The Building of a Civilization of Love

The third area of commitment that comes with love is that of daily life with its multiple relationships. I am particularly referring to family, studies, work and free time. Dear young friends, cultivate your talents, not only to obtain a social position, but also to help others to “grow”. Develop your capacities, not only in order to become more “competitive” and “productive”, but to be “witnesses of charity”. In addition to your professional training, also make an effort to acquire religious knowledge that will help you to carry out your mission in a responsible way. In particular, I invite you to carefully study the social doctrine of the Church so that its principles may inspire and guide your action in the world. May the Holy Spirit make you creative in charity, persevering in your commitments, and brave in your initiatives, so that you will be able to offer your contribution to the building up of the “civilisation of love”. The horizon of love is truly boundless: it is the whole world!

- Pope Benedict XVI, WYD 2007 MESSAGE, Growing in love each day


3:12. Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect: but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus.
3:13. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I do: Forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forth myself to those that are before,
3:14. I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus.


-St. Paul to Philippians

Sunday, June 29, 2008

My new desktop background

I though I would share my new great desktop background image(s):)

The 'back/blank' area is the live S+L, it is probably black because it could not catch a moving image... To watch full screen I just double click in the small (now black) screen!

The little green screen is a holy reminder of psalm 138


Happy Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
Happy beginning of the Pauline year to all.

God bless

Salt + Live now live on internet!

For few days now, I have a quite different desktop background. Half of my desktop is now occupied by a screen of live S+L. So as long as my computer is running, I can be watching or listening to S+L. It just look so great.

S+L also reminded me that I am bilingual...and something about my being canadian as it keeps switching from one language to an other. English, French, Italian,and Chinese...this is so Canadian and this is so Catholic :)

This is really wonderful, I just realise that I can slowly learn a language just by getting familiar to listening to it. For few days of watching, I am catching some key latin words already. And I am also feeling that I just got a special way of keeping up with french. Now I don't really need to switch from channel to channel to get french on tv.

Plus, this way of broadcasting is somehow revealing the universality of the church. As I watch I see both the unity and diversity of the Church at the same time. With think like the liturgy and other tradition I see one language of the Church. And by some cultural differance of the people I see diversity.

Wow, I didn't know I was going to write so much:) Well, I have also to add some more. Like mentioning the fact that this station is so youthful that one feel the livelyness of the Church. As JP the great used to say, the Church is young.

Now what else was I going to say last? yeah, that i got to volunteer for S+L. Since we don't have it on standard channels here in BC, not even in our tv providers listing yet, we can only watch it online. So I will be helping promoting on my parish, and hopefully one day after many of us give enough pressure on our provider, it will also be available in regular channel listings.

Pray help the wide spread of the good news. And try it out yourself.

God bless

Thursday, June 19, 2008

WYD Social Network launched in Sydney.

"Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat! "


WYD 2002 left Canada with a new catholic television, Salt+Light.
WYD 2005 must have come with new great initiatives, one of them being the schoenstattyouth web site.
WYD 2008 brings XT3 already even before the official start date of WYD which is on July 15.




XT3 stands for 'Christ in the Third Millenium'. And it is a social network for WYD2008 and beyond as it states on its website. Here are descriptive videos.








God bless

Friday, June 6, 2008

'Ecological 10 Commandments' around the corner ?

Mexican media predict release of "Ecological 10 Commandments"

Mexico City,
Jun. 6, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, the secretary of the
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, will present a talk on Catholic social
teaching and the environment in Milan next week.
The scheduled talk by
Bishop Crepaldi will argue that Christians must recognize creation as a gift
from God, to be respected and preserve, knowledgable sources predict. At the
same time, the Vatican official will make it clear that concern for the
environment should not supersede respect for the dignity of the human person.
In Mexico, media reports looking forward to the speech by Bishop Crepaldi
have already predicted that the talk will present the "Ecological Ten
Commandments." That speculation was apparently prompted by a March interview in
L'Osservatore Romano with Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the regent of the
Apostolic Penitentiary, who spoke to the Vatican newspaper about "new forms of
social sin" including environmental degradation. Archbishop Girotti's list of
modern transgressions provoked a spate of reports suggesting, absurdly, that the
Church was revising the Ten Commandments.


A Zenit article adds:

The secretary told Vatican Radio today that the document is an attempt "to
explain in 10 points the most important aspects of the chapter on the
environment in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church."

He added that is an effort to enlighten Christian communities, groups and movements on "the very rich social magisterium of the Church on the specific question of the environment and its protection."


I added the link in the quote. I would recommend to anyone to keep it around and take a look in it when time is available. If you ever wondered where the Church gets its interesting ideas on issues like war, sex, abortion, eutanasia, freedom of speech/expression/religion, etc, that's the perfect document for you. It helps a lot to make sens of who we are in society and give a more understanding of the Christian worldview of society explaining more clearly many points of the Bible like in Genesis man creation story, Babel, etc....


I would like to remind that, few months ago, the Church released a set of 'Ten commandments for Drivers'. For more see the Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road by the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care and Itinerant People.