Real Catholic Blog

When Pope Benedict endorsed using all modern electronic means to spread the Word of God, he might not have had Father Jay Finelli in mind. As devout a Mac head as he is a priest, there is no gadget or online tool Father Finelli is not using to win new souls for Christ (see The Georgia Bulletin). You can even see him opening his iPad upon its deliver to him.

Podcasts? Check! Video podcasts? Of course! Blog? Got that down, too. He even has a Chantcast! He is on Twitter as well Facebook and YouTube might as well be old school for him. He even has a live stream.

It’s all well and good and with younger priests come newer techniques.  Priests are no different than anyone else. They will bring with them their interests and parts of applicable modernity to their job. In this sense, they are no different than a young CPA using online tools while the grizzled old vet still uses the ledger book. In fact, we love EWTN and a new wave of technology at its founding allowed it to take off — and newer technology allows it to flourish still — and EWTN is about as traditional and true to the Word as there is. It’s safe to say we love the way technology has enabled hundreds of millions to stay in tune with the Faith, and to spread it, or we wouldn’t be here at RealCatholic ourselves.

Still, and again as in life, technology has a role. It can be a road to, but not a substitute for, our personal relationship with God and the manifestation of that on Sunday, which is the receiving of the Holy Eucharist. Delivering and receiving a better understanding of the Word through technology is a useful supplement it, but listening to Father Finelli’s homilies or watching Mass on EWTN cannot take the place of attending Mass. Watching videos of a papal address cannot take the place of saying the Rosary or Eucharistic Adoration.

Technology has its place. But we have ours — in the pews and in prayer, engaged in our parishes and the communities around us.

The iPadre takes Christ’s injunction seriously high tech: To spread the Gospel to the ends of the Earth. 

Here’s part four of Father Frank Pavone’s series on praying to end abortion. For part three, click here, where you can also find the links to the first two parts. Each is less than two minutes and is well worth your time since when we pray to end abortion, we honor God by praying His will be fulfilled in saving the very lives He creates. 

On another note, please help the cause by sending this link to friends and posting it to as many social networking sites as possible. Prayer is our ultimate tool in ending the abomination of abortion. It truly is astounding: those who believe abortion is a “right” and that “government should stay out of it” feel a sense of outrage when pro-life people pray. If all they care about is keeping government out of the issue, why should they care about people praying? (Many are atheists, so they really shouldn’t care, should they? So their anger at Christian prayer tells me something.)

But take a look at the thread at one of Father Pavone’s videos on YouTube (here). It’s full of vile messages. It’s reflective of those who confront the prayerful outside abortion centers, with in-your-face obscenities.

What’s worse are the politicians who claim they despise abortion, but that the government can’t get involved. Yet these politicians never contribute to or help pregnancy resource centers or join pro-life rallies or do anything non-governmental to discourage abortion.

It all points to what we’re up against: hypocrites and radicals, many of whom are very powerful. Which brings us back to prayer. To learn more about the power of prayer, join Father Pavone at Pro Life Prayers.com or at Priests for Life, where he is the national director.

According to Father Pavone:

We pray to end abortion because we are praying for a stop to the killing of human beings. When the rich young man came up to Jesus and asked what he had to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus said, “You have to keep the commandments.” The first commandment He mentioned was, “You Shall Not Kill.”

There is hardly anything you can do that’s worse to a person than to end that person’s life. And we know what it means in the very depths of our being and in our culture to save a life. We pray all the time for people to recover from serious illness, for people to be protected from serious danger; we are praying for the preservation of their lives. Saving a life is considered one of the greatest things that anybody can do and, when we want to illustrate that we are not guilty of anything serious, we often say, “Well, at least I didn’t kill anyone.” The motivation to pray to end abortion is rooted in the deepest parts of our human nature, and therefore this has a priority over other intentions of prayer.

Our culture values life. That’s why we call those who rescue others “heroes” and pray for people who are sick. It’s also why we need to pray for the end of abortion — to save human life, because human life is the same whether it’s born or unborn, and it’s God’s will that it live to natural death.

Here is the second installment of Father Frank Pavone’s series on how to pray to end abortion. Father Pavone is the National Director of Priests for Life and you can see his various commentaries on his YouTube page (here). You can see the see first in this series on the Real Catholic Blog, here.

According to Father Pavone:

“The Lord will destroy death forever!” This marvelous declaration from Isaiah 25:8 should sustain us daily in our pro-life efforts.

When we pray to end abortion, we are not just asking God to do us some favor or to grant a request. It’s much more momentous than that.

When we ask Him to end abortion, we are pleading for the fulfillment of the primary purpose of salvation history: the conquering of death. It was for this that Jesus Himself died and rose again; it is for this that every Church ministry exists.

Please watch the short video below (and the first one) and continue to pray for the end of abortion. I’ll post the third video in the near future. There are many tools that need to be used in the long and arduous task we have before us to end this horrid practice. Some we can do more readily than others and some are more practical than than others. But the one we must always put to use is prayer. (Feel free to share this link on other sites or e-mail to friends and family.)

Father Pavone: “When we ask Him to end abortion, we are pleading for the fulfillment of the primary purpose of salvation history.”

Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, has begun what he hopes will become the nation’s largest prayer group — and he’s doing it online through a series of videos on how to pray for the end of abortion. These brief YouTube videos will empower all of us to pray more effectively for an end to the slaughter of children.

In the first in the series, posted below, Father Pavone explains . . .

why we pray to God when God clearly already knows what He wants to do. In the Lord’s Prayer, He commands us to pray, “Thy Will Be Done.” Yet as God carries out His will, He wants us to be involved in what He is doing. His will is that our prayers and actions do make a difference in the building up of His Kingdom. Therefore, we who are pro-life are to pray fervently every day for an end to abortion.

Let us know what you think of this message. We will post as many in the series as we can.

God wants us to pester Him even has He alone accomplishes His will.

Below is a very informative video from RealCatholicTV.com (via YouTube.com) about corruption and scandal at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, especially as it relates to personnel there and the activities in which they are engaged which are counter to the teachings of the Church. One individual, John Carr, served on the board of the radical leftist group Center for Community Change (see Bellarmine Veritas Ministry).

Mr. Carr and others at the USCCB are funding organizations — remember the revelation of its funding to ACORN? — that have a left-wing political agenda including those that work to advance the agendas of pro-abortion and homosexual rights groups. As Michael Voris (Catholic.org) and Vic Faust (The American Catholic) explains in the video, it calls into question the role of the USCCB. For example, the Conference doesn’t rule on doctrine and teaching — that is up to the Vatican.

However, that doesn’t stop it from issuing letters, which it represents as authoritative. But its biggest fault is that it has and continues to staff its organization with leftist political ideologues who have, since the USCCB’s inception, used the imprimatur of the U.S. Bishops to influence the notions of the faithful, seminaries and Catholic colleges. In this way, it has poisoned the faithful by confusing them as to what the Church (God) teaches. This has led to division within the Church and a weakened voice in the culture of our country which abets abortion, a weakening of marriage and a general deterioration of our culture and spiritual lives.  

By the way, we have added two sources from the video — RealCatholicTV itself and Bellarmine Veritas Ministry to our Media section and Blogroll, respectively. Two others, American Life League (see article) and Pew Sitter (see article) are mainstays in our Public Policy Section and Media sections, respectively.

The USCCB needs a staff and policy house cleaning. Michael Voris and Vic Faust  provide a detailed report.

I just received this e-mail from our friends at CatholicVote.org. Last week, its president, Brian Burch, asked people to sign a petition to back up CBS’ decision to air an pro-life ad during this Sunday’s Super Bowl, featuring star college quarterback Tim Tebow and his mom, who was urged to abort him 20-plus years ago. Big money pro-abortion groups have pressured CBS to pull the ad, so CatholicVote.org stepped in as a counter balance. We hope you signed on. Here’s Brian’s update:

Dear CatholicVote Member,

The President of CBS received a surprise at 9:53 a.m. yesterday.

A large Fed Ex box filled with nearly 500 pages of signatures from over 50,000 friends of CatholicVote arrived at the office of CBS President Leslie Moonves.

Enclosed in the package was a personal letter thanking CBS for standing firm and agreeing to air the ad produced by Focus on the Family featuring Florida football star Tim Tebow and his mother.

I explained that CatholicVote was especially interested in their decision because of our own efforts last year. With your help last January, we pushed hard to have our ad featuring President Obama aired during the Super Bowl.

NBC ultimately rejected the ad, yet I remain enormously proud of what we did together. We stood firm for the principle that every human life matters. We proudly stepped forward to tell the world that every human life is a gift — including the lives of those with whom we may disagree.

We had 2 million people watch our ad on YouTube over the past 12 months, while also sparking a healthy discussion in the media and on the Internet. And the ad was mentioned repeatedly again this year as controversy over the Tebow ad was discussed.

Did we help pave the way for this year’s Tebow ad to be aired? Who knows? What really matters is that we are winning.

Focus on the Family has taken the lead in making a Super Bowl ad a reality for an estimated 400 million people around the world. They deserve our heartfelt thanks.

I know when I see the ad this Sunday, my heart will swell with pride. This ad is not merely a story about Pam Tebow and her son, but also a statement about being pro-life in America.

We aren’t outsiders. We are mainstream, proud, and inspiring the rest of America with what we believe.

And more people every day are coming to see what we see: Life is indeed beautiful.

Be sure to catch Thomas Peters on Fox News tonight. Enjoy the Super Bowl. See you next week.

Sincerely,

Brian Burch, President

CatholicVote.org

P.S. Send us your prediction on the score for the Super Bowl. Pick the winner and the score. Whoever is closest will receive a surprise gift next week and get a shout out at our legislative arm, CatholicVoteAction.org. (Our combined sites receive 15,000 visitors every day!)

As we’ve noted before, Pope Benedict XVI endorses new media and digital technology as a vital tool in reaching and teaching people about God, our faith and the Church. Now, he’s taking it a step further. In a recent message, he promoted the 44th World Day of Social Communications, and calls “urgent and unavoidable task for priests and consecrated men and women,” to communicate through this new avenue of reaching people not before available through traditional forms of communication. He practices what he preaches — the Vatican has an excellent YouTube channel and Web site, for example. We would add that lay people have their own responsibility to reach out to those who are not familiar with the Church; or those who are, but who have declined the Lord’s invitation to come home.

Pope Benedict says: Get online, log on and log into the Word of God!

Catholics Come Home posted the video below on its YouTube Channel. It’s entitled, “The Bible proves Catholic beliefs that most protestants deny.” Although it is short, it is powerful, and debunks a few of the primary objections some protestants have toward Catholicism.

Of course, the fact that Catholic teaching comes from the Bible (and not from “some old men in Rome”) should not come as a surprise to anyone. Still, some people (Catholic and protestant) have been conditioned to believe otherwise. But, the fact is, every teaching of the Catholic Church is grounded in Scripture. Otherwise, we could not be one, true, apostolic, universal church. As CCH explains, the video proves Catholic teachings, using Biblical passages, that most protestants deny, including: 

Peter was the first Pope, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Confession, The Bible alone is not sufficient, and justification by faith and works.

It should be noted that Catholics do consider protestants our separated brothers and sisters. And anyone who is Baptized “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” and believes in Jesus Christ is considered a Christian. But it is within the Catholic faith that the fullness of God’s revealed truth is found.

This video is a great primer on apologetics. Always remember, everything we believe is the Truth and it is the Truth because it is directly from Scripture. 

Father Frank Pavone (see Father Pavone’s Blog) and Priests for Life are hosting a Vote Pro-Life teleconference on Monday, January 25, 2010. The teleconference will focus on the 2010 elections and will have a panel of experts, including David Barton of Wallbuilders and Majorie Dannenfelser (see Weekly Standard interview on YouTube) of the Susan B. Anthony List (see The SOP.org).

The teleconference, which is designed to motivate, inspire and educate will be a great way to capitalize on the momentum of the March For Life later this week in Washington, D.C. (It’s not too late to attend. Ask your parish, diocese, a Knights of Columbus council, find here, or other Catholic or pro-life organization in your community if they are planning to charter a bus.) If you can’t attend the March For Life, the teleconference is a good way to learn how you can participate in the pro-life movement.

Sign up for the teleconference here, at Priest For Life. After you sign up, you will receive an e-mail with more details. You cannot receive the details on how to participate without an online RSVP. 

Father Pavone accurately notes that “A key part of putting our prayers into action is bringing them to the voting booth.” So, please, forward this link to friends you think are interested in getting more involved so they can learn about the teleconference. You can also join the Pro-Life Cause on Facebook by clicking here. Father Pavone asks that we “act for the unborn so that we may save Our Lord’s children.”

Sister Vicki Ix is probably tired of all the cooking nun puns and the comparisons to Sally Field (The Flying Nun). But you have to admit, her approach to vocations is unique.

Sister Vicki is the vocations director for the Benedictine Sisters of Virginia. She is combining new media technology and her love of the culinary arts —she’s a culinary school graduate and once worked as a restaurant chef before entering the religious life — to reach out to women who are interested in a life of religious vocation. She’s as adept at the tools of the Internet as she is with her cooking utensils. She has a YouTube channel, where she posts cooking lessons, and a blog, Monastic Journey. She has become a bit of a trans media sensation, receiving publicity this year across the new and traditional media spectrum, including Friends Eat Blog as well as the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which wrote a profile on her (and did a recent follow-up), and the religious media, such as the Arlington Catholic Herald. 

As she told the Times-Dispatch in late May:

If St. Paul were alive today, his letters would be going out on the Internet. It can be used for good things, really good things.

That makes sense and we agree. Congratulations Sister Vicki on some well-earned and deserved attention to a important need in the Church — vocations to the religious life. We add our prayers to your efforts.

Here is her “Cooking Pasta 2″ lesson (part one is an introduction):

Pasta and prayers: Sister Vicki Ix cooks for her Benedictine sisters and also works tirelessly and innovatively for vocations.