I had some problems posting last week which led me to think about the way in which we connect to each other and communicate. These thoughts were added to when I was at Mass yesterday and had the presentation of the first module of the Worshipping Under Southern Skies from my parish priest, using a PowerPoint slideshow in his homily to explain the history of the Church in New Zealand.
So, I have three thoughts to share with you on this topic of connections:
1) In the internet-age, we sometimes are guilty of taking our technological connections for granted…until they’re gone. But while being disconnected from the tech can be frustrating and an inconvenience, I think that it is a good thing overall to remind us there are more important things than checking our email or reading blogs (this one excepted of course ;) ). I would also say that with today being Labour Day, it is a good opportunity for us to realise that we’re supposed to be celebrating the 40-hour working week – a concept which the continual connectivity of today challenges. When you can get your email anywhere and work remotely, the lines between office and home start to blur…sometimes dangerously. So, I thought I might put forward the idea of volunteering some time this week to disconnect from technology and maybe reconnect with your family, friends and God. :)
2) The presentation my priest gave at yesterday’s Mass spoke of the apostolic succession of the New Zealand bishops back to Bishop Pompallier and ultimately to the apostle John, who was at the Last Supper with Christ Himself. That’s a pretty fantastic connection to be able to benefit from! To know that our Church here in New Zealand is founded upon the Church set up by one of the apostles of Jesus, in line with His call to go forth and spread the Good News – a message He originally spoke 2,000 years ago. To have such a real and traceable connection is…well, awesome!
3) The fact that the presentation was a PowerPoint made me think about the changing way in which the Church connects to Her faithful and to those outside the Church. Sometimes I have great hope when I see aspects of the Church adapting the “packaging” of the Good News of Christ, while staying true to the message itself. However, at other times I despair that some aspects of our communications skills have not moved on since Christ last walked the earth! I think we should be looking to see what we can do to truly live that call to spread the Good News – leveraging our direct connection back to Christ with our knowledge and use of modern technology to let more people know what He stood for and how He can help them.
There you go. :) Three thoughts. Whew! I’m going to go and have a lie down. :) Enjoy the short week!
My friend did a study of an hour of television and found that 1/3 of that time was spent on ads. He found almost all of the ads in that hour tried to tell you something about the way you should think. You need smint to get girls to kiss you (because getting girls to kiss you is what you want). You need anti-bacterial soap otherwise you will not be a good mother. You need this brand of makeup to make you look good (because you’re supposed to look good). Buy a maths computer tutor because you feel so useless when you can’t help your child with his/her maths (don’t you!).
Billboards lately are really irritating me too– the Bendon ones have perfect looking bronzed women lying across them in sexual poses in underwear. What do guys think when they walk past them every day?? The Lee campaign has a girl who looks 15 in bed with a guy (because it is completely normal and cool to have sex at 15 – and what does this have to do with clothes?). Even the 10 metre high Magnum billboard in town (we’re talking about an icecream!!) has a sexual looking women looking at it seductively as its key focus.
To some extent this is a cliché topic – you know advertisers are trying to influence your thoughts all the time. You know billboards are selling you an image rather than a product. But do you think you’re immune? Because you’re not. We can think ”it’s just a laugh” or “nobody really takes it seriously”. We can think that we’re ‘adults’ who are not influenced. Hence I suppose ratings being R16 and other age limits. But when something is around you ALL the time it can’t help but be normalized for you. Sub-consciously you can’t help shifting your aims and goals just a little to be in line with what is all around you and constantly being told to you. And if you’re not immune, what about all those people who really are swayed by everything they hear?
It irritates me that people hear this stuff all day long. Why is it that so much in our market economy, even icecream, has to be sold with a seductive woman? Are we all really so shallow that market research obviously shows that sex is what needs to be sold to us to make us buy?
One of the interesting things for me about travelling overseas is the impact it has on one’s connections to home. In the “old days”, international travel meant total disconnection from home in pretty much all meanings of the word. If you were going via ship or plane to the other side of the world and you wanted to send a message back home, you had few options other than the days or weeks of a telegram. As we became more of a “global community”, you could possibly make an international phone call, at a high cost usually. Nowadays, you can connect to home (in a way) back using cellphones and email and whatnot.
(Just a side note on irony: this post was originally supposed to be posted from Sydney while I was away on business there earlier this week. It turns out that technology does not always make connections back home easier).
But technological advances aside, the point is that you’re still physically disconnected from home.
I haven’t done a lot of international travelling, and when I have, it’s usually been to the West Island (a.k.a Australia) which, some of my more travelled friends would argue, is barely overseas. More like oversea. :) At any rate, I’ve had some great conversations with good friends of mine on their O.Es who all talk about an amazing connection that we sometimes take for granted – the Mass. They all speak of being in a foreign country, often immersed in a foreign language, and longing for home.
And then they talk of walking into a church…and being home again. Sure the language might be different, and the songs unfamiliar, but the prayers are the same, the readings are the same, and He still comes into their midst to remind them of where home truly is.
It’s a wonderful thing we have, this global connection back to home, and to Home. To know that we can be physically separated from our friends and families, and still be physically connected to Christ. Just beautiful.
Regarding WUSS, I got a fairly decent presentation at Mass on Sunday. It was quite flash and used powerpoint slides. Unfortunately, I fell asleep was reflecting during the presentation and missed most of it. Hopefully the don’t feel the need to make unnecessary changes. Are we the only place in the world that says the new version of the ‘Our Father’?
I watched ‘Nightline’ on TV3 last night and there was an item on ‘World of Warcraft’ or ‘WoW’, which is a multiplayer online game. It’s played by around 7 million people worldwide. From my understanding of the game, basically you create a character, give yourself personality traits, skills etc and away you go. You can even form little groups and adventure toghether. If you always wanted to be a beared half-elf woman who can shoot fireballs and travel round the virtual world with fellow half-elf bearded women, this is the game for you.
But that got me thinking. 7 million people play this game? Why can’t we Catholics use this to our advantage? What a great way to reach people and evangelise! Get a bunch of game savvy Catholics together and travel the world (sorry, virtual world) as Catholic orcs or elves or even a normal everyday human. Your group could be well known for acting decently in your dealings with other bearded half-elf women, or taking a non-violent approach to slayerage of monsters.
Even better, why doesn’t someone out there come out with some kind of game that has a Catholic spin to it? You could be a virutal St. Paul or Methuselah. Instead of roaming round the countryside (sorry, virtual countryside) vanquishing monsters and looting loot, you could travel round preaching and converting! It’ll have to be a little more exciting than that perhaps, but the potential is there I’m sure…
Can you tell it’s Friday? A long weekend Friday even. Enjoy it everyone. if you’re ever on WoW, look out for the gnorc (half gnome / half orc) character called ‘Gnorc the Slightly Virtuous’.*
*Just kidding. I don’t play. I prefer my games with lots of spreadsheets and stats. Ah sports games.
This topic has been on my mind for a while and I’ve avoided broaching it on this blog, but the time has come. I’m going to talk about my FEELINGS and THOUGHTS about the Church’s teachings on contraception and how it specifically relates to HIV and AIDS.
First up, anyone who’s read any of my posts will know I’m no theologian nor do I have a deep knowledge of many teachings of the Catholic Church. But as far as I can see, that’s typical of a lot of Catholics out there – and it doesn’t make us inferior God’s children…
So, the crux of my problem is how can our Church justify its stand on contraception – and I’m specifically referring to condoms here – when 100 million people are infected with HIV throughout the world? The majority of these are NOT homosexual males suffering from “gay cancer”, and the majority of these are NOT in the developed world.
Nearly 40 million people are living with HIV worldwide – 25 million of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.
It’s not that I’m promoting the use of condoms as the only solution in preventing the spread of this devastating disease. That would be ignorant and overly simplistic. The fight against the spread of HIV has to be fought on a huge number of fronts – advocacy and education (in both developing and developed countries) is the first and most vital step.
The promotion of abstinence and monogomy are also vital, but it is naive to think condoms don’t help and should be ignored.
I cannot, in all good conscience and faith in God, justify my Church’s teaching on contraception in the light of the suffering of so many of our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we’re talking about people who barely have enough food to eat, clean water to drink, or access to medication, people who are reduced – through poverty they did not choose – to living in conditions no human being should, who is the Vatican to say their only path to heaven involves a denial of access to, in many cases, life-saving prevention?
Worshipping Under Southern Skies – Rediscovering the Beauty of the Mass
As many of you will know, a revised English translation of the Roman Missal is underway, and is nearing completion after more than 20 years of work around the English-speaking world.
This Sunday just gone, our Bishops in NZ invited each parish to begin exploring the roots of our worship in Aotearoa, in part as preparation for these approaching changes.
So far, it sounds like a few areas haven’t explained the context too well – I’ve heard several people believing it’s a purely local initiative, and wondering which changes “our bishops” were going to introduce!
So I’d be interested to hear how well parishes throughout the country did with the material, and if any overseas readers have started to experience similar formative programmes, or formal introductions to the approaching changes.
Faith, hope and love – the greatest of these is love
Charity is a synonym for love so we are able to say the greatest of these is charity. Charity is one of the three theological virtues which mean they have God for their immediate and proper object, they are divinely infused and they are known only through Divine Revelation.
Charity begins at home – this is a point which may be accepted flippantly but requires deeper reflection. For a house to be a home there needs to be charity, a love which searches for the needs of those around them.
We call those with the greatest love, the greatest charity – Saints, and those who are charity, who are love – God. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). “If you see charity, you see the Trinity”, Saint Augustine
Charity is the theological virtue, by which God, is loved by reason of His own intrinsic goodness and our neighbour loved on account of God.
The love of our neighbour falls within the theological virtue of charity in so far as its motive is the supernatural love of God, and so it is distinguished from mere natural affection.
In my own home over the past week there have been moments where I think, why is this so hard? Would I be better to live alone? I am blessed to live with a dear friend who is always willing to work on friendship, and I know that living alone would not serve in me growing in virtue – there is no growth or charity in getting everything you want, and avoiding all conflict.
Pope Bendicts first encyclical Deus Caritas Est: “The saints are the true bearers of light within history, for they are men and women of faith, hope and love.”
Can I become a Saint?
Can you?
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