CatholicVoteAction.org

Congrats to Herbert M. for taking this photo of our Earth Day bus ad in San Francisco. We’ve got a CatholicVote.org coffee mug heading your way, Herbert!

If you’re the first to send in a photo of the ad from Seattle or Los Angeles, we’ll get a mug sent over to you, too. Email the picture to photo@catholicvote.org.

Kara Mone, our Membership Director, snapped this photo of a moving bus just blocks away from our CatholicVote offices here in Chicago.

But since she’s an employee, she’s not eligible for the prize. First person from each city to take a photo of the ad on a bus and send to photo@catholicvote.org gets a free CatholicVote.org coffee mug!

Folks in Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco — have your camera phones ready! Just be careful: No texting or photographing while driving.

Our latest press release:

CHICAGO – CatholicVote.org says it’s time to use Earth Day to celebrate nature’s greatest gift – human life.

With bus ads starting today in Chicago and next week in San Francisco and Seattle, CatholicVote.org is encouraging Americans to rethink how they celebrate Earth Day, and how we to go about building a culture that respects the environment.

“Our goal is to use Earth Day to get Americans to think more deeply about what it means to truly respect the Earth and creation. Prevailing environmental attitudes too often view humans as the enemy of nature. We believe the human person is God’s greatest creation, and the Earth’s greatest resource. Building up a culture of life is the single most important way to build a culture that respects the environment,” said Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote.org Education Fund.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thomas posted earlier in the week about the efforts of some dioceses on the west coast to promote a carbon fast during Lent. He wrote criticizing it.

And regardless of the science of climate change, the idea that Catholic should be more focused on supporting politicized green campaigns instead of focusing on the personal effects of sin is … deeply misguided as well.

This post by “Master Peters” provoked an angry response from Tony A. at Vox Nova of which this is a taste

A second point: when Peters lectures the bishops on sin, he seems unaware that something could be morally amiss with American over-consumption and the consumerist culture, even apart from carbon emissions.

I’m not particularly interested in the rest of the posts, which argue about whether or not man has caused global warming and the current state of science on the subject. I think those kinds of arguments miss the point. Read the rest of this entry »

A topical story from Yahoo Sports:

Twelve years ago at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, a 17-year-old speedskating prodigy named Kirstin Holum was tapped for future greatness.

When Holum placed sixth in the 3,000 meters – one of the most grueling disciplines in the women’s program, a lung-scraping four-minute bust of lactic acid torture – speedskating insiders predicted a golden future and speculated she may not even reach her peak for another decade.

Flash forward to the present day:

There is no television and no internet at St. Joseph’s Convent in Leeds, England, meaning Holum won’t get to watch the Winter Olympics where she was supposed to become a star.

The peaceful surrounds of the convent is where Holum, now known as Sister Catherine, devotes her life to religious service as a Franciscan nun. That calling had begun on a trip to Our Lady of Fatima, a holy site in Portugal famed for a series of religious visions that appeared nearly a century ago. It was outside the Fatima basilica where Holum decided that a path of religious dedication, not frozen skating lanes, would be her destiny.

The rest of the story here.

I think this is completely overblown: