Merry Christmas to All!

I still have some ideas for this blog that don't involve Catholic Lane or Catholic Exchange, I promise! It's just I can't get to them at the time. :) I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I penned the following Reflection on the Christmas Season over at Catholic Lane. I really think it is valuable for those who only attend Church occasionally. Consider giving it to them.

Lenten Project at Catholic Lane

The following is loosely based on what I sent to the writers of the Learn and Live the Faith section on Catholic Lane.  Does this interest you?  Let me know in the comboxes, +Kevin Tierney on Google+ or @CatholicSmark on Twitter.

Does your local parish offer you Lenten reflection manuals?  Roll your eyes when you see one?  Some of them are heterodox.  Some of them are just plain bland.  While some of them are good, a lot of them lack a real understanding how the Scriptures help us live out our Lenten journey. 

I'd like to change this at Catholic Lane.  I'd like to do liturgical reflections for the readings for every day in Lent 2014.  Thanks to the abundance of commentary on the Sunday readings, that's 34 days that need to be filled, and I'd like the writers to help do it.  Since I highly doubt I'm going to get 34 writers, we would do this on a rotating basis.

While our normal word limit is around 1,000 words, I want that to be half this time.  Have the reflections be 400-500 words; short and sweet.  They should be focused explicitly on the readings for the day, and how these readings help us through the season of Lent.  As a result, they should be focused on promoting things like penance, fasting, confession, the freedom these disciplines provide, etc.

I'd like to get this set up and the structure worked out well before Lent starts, so let me know over the next few weeks if you are interested.  (Lent starts March 5, 2014.)

God bless,
Kevin Tierney
Associate Editor, Learn and Live the Faith
Catholic Lane

Homilies as an Examination of Conscience

Is the topic of my latest at Catholic Lane today. How do we handle preaching that is otherwise orthodox but not what we want to hear?

Come Join The Bad Apologist and Evangelist Club!

When I agreed to become Editor of the Learn and Live the Faith Portal at Catholic Lane, I knew it was going to involve work.  What I didn't realize is how much fun it would be.  I've got a great boss who has stood by my decisions and allowed me a lot of freedom to run that section of the website, and I think it's paid off.  I've been blessed to have some great talent to work with, and traffic has responded accordingly.  Every now and then I write something that generates buzz as well.  We are having a lot of fun doing things differently at Catholic Lane, and it is paying off.

I look forward to continuing that tradition in 2014.  With that in mind, Catholic Lane is going to be doing a new series in 2014, something I like to call The Bad Apologist and Evangelist Club.  (That's a working title of course, if anyone has a better idea let me know!)  One of the things our Holy Father Pope Francis has put a premium on is evangelizing.  He wants Catholics to get out there in the world and start aggressively spreading the Gospel.  This is a good thing, and I hope a lot of Catholics (readers included!) respond to the Holy Father's call.  One thing we should keep in mind though:  a lot of people are going to make a lot of rookie mistakes in evangelizing, and these can be costly.

Nobody knows this better than those of us who have been doing apologetics and evangelization for awhile.  I'm on year 14 as a Catholic, and most of them have been spent being bold with my various apostolates.  In those fourteen years I've helped reach a lot of people with the Catholic Faith.  I've also alienated quite a few as well.  My professionalism and charity have earned me a lot of brownie points with those I'm trying to reach, just so I could have the opportunity to blow it all away with arrogance, condescension and bad arguments.  My story is far from unique, everyone knows this story if you have ever tried to share the love of Christ with someone.  Looking back, I realize how so many of those mistakes could have been easily avoided.

That is the purpose of The Bad Apologist and Evangelist Club.  I'll be putting together several writers (myself included) to give you the rookie mistakes we have seen and (most likely!) made ourselves when it comes to apologetics and evangelization.  We are going to talk about what makes those rookie mistakes so appealing, why they are ultimately wrong, and a better way to handle the situation.  Most importantly, I want this series to serve as an examination of conscience for all those doing the vital work of apologetics and evangelization.  We need to look over every word we have shared to see if it really is effective, or if it is something we really need to stop doing.  There could be a very real chance that our proposed solutions lead to more mistakes.  At that point, hopefully a constructive dialogue occurs and everyone looks to make everyone else better.

We have five ideas so far, and plenty more will be coming.  This will be a monthly series at Catholic Lane starting in January.  If you are interested in working on this topic, feel free to get in touch with me here at the comboxes, email, or @CatholicSmark on Twitter.

Theology of the Interior: Latest at Catholic Exchange

Why is the interior life such an important thing for Catholics? Why is slander considered a "work of the flesh" in the same category with things like lust? I explore this in my latest at Catholic Exchange.

There is no "Francis Effect": Why That's Not a Bad Thing

When I’m not writing on traditionalism or John Paul II’s Catechesis on Human Love (and how they are related!), I am a baseball fanatic and a political junkie.  One thing that unites the two:  I favor the far more “data-driven” approach.  I’m not a statistician, but I love the way conventional norms have been challenged in the field taking a different approach in mind.   One of the recent political books starts off with listing 62 “game changers” according to the media that would impact polling in the election.  As it turned out, none of them changed the trajectory of polling at all.    

The first rule of this discipline is that most “experts” are a bunch of overpaid hacks that are there to tell you a story, not tell you the truth.   I think we Catholics could take to heart our more secular brethren when it comes to looking at how Catholics report news about the Church.  We should keep this in mind when examining “The Francis Effect.”

Latest Column at Catholic Lane

Taking a break from reading Francis' Apostolic Exhortation.  Seriously, who thought 288 paragraphs was a sound idea?

Read my latest at Catholic Lane Today, on how the liturgy tells the story of salvation.  It's under 1,000 words, far easier.

Evangelii Gaudium

Is out.

Read the whole thing before you read the commentaries.  A lot of people are going to be very angry when reading this.  If they are smart, they will breathe before posting.

Since they won't be, make sure you read the words before the nerdrage deluge that is about to be upon us.

Look Away or Not Lust?

This is the subject I discus at Catholic Exchange today.  Basically, I argue that the way this question is presented by most TOB presenters is a false choice.  One of the ways you avoid lust is by looking away.

Various Francis News

Over the past few days, we've had several things come out about the Pope which have caused discussion.

- First there was the statement from Cardinal Hoyos that Francis has no problem with the Latin Mass, and really doesn't have that strong of an opinion one way or another on it. He has no intention of supressing it. This should be obvious, but a lot of people really believed he would. This was covered a few days ago here. 

- We also found out that Pope Francis personally reached out to Archbishop Marchetto. Now that means nothing to anyone but theological wonks, but it is important. His Excellency has written what may be called the most authoritative work about how to interpret Vatican II. Probably a better way to say it is that the archbishop is the "best interpreter of the Second Vatican Council" because that is precisely what Pope Francis called him. 

 The Archbishop's main argument is that you need to read the Council within a hermeneutic of continuity, or you need to read it in harmony with all previous tradition, and not treat it as a break. This really shouldn't be a surprise. Yet a lot of Catholics for their own ideological reasons believe deep down Pope Francis held otherwise, even though, if one played the percentages, this wasn't likely.

-He was Bishop of rome

 -The Cardinals in the Conclave were all chosen by either John Paul II or Benedict, who spent their entire pontificates stressing the need for a hermeneutic of continiuty. Think they would give people the red hat who clearly held otherwise? 

 -The Pope clearly backed the idea in previous speeches.

Sadly, a lot of people of various different persuasions really didn't care about the evidence. They were convinced, for good or ill, Francis believed Vatican II broke with previous Church teaching, and was going to base his pontificate off of this fact. Will this stop most of the people believing this? Probably not. Yet for those who want to look at the matter objectively, it should. RELAX. 

- The "controversial" interview the Holy Father gave with Eugenio Scalafari has been removed from the Vatican's website. A lot of people are rejoicing. Others are trying to use this as a cudgel to beat others with. A few have even snickered "well your defense of Francis' words looks mighty stupid now!" Not really. 

What I'm going to explain is a difficult theological concept, but we need to understand it: just because somebody says something in a way you don't like doesn't make them a heretic or wrong. Wait, that's not difficult? If the blogosphere followed that concept, content would decline by about 95%. If there's a chance that something the Holy Father said can be read in an Orthodox fashion, do so. If you can read it in a way harmonius with Catholic truth without doing grave violence to either the text or Catholic truth, do so. You should really be doing this with everyone, but that goes double for the Bishop of Rome. 

What we have are (likely) some things said about conscience that, while one can read them in a way harmonius with Catholic truth, they caused a lot of confusion. As a result they took down the words. They will almost certainly have to issue further clarification, and it will probably be..... in a way that is consistent with the greater Catholic tradition. 

There's nothing wrong with wishing he would give greater clarity with his words, or pointing out that, due to ambiguity, people will misunderstand things. It is something different entirely to scream the man is a modernist, a heretic, and proof once again he is trying to destroy the Church, and oh how everything is just oh so horrible. WOE IS ME! - 

So we've learned a lot about Pope Francis over the past week..... or have we? We've found out that he wasn't going to supress the Latin Mass, and he doesn't believe Vatican II created a new church, and that sometimes, what you want to say doesn't always end up playing out best in print, and as a result you make adjustments. This kind of stuff really was common knowledge beforehand. The only people who disagreed with this were those who felt it was advantageous to disagree for whatever reason. 

In the end, things are like they always are. Most people don't read blogs, and as a result were oblivious to all of this stuff. That is still the wise course of action.