Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Some Catholic in New Hampshire tidbits

I just wanted to post a couple of things that might be of interest to any Catholics living in New Hampshire; since I had to go looking for them, you might not know about them. If you do, well, thanks for adding to my meager hit counts anyway - your charity is not unnoticed.

First, the Diocese has put together a list of resources for Lent here. Included is a pointer to the Bishop's Lenten Message. I particularly liked this graph:

Lent is also an Equalizer. It reminds us that no matter our station or status in life, we are all the same, namely, the bearer of foibles and failings as well as gifts and virtues. Lent calls attention to our failings. Lent is an Equalizer. As we all are imperfect, none of us is exempt from choosing to improve our effort to be Christ like in our service of God and one another.
That is truly one of the great wonders (and indeed great difficulties for some) of the Church - being "the Church of here comes everybody" as is said and all receiving the same sacraments in the same way has, or at least should have, a great equalizing effect. When we realize we're not all that far from the executive in the pew next to us, just maybe we'll realize we're also not that far from the homeless person on the streets.

There is also a new feature from the Diocesan site - a periodic email newsletter filled with various resources. The current one is up at the link - I'd like to hope that most families will sign up so they can be sure to not be left out or caught by surprise by anything. The more ways we can get information to people the better!

Finally, via Corpus et Sanguis, (and yeah, I'm way late on this) there is an online petition to ask for the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite to be held in the Cathedral in Manchester. For many of us this would be significantly more accessible than trips to either Nashua or Portsmouth. I certainly expect, or at least I hope, that there are more than the current 39 of you out there who have signed the petition who would like to see this happen.