This blog has a tell.

A tell in poker is a subtle but detectable change in a player’s behavior or demeanor that gives clues to that player’s assessment of his hand.

Every now and then I’ll review the whole page of the most recent ten postings on the blog.  When half or more of the postings has embedded video in it, it is usually an indicator that I have not developed a fair amount of advance content in the queue. 

Yep… still is!

As we conclude this week-long celebration of Valentine’s Day, don’t think that I forgot to send out a Catholic Youth Ministry Valentine to one very important person….

You!

I mean, sure… I ♥ ArchBalt, I ♥ Diocesan Leaders,
I ♥ the Pope, I ♥ Bob Rice, and I ♥ Team, but you didn’t think that I forgot you, did ‘ya?

So, here’s the deal… because you minister within our catholic church working with the diocese and it’s leadership and within the universal church and our Holy Father, because you are trying to share the Good News not on your own but with a team…  Well, how can I resist???

I ♥ ‘ya, too!

It has been a snow-bound week and the office has been closed all week.  While I have been celebrating, over on facebook, the joys of solitary shoveling… and while my introvert has appreciated the quiet…  I really have missed the team.

Yea, “team.”  I work and minister with beautiful, feisty, talented, passionate women who are gifts to our local and national experience of church as well as to my own life.  In our time of transition, we have grown together as a team through many, many shared projects and countless hallway conference meetings. 

Youth ministry is supposed to be a team effort. Church is supposed to be a team effort. (Why do you think Jesus recruited twelve?)  Well, throughout this week-long celebration of Valentine’s Day, I would be terribly remiss if I was not offering up a Catholic Youth Ministry Valentines to our team.

(And who is not pictured are Ann Marie and Susan, our administrative staff who constantly amaze in their ability to keep us all straight while learning new skills to serve the filed. Yeah, yeah, I daily live out the Hail Mary as “Blessed am I among women.”)

Catholic Youth Ministry Valentine Day 4:

This is going to embarrass him as he has students that monitor the blog, but I love the way Bob Rice teaches Scripture. What he does so well is mix the human and the divine. 

Beyond speaking, Bob has been writing a lot as well (Does Franciscan have a publish or perish stipulation?)  You can sample Bob’s writing via his blog and bibliography.

So, This is a delayed post as I have been trying to do a soapbox slideshare related to the pope’s encouragement to priests (and therefore, all of us) to use modern technology to communicate about faith (even if that means stuff like blogging.)

But, slideshare wasn’t really working for me in the past snow-bound days, and I tripped across video. (h/t to American Papist, Thomas Peters) This is a scene from a German movie about Hitler has been re-dubbed countless times for comedy’s sake.

While the video’s message does get ever so slightly jingoistic in a time and on a site where we have been encouraging spiritual bipartisanship, one does have to appreciate the humor found in that Pope Benedict has defied expectations.

You gotta love the Pope. I know I do.

He is a fascinating source of quotes – that really speak to the heart of the faithful.  He writes and speaks of complex thoughts in a simple manner.

Ultimately, one can see that he would have happily had chosen the life of a university professor. Teach on, your Holiness!

We are gonna be celebrating Valentine’s Day all week, offering up Catholic Youth Ministry Valentines out to a few folks.

First up is the Archdiocese of Baltimore.  It is more than work or ministry… it’s home and, yet, it’s more than that… it’s family.  We gather for our annual reunion at the pilgrimage, we are honored to share time with one another at our youth contact meetings or events such as NCYC.  We are blessed with wonderful talented people in our offices, parishes, and schools.  We often claimed that the ArchBalt is the “Premier See,” but seriously we daily work hard to earn that claim.

HAITI:
Please continue to check our Haiti post which will be continually updated with additional news and resources. Keep Haiti in your prayers.

MARCH 31st:
Learn why the last day of March is a very important day in Catholic Youth Ministry here.

All right, everybody, back to it!

The break in the schedule, no matter if it was actual holiday/vacation for you or a series of programs, liturgies, parties at which you had to be present. . .  Well, that’s all over… (despite that, liturgically, we remain in the Christmas season.)

And, the Catholic Youth Ministry blog (est. August 2004) has also officially returned for another round. (Actually, we snuck back in on New Year’s Eve, what can I say… I missed ‘ya.)

Resolutions for the new year? A few.  We are gonna try to continue to ride the Caffeine second feature (which at 60 posts deep is worth the review we will have this week) for as long as we can. Sundays we will continue the lectionary based mash-up prayers that we started in Advent. Something from the Catholic Youth Ministry News world will be found on Tuesdays. Wednesdays always had a little something that was training-friendly, we are going to start the year trying something a little more different.  Come back in two days to check that out. Saturdays will still aim to be a little something something on the funsies side of things.

My best blog-related resolution… to keep stocking up some posts. placing them in the queue ahead of time.  When that happens, it allows for some more personal postings and “breaking news” items, without the pressure to feed the daily beast.

It’s a new decade and a new year and a new month and, a.n.d., a.n.d. a new day, a new dawn. You know how I feel. . Let’s get to it. folks!

After having learned how to replace the banner atop the site, I promptly lost the connection.  Christmas break allowed for some serious deciphering and last night, I broke the logjam.  With the new year, we have a new banner and the promise of frequent updating of the same

I found the image for the new banner from Thomas Peter’s American Papist site and he credits Reuters as the source.  Peters suggests that the unknown cardinal is texting… maybe.

It’s a different church, ain’t it?

In a typical year end function of most publications, we will be running a series on the “Top Posts of 2009.” (Review the whole top ten list here.) 

The # 1 posting of the year was published on April 1st. (Pay attention to that date… It plays into the story. There will follow-up postings acknowledging it was all an April Fools, looking at the comments that the video received, and the out-takes of the original video.

The Catholic YM Blog is No More

Please review the video clip for all the details as to why we are discontinuing the Catholic Youth Ministry blog as of today. 

We hinted at this yesterday on the blog as well as Monday and Sunday so everyday readers should have had a hint something like this might occur.

Please keep our entire blog staff in your thoughts and prayers.  We have suggested that they all try out for their homeland’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire over there in India in hopes that they will find love and/or make a fortune in rupees.

Condolences can be submitted through the comments link in the lower right section of this post.

Thank you for your viewership.

Goodbye, Farewell, Amen.