Opportunity: Bring the Fatima Movie to your city!

Ignatius Press is behind this production so I'm intrigued - Stephen Greydanus calls it "the best movie ever made about Fatima":

"Based on the memoirs of Sister Maria Lucia de Jesus dos Santos, and thousands of independent eyewitness accounts, The 13th Day is a dramatic retelling of the experiences of three shepherd children between May and October 1917. (Read more...)"

They have a great website where you can do all the multimedia stuff like watch the trailer and clips, download desktop wallpapers, pre-order the DVD, become a Facebook fan, and most importantly, "Be the first to show The 13th Day at your church, school, or local theater."

If you decide to host a screening, I'd be happy to help spread the word here on AmP.

Ph/t: AmP reader Jen.

update - already our first showing, this one from AmP reader Deacon Chris Hanson:

We are screening The 13th Day in Council Bluffs, IA (just across the river from Omaha, NE) on Sunday, November 15th. The movie is being shown at St. Albert's Catholic School, in the auditorium at both 4pm and 6pm. A free will offering is being taken, and proceeds will be given to Gabriel's Corner, our pregnancy counseling center of Council Bluffs. Gabriel's Corner is located right across the street from Planned Parenthood.

The address of St. Albert's School is 400 Gleason Avenue, Council Bluffs, IA 51503
Please contact Jenny Van Soelen to reserve seats 712-328-2316

update - a second showing:

Our Lady of the Mountains Church in Jasper Georgia will be showing this film (with a light dinner) on Friday Nov. 13th starting around 6:30 p.m. (watch for info in the bulletin at www.olmjasper.com).

Did St. Theresa have an intercessory role in Anglican reunification?

Jack Smith at the Catholic Key blog:

Yesterday we conveyed the suspicion of former Episcopal and now Kansas City Catholic priest, Father Ernie Davis, that the intercession of St. Therese of Lisieux was behind the Vatican’s move to provide a structure to welcome Anglicans into full communion. Now, the Anglican Catholic Bishop of Canada strongly confirms that thought.

Father Davis, who leads St. Therese Little Flower parish in Kansas City which hosts an Anglican Use community, wrote of the news from the Vatican:

Anglicans and Catholics flocked to visit the relics of Saint Therese of Lisieux as they made a very recent pilgrimage to England. Her relics rested on her 2009 feast day at York Minster, the Cathedral of the Anglican Archbishop of York. When I read about that, I told the people here at St. Therese Little Flower that she was working on something big. In other words, preparations for this Apostolic Constitution have been in process for 170 years, and some of the preparations have been made at levels that are higher than popes.

The Traditional Anglican Communion Bishop of Canada saw the claim and sent an email today to Father Davis with remarkable details of St. Therese’ intercession. Here’s the email.

Miracle Video: Baby in stroller hit by train as mother watches

This is why we should pray to our Guardian Angel every day:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Happy Feast Day to Me!

By which I mean, of course, a happy feast day to my patron saint, Thomas More, also known as "omnium horarum homo" (a man for all seasons, referring to his wide scholarship and knowledge).

If you haven't seen the movie about him, A Man For All Seasons (only $8!), see it today. If you have seen it, watch it again!

He shares this feast day with Saint John Fisher.

More about More in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Many useful tidbits about him from SQPN, too.

One of his frequent prayers: "Give me the grace to long for Your holy sacraments, and especially to rejoice in the presence of Your body, sweet Savior Christ, in the holy sacrament of the altar."

Here is a prayer to St. Thomas.

St. Thomas More, patron saint of adopted children, civil servants, court clerks, difficult marriages, large families, lawyers, politicians, politicos, statesmen, step-parents, and widowers ... pray for us!

Bishop: Quit with the stupid baby names, already!

Via CMR (one of my new favorite blogs, by the way):

An Italian bishop has called on parents to stop giving their children "ridiculous" names and revert to traditional Christian names instead.

Monsignor Bassano Staffieri, retired bishop of La Spezia in Liguria, said that of the 500 girls born in the city this year, "not one was registered or baptised with the name Maria". He added."A name is not just a sound, it has a profound meaning."

Mothers and fathers "should return to using a name like Maria, which is inspired by the Virgin Mary", instead of opting for "exotic or strange names of which their children will later be ashamed", the bishop said. There were signs that parents were reverting to traditional names for boys, "but this is still not the case with baby girls, alas". (underlining mine)

He said the reason was not so much that Italian families were abandoning the Catholic faith but rather that they did not give enough thought to baptismal names. "The problem is they do not think about what they are doing".

Here's a good litmus test if you have doubts about the name you are considering: when you tell your friends what you are thinking of naming your child, do they ask in return, "What saint is that?"

If they have to ask, keep trying.

Unless, of course, you chose "Columkille."

Favorite Catholic Quotations

Eric Pavlet at Inside Catholic found some great ones:

• Bd. Teresa of Calcutta: "God does not ask us to be successful; he asks us to be faithful."
• St. Catherine of Siena: "If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire."
• St. Augustine: "If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself."
• Also St. Augustine: "Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.
• And yet again St. Augustine: "Our souls are restless, O Lord, until they rest in You."
  St. Thomas Aquinas: "Contemplate and give to others the fruit of your contemplation."

Others?

Find information on every Saint and Blessed in one place!

A friend of mine was closely involved with this project. From the press release:

For the first time ever, the Vatican’s official list of saints is available online. eCatholicHub.net has created a searchable database of saints and blesseds based on the Roman Martyrology, the Vatican’s saint list. The database comprises 6,882 entries of men and women recognized for their sanctity by the Catholic Church.

While several saint databases are available online, none have the authoritative scope of the Roman Martyrology like the eCatholicHub database. The eCatholicHub database does not leave out any saint or blessed, making it the most comprehensive source for saint information on the Internet.

Mark Giszczak, a graduate student at Catholic University of America, teamed up with Jim Zapapas, a Denver database programmer, to create the database.

Check it out: http://www.ecatholichub.net/study/saints

They also have an extremely powerful way of searching the database, which is useful.

Here is a sample saint profile.

Pope Benedict on the Holy Angels

From today's Vatican bulletino:

"Recalling that today marks the Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, the Holy Father said: "let us trustingly invoke their help, and the protection of the Guardian Angels, whose feast we will celebrate in a few day's time, on 2 October".

"The invisible presence of these blessed spirits", he said, "brings us great help and consolation: they walk at our side and protect us in all circumstances, they defend us from danger, and to them we can turn at any moment. Many saints established bonds of real friendship with the angels, and numerous episodes testify to their assistance on particular occasions. Angels are sent by God 'to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation' as the Letter to the Hebrews says, hence they are a real help to us on the pilgrimage towards the heavenly homeland".

Photo credit: "Archangel Michael conquering the Devil"