The Canon: The Canon's 2014 Catholic Hipster Checklist

The Canon: The Canon's 2014 Catholic Hipster Checklist: So, you want to be a Catholic Hipster but don't know where to get started?  Our 2014 Catholic Hipster Checklist is here to help! ...

The Burning Babe

The Burning Babe

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, though scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,
As though his floods should quench his flames, which with his tears were fed.
"Alas," quoth he, "but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts, or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood."
With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas Day.

Robert Southwell (1561-95)

Loving the Stanek Report

From over at the Margaret Sanger blog a great piece on the valuable niche the Stanek Report now fills:   

If You Like Drudge, You Will Love the Stanek Report

A powerful pro-life internet presence has evolved over the years in response to the repulsive pro-abortion news coverage we have come to expect from the left-wing, mainstream media.

As we outline below, there are countless great pro-life blogs, pro-life news sites, pro-life organization websites, and pro-life activist sites out there. But now we have The Stanek Report.  The Stanek Report  serves as an invaluable, prolife news aggregation website pulling many of these resources together on one user friendly news site.  If you like the Drudge Report, you will love  The Stanek Report.

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Earlier this year, we highlighted many of the great pro-life sites out there:

There are some great prolife websites and we visit many of them daily and link to a lot of the top ones.  Of course, Life News, Foundation Life Pro-life News, ProLife Unity News and LifeSiteNews are must reads every day;  our tremendous national organizations all have very helpful websites, Priests for Life, Human Life International, American Life League, National Right to Life, Sisters of Life, the tremendously effective Life Dynamics, Operation Rescue, our personal favorite Forty Days for Life, and of course Lila Rose and her wonderful organization Live Action. 

The Margaret Sanger Blog always relies on  Klanned Parenthood, TooManyAborted, Black Genocide,  and Abort73 which are great.  Students for Life is an invaluable site.  We love Life Decisions International and its effort to defund the bloodthirsty haters at  Planned Parenthood - same with STOPP Planned Parenthood. The quite useful, yet underrated site at ProLifeAmerica, is a favorite.  The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform is a definite life-saver.

A few more must visits are Maafa 21, 180 Movie, and The Culture of Life Review.   Unique and innovative efforts are also our favorites, so we are big fans of Save the Storks.  You will also want to keep an eye on Grace Daigler, a forward thinking Franciscan University student, and her new effort Equipped to Engage.  Online for Life is another brilliant new effort.  Heartbeat International is also doing some good work.  On the local level, there are great organizations across the country, way too many to mention, but a special shout out this year goes to the gutsy folks at Cleveland Right to Life.  

We also find it useful to check the pro-life articles on the conservative activist site FreeRepublic.com on a daily basis.  We also follow pro-life articles at the Federalist.com and RightlyWired.com.  

Countless men and women are clearly doing heroic work and we are surely missing a bunch of sites worthy of mention.  And that is why we can not even begin to list all the great bloggers who each and every day make the case for life and bring to light profound and meaningful pro-life stories.  With so many valuable and informative blogs having one central prolife blog that pulls them all-together is extremely useful -that blog is Pro-Life Blogs. 

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We also highlighted not long ago some of the great up-and-coming blogs:

Top 10 up-and-coming ProLife Blogs

It is always heartening to see the vast number of voices speaking up for the innocent and voiceless unborn.

We never cease to be amazed by the vast array of profile ministries in this country.  One excellent gauge for the passion of our cause is simply the number of websites and blogs out there selflessly trying to win hearts and minds to the pro-life cause.

We could make a list a mile long of all the pro-life sites out there, but today we just thought we would highlight some of the great up-and-coming blogs and organizations.   We still love and read Jill Stanek daily, but here are some other blogs to keep an eye on and bookmark.

10.  Generations for Life is the Pro-Life Action League‘s outreach to the new pro-life generation.Generations for Life empowers teens to be effective pro-life leaders by inspiring and helping them to establish lively pro-life clubs within their own high school communities and youth groups.
The Generations for Life Blog is great.  We love the Prayer Challenge and video recently posted and organized by high schoolers. 

9.  Save the Storks  Want to be inspired?  This group is doing something fresh, innovative and extremely valuable every day...follow this blog and you will be filled with hope.  The pro-life cause certainly has genius on its side!

8.  The Quick and the Dead: Planned Parenthood's Brazen Legacy of Debauchery, Defilement, and Death is an always informative blog that has been a round for a while.  But it really caught our attention again recently with the news that George Grant was re-releasing his epic Margaret Sanger biography, Killer Angel.

7.  The Prolife Youth Blog  is another marvelous, youth led blog that just fills one with hope when one reads it.  With bright minds like this on our side, one can imagine a day when abortion will become unthinkable.

6.  Rightly Wired  is more of a Libertarian leaning Conservative news site, than a pro-life blog, but it consistently has very high quality, right to life articles.  Youthful and inspired, if it is not yet on your radar, we encourage you to link to Rightly Wired , check it daily, and enjoy...you can thank us later.

5. Students for Life  is the best.  We can never find enough good things to say about Students for Life. Would have been number one, but it's not really up-and-coming.  It's already there.  The Students for Life site is great, the organization is even better, and the work they do is invaluable.  God bless Students for Life.

4. LiveActionNews is another group that has accomplished so much and that is so valuable to the pro-life movement that it doesn't really belong in the up-and-coming category.  But it is a site we visit daily, and even though Lila Rose already seems like she belongs in the ProLife Hall of Fame, she is only 26!  If we were unborn, we would want these guys on our side. 

3. WhyIamProLife.org is written by the young members of he Society for the Protection of Unborn Children a UK organization.  It is great to see that the hope, ingenuity and energy we are increasingly seeing is not just a US phenomenon.
2.  Equipped to Engage is an effort by students to help train other students to become leaders in the pro-life cause.  This is a very important effort with an incredible amount of promise.  

1. 40 Days for Life is certainly one of the most important efforts to come along.  A powerful, prayerful effort that has won hearts and minds daily, and closed abortion clinics weekly - it is an answer to all of our prayers.  Reading updates on 40 Days for Life fills us all with Hope!

That's our list.  Sure it's not perfect, and some of these sites aren't even blogs, and some of them aren't up-and-coming they are already there!  But who cares.  We just hope you check out some of these sites and get involved however you can. 

And if that's not enough pro-life blogs for you, be sure to check out Pro-LifeBlogs.com for an exhaustive list of the all pro-life blogs you will ever need to read.

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And now there is  The Stanek Report  .  If you haven't already, go check it out!

An update on traditional monks at the Silverstream Priory from Catholic Ireland.

Fundraising deadline looms for Silverstream priory

By Sarah Mac Donald - 21 December, 2014

Ireland’s newest monastery - the Benedictine monks of Silverstream Priory in Co Meath - need €150,000.

Benedictine monks of Silverstream priory (l to r) Dom Elijah, Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, Dom Finian and Dom Benedict Andersen.

The fundraising deadline for Ireland’s newest monastery is just four days away and the Benedictine monks of Silverstream Priory still need €150,000.

The community of five was founded from its parent community in the diocese of Tulsa in Oklahoma in the US and ended up coming to Ireland when the house the community was renting in Tulsa became too small.

Prior, Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, explained that they need to purchase the Victorian-era monastery to make their future secure and to do major work to stem its descent into further decay.

Silverstream Priory was built around 1845 on 15 acres of countryside near Stamullen.

It had been owned by the Visitation Order of nuns from 1955. They moved out four years ago when their members needed nursing home care and they sought to sell the property to raises these funds.

The price tag for the property was €750,000 including a chapel that is crumbling and in bad need of repair.

The Benedictine monks intend to offer retreats to priests and religious and self-fund itself but it can’t do that until this financial hurdle is overcome.

“For a monastery to really flourish, there has to be that security that we can say this is home,” Dom Mark Daniel Kirby said and he explained, “We don’t own anything personally but the monastery has to be rooted in a place.”

He said the way of life they were living as Benedictines was the same since the 6th century and that as Ireland had once been covered with monasteries, they were trying to keep that memory alive.

“We are here to stay – we are planted here and we’ve already put down roots. I believe that God called us to Silverstream and that this is where we are supposed to be.”

“The Second Vatican Council taught that a local church is incomplete until it has a contemplative monastery. So it is important that we remain and that we continue to flourish because we are getting vocations and there are more on the way. But we must secure the monastery first,” he said.

Speaking at the Stamullen priory, 34-year-old Dom Benedict Andersen told CatholicIreland.net, “Our monastery began in Tulsa in 2007. We were founded by the Bishop of Tulsa, Edward Slattery and we took root there.”

“I joined the monastery when we were in Tulsa and we were in a rented house in Tulsa – sort of looking for a property to move on to so that we could grow. We couldn’t really find anything adequate in Tulsa so we asked the bishop would he allow us to look outside the diocese. He said where are you thinking of, and we said maybe Ireland, and he said well if it is Ireland that is ok.”

“We came into contact with Fr John Hogan who is the parish priest of Rathkenny in the diocese of Meath. He said that there was a monastery in Stamullen of the Visitation nuns and they are thinking of leaving. So we got in contact with the bishop of Meath and he said you are very welcome to come here.”

Silverstream Priory is currently the only contemplative monastery in the diocese of Meath. Though it has been in Ireland less than four years and is already attracting new candidates.

One of these is novice Dom Finian who is from just outside Navan.

The 34-year-old was prior to joining the monastery an instrumentation technician who worked in calibrating scientific instruments such as gas turbines.

He was living in Bedford in the UK before he embarked on his vocational journey.

“It was something I was thinking about for years. For myself, it was a matter of coming to the monastery and not just staying for a day or a week but over the course of time when you live this life you begin to see the wisdom and the life in action… it is something you have to try to see.”

The novice said his family would “always have been supportive of anything I tried to do” and that they “always knew that vocation was a possible life decision for me”.

For the youngest member of the community, 27-year-old Bro Elijah, his family were not supportive.

“My family is not catholic, they are Lutherans. I became a catholic in high school and it was early college when I made the decision to join a seminary.” It was a source of rupture and even to this day a source of grief.

However, he told CatholicIreland.net, “I am in regular conversation with my parents and my family; they know I love them and I know they love me but it is very difficult when a family isn’t on the same page.”

Dom Elijah like Dom Finian is a novice. He will make his vows next year. “I have taken no vows – I could walk out if I wanted to and if something went wrong I could be dismissed. Right now everything is going well and I’m happy and planning to stay.”

The Tulsa native originally became a seminarian for his home diocese but thanks to the amount of time he spent “going back and forth” between the monastery in Tulsa and the university he “became part of the furniture” and was drawn to contemplative cloistered monastic life.

The Benedictine monks of Silverstream live their vocation under the Patronage of Our Lady of the Cenacle and have a special dedication to the sacred liturgy.

When Dom Benedict, who was a member of the Tulsa community, pronounced his vows last year, he was the first Benedictine monk to be professed in Meath since the dissolution of the Abbey of Fore by the commissioners of Henry VIII in 1539.

The monks have a number of young men both from Ireland and the US interested in joining the community but the monastery is badly in need of renovation in order to accommodate more men.

Dom Benedict was born into a Danish-Irish-American family which were culturally Catholic. “I came from an unchurched catholic background. I was baptised but I was never brought back to church. Through a lot of study and many trials and tribulations I came back to the catholic faith.”

For many years, he was a member of the Eastern Orthodox church. “I was an eastern orthodox seminarian and studied at the Russian orthodox seminary of St Vladimir’s in New York. Through the discovery of this monastery I came back to the faith of my baptism and just became enchanted with the Benedictine life – and that is how I came to join,” he explained.

See rest here: