Hi everyone!
I hope all of who are working on your submissions for “Praising Him Loudly: Volume 4″ are experiencing a lot of success with your recording! I recently had an email from a band who is recording two songs and they had a question about guitar tracks. They had many tracks recorded and were trying to mix the guitar tracks without it sounding “cluttered” or “muddy.” The word I had for them is to concentrate on fewer guitar tracks – simplify, simplify, simplify! By the end of the day, less tracks were the solution and the mix started to sound so much better and punchier. The whole concept of simplification was also the word of the day with Michael Voris of Churchmilitant.tv and Tim Haines of Vericast. Both were in Toronto yesterday, and my sons (Franklin and William) and I had the priviedge of hearing both of them speak at the Future of Catholicism conference.
Please keep in mind, that I find both of these men totally inspirational and that my summary catches only about 1% of the intelligence, authenticity and the truly spirit-filled passion that both of them revealed yesterday. I also hope that my summary/review is fairly accurate – please let me know if you think I have made a mistake or have left something important out of this post.
Voris and Haines both touched on topics that were important to the New Evangelization. Voris was up first and he stated that there seems to be a lot of negative talk about Vatican II – but there was a crisis in our Church that was detected 100 years or so before Vatican II. Personally, I can’t believe the amount of criticism there has been about Vatican II and to hear that there were problems before it was good to know – especially since great Church figures like John Henry Newman detected this back in 1801. Yet “normal” Catholics backed by good priests and bishops can bring about God’s work through evangelization. This might seem like an obvious statement, but with all the criticism of our Pope and the bishops at the Synod – this “obvious” statement carries a lot of positive weight. We do live in interesting times – we have an opportunity in a culture that despises us and we can stand up for the Truth of the Holy Catholic Church. Voris went on to say that this battle is not a romantic battle but a lonely one; faith is always a fight when faced with the oppostion we see in today’s society. Voris then went on to mention that the Church seems to be on Her sickbed. But what should we do? We don’t find another mother – our Holy Mother Church needs our loyalty! This does involve some personal costs. For example, we the members of the laity need to love out Church but if someone is making fun of Her or our priests – we should “man up” and defend Her! We should use our gifts of the Holy Spirit that we received through our Baptism and Confirmation and stay firm in our faith. We need to shake off the whole “Church of Nice” concept and speak up; we owe it to Christ who gave it all on the cross. Voris then went on to give examples from Paul’s letter to the Galatians where Paul had to speak frankly about those who were trying to undo his work.
Why this call to action? What is at stake here? Quite simply, our eternal lives are at stake. WE need to free ourselves about the worry of what others will think of us in order to care about our souls, our family’s souls and the souls of those around us. We are also commanded to tell the Truth. But, as almost everyone knows – in order to tell the Truth – we must prepare for the cross that comes with it. WE need to ask ourselves a very simple question – Did I do something good/great for God? – not to make us famous – but to give everything we can for God – love Him with our whole mind/heart/sould/strength. And a big question for those of us who are parents – did we pass this on to our children somehow?
We have the tools to do all of this. The problem is to simplify our lives and come back/rediscover/bolster our own faith. WE can do this by trying to stand up and speak the Truth, pray for grace to be a good/better witness for the Church and we need to understand what is at stake here in terms of souls. Radical transformation in how we live our faith is important in these radical times. Voris echoed what I have heard some of the other speakers say (for example, Matthew Kelley – the author of “The Four Signs of Dynamic Catholics”) which is an authentic need to know what the Church teaches and what it does (e.g. by reading the encyclicals, the lives of the saints) – in other words, doing some research. If we can take even 10 minutes a week to make reading/research part of our daily lives we can be a better instrument of grace for others.
With that being said, Mr. Voris left the stage. Tomorrow night I will continue this post with Tim Haines’ first talk of the day in summary.
Oh, by the way – in the picture of Michael Voris with my son William, myself and Franklin – we did get him to say “Metal!” when the picture was taken! Awesome!!
Good luck with your song submission prep work – if you can drop me a note to let me know how it is going! And yes Craig, I still have your songs…LOL!! Please also let me know about the summary on Michael Voris’ first talk – feedback (negative/positive) would be greatly appreciated!!
Yours In Christ!
dave
PRAY THE ROSARY EVERY DAY!!
Please feel free to check out Michael Voris on his website churchmilitant.tv and Tim Haines at http://www.vericast.net – please consider supporting Catholic media by watching these sites, praying for their mission and donating to them if you can. – df
