by Denise O'Toole Kelly on October 22, 2009
in History, Media
I found the coolest thing in the Florida Catholic’s attic the other day.
OK, it’s not really an attic. It’s a storage room in the basement of the Diocese of Orlando’s downtown Chancery, where the newspaper’s state office is. But combing through boxes looking for fodder for the “Moment in Catholic History in Florida” feature I’ve been doing for the paper’s yearlong 70th anniversary celebration is a bit like exploring a grandmother’s attic, finding long-forgotten treasures left behind by my predecessors.
Stashed among the many photographs, some of which we’ve been posting throughout the year in the “70 Years Photo Blog,” I found a yellowed Western Union telegram from October 1962. As I read the message, I realized it was a dispatch from Rome — a description from the Florida Catholic’s priest-correspondent there for the opening of the Second Vatican Council — which was the “moment” I had selected for publication in the Oct. 23-Nov. 5 print editions.
It made me think of how much has changed in the way news is gathered and reported in the 47 years since Vatican II and the seven decades since the Florida Catholic’s first issue was published on Dec. 1, 1939. My former boss from the Florida Catholic — Christopher Gunty, now associate publisher/editor of The Catholic Review in Baltimore — happened to be in Rome around the same time I found the old telegram. He sent me an e-mail to offer me a story and/or photo from a diaconate ordination at St. Peter’s Basilica that included a seminarian from the Diocese of Venice in Florida. No telegraph operator, no per-word fee, just an instantaneous transatlantic transmission of information. But what will there be of it for an archive-diving editor of the future to find 50 years from now to commemorate the Florida Catholic’s 120th anniversary?
Speaking of the future, that was the subject for our print editions’ companion to this blog — the Living Our Faith page — in the Oct. 23-Nov. 5 issue. Jean Gonzalez of the Florida Catholic staff interviewed three young adult Catholics about their thoughts on the future of their Church for “Next generation of leaders foresees hope, strength,” and 18-year-old Nick Bryant was equally optimistic in his FAITHCorner reflection “How I envision the future of the Catholic Church.”
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Catholic Church,
florida catholic,
Vatican II
I found Dan Rudden in Deerfield Beach last year around this time, when I was looking for sources for a story that ended up being headlined “Hands-free Hail Marys: Recorded rosaries let drivers keep a hold of the wheel, but is multitasking a good idea?” He runs the 5-year-old, nonprofit Rosary Foundation, which spreads awareness of the rosary and miracles associated with it, primarily through the Web site, erosary.com.
Rosary Month was coming up again this year, as it does each October - in fact today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary - and this time I was looking for a Florida Catholic reader to write the FAITHCorner reflection for the Living Our Faith page in the Oct. 9-22 print editions. Dan was the man.
His piece, “The supernatural rosary,” notes how novelists and directors have flooded society with storylines based on fantasy, science fiction and obscure conspiracy theory, and how many top-rated television shows are based on occult practices. He poses the question: “If it’s so easy to become lured in by such frivolous entertainment, then why is it so hard for us to become intrigued by the true power of Jesus Christ?”
Around Florida, there are several larger-than-life examples of Catholic parishes and communities that are intrigued by the power of the rosary. In the feature story on the same page, “Outdoor settings allow pilgrims to prayerfully surround themselves in the rosary,” staff writer Jean Gonzalez calls attention to rosary paths and gardens that allow visitors to immerse their whole selves in meditation by walking from mystery to mystery.
The rosary and Rosary Month have been the talk of the Catholic blogosphere for the past few days as well. Deacon Scott Dodge the Diocese of Salt Lake City uses the occasion to expound on the Luminous Mysteries. Father Anthony Ho of the Archdiocese of Vancouver offers downloads of rosary meditations. Margaret in Minnesota, a homeschooling Catholic mom, reviews and recommends the book “The Rosary: Keeping Company with Jesus and Mary,” by her friend, Karen Edmisten, a blogger who wrote about the rosary this month herself.
Dear Living Faith readers, if you don’t have a blog of your own - or even if you do - I invite you to use the Leave a Comment function of mine, below, to offer your suggestions for other readers about making the most of Rosary Month.
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rosary
Facebook came through for me again.
Those of you who read my last post know that I used the social networking site to find and virtually interview Catholic Floridians who had something to say about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new Facebook page. And I successfully asked Florida “fans” of the USCCB page to be “friends” of mine on the Facebook page I’ve created for use exclusively in my role as managing editor of the Florida Catholic.
One of those friends, Deacon Jim Stokes of St. Joseph Parish in Palm Bay, came to my rescue last week. The Living Our Faith page in each issue of the print edition of the newspaper features the FAITHCorner, a reader’s reflection on the page’s topic of the week. The topic for the Sept. 25-Oct. 8 issue was stewardship, and a fellow editor was handling the task of enticing a reader to put themselves out there in 200 to 300 words. That editor unexpectedly had to take time off, so we had to start over in our search for a reader who was willing and able to write about stewardship - fast. I could tell from Deacon Jim’s Facebook updates that he was the one for the job, and he came through with “Treasure an important factor in stewardship” well ahead of deadline. Thanks, Deacon Jim!
To complete the stewardship trifecta, my main story for the page highlighted time and talent. Though it didn’t start out this way, the story ended up focusing mostly on parish ministry fairs, thus the headline “There’s a more than fair chance of finding a ministry for you.”
Organizers of such events from the Panhandle to southeast and southwest Florida reported increases in participation in parish ministries of as much as 25 percent as a result.
Living Faith readers, please tell us about your experience with ministry fairs and other efforts to promote stewardship in your parish by using the “Leave a Comment” function below.
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facebook,
ministry fairs,
social networking
by Denise O'Toole Kelly on September 15, 2009
in Media
When it came time to find out how Catholics in Florida were responding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new Facebook page for a story I was writing for the Living Our Faith page in the current Florida Catholic print editions, I went to the obvious place: Facebook.
I combed through the USCCB page’s list of “fans” - there were fewer than 600 at the time - for people who volunteered the information that they lived in Florida. Then I sent a one-on-one message to my identified prospects asking them to respond to a series of questions if they wanted to be considered as a source for the story.
It worked like a charm. I got a lot of great comments for the story “Welcome to Facebook, U.S. Catholic bishops!” and made a few “friends” on the Facebook page I’ve created to use exclusively in my professional role as managing editor of the Florida Catholic.
It’s too late to be included in the print-edition story, but if you would like to express your thoughts on the U.S. bishops’ online outreach, the Florida Catholic would still love to hear them. (It has more than 1,300 fans now.) Please use the “Leave a Comment” function below. And if you’d like to become my Facebook friend, click here.
If you are not already familiar with Facebook - or you are but you’d like to read a young adult Catholic’s view on the social networking site - you might first want to check out Valerie Bryant’s words of warning in “Dodging dreck to harness the good of online social networks,” which appeared in the FAITHCorner of our print Living Our Faith.
Tagged as:
bishops,
social networking,
U.S. bishops,
u.s. conference of catholic bishops
Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” (“Charity in Truth”) appears to be gaining traction among lay Catholics in the business world.
Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson focused on the teachings in the July encyclical in his address today at an international meeting on ethical business practices in Rimini, Italy. Anderson said the Knights have led by example by running a successful insurance company based on Catholic social teaching. “We treat customers and employees fairly,” he said. “Our investment rules prevent us from investing in dozens of companies that violate Catholic teaching in a number of areas, and yet, in one of the worst financial crisis in memory, we turned a solid profit. … A business model based on the understanding of the dignity of each person and on our responsibility to our neighbor cannot help but be an ethical one. We must work to replace Cain’s motivation, with the good Samaritan’s in every aspect of our lives, and especially in business relationships. Only in this way - as the pope makes clear in his recent encyclical ‘Caritas in Veritate’ - will development be truly sustainable.”
The press release about Anderson’s speech at the weeklong Meeting for Friendship Among the Peoples organized by the Catholic Communion and Liberation movement, caught my attention because of an initiative that’s being launched by a Florida business executive. It’s the subject of the FAITHCorner reader reflection on the Florida Catholic’s current Living Our Faith page, the print editions’ companion to the Living Faith blog. In “Businessman seeks to put pope’s economic teaching into broad practice,” Paul Gonzales, a parishioner at Blessed Sacrament at Clermont and volunteer at the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe in Orlando, wrote: “I believe that business professionals can come together and, based on the teachings of the encyclical, develop principals every employer could adopt.” Gonzales, who heads the compensation department for a major Orlando area employer, asks that those who want to contribute to the effort e-mail him here.
The Living Our Faith page also includes, “Faith helps out-of-work professionals find paths,” staff writer Jean Gonzalez’s look at parish-based ministries for the unemployed.
Living Faith readers, please use the commenting feature below to share your thoughts on how Catholics can uphold their values in the work world, or your stories about what your parish is doing to minister to the unemployed.
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business,
econony,
Knights of Columbus,
unemployment
You’ve gotta love it when it seems like the Holy Spirit is leading you through your workweek, making the job easier and the product better.
My turn to lead morning prayer for the Florida Catholic state office staff came up again yesterday and today and, as regular readers of Living Faith may know, that means I checked my Catholic calendar for inspiration from the saint for the day. Through sleepy, 5:30 eyes yesterday morning, I noticed that both the Aug. 18 and Aug. 19 blocks on the Church calendar hanging on my fridge were blank. But I had no fear; I knew a copy of “Butler’s Lives of the Saints” (Concise, Modernized Edition, edited by Bernard Bangley) awaited on my office shelf at the other end of my 62-mile morning commute.
Meanwhile, somewhere along Interstate 4, my mind ticked through other items remaining on my to-do list for the week, such as selecting the next subject for the historical profile that’s a regular feature on our new “Year for Priests” page in the Florida Catholic’s print editions.
It all came together when I got to the office and started to prepare for prayer by opening the “Butler’s” book. The saints listed for Aug. 18 and Aug. 19, respectively, are Chilean St. Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga (1901-52) and French St. John Eudes (1601-80) - both priests!
According to the book and various online biographies, Father Hurtado’s father died when Father Hurtado was 4, leaving him and his mother impoverished and sometimes homeless. After receiving a scholarship to attend the Jesuit College in Santiago, he joined the order and became a priest, devoting his ministry to serving the poor. He founded a shelter for homeless and abandoned children - a Chilean version of Boys Town - and a Christian labor union. An Aug. 18 posting on Whosoever Desires, a multiauthor Jesuit blog, includes a soul-challenging reflection from the saint himself.
For someone who’s been dead for more than 300 years, Father Eudes - known as an outstanding speaker, writer and missionary who devoted his life to finding lost souls, and training and educating other priests to do the same - received a fair amount of attention from bloggers for his feast day, too. Today’s post on A Penitent Blogger had this interesting take on him: “He was often seen in the company of prostitutes and he went by the name of ‘John.’ It wasn’t what one might think: He was a priest.” And Denise Bossert in today’s Catholic by Grace, posted a beautiful quote by him on the Eucharist.
So, the Holy Spirit has offered me an abundance of options. Living Faith readers, as I head out for my return trip home on the highway, help me choose. Which of these saintly priests should be the subject of the “Year for Priests” page profile this time?
Tagged as:
holy spirit,
saints,
year for priests
We didn’t plan it this way, but our spotlight on seminarians in this post and its companion in our Florida Catholic print editions, the Living Our Faith page, happen to fall very close to the Aug. 10 feast of St. Lawrence, a patron of seminarians.
Our coverage focuses on what men who are preparing for the priesthood do in the summer when they have a chance to venture away from the seminary and go back to their communities or elsewhere to continue to learn and to serve. In “Seminarian humbled by chaplain experience,” staff writer Jean Gonzalez introduces readers to Jim Grebe, a 24-year-old seminarian of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee who spent the summer as a chaplain at Baptist Hospital in Pensacola. And in his Faith Corner reflection, “Return trip to Dominican Republic builds on treasures of first visit,” Orlando Diocese seminarian Dominic Buckley, also 24, talks about time spent this summer in Orlando’s sister diocese.
St. Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of the Church of Rome and was martyred in A.D. 258, when he angered the prefect of Rome, who thought the Church was sitting on a large treasure that he wanted to get his hands on. St. Lawrence gathered the poor and sick, and told the prefect that they were the Church’s treasure. St. Lawrence was sentenced to be executed by fire on a large iron grill.
Here’s what happened next, as related in an Aug. 10 posting on the Catholic Fire blog: “Lawrence was burning with so much love of God that he almost did not feel the flames. In fact, God gave him so much strength and joy that he even joked, ‘Turn me over. I’m done on this side!’ And just prior to his death, he said, ‘It’s cooked enough now.’ Then he prayed that the city of Rome might be converted to Jesus.”
It’s obvious from the story why St. Lawrence became the patron of comedians, and even fire and cooks. But I’m not sure how he came to be known as a patron of seminarians. Can any Living Faith readers out there help?
While poking around on other Catholic blogs for inspiration on what to write about today, I found it in the Aug. 5 posting on the USCCB Media Blog. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops now has a page on Facebook. I think I’ll become a fan.
As someone who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of online social networking, and still uses it cautiously and sparingly, I know this is a big step. But the USCCB communications and media relations departments, which already reached out to the masses via Twitter and the aforementioned blog, jumped in with both feet. At just about a week old, the page had, at this writing, 588 fans. Don Clemmer, the USCCB assistant director of media relations who wrote the blog posting and is heading up the Facebook project, said to expect pictures, videos, forums for discussion and links.
Over the past two days, the USCCB has been using the site in part to spread the word about some troubling language regarding abortion coverage that was amended into the U.S. House of Representatives version of health care reform before Congress broke for the rest of summer. It links to a letter sent Aug. 11 to congressmen by Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.
Last week, it linked to a Catholic News Service blog posting about a hot debate over whether social networking sites such as Facebook are good or bad for humanity. It’s merely a coincidence the flare-up, sparked by comments made by an English archbishop to a London newspaper, happened at the same time the USCCB Facebook page was coming online.
Tagged as:
abortion,
health care reform,
social networking,
usccb
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