Muslim History, Muslim-Style
January 10, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
It’s a long but interesting and well-done depiction of what Muslims claim happened in the aftermath of the murder of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the founder of the Muslim religion.
Something Lutheran Happened on the Way to Rome
January 10, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
You know me, I love conversion stories, and right now I’m enjoying part 2 of my friend Karen William’s serialized account of her journey to the Catholic Church. Check it out!
At the same time, one of my girlfriends, Wendy, invited me to her church – St. Paul Lutheran. I took her up on it one fateful Sunday and was immediately taken with the whole church concept and started attending on a regular basis. It was as though someone turned on the God faucet and my mind was opened to the constant stream of His love and mercy. Pastor Mike told me to read a little book on the Gospels called “The Way” and I attended Pastors Class faithfully every Sunday. I was on the fast track. By April of that next year, I was to be baptized (yea!) and confirmed in the Lutheran Church.
St. Paul was a large Lutheran Church in Trenton Michigan. It belongs to the Missouri Synod which leans more conservative than the other branches. The church was traditional, baroque with a communion rail and a large glorified Jesus behind the high altar. It had one of those suspended ambos that was elevated from the rest of the sanctuary by stairs. Pastor Pohl (head hancho), had a beautiful sermon delivery and would always conclude his sermons with “And so far”. I really don’t know if that makes grammatical sense, but it sure sounded cool and everybody respected him. The music at St. Paul was a big deal. Every Easter we’d hire a local orchestra, mix in our own musicians and vocalists with them (I played first chair trumpet at that time) and go crazy on Handel etc. It was a blast. (no pun). The performance would always engender tears and ovations. I lasted at St. Paul until I went away to college. Pastor Pohl stayed on until retirement, Pastor Mike (the younger assoc who ran the Pastor’s class) defected to the charismatics and was basically shunned.
Something curious was happening in my soul. Something really glorious. Of the things I managed not to discard, I saved my senior year scrapbook which includes a page entitled “One Important Person”. The page is not devoted to any one person, but to . . . (read more)
No Planet X
January 10, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
A friend sent me a link to an interesting article which rebuts the persistent and ubiquitous theory of an inbound rogue planet/star/object that will pass close to the earth in the next few years and will, the theory holds, wreak great damage on earth. The author of this article basically says, “Ain’t gonna happen.”
I love getting good news!
My Face on FaceBook
January 10, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
I recently discovered (actually, someone from my parish whose initials are “Thomas Deliduka”) told me) that there’s a new Patrick Madrid “fan page” on Facebook.
Weird. Flattering, but weird.
And when, a couple of months ago, I discovered that I was the very last person on earth not to have a Facebook page of my own, I broke down and created one. No big whoop. Check it out if you’re interested in that sort of thing. I find that I am becoming increasingly interested in that sort of thing — not fan pages, but the ability to communicate widely and quickly and with many people through the medium of things like Twitter, FaceBook, and the rest of it. It’s amazing and at times startling to realize just how interconnected we have become through this technology. Makes me wonder where it’s all headed and how fast we’ll get there.
Just imagine how utterly different the world would be now if the Internet and all its positive accouterments, such as e-mail, blogs, etc., had been available to the public back in the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up. That’s a bit like trying to imagine what the world would have been like and how differently things would have turned out for, say, Japan and China, if only St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier had had fax machines.
A Cartoon From Christianity Today
January 10, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Update: WELCOME! all my new visitors who are coming here from Father Z’s blog! I appreciate your taking a look here and I hope you’ll come back. God bless you all, and thank you, Father Z, for the link. — Patrick Madrid
It's the Stupid Economy
January 9, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Watch this . . .
. . . and then see (if you haven’t already) my earlier post about PeterSchiff’s predictions. I report, you decide.
A Priest Speaks About A Problem That Many Married Men Have
January 8, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
By Fr. Bob Sprott, O.F.M.
“So, how long has the pornography been a part of your life . . . ?”
Because the sin of viewing internet porn gets confessed a lot, I find myself asking that question a lot. At St. Peter’s confessions are heard continuously from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., and every priest on staff here is in the confessional once or twice a day for an hour and a half each time. And rare, very rare, is the stint in the confessional when I do not hear the sin of pornography (and these days it’s almost always internet pornography) confessed once, and by far the more common experience is to hear it confessed several different times in the course of the hour and a half.
And so to try to see just how serious the porn problem is with the penitent, I will usually ask two questions: the one at the top of the page, and “How often do you access the porn?”
Every man is different (with porn it’s always men) and every story is different, but if you hear the sin often enough and ask these questions often enough, you begin to see patterns and common features, and you begin to appreciate how widespread the problem is. I suspect that if drug addiction or alcoholism were as pervasive as the use of internet porn is, the country would be non-functional; just too many people would be drunk or high for anything to be working right.
The other thing you begin to appreciate as a confessor is just how hard it is to break out of a porn habit. Some penitents have tried repeatedly to break free, tried and failed every time, and they know how hard it is to put it behind them. Others have never really tried, and many of them think that they would be able to throw it off quickly and easily once they buckled down and got serious about it; these, if they do try, are in for an unpleasant surprise, and I try to warn them of this as gently and firmly as I can . . . . (read more)
Manga Messiah
January 7, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
I Love Japan. I’ve spent a fair amount of time there over the years, and am impressed by its natural beauty, cleanliness, modernity, and culture.
And the Japanese people, well, I love them, too. They are very clever and industrious, sometimes in peculiar ways, and for my money, they come up with some of the weirdest, funniest humor I’ve come across in my years (think of me as an Anthony Bourdain connoiseur of humor). If you don’t believe me, check this out. There’s quite a bit more where that came from.
The problem with Japan, though, is that it is a thoroughly secular country and God has virtually no place there. Sure, there are some, mostly cultural, Shinto and Buddhist religious overtones in Japanese society, but those have always struck me as primarily ornamental and ceremonial in their value to the Japanese people, in particular regarding how they cherish and honor the memories of their anscestors, no matter how recently deceased.
But Japan’s intense secularism and seeming imperviousness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not an inevitability. Catholic missionaries were thrivingly active across Japan in the 16th century and, had the Shoguns not panicked at the swift spread of Catholicisim among their people and, therefore, unleashed a fierce persecution against the Church there, Japan very likely would be a thoroghly Catholic country today, much like the Philippines.
So, how, you ask, can we break through Japan’s hard shell of disinterest in the message of Jesus? One group of creative Christians says the answer is: Manga. And they’ve recently produced Manga Messiah which is . . .
“a 300-page comic book that depicts Jesus’ life from birth to resurrection. Unlike their Western counterparts, young and old Japanese alike love comics, and it’s not unusual to observe a train full of commuters in the Tokyo rush-hour with their heads buried in the latest manga. ‘For reaching Japanese, this book is far more effective than showing The Jesus Film,’ stated one long-term missionary based in the country.
“Once details of a website for readers to request more information was stamped inside, OM Japan partnered with The Evangelical Alliance Mission to distribute the Manga Messiah far and wide. Over 80 short-term volunteers from a dozen countries spent two weeks in festive costumes handing out the comic to shoppers in the town of Karuizawa. The idea of dressing up as an elf or Santa Claus might seem a strange way to communicate the real meaning of Christmas, but Joel Kaufman, an OM worker from the US, immediately saw the benefit. ‘When a child receives a copy of Manga Messiah from Santa, that is something they are going to cherish and keep,’he noted. With adaptations of the books of Genesis and Acts now published, the comics are certain to travel further than Japan’s shores. English-language translations are also available, and interest in these international versions is expected to be huge. For now though, the Manga Messiah is one Christmas present that every Japanese person who received it is unlikely to forget.” (read more)
Also: The New Life League Japan website and also see their presentation on how to use Manga to evangelize Japanese.
Manga Messiah
January 7, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
I Love Japan. I’ve spent a fair amount of time there over the years, and am impressed by its natural beauty, cleanliness, modernity, and culture.
And the Japanese people, well, I love them, too. They are very clever and industrious, sometimes in peculiar ways, and for my money, they come up with some of the weirdest, funniest humor I’ve come across in my years (think of me as an Anthony Bourdain connoiseur of humor). If you don’t believe me, check this out. There’s quite a bit more where that came from.
The problem with Japan, though, is that it is a thoroughly secular country and God has virtually no place there. Sure, there are some, mostly cultural, Shinto and Buddhist religious overtones in Japanese society, but those have always struck me as primarily ornamental and ceremonial in their value to the Japanese people, in particular regarding how they cherish and honor the memories of their anscestors, no matter how recently deceased.
But Japan’s intense secularism and seeming imperviousness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not an inevitability. Catholic missionaries were thrivingly active across Japan in the 16th century and, had the Shoguns not panicked at the swift spread of Catholicisim among their people and, therefore, unleashed a fierce persecution against the Church there, Japan very likely would be a thoroghly Catholic country today, much like the Philippines.
So, how, you ask, can we break through Japan’s hard shell of disinterest in the message of Jesus? One group of creative Christians says the answer is: Manga. And they’ve recently produced Manga Messiah which is . . .
“a 300-page comic book that depicts Jesus’ life from birth to resurrection. Unlike their Western counterparts, young and old Japanese alike love comics, and it’s not unusual to observe a train full of commuters in the Tokyo rush-hour with their heads buried in the latest manga. ‘For reaching Japanese, this book is far more effective than showing The Jesus Film,’ stated one long-term missionary based in the country.
“Once details of a website for readers to request more information was stamped inside, OM Japan partnered with The Evangelical Alliance Mission to distribute the Manga Messiah far and wide. Over 80 short-term volunteers from a dozen countries spent two weeks in festive costumes handing out the comic to shoppers in the town of Karuizawa. The idea of dressing up as an elf or Santa Claus might seem a strange way to communicate the real meaning of Christmas, but Joel Kaufman, an OM worker from the US, immediately saw the benefit. ‘When a child receives a copy of Manga Messiah from Santa, that is something they are going to cherish and keep,’he noted. With adaptations of the books of Genesis and Acts now published, the comics are certain to travel further than Japan’s shores. English-language translations are also available, and interest in these international versions is expected to be huge. For now though, the Manga Messiah is one Christmas present that every Japanese person who received it is unlikely to forget.” (read more)
Also: The New Life League Japan website and also see their presentation on how to use Manga to evangelize Japanese.
Could You Help My Friend Patty?
January 6, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
My dear friend and sister in Christ, Patty Bonds, is a single mother who has had a very rough few years since she converted to the Catholic Church from Protestantism. Coming from a virulently anti-Catholic background (overcoming those religious prejudices was a gargantuan task in itself), when she became Catholic, some in her family simply turned their backs on her. But Patty loves the Truth more than mere human respect, and she has faithfully trusted in Christ’s promise to all who love Him:
“He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:37-39).
Patty trusts in the Lord’s will for her life, even as she has struggled to overcome a series of difficult financial setbacks in recent months. She works for a relatively low-paying public service job in Arizona, which provides a modest income that one person could manage to live frugally on, but Patty has also been very generous in supporting other family members who have turned to her in their times of need, which means that she’s in a difficult spot right now with some pressing bills she really needs to pay. Among other things, her ancient used car just went kaput, and she needs to find a way to raise the money to get it repaired.
I know Patty personally. I can vouch for her. And I can assure you that any donation you can make to help her out, be it large or small, will help her get through this difficult time.
If you can help, please go to her blog and click the PayPal button on the right side to make a donation. $10, $20, $50, $100? No amount is too small, of course, and no amount is too large, either. If you’re in a position to be really generous with funds God has blessed you with, please do so and give what you can. Above all, please keep Patty in your prayers.
“The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work. As it is written, ‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.’
“He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God; for the rendering of this service not only supplies the wants of the saints but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God. Under the test of this service, you will glorify God by your obedience in acknowledging the gospel of Christ, and by the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others” (2 Corinthians 9:6-14)
This Site (My Site) Is Under the Patronage and Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary
January 5, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
My thanks go out to Nancy at her Traditional Motherhood blog for finding and posting this glorious icon of Our Lady!
Talk to Your Daughter Before the Beauty Industry Does
January 5, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Warning: Contains very suggestive, though not pornographic, images:
