Thanks from the Kingdom of God Sisters! Let’s do it again!

Image © Anthony S. Layne.

Hey, folks! We got a “thank you” card from Kim Brown of the Kingdom of God Sisters!

You’ll remember that the KGS is the start-up second-order religious group on whose behalf I wrote last month. (I also kicked in a little of my own money.) Here’s what the future Sr. Kim — or perhaps Mother Kim? — has to say:

Dear Anthony Lane [sic],

Thank you for your gift to KGS and for your promotion on Twitter. Please keep us in your prayers as we strive to do God’s will & know you are in mine.

God is love: let the Kingdom know,

Kim Brown

Now, I say “we” got a card because it was you, Dear Readers, that helped spread the word, mostly through “likes” and ”shares” on Facebook. But I’m thinking we can do better. So please hit the “Twitter” button; share it on Facebook or Pinterest; re-blog it on your own Blogger, Wordpress or Tumblr account — whether you yourself can donate or not, pass the word on! And if you can spare a sawbuck or so, click on this link to go to the KGS’ donation page! Let’s make this go viral!

God is love: let the Kingdom know! Semper Fi.

Help the Kingdom of God Sisters!

Kim Brown, Foundress, Kingdom of God Sisters.
(Image via LinkedIn.)

One day, you're a speaker and a Director of Student Life for a mid-sized university in north-central Texas, wondering if you have a vocation to marriage or not. Five breathless years later, you're knee-deep in the founding of a prospective Augustinian religious order dedicated to evangelization and dogmatic formation. You're trying to buy a house to turn into a convent, and you haven't even begun your own postulancy yet. And all because your grandma (so well-informed, your family jokes that "she was Google before there was Google") asks you during a phone conversation, "Dear, have you thought of becoming a nun?"

That's kinda-sorta the way Kim Brown tells it, albeit in better detail and much more engagingly.

Your Humble Blogger met Kim last night at a meeting of my Knights of Columbus council. A couple of months before, we'd voted to contribute sufficient funds to purchase 150 study Bibles for the young women who, if all goes well, will make up the first generation of the Kingdom of God Sisters, the religious order Kim is founding in order to join. In her conception, the KGS will focus on conferences, retreats, and one-day events to help dioceses strengthen the religious formation of Catholics, using modern technology and techniques, while adopting the charism, habits, prayers and practices of a traditional order dedicated to the Rule drawn up by the great Father and Doctor of the Church, Saint Augustine of Hippo.

The Kingdom of God Sisters is right now in a "halfway" stage: it's not officially recognized as a religious order, although it has the interest and vocal support of the Diocese of Fort Worth. For one thing, postulancy, the formative stage before taking the evangelical vows, isn't a do-it-yourself project; it's always done in community, living much the same life you intend to live after taking the vows. Hence, the need for a convent; besides Kim, there are currently over forty young women (median age in the early 20s) discerning their vocations along with her.

Your chance to help a struggling mother!

... [C]harity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice.  It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.

—G. K. Chesteron, Heretics

My friend and fellow Catholic Stand writer, Susan Anne, is an amazing person. She’s the mother of ten (yes, ten) beautiful kids, works, participates in state politics, and usually finds some time to write heartfelt reflections. She's also a person of great inner strength; she's raising the children alone after pulling herself and them away from an abusive husband.

But even strong people need help. The work is sporadic; the roof she's trying to keep over her kids' heads need repair; and there's a potentially-threatening health issue for which she's being tested. If it ain't the troubles of Job, it's pretty darn close.

This is why some friends of hers from Franciscan University of Steubenville put up a GoFundMe page, with a goal of $20,000 for the repairs. She also needs prayers, so please add her to your prayer intentions; if you believe in the intercession of saints, I suggest Ss. Peregrine and Jude.

Thanks in advance for your generosity!

[Shout-out to Mark Shea, who also posted the link on his blog Catholic and Enjoying It!]

A narrative of hate; or, unhappy Father's Day

Something sick and twisted has poisoned a segment of feminism. The picture to your left isn't representative of all feminists, or even necessarily a majority of feminists. But they're within the feminist camp, and their voices are getting louder.

I've never had a problem with feminism, so far as it has meant equal opportunity, equal pay and respect for women. I've thought that feminism went wrong in making women's equality dependent on their economic and political power; I believe women are intrinsically equal to men as created in the image of God (cf. Genesis 1:27). I've also believed that feminism went wrong in equating sexual license with empowerment. At one time, feminists and Christians were united against pornography as demeaning to, and exploitative of, women; that seems to have fallen by the wayside even as porn has become more explicitly degrading to women, to the point of catering to rape fantasies.

But this? These women's narrative of victimhood has become so paranoid and self-referential that they can't grant anything positive, anything to celebrate, about men let alone fathers. This goes way beyond the need to address sexual violence (and thanks again, George Will, for your obtuse, patronizing diminishment of the problem, you arrogant jackalope).

This. Is. HATE. 

Sad news ... and an Action Alert—UPDATED

Elizabeth Foss of In the Heart of My Home has some saddening news for us here in the Catholic blogosphere:  Barbara Curtis of Mommy Life, a teacher, writer and recent convert to Catholicism, had a massive stroke on Sunday, Oct. 28, and is not expected to regain consciousness.

You can go to Elizabeth's page and read her and others' testimonials to this formidable woman.  For my own part, I read plenty of her columns whenever they appeared in New Advent (and you could count on at least one a week appearing there; in fact, Kevin Knight in a fit of possessiveness calls her a "New Advent blogger" in his link to Elizabeth).  I always found her sane, sensible, often amusing and with the enviable ability to not take herself too seriously.  We'll miss her voice and her wisdom; she was a true Defensatrix Fidei.

While you're there: Barbara was trying to raise $5,000 to send her daughter Maddy, a promising opera star, back to Catholic University for the spring semester.  Elizabeth has the hat (or the PayPal button) out for that worthy cause; please take the time to make a donation and help launch a potentially brilliant career.

Fac nos, Domine Iesu, sanctae Familiae tuae exempla iugiter imitari, ut in hora mortis nostrae, occurrente gloriosa Virgine Matre tua cum beato Ioseph, per te in aeterna tabernacula recipi mereamur: Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Grant unto us, Lord Jesus, ever to follow the example of Thy Holy Family, that in the hour of our death Thy glorious Virgin Mother together with blessed Joseph may come to meet us and we may be worthily received by Thee into Thy everlasting dwelling place: Who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen.

Update — October 31, 2012

According to Elizabeth, Barbara Curtis passed away yesterday afternoon, surrounded by her family.  Her funeral Mass will be held Saturday at St. Frances de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville, VA at 12:30.  Elizabeth is still accepting donations for the Curtis family, particularly for husband Tripp and to send Maddy back for her senior year at Catholic University.  I wasn't aware that Maddy had been a contestant on American Idol!  Here's a clip of her singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".

Do you want the shaft with or without Vaseline?—UPDATED

Photo credit: Larry Downing/Reuters (© 2012)

From Reuters News Service, today at 12:50 pm EST:

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama, in an abrupt policy shift aimed at quelling an election-year firestorm, announced on Friday that religious employers would not be required to offer free birth control to workers and that the onus would instead be put on insurers.
The compromise sought to accommodate religious organizations, such as Catholic hospitals and universities, outraged by a new rule that would have required them to offer free contraceptive coverage.
Instead, the new approach puts the burden on insurance companies, ordering them to provide workers at religious-affiliated institutions with free family planning if they request it, without involving their employer at all, the White House said.
"Religious organizations won't have to pay for these services," Obama told reporters in the White House briefing room. "But women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services."

On paper, the new approach looks broader than the "Hawai'i-style exemption" that the USCCB had already signaled was "not much of a compromise", and already one "Obama Catholic", Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association, has announced she's "very pleased" with the announcement.  (Is she not disturbed that Planned Parenthood capo CEO Cecile Richards is also pleased with it?)

Bp. Jenky's great move — and a poll to vote on NOW!

This post was just going to be in support of Peoria's bishop, Most. Rev. Daniel R. Jenky CSC.  But something else cropped up to add to it ....

Yesterday EWTN News reported that Bp. Jenky has instated the St. Michael Prayer in all Sunday Masses during the intercessions to pray for Catholic's freedom "until these grave issues are favorably resolved".  (Full text of the letter at the diocesan website news post.)

While it is primarily the laity who should take the leading role in political and legal action, as your Bishop, it is my clear responsibility to summon our local church into spiritual and temporal combat in defense of Catholic Christianity.  Have faith!  Have courage!  Fight boldly for what you believe!  I strongly urge you not to be intimidated by extremist politicians or the malice of the cultural secularists arrayed against us.  Always remember that the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

 Now, I leave it up to you to decide whether this decision, as well as the full-throated blast at the Obama Administration that came with it, deserves an Ecclesial Backbone nomination.  The Prayer was originally said after Low Mass as part of the Leonine Prayers which Leo XIII instated in 1884 (the St. Michael prayer was added two years later).  If anything, it should be brought back nationwide, so I applaud Bp. Jenky's decision and hope other bishops follow his lead on this.