Almsgiving…. is it the “Redheaded Step-Child of Lent”?

Almsgiving is  likely the most difficult for us in the United States. We often have the attitude of “keep it, times are hard” of “I’ve earned it” or whatever excuse we allow our consciences to succumb to.  When people have enough, they rarely think of it in that way. Enough is not enough, more is not enough.

Scripture call us to something else, to come out of ourselves and see that enough is usually too much. Lest anyone think I am just picking nits, know that I am probably the most guilty in this area. I have a good job, the bills are paid and at the end of the month there is always a bit left over for “a little something nice”.

 

This Lent is a resolution to do better, to contribute to the “ol’ rice-bowl” not from my excess but a a more painful place.  It is amazing how much of a sacrifice cutting back on that cup of coffee or that movie or that dinner out can be. And, although, there is a certain smug satisfaction to doing so and placing the funds into the hands of those who need them is unavoidable, my strongest prayer this Lent is too learn to release what I can for the sake of those who cannot. Lent is only beginning and I am already struggling in this area, so neglectful have I been of this spiritual discipline.

Ora Pro Nobis!

Here is an excellent article on almsgiving. I hope it is valuable

Of the three marks of Lent — prayer, fasting and almsgiving — almsgiving is surely the most neglected.

And yet, in the only place where the Bible brings all three together, the inspired author puts the emphasis firmly on the last: “Prayer and fasting are good, but better than either is almsgiving accompanied by righteousness … It is better to give alms than to store up gold; for almsgiving saves one from death and expiates every sin. Those who regularly give alms shall enjoy a full life” (Tob 12:8-9).

Why is almsgiving better than prayer and fasting? Because it is prayer, and it involves fasting. Almsgiving is a form of prayer because it is “giving to God” — and not mere philanthropy. It is a form of fasting because it demands sacrificial giving — not just giving something, but giving up something, giving till it hurts.

Jesus presented almsgiving…….. Read More

Does Facebook hold power over courts?

CRANSTON, R.I. –  A Rhode Island public school district committee on Thursday voted not to appeal a federal court decision ordering the removal of a prayer banner displayed in a high school in a lawsuit brought on behalf of a 16-year-old atheist.

The Cranston School Committee voted 5-2 at a public hearing to discuss the suit involving Jessica Ahlquist, a junior at Cranston High School West.

“This decision protects the rights of all students and will allow the school district to get back to the business of education.” – The Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union

I ask, how does the supposed right of one student protect, in any way, the rights of all students? Simple, the rights of the majority of students who wanted to keep the banner simply do not matter to the ACLU.

I think that the board would love to appeal the decision. But such articles in the local Providence Journal make it difficult to even think of an appeal.

There is no doubt that monetary considerations have forced the school to forfiet an attempt at appeal, and considering the hostility toward religious expression federal judges have shown over the last 25 years, they would probably go bankrupt fighting this horrible decision by a judge on behalf of a confused and arrogant 16 year old girl.

It is no secret that the ACLU has deep pockets. “Volunteer” lawyers working with the ACLU have an opportunity to make a name for themselves, without having to spend any real money or worry about making any.

But, I have to ask myself, how much did Facebook factor in this judges ruling and in the decision not to appeal?  This is a question that can only be examined in theory, as we will likely never know, but Facebook, or rather its users, has considerable social influence. But is it always justifiable influence?

Lets look at this.

First of all, Facebook, as far as I know, has been neutral in the whole thing.

It would seem that this teenage girl was smart enough to start a Facebook campaign to have this banner removed.  The page garnered, at least in the beginning, thousands of “Likes” more than a later page devoted to keeping the prayer in the school.

As I have argued before, Social Media is the way that more and more people are communicating.  This is most especially true with teens and young adults. It is almost second nature to them to put something up on Facebook, Twitter or a blog without even thinking about it.

All of the news outlets that I follow made certain to mention the number of “Likes” at least once in their coverage period. This may well have prompted people of older, more mature natures to “Not Like” the page, but it was not enough to topple the “Likes”

Who is it that most likely clicked the “Like” button? 

I’m going to go with the answer: teenagers.

They have the widest demographic on Facebook, and insanely numbers of “friends”. When one posts a “Like” it is broadcast to all of your friends. If you have 700 friends (not an unlikely number) that gives you 700 possible “Likes”. It pretty much grows exponentially from there.

It is also a worldwide social network. Many people, no matter what their opinion on US policy, simply would have no voice in it were it not for social media. While what a person in Belize thinks of  situation in America might be interesting,  it holds no real power to change or affect it. They could not come to the US and vote. They have no rights.

Facebook also wants its users to be of a certain age, but they do not check up on it.  There are probably thousands of  “underage” Facebook users. Frankly, this dimminishes the idea that Facebook is any kind of a think-tank and I don’t argue it is.  This does need to be taken into consideration when we think of the power of Facebook opinions.

Many teens are well versed in their religious beliefs, but it is fair to say that thay lack considerable experience in their faith. Experience evolves thoughts and passions.

Teens are, on the whole, more passionate than the average adult about issues. Passion is not always wisdom, but it is at least something!  We adults could do well to have such drive.

That said, it’s not too hard to make a teenage atheist as, right now, it is cool to be one.  If it were considered cool, to be a Marxist, it would be a very simple matter to convince them to become one.

They tend to follow whatever trend their friends do or to follow the opposite of what their parents do.  This is a no-brainer statement.

So my base question here is this: Is Facebook a legitimate guage of public opinion?

Probably not as much as people will think.  The key here is the word legitimate. 

Teens have much to say on many topics and many are well informed. But please take into consideration, teens have no right to vote, and as such, no right to sign petitions on civic matters.

Facebook has become a vehicle for ad hoc petitions in the form of a simple button.  It requires no serious thought or consideration.  If you like the picture of the kitten playing a harp, you click “like”.  It is more an emotional than cognitive reaction.

Clicking a “like” is too easy.  The media should know that, and they do, that is why all of their online articles also have a “Like” button.  They also know that they can sway more public opinion on Facebook than they can in any op-ed article in print.

It is for these very  reasons stated above that I argue that Facebook has no legitimate place in forming public opinion, but sadly, it does. 

Actually, this is nothing new for anyone to read…. but I felt much better ranting about it.

Perhaps someone with real passion about the prayer banner will start a “donation” page on Facebook to help fund an appeal.  

Unfortunately, this will garner little support because most of us do not put our money where our “Like” buttons are.  

Consider punching the “Like” or “Post”  or “Share” button at the bottom of my page as well.

 

Will they ever get it right?

I do not promote the CBLDF, but theirs was the most readable of graphics, which actually makes sense when you Google them.

The major media outlets will likely never get it right. I pray they will, but experience has shown me otherwise. even Fox, who should understand the issue at stake is missing the point here.

Of course the economy is still an issue that is on everyones political mind, and history has shown that, over and over again, the state of the economy has both made and mangled presidential candidates.

But please….PLEASE…. hear….. this:

It’s not about birth control, it’s not about abortion, it’s not about culture, it’s not about ideology, it’s not about Democrats or Republicans, it’s not about religious preferences and no matter how hard some people try, it’s not about women’s health……. and it is absolutely not a social issue. “It’s The Constitution, Stupid!”

The First Amendment was designed to keep the government from messing around in areas they don’t belong. We pretty much based the War of Independance on keeping government out of religion, the press, speech and assembly.  It’s the First Amendment precisely because our founding fathers knew that without these limitations on government, without these freedoms for individuals and groups of citizens, we will have tyranny.

Tyranny is the direction we are possibly heading and the press, in all of its forms, will play a critical role in maintaining our freedoms or supporting the downfall of the Great Experiment that is the United States.

Let’s get the issue right.

In an election about the economy, the culture wars make a comeback

Read More:

What woul Kermit Pray

I saw this over at SQPN. Just a touch of joy for the evening:

I came across this wonderfully creative website with lots of photos of Kermit the Frog, including one of Kermit in Church.

Which made me wonder.. what would Kermit pray during this time of Advent? Post your captions in the comments!

I saw these captions on Facebook:  Read More

Catholic New Media – Are You SEO Savvy?

SEO, Search Engine Optimization is key if you want your website or blog to have a chance of popping up reasonably high on any search engine. Below is an article from the Catholic Register blogger Jennifer Fulwiler. SEO has been a hot topic in business for a number of years. As Catholic users of New Media, we do not often think of our techniques as something that would benefit from a business model. However, even if we never set up our blogs or sites as a business, one still needs to “get the hits” if we are going to be effective in our efforts of evangelization.  This is a good read.

5 Things Every Catholic Should Know About How Search Engines Work

Monday I issued a rallying cry for Catholics, as well as all pro-lifers, to get serious about search engine optimization. These days the human search for truth is often literally a search typed out on the internet, so it’s of the utmost importance that Catholics understand how to make sure our websites are visible to search engines. Some folks asked for specific tips for how to go about this. Though entire books have been written on the subject, and there’s a multimillion dollar industry for people who specialize in this area, search engine optimization is really quite simple. Whether you are in charge of the official internet presence of a large organization, or simply have a small personal blog, you can play a big part in fighting the search engine war if you understand these five simple principles:

1. There are tools that will tell you which search terms are most popular: As we’ll discuss in #2, you’ll want to hone in on somewhere between one and three search phrases for which you want your site to rank high. To help you determine which keywords would make most sense for you to target, you can use Google’s handy keyword tool to find out how popular various search terms are. And keep in mind that the most popular isn’t necessarily the best: It would be much harder to rank on page one for the super popular term church than for the less popular term church in Denver. So, for example, if you run a parish website in Denver, it may make more sense to optimize on the latter, less popular phrase that’s more in line with your mission.

2. The typical website can only rank high for a few key terms: It is unlikely that your website would be able to rank on page one of the major search engines for lots of different terms, so the best strategy is to choose just one or two to focus on. For example, if you run a pro-life crisis pregnancy center in Cincinnati, you may decide that the most important phrase that you’d want your site to rank high for is abortion in Cincinnati, so that women searching on this term will know that there is a positive alternative to abortion available to them. As we’ll see in the tips below, knowing your goal term(s) is critical for making your site search engine optimized.

3. Search engines look at the words in incoming links to your site: One of the ways to improve your rank for a key phrase is to get others to link to you by using words from that phrase in their link. This is also good to know for anyone who publishes anything online, whether or not you care about your own site’s search engine rank. You can help search engines like Google find sites with truthful, quality information by creating keyword-rich links. For example, let’s say I write a post referencing an article that debunks the myth that Catholics worship Mary, and I link to it by saying, “Check out this article that debunks the myth that Catholics worship Mary.” Here are two ways I could place the link, one good, one bad:

• Good:  “Check out this article that debunks the myth that Catholics worship Mary.”
• Bad: “Check out this article that debunks the myth that Catholics worship Mary.”

Notice that in the first one, the link includes the words Catholics worship Mary, which will help people searching on that subject find that page.

4. Search engines look at how frequently words are used on sites: To use the example from #2, if your crisis pregnancy center sets the goal of ranking high for the term abortion in Cincinnati, you’ll want to find ways to incorporate that term into the content of your site (without gaming the system, of course—you’ll get penalized by search engines if you create pages with no real content solely for the purpose of improving your ranking). So you may want to write a blog post called “Considering abortion in Cincinnati?”, create a static page with the title, “We offer alternatives to abortion in Cincinnati,” etc.

5. Search engines value words in some parts of websites more than those in other parts: The people who write search engine algorithms figure that websites will put the most important terms in places such as the domain name, page titles, section headers, bolded phrases, etc. If you have some basic knowledge of the technical side of websites, you can review the tips here to get a more detailed explanation of the most important places to put keywords. If you don’t know the difference between a meta tag and an H1 tag, don’t worry about it: Just make an effort to make your page titles and section headers contain the keywords that are important to you.

Whether you’d like to improve the rank of your own site, or just help other sites you like be more visible to search engines, knowing these five things will help you make a difference. If you’d like to learn more, you can check out Google’s webmaster tools, and read some of their informational posts about how search engines work. Also, if you’d like to learn from the best, just search on search engine optimization and see what high-ranking sites have to say. By definition, any site that’s on page one for the term search engine optimization must know a lot about search engine optimization!

This might sound boring to the non-nerds out there, but I assure you that this knowledge is critical for the modern Catholic. In order to use the internet to evangelize the culture, half the battle is simply to speak the truth on our websites; but the other half is to make sure that people can find them.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jennifer-fulwiler/5-things-every-catholic-should-know-about-how-search-engines-work?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#When:2011-10-19#ixzz1bFCvp9If

New-Media Evangelizer

I have been involved in New Media for greater than 10 years, creating and maintaining a number of web sites.

I started building a web presence for Marriage Encounter of NE Nebraska in 1996, followed by the site for the Permanent Diaconate of the Archdiocese of Omaha in 2001, NE. I passed these on over time.

I currently maintain the web site for the Permanent Diaconate of the Diocese of Grand Island, Deacon Bill’s Place and The Deacon Preacher.

I do not mention these as anything other than some evidence of credibility when speaking about New Media. I’ve been around awhile.

When I started the early sites, they were almost revolutionary. At that time there were maybe three or four Diaconate sites at the diocese level and just a handful of individual deacons sites.

That number has increased dramatically over the years, which shows a Catholic Church presence on the web.

However, all of these web sites suffer from the same flaw of mentality: they are “static”.

They exist for a specific niche of readers and consist primarily of content that flows one way, from web to viewer. They are filled with schedules, downloadable materials and good information, but the information age has drastically changed in the last several years.

The new media of today is anything but static! It is interactive with ideas and conversations happening almost in real time. Communities of like minded and opposite minded people pop up in almost every Google search.

This is the point of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, pod casts and YouTube, to name a few.

I believe that the Church indeed must, not only enter into this arena, but they  be a leading and dominating force. Catholic bloggers have been at the forefront of this New Media explosion, but most parishes, diocese and clergy have been missing or only minimally represented.

The article and book listed below are a good place to start. The numbers that Mr. Vogt gives are staggering! (Any emphasis is my own)

Brandon Vogt talks about modern ways to share the Gospel.

ORLANDO (CNA)—Twenty-five-year-old author and Catholic convert Brandon Vogt has a message for the Church: Utilize new media or fail to reach the American population and much of the rest of the world.

“These new-media tools have already infiltrated our culture, our way of communication, in ways that are mind boggling,” Vogt told CNA on Sept. 16.

“They are not a trend, they are not a passing fad and are, therefore, necessary for the Church to engage in,” he underscored. “If this digital continent is where people are, then the Church needs to be there too.”

In his new book The Church in the New Media (Our Sunday Visitor/$13.95), which includes a chapter by Register blogger Matthew Warner, Vogt describes a planet with more than 750 million Facebook users, countless blogs and three billion-plus YouTube video views per day.

Last year, Americans alone sent more than 1 trillion text messages, and nearly 13% of online adults in the U.S. have Twitter accounts.

“I’ve seen intense, deep discussions about religion or faith or morals” on these mediums, Vogt said, “so I’ve seen the tip of the iceberg on how powerful these tools are.”

However, “when I look at the Church — especially her institutional arm as a whole — I saw that we were really not engaging these tools on any level compared to other spheres of life.”

Vogt estimates that the Catholic Church is “a good two to three years” behind most Protestant communities in using new media; and when it comes to the secular world, “we’re a good half decade behind.”

In writing his groundbreaking new book, Vogt said he wanted to use his own expertise and that of other online Catholics “to help the Church as a whole to engage this digital revolution.”

The book outlines what Vogt calls the four main uses the Church should have for new media: evangelization, faith formation, community building and mobilizing for the common good.

He marveled that, for the first time in history, educating the faithful “is no longer a Sunday-only activity or constrained to religious-education classes.”

“We can really educate Catholics in their faith every second of every day — all the information is completely available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.”

Aside from faith formation, however, Vogt said that the greatest area of potential for the Church is using new media for the common good.

“Catholic social teaching places a strong emphasis on the theme of solidarity. With these tools, we have a primary chance to engage solidarity like we never have before.”

He cited the example of the advocacy group 40 Days for Life, which has grown from a handful of people in a few short years to one of the biggest pro-life movements in the world: “Anybody can connect with anybody in the world in a matter of seconds, especially for free, and so we can build movements for good.”

However, there are dangers to new-media use, Vogt noted, explaining that more and more research is showing that the Internet is actually rewiring the human brain, making us constantly distracted.

But he addressed the fear some have within the Church that Catholicism could be dumbed down or reduced to sound bites through media tools.

“I don’t think the danger is the competition between the distracted online culture and religion,” he said. Rather, “I think religion, Catholicism in particular, is the antidote to digital distraction.”

People in modern society are having an increasingly hard time engaging in deep, contemplative practices offline, Vogt said. “I think that’s the perfect pastoral opportunity for the Church.”

Through new media, he explained, the Church can point to ancient practices like Eucharistic adoration, contemplative prayer and lectio divina.

“The Church can come to these people and say, ‘Yeah, we know you’re overwhelmed by this torrent of content online; we know that you’re hungry for something deeper than the shallow Facebook messages and tweets you receive. Come to this fountain of depth and sustenance that the Church offers.’”

Vogt said that Catholics should take their cue from Pope Benedict, who recently made headlines when he tweeted for the first time.

“I thought it spoke monumental volumes to the world — I don’t see any other major religious leader doing something like that.”

Although the Vatican has had some “tough love” moments in learning the need to stay current in their communication practices, the tweet “was a great sign of confirmation that the Vatican, from the very top, from our 84-year-old Pope, sees the value and importance of using these tools.”

But Vogt said he’d like to see more involvement in new media by U.S. bishops, many of whom may be intimidated by rapidly expanding technology and communication methods.

“It can be overwhelming with the new-media tools because there are so many — even if you just look at the prominent ones: We’re talking blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.”

Vogt recommends that bishops “just pick one that you’re not doing and dive in — explore and test out different ways of posting and interacting with the commentators.”

He said that by engaging in new media, bishops have the power to alter young people’s inaccurate perceptions of the Church.

“A lot of people my age, especially in the young-adult generation, are disenfranchised with the Church for many reasons — one of which is they kind of picture the Church to be this distant, inhuman, disconnected organization,” he said.

“I think new media is the perfect way for bishops to change that perception. They can put a real face and real persona behind the Church’s image. This is a Church filled with real people, with real emotions and interactions.”

For those who are “still unsure, still hesitant, still fearful about engaging in the digital world because of all of its inherent dangers,” Vogt said, “I would echo the roar of Pope John Paul II — ‘Do not be afraid.’

“I think that is the voice that the Church needs to hear at this moment in time more than any other.”

Read more:

Deacon Bill O’Donnell is serving in the Diocese of Grand Island, NE where he continues to use New Media, primarily in the area of Catholic Faith Formation. You can contact him atbill@deaconbill.com, read his Deacon Bill’s Blog and listen to his pod casts on DeaconCast.Net