Catholic

I was recently inspired by Jeffrey Miller's embeddable Advent Wreath widget to try my hand at illustrating and animating an advent wreath in HTML5 with the <canvas> element or by animating an SVG.

My heart was in it for a while, but I ultimately gave up on the project due to the fact that I had already spent a couple hours on it and wasn't happy with my progress...

However, I did end up with a fairly good illustrator/vector wreath and candles (I spent a bit of time trying to get the flames looking just right), and also created a brush to create the actual wreath, making it look somewhat like an evergreen wreath.

I could spend a bit more time making things look a little nicer (everything's relatively flat right now), but I thought I'd just release this artwork for anyone to use and improve. I just ask that if you make something awesome with it, you let me know how you did it and give a link to an example :)

You can download the brush and the wreath graphic using the links at the bottom of this post.

Advent Wreath by Jeff Geerling is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.lifeisaprayer.com.

As we approach Christmas, I tried to think of a few gifts that others like me (namely, Catholic web developers and online content producers) could use to help them become more effective in their work.

I came up with a list of items ranging from the Catholic Catechism (I'm surprised by how many of my Catholic friends don't have a copy yet) to the Glif—a tiny but great tripod mount and stand for the iPhone 4/4S—and posted them on Open Source Catholic: The Catholic Developer and Blogger Christmas Wish List 2011.

Since a few people insist on buying gifts for Christmas, I always like to think of gift ideas that would be truly appreciated and useful, rather than simply things I or others like myself would want only for fun. Hopefully this list gives you a little inspiration!

Just wanted to announce here the immediate availability of the Android version of the Catholic News Live Mobile App. You can buy the app for your Android-powered device on the Android Market: Catholic News Live.

The Android version joins the iOS version that's been out for about a year now, as well as the website, all three in combination allowing you to follow the latest Catholic News wherever you are, on whatever platform you use! Read more about the Catholic News Live mobile app »

Here are a few screenshots from the app on an Android phone:

I'll probably write more about Android development over on my Midwestern Mac, LLC blog in the coming weeks, but don't expect much right now—I'm quite busy with flockNote and some other projects :)

I recently read a blog post titled 'Freedom from Choice' from the Red Sweater Blog (a blog by Daniel Jalkut, a Mac programmer) with great interest, considering the subject matter (Steve Jobs, computing, and free/open source software). In the post, Daniel speaks about how Steve Jobs' decisions to restrict certain 'freedoms' on the iOS and Mac platforms has helped Macs, iPhones, and iPads become more focused and consumer-friendly devices.

The reason for this is that the user no longer has to worry about making a thousand decisions to accomplish a simple task.

Daniel said that Richard Stallman, a staunch 'everything must be free' software programer, "paints Jobs as a robber of freedoms, first and foremost, while neglecting to acknowledge the many liberties he brought, for example to those of us who can’t, or don’t want to build our own computing infrastructures."

This is readily apparent and admitted by those in the computing world who realize that giving people a command line/terminal and telling them to go to town is a very bad idea. Most people I know would (and do) quickly ruin their computers because of the level of control they have over them. How many people do you know have laptops that are always locking up, shutting down, or messing up due to software people installed on them, additions people made, or simply the little things people have done to their computers for the sake of making them 'their own'. (It's the same with many Android phones, in my experience...).

Is it not the same in our personal lives, in the realm of morals and faith? Everyone subscribes to some moral system or faith/religion (whether it's formalized or not), and some people (like me) choose to belong to a faith (Catholicism) which helps us make the decisions that will help us be better humans, free of the 'malware' and ailments that eat at our souls and self-images.

A lot of people don't believe this, but take the example of abortion: With the option of abortion on demand, women in desperate situations seem to have two options:

1. Have an abortion to solve the problem of an unwanted pregnancy.
2. Struggle through a nine-month, inconvenient pregnancy, and either give the baby up for adoption or struggle through raising a child, and generally live a more difficult life*.

Many people would choose number 1... it gets rid of the problem, right? However, if you're Catholic, and you realize that there is no option 1 (the ends don't justify the means), you begin to open your eyes to the additional possiblities that result from choosing life:

• You could learn to make ends meet, and become a better person by dealing with the situation and raising a child as well as you can.
• You could give a great gift to a family hoping and praying for a child by offering your baby for adoption.
• You could learn about the miracle of life developing inside the womb, and cherish that life, and increase the amount of love in your world by sharing yourself with the new life through love and nurturing.

Often, restricting your 'choices' leads to new and unforseen freedoms; on my iPad, I'm free to spend more time reading articles and news, and interacting with people, since I can't give into the temptation of constantly configuring inane system settings or managing 25 open applications like I do on my Mac. In my life, I can spend more time loving my wife and building our relationship (instead of harboring bad feelings or feeling remorse), even when it's tough to do so, because I know that divorce is not a choice.

When you give up the idea of freedom to do any possible thing, you free yourself to make easier—and better—choices.

*To every man in the world: if you're going to have a sexual relationship with a woman, deal with the consequences like a man. It's your duty to love and nurture that child, not to abandon the mother and child. Real men don't ignore the consequences of their actions. (This, ironically, is another reason why the Church wants people to wait until marriage to have a sexual relationship... it helps keep people honest, at a minimum!).

Hat tip to The Forum, for the following from Arizona [Catholic Sun]:

Plans are underway in the Diocese of Phoenix to implement new local norms for the distribution of Holy Communion that will bring the local Church in line with universal Church guidelines.

As a result, the Precious Blood will not be offered at every Sunday Mass, but instead be reserved for special occasions, left to the determination of each parish pastor.

The change will bring local Catholic celebration of the Eucharist into union with the practice of the faithful around the world. Receiving Communion under both kinds is uncommon in most countries.

"What many people don't realize is that we've had experimental privileges," said Fr. Kieran Kleczewski, executive director of the Office of Worship. "We're now under the same norms as the Church in the rest of the world."

While I know many people who will be disgusted to read this, and tell me that Phoenix is backwards, and is not living in the reality of the day... I have to say that I am excited to read this news.

I grew up knowing only the modern Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, and did not know anything else until I joined the Seminary (one of my favorite liturgical hymns at that time was City of God). The Extraordinary Form of the Mass, as well as the Ordinary Form celebrated in Latin (or simply by-the-book in English), appealed very much to me (and to many of my peers) not only because it was different than the standard Mass, but because it was more focused and a more direct form of worship.

Things like everyone greeting each other before Mass begins, singing the same 70's liturgical tunes day in and day out (catchy, yes, but God-focused?), and watching priests let the laity perform almost all their jobs (what else is a priest to do, if not celebrate and offer the Sacraments?) are detrimental to my ability to worship the Lord through the Sacraments... and I'll be happy to see the day when liturgy is again universal and, well, Catholic, in every parish I visit.

That we in the United States do strange things like receive the Lord in the hand, have armies of Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist at almost every Mass, and consider youth worship to essentially involve drums and multi-thousand dollar sound systems is a sign that we have lost touch with the universal Church. None of these things are essential to the liturgy, and in fact, if one were to explore the world outside the U.S. and pockets of Europe and other first-world countries, one would discover that, no, these practices are neither universal nor practical (nor, in most cases, fitting).

Liturgy is about worship—of God—and it was made for the sole purpose of man uniting himself to God. Catholic liturgy is facilitated by a priest—a minister ordained to primarily bring God to man. Why do we feel the need to change things? We must stop holding on to so many 'innovations' of the Catholic Church in the U.S. since (and before) Vatican II, and refocus on the fundamentals.

It's my great hope that this Advent's coming revised translation of the Roman Missal will bring about a deeper look in the Catholic Church in the U.S. into what makes liturgy truly effective and meaningful.