Central Catholic High School Are State Champs

Saints Win State!


Not that I am bias but I thought that the photographer, my wife, did a great job of capturing the action.

Will you be a prayer warrior for our VBS youth group?

I am recruiting YOU to join in and be a prayer warrior for our vacation bible school mission trip next week to Martin County, KY. This is their second trip to the area as this video from last year's trip captures.



Please respond in the comment section of this post leaving your (first) name and where you are at so I can inform the kids that we have people praying for them from all over.

Have you prayed for the message?

tip to Amy Welborn

Through It All - Christ is Our Hope

Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well.

In "Spe Salvi - in hope we were saved" Pope Benedict XVI provides us a glimpse into the only possible future we have - a future built in Christian hope.

In this encyclical on hope Pope Benedict XVI notes that St.Paul reminded the Ehpesians (Eph 2:12) that "before their encounter with Christ they were ‘without hope and without God in the world.'" (On Christian Hope, #2). Pope Benedict goes on to stress:

Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. So now we can say: Christianity was not only "good news" --- the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only "informative" but "performative."

That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known---it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.

+ + +

Over the weekend I listened to 4 top graduating seniors from one of our public high schools and each spoke about living in the "now" - giving almost no reference to what kind of future there may be waiting for them. It was as if they were acknowledging the lurking "dark door of time, of the future" and so their advice was that you better enjoy what you have while you can.

It has been 8 years since I last attended a graduation ceremony. I know that they usually include a lot of hooping 'n hollering and a big beach ball tossed among the graduates getting all psyched for party-time, however, as I remember, in the celebration there would be some reference made to the challenge and hope in the future...not so much here. I wondered if this was so because it was a public high school with guidelines prohibiting the expression of faith, as it has become more and more apparent that true hope can only come from faith.

"Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well."

Let us remember to imitate Mary's YES and the YES of Jesus Christ to live in the fullness of this new life - being models of this life-changing hope for others.

Resource Guides for Teachers, Catechists and Youth Ministers

It is all what we would call, a teaching moment. Check the site out: "Catechesis on the papacy is an integral part of planning for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States in April. The Archdiocese of Washington, in collaboration with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Evangelization and Catechesis, has created resource guides to support the work of teachers, catechists and youth ministers. These materials offer direction and referenced suggestions for the development of two to five hours of grade appropriate and parish/school appropriate lessons focused on the papacy and the papal visit. They also include material suitable for adults."

Conversion -- setting the heart on fire -- so often we struggle, at least we give ample excuse for not being on fire with our faith, when we are charged to help pass on the faith to another... This week we are being given all sorts of opportunities to express what all long for in their hearts -- faith, hope and love. So with proper guidance and understanding of the Sacramental Life we can help instruct our youth to be filled with the joy so abundantly displayed by our Holy Father this week.

Why Kids. Can't. Focus.

A librarian bemoans the avalanche of information that students -- and other readers -- must try to master today.

"How long is it?" has replaced "Will I like it?" The students' finicky inclinations, as well as my own recent hasty approach to reading, bothered me enough to try to trace the root cause. I suspect that the tipping point in information overload has tipped. Students' aversion to reading does not necessarily signal a weakness, much less a dislike of reading. For them, and now maybe for me, moving on to something else is an adaptive tactic for negotiating the jungle that is our information-besotted culture of verbiage.

These kids manage to survive by bushwhacking through the muddle -- while seamlessly dealing with an e-mail, a Word document or a 50-page PDF from the scholarly database JSTOR. It's taken them just a few years to arrive at the same conclusion that I've reached after a lifetime of sustained reading: The pursuit of knowledge in the age of information overload is less about a process of acquisition than about proficiency in tossing stuff out. By necessity, we spend more time quickly scanning manuals, king-size novels, the blogosphere and poems in the New Yorker than we do scrutinizing their contents for deeper meaning.

This is the price we pay for the changed demands in reading. Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff defines this new reading terrain as "the paradox of our age." We've grown into a culture of searchers, not readers. "Surely, we have never read, or written, so many words a day," Schiff writes. "Yet increasingly we deal in atomized bits of information, the hors d'oeuvres of education."

Read all … yeah, right.

Christian Halloween Fan

A full service website for all your All Hallow’s Eve needs. [HT: Mark Shea] UPDATE: HellCo's Corporate Propaganda

Link to Get Dawn Eden's Talk at Chesterton Conference

Here is just a little post from the Chesterton Blog site on Dawn Eden's talk at their conference last month.

To get a copy of her most excellent talk, I highly recommend it, you can order online here.

We are anxiously awaiting news about Dawn's first day at her new job as Cardinal Newman Society’s first Director of its new Love and Responsibility Program. For more information about the Love and Responsibility Program link here.

We are wishing you the very best and we know you will do a great job.

By the way, the suave and debonair gent sitting next to Dawn is our very own Athos. Nice smile there Ath.

Speaking of Catholic Youth Ministry

Check out Life Teen. Here is one of their videos geared toward relationships and the Bible.


Testimony to the power of scripture in the lives of teenagers and young adults. Great video!

Steubenville On The Bayou

Steubenville On The Bayou 2007 begins today, see link. Nothing quite like the inflamed heart of the young. So if you are anywhere in the south and happen to hear shouts of adoration it is probably coming from Steubenville, LA.