Theology of the Body: New Year's Revisions at Theology of the Body...

To celebrate the new year, some changes...

First: I've cleaned up and reorganized our side bar! This was a long time coming. I use our sidebar almost daily as a quick point of access to some good online resources, so I've done my best to provide well-organized links that will be useful to our little cache of excellent readers. I've omitted inactive blogs and re-organized our Apologetics section, which I refer to often; and I've added a few good blogs that I've recently discovered. Check them out! Some of my personal favorites include Take Your Stand, "Living as a Lay Apostle in the New Millenium;" Adversaria, an insightful UK Anglican blog; Fides Quaerens Intellectum, "a handful of philosophy PhD students reflect on philosophy, religion, and other stuff;" Mockingbird documents the Manhattan outreach of Dave and Cate Zahl; Intellectuelle is for "Thinking Christian Women;" Church Ladies is a place for "the Pious Sodality of Church Ladies, to exchange such pieces of feminine genius as are useful to their craft;" and, just for fun: Overheard at YDS.

The blogs that get a permalink here either consistently witness to the best of the Church's mind and practices, or provide an excellent look at the considerations of those who (like all of us) are continually seeking understanding with their faith, and doing it really well. Then, there are a few blogs which merely provide some very useful tools for the building up of the Church's families; or, there are those which support the Church's gifts to the secular world by the promotion of the culture of life.

Secondly: I've put together a new section for "Sermon Aids and Resources" in the top section of our sidebar. This idea was inspired by my clergy friends who frequently have to scramble to get a sermon together for Sunday services while at the same time balancing many other duties. Googling "homily help" provides a rather random assortment of links, so I have done a little research and pooled some sound online resources for sermon writing to be available here. I hope that you all will approve. All the best to our wonderful pastors who read and comment here.

Some Sermon Aids and Resources

Catachetics Online

The Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City: Homily Help

Medieval Sourcebook: The Golden Legend Online, Etc. Lives of the Saints, medieval references, and other resources.

Prepare the Word Each week, Prepare the Word provides tools to prepare effective, powerful homilies—the kind that touch people’s minds and hearts and nurture their faith: insightful, succinct homily reflections for each weekday of the year; sample homilies for special occasions; useful information on feast days and other important church celebrations. (Subscription required)

St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology Resource Center The St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology is a research and educational institute that promotes life-transforming Scripture study in the Catholic tradition. The Center serves clergy and laity, students and scholars, with research and study tools — from books and publications to multimedia and on-line programming.Our goal is to be a teacher of teachers. We want to raise up a new generation of priests who are fluent in the Bible and lay people who are biblically literate.

The WorkingPreacher Web A ministry of the Center for Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary: inspiring better preaching by offering timely, compelling and trustworthy content for today’s working preachers. The inspiring and educational content is deeply grounded theologically and biblically, to inspire more faithful and creative proclamation of the Word.

Finally, for a little ecclesiology. I've changed the sub heading in our title: as you can see, this blog is now to be known as a place for "young catholics and friends," period. This reflects the fact that in our world, there are those who identify with the Church Catholic with varying degrees of integrity, and those who do not, for their own reasons. I want this blog to bear witness to the fact that the Body of Christ is not a network of means or ways, much less a "tree" with "branches," but truly one Body, called into visible being by the will and body of her Lord, Jesus Christ. Whether we will be found within or without that Body is a matter of conformity and profound hope, not of verbal machinations or tricky self-identifications. As the author of Revelation puts it, the Spirit and the Bride say, with great simplicity, "come."

Happy new year to you all!