Denver, Colo., Dec 19, 2017 / 03:17 pm (CNA).- There are five five shopping days before Christmas. Are you still searching for a few last-minute presents? CNA has gift-giving advice from some thoughtful Catholic gift givers:
Archbishop Samuel Aquila, Archbishop of Denver:
One great Christmas tradition I have witnessed in several families is to forego Christmas gifts altogether in favor of gathering together donations for a chosen charity. In a family with several siblings, maybe a different sibling choses the charity each year, and together they are able to make a substantial gift. Even among a group of friends this could be done. What a beautiful testimony this practice is to our young people!
Lauren Ashburn, EWTN News Nightly with Lauren Ashburn
My favorite Christmas gift to give this year is from My Saint My Hero. The ”wearable blessings” company is run by a Catholic woman I interviewed this fall for EWTN News Nightly with Lauren Ashburn. She pays women in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to make necklaces and bracelets. Their mission is simple: to bring faith, hope and purpose to everyday life. Plus, for the fashionista in me, they come in a gazillion colors!
Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap, Archbishop of Philadelphia
Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas is a marvelous collection of daily seasonal readings from Romano Guardini, C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many other Christian authors. It’s a wonderful gift that has permanent value. Mars Hill Audio Journal, produced by Ken Myers, and First Things magazine, edited by R.R. Reno, also make great Christmas presents that keep enriching the mind and spirit throughout the year.
Jeanette De Melo, Editor-in-Chief, National Catholic Register:
Try a gifting a subscription to the National Catholic Register for Christmas. I recently received a wonderful letter from a new Register reader. He said “If, dear sir, it was your intention to keep me rooted in my favorite chair, enjoying my favorite pipe while enthralled by extraordinary substance in your paper, your mission was accomplished.” The first issue he’d read was our 90th anniversary special edition, and he remarked that the only difficulty with this paper was that it had set the bar so high. “But considering you’ve been doing this for 90 years, I’m not too concerned! Here’s to many more years of the Register!” I hope many more people could enjoy a leisurely pace and thoughtful read with our newspaper. And we’ll be celebrating 90 years all year long!
JD Flynn, Editor-in-Chief, Catholic News Agency
I’ve given Archbishop Chaput’s Strangers in a Strange Land, George Weigel’s Lessons in Hope, and Fr. Thomas Joseph White’s The Light of Christ to a lot of people on my list this year. They’re some of the more interesting and important books I’ve read in 2017. I’ve also given donations on behalf of friends and family to Christians in the Middle East, through the Christian Near East Welfare Association. But if you want to give the best possible gift to your family, turn off your phone on December 23rd, and don’t turn it on again until the 26th. They’ll appreciate it more than you realize, and so will you.
Leah Libresco, Catholic Author and Speaker
I’d recommend The Little Oratory by Leila Marie Lawler & David Clayton to a household of any size. My husband and I have been reading the practical, tender guide to expanding your prayer habits at home all year, and we’ve gotten a lot out of it (an icon wall, a cross in the kitchen to kiss when exiting, etc.). We’re planning to spend some time over the holidays to figure out what we might take on/receive from God next! Plus, of course, if you know someone who’s tentatively exploring Catholicism, you can always get them my Arriving at Amen, about learning to pray as a convert from atheism, and embracing faith as a second language.
Curtis Martin, Founder and CEO, FOCUS
In our family we have minimized the gift giving by working together with Cross Catholic International. As a family, we sit down and evaluate various projects and determine together, who we would like to support. It has been a blessing to provide a well and fresh water, or education and care for children with special needs, or food for the hungry.
Chris Stefanick, Real Life Catholic
Two things:
1. My book, Joy to the World! It’s short meditations on the best news ever, and the best gift ever: God’s unmerited, unconditional love for us. And it’s the perfect evangelistic stocking stuffer.
2: Homemade candy. Because nothing communicates love like sweetness. 🙂
Michael P Warsaw, Chairman of the Board and CEO, EWTN Global Catholic Network
I suppose it’s not surprising that I would recommend Mother Angelica on Prayer and Living for the Kingdom as the perfect Christmas gift. This book brings together, for the very first time, Mother’s timeless advice on how to deepen your prayer life and achieve your ultimate purpose— eternity in Heaven with Jesus. With some of Mother Angelica’s own original prayers, this makes a wonderful gift that someone can take with them to adoration or a Holy Hour. It’s a gift that delivers eternal rewards!
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Author
I’d suggest giving Matthew Levering’s fine book, An Introduction to Vatican II as an Ongoing Theological Event: the perfect gift for Catholics across the spectrum of opinion, and especially for those under fifty for whom the Council has, at best, a murky image. Levering puts Christ back at the center of the Council, which is what the Council Fathers intended, as too few understand, or do, today.
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Of course Francis would lend his blessing to anything that celebrates disorder and perversity. It just reinforces just how worthless Francis’ blessing is.
As has been said by so many others, a “blessing” which is associating God’s Good Name to that which is being blessed, is a blasphemy when it is attached either directly or by inference to acts that are intrinsically disordered and sinful. Do this, Francis, at risk of your own peril.
Deacon, begs the question, “That which is loosed on earth will be loosed in Heaven?”
Stop playing silly mind/power games Holiness.
Anything to say about the Paris blasphemy?
The supposed focus of Catholic unity is divisive, seemingly by design.
Am I the only one getting nervous that Pope Francis may weigh in on the Olympic Opening Ceremonies?
But the Pope couldn’t say anything about the Olympics outrage or bother to meet brave Cardinal Zen while the Vatican continues to protect Rupnik. Shouts rather than speaks where they stand on issues, eh what?
The only thing that raises Bergoglio’s ire is faithful Catholics praising and adoring our Lord through the same Mass that’s been used for many centuries.
*That* simple fact shouts volumes about who Bergoglio is and what spirit he serves.
Inimicus Massae Latinae est procurator Satanae.
Why does the Holy Father or anyone else need to describe a human being by one aspect of their inclinations and behaviors.? We are all souls in need of salvation and some respects are all disordered as a consequence of the fall. We are called to live a chaste life no matter our desires and inclinations. Help people who have disordered inclinations. Yes. Defining them by these inclination, regardless of their self-definition. No.
You’re absolutely right, Russell. I wouldn’t want anyone characterizing or categorizing me by my foibles, imperfections, sins, physical appearance, etc. etc.
Fr. Martin identifies the people he serves as “queer,” which is a red flag that his vision of the human person and human sexuality is distorted. His Jesuit-sponsored Outreach website promotes all sorts of filth and degradation, including acceptance of sodomy, (aka “same-sex and marriage) and the misogynistic ideology behind transgenderism. I’m not sure why Pope Francis endorses it…
We read: “The 2024 Outreach conference was organized for “LGBTQ laypeople, clergy, scholars, artists, educators, students, and family members to build community, share best practices, and worship together.”
And what might be some of the current “best practices”?
In 1985 anti-binary sexual behavior among gays was found to be “an average several dozen partners a year” and “some hundreds in a lifetime” with “tremendous promiscuity.” Practices much changed, certainly, since the scourge of AIDS….but, then, still this:
“In one recent study of gay male couples, 41.3% had open sexual agreements with some conditions or restrictions, and 10% had open sexual agreements with no restrictions on sex with outside partners. One-fifth of participants (21.9%) reported breaking their agreement in the preceding 12 months, and 13.2% of the sample reported having unprotected anal intercourse in the preceding three months with an outside partner of unknown or discordant HIV-status.”
Source: Neilands, Torsten B.; Chakravarty, Deepalika; Darbes, Lynae A.; Beougher, Sean C.; and Hoff, Colleen C. [2010], “Development and Validation of the Sexual Agreement Investment Scale,” Journal of Sex Research, 47: 1, 24 — 37, April 2009); Cited in: Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., “An Open Secret: The Truth About Gay Male Couples.” https://www.josephnicolosi.com/collection/2015/5/28/an-open-secret-the-truth-about-gay-male-couples)
Surely, Fr. James Martin, SJ and the aligned (?) 2024 synodal relator-general, Cardinal Hollerich, include such research in their “scientific and cultural foundations” for overturning moral theology, human sexual morality, and the traditional family.
You ask what might be some of the current best practices. I don’t want to know. I am not interested in the least. I AM curious to know about the worship these people plan. WHO will they worship? Perhaps Francis will being in a new PAPAmama and all will be free to dance about a table or altar channeling pagan Paris 2024.
I wonder how they may reconcile themselves to the God of Abraham, that same God who created man and woman, commanding them to be fruitful and to multiply. How do they understand the God of Life, Jesus born of Mary and of the Father God. How do they understand Christ as the Bridegroom joined to the Church as His Bride? How do they interpret Jesus’ words in scripture about lust, eunuchs, divorce, Sodom, and Paul’s words on who will inherit the Kingdom?
Then again, I’ll let Francis do the listening. I’ll read the Word.
The words “repent” and “chastity” will never pass the lips of the Pied Piper of Sodomy James Martin LGBTQSJWXYZ during this gabfest of the intrinsically disordered.
Something wicked this way comes. A line borrowed from a Francis X Maier doomsday prognostication rarely voiced by a staid Catholic apologist.
Maier darkly chides a Mickey Jagger song Sympathy for the Devil the theme the inversion of good and evil. Maier along with the many have noticed this markedly so for over a decade. Heads would have exploded several decades past if it were known that in the near future sodomy would be celebrated as a good, what is more, a moral good by the Catholic Church. If not formally nonetheless de facto.
Pope Francis affirms the perversion as acceptable practice by offering his blessing. What the world has come to embrace, once considered a severe insult, despicable perversion is now celebrated by the Church. Not the whole Church. The Church that lives in the shadows.