back and look through what you confessed previously.  Each time you prepare for confession, the Examination of Conscience is fresh and unchecked.
*the prayer after finishing Confession changes each time you go, and they are lovely.  I wish there were a way to capture them for future reading—I remember particularly good ones from St. Gregory the Great and one from St. Josemaria Escriva, but I can’t find a way to go back and read them again.
I had thought I might use the Confession App for a nightly examination of conscience, but instead, I use my all-time favorite App, Universalis, for saying night prayer.  
Little iApps, the developer of Confession, have a great line-up of Apps.  I’ve downloaded all of them, and especially love the eVotions Apps on different saints.  Our family especially likes the photos on the St. Gianna Molla App.
In recent days, my 8-year-old son and I have taken to saying the novena to Blessed John Paul II in his “App,” as his before-bed prayers, and there’s nothing sweeter than hearing his little voice read through the prayer at the end of the novena. 
Have you used the Confession App?  Or do you have any Catholic Apps you’d like to share?