At World Youth Day

Ashley, Mollie, and Gary from SMU are at WYD SYD 2008 as we speak. Best wishes and Godspeed, folks! We look forward to reports when you get back.

(Anyone else from our Friends of Theology there? Let me know!)

Missing Saint Mary's this summer?

Here's a lovely picture of St. Yon's from Sharon, a visitor on campus for the regional Communion and Liberation spiritual exercises.

Our 2008 retrospective

And thanks to John Becker for permission to use the song!

There are also new pictures of all of us (and a lot of the campus) here.

"A Preferential Option for Youth"

Youth ministry folks--what do you think?
Find it over here at Topics of Note....

Want to have your "Catholic Faith" story on Public Radio?

Speaking of Faith is a very interesting and smart radio program on religious issues, put out by American Public Media (it feeds to National Public Radio). And they are asking right now for your thoughts on what it is like to be Catholic, in preparation for covering Pope Benedict's April visit to the USA. Please consider going here and putting in your two cents! Here's the pitch from the website:

Share your personal reflections on the Catholic Church

Pope Benedict XVI will be making his first papal visit to the U.S. in April, to help revitalize and strengthen the U.S. church. He will be stopping in Washington D.C. and New York City to offer mass at Nationals Park and Yankee Stadium, visit the White House, and address the United Nations.

We're using the occasion as an opportunity to start a broad-ranging conversation about the rich tradition of Roman Catholicism -- its history, trajectory, and the contemporary issues Catholics are wrestling with. Although we often hear news stories about the Catholic Church, diverse practitioners of the faith have had little voice in telling their stories.

If you are or were Catholic, we'd like to hear your perspectives on what anchors and unsettles you in this vast tradition. We're also interested in the hopes and concerns you have for the church, now and into the future.

Continuing the trend of our own being in the news...

I thought some of you might enjoy reading this article I found in The Catholic Spirit (the newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis) the other day. It's about eight camp counselors who all met at Catholic Youth Camp in McGregor, MN, paired off into couples, and eventually got married. The first couple mentioned is none other than Paul and Taryn Yantes, whom most of you probably remember; they graduated from SMU in 2006, got married in September of that year, and had a baby boy this past Christmas.

It's a cute article; enjoy!

http://thecatholicspirit.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=1476&SectionID=37&SubSectionID=&S=1

Viva Roma

Alright, this is my first attempt at blogging - but inspired by Dr. SWD, I thought I would offer a link to a blog that might be of interest.

As many of you know, Dr. Sobolewski and I are members of the University Council on Lasallian Mission and Formation. As members of the Council, we are going with the other university representatives to Rome this week. We are meeting at the Christian Brothers headquarters and will meet the Superior General, Br. Alvaro, and spend the week studying and praying about our Lasallian mission.

A blogspot (is that the right word, Dr. SWD?) has been created by one of our colleagues in the Twin Cities at: http://smucfm.blogspot.com/ Every day, someone from the group will post a report about the day and what we did. Check it out and see what we are up to!

Have a good break (oh, yea, who's going to check a blogspot during break??)! I miss you all this semester. S.J.

Save The Date: Commonweal Lecture

Saint Mary's University in Winona is hosting the Commonweal lecture on April 10, 2008. The speaker will be one of Commonweal's editors, Dennis O'Brien, a philosopher and president emeritus of Middlebury College in Vermont. His latest book is Finding the Voice of the Church by University of Notre Dame Press. The working title of his 7pm lecture is "Can The University Be Catholic?"

Student discussion session in the later afternoon as well, on why the popular atheists (think Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc....) get it wrong.

Put it on your calendar now!

Dr. Sobolewski and SMU's graduate theology program in the New York Times

Once again, I'm touting the accomplishments of my more humble colleagues.

A New Emphasis for Schools of Ministry: Management Skills

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — For the last four years, Wendy Samuels has worked in a remote village in Jamaica for Mustard Seed Communities, a Roman Catholic nonprofit group that helps disabled children.

The work is both rewarding and heartbreaking. But some of the most difficult moments came as she managed well-meaning staff members who did not always do their jobs properly.

“If someone is not performing their job, how do you deal with it when there is still so much to be done?” Ms. Samuels said. “I kept wondering, How do you manage persons in a third-world country who work for a charitable organization?”...

The full article is worth reading in whole and can be found here. (Dr. Sobolewski is on the second page.)

Catholics on Call conference, Summer 2008

Please see the the post here about the "Catholics on Call" conference in Chicago and consider applying! If you get accepted, it's free....

More Pictures of Theology Sites, Scenes, and Students at SMU

We have some more Theology pictures added to our Flickr site from Fall 2007 (click here for the mosaic above, and click here to see the whole set). I intended to get mostly outside pictures, which I did, but not that many--if you recall, it rained nearly all Fall.

The above picture is a fun mosaic of some of the pictures (mostly new but three from last academic year). Enjoy!

Art and Theology in the Winona Daily News

...via the work of our own Dr. Eileen Daily, who would never post this herself. Therefore, I will. She's behind getting art into the new Cathedral (it isn't in the Cathedral itself, but in the opening gathering space).

If you need to brush up on Bible stories, the walls of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart will help.

The Cathedral is exhibiting a show of 41 hand-sewn Panamanian molas depicting biblical scenes.

A mola is a panel of reversed appliqué that is worn on the front and back of the blouses of the women of the Kuna Indians of the San Blas Islands, off the eastern shore of Panama. The word means shirt or clothing in the Kuna’s native language. They don’t have to be religious in nature, although this collection is.

The exhibit, “Molas: From Eden to Eternity,” is the work of Christians in Visual Arts, an organization of artists, pastors and supporters of the arts who try to use the arts to teach about Christianity. The exhibit has traveled the country, including a stop at Yale.

Eileen Daily, a professor of theology at Saint Mary’s University, helped curate the show. Daily did her doctoral dissertation on using Christian art in religious education.

As someone who grew up in Panama, I was a little blown away when I saw this exhibit there a few days ago. I didn't know the Cathedral was showing this Panamanian art form, which is all over the place in Panama (or at least, they were where the Americans were, because we had the money to buy the pieces). I remember buying much smaller, simpler versions of these from the women who made these, sitting in a street market and draped in this appliqued fabric, which seemed very exotic to my 10 year old self. Anyway, the molas can be incredibly elaborate; they are done by a small indigenous group that lives on the islands in the Atlantic off the coast. Go see some lovely examples of the art form before this closes in January!

Rest of the story here.

New Forum for Friends of Theology

Check out the new link to the Friends of Theology forum in the list to the right.

Scholarships for Formation Weekend

See Opportunities page.

What is it like to study theology and ministry at SMU?

Hi folks--remember this video from last year?

We're still working on a new YouTube video that promotes why people should consider studying theology for work in the Church and academy (and perhaps come to Saint Mary's in MN, of course!). I have it narrowed down to three songs for background: if you could please give me feedback (in the comments box or in person), I'd appreciate it. You can click and listen...

Matt Maher, Unwavering
Tom Booth, Fragrance Prayer
Marco Frisina, Jesus Christ, You Are My Life

I'm leaning toward the first (there are other factors than "is it beautiful" involved, and this one meets those other issues), but there are good things about all the songs. I do need to check that I can get permission to use these songs on YouTube (I'm pretty sure I can).

Also: I need more pictures (always!). I will be taking pictures around campus in the Fall, and that includes student pictures. But if you can bring your camera to Campus Ministry events and internships and take pictures, that would be ideal: just send me the pictures afterward. Thanks in advance.

swindley at smumn dot edu

Subscribing to posts on a reader, homepage, or through email

If anyone wants to subscribe to the posts from these forums--that is, get an alert when there are new posts to read, as well as headlines--this is easily done.

• First, scroll to the bottom of this page (and the front page of every forum to which you wish to subscribe), and look for "Subscribe Posts Atom."
  
• Click on that, and you will be prompted as to where you want to "read" the posts: in Google, Yahoo, or on Bloglines.
• After that, you click "add" and you're done! You can also keep up on blogs and news outlet headlines this way...any website that uses RSS (Really Simple Syndication) will allow you to do that.

If anyone knows how to put up an RSS feed in Facebook or MySpace...two social networking sites I know nothing about, other than their existence...please tell us in the comments box, so we can share the wealth (and posts).

Finally, if you want to subscribe to these posts via email, go to Feedblitz.com and scroll to the bottom of the page, where you can very simply subscribe to a blod and get email notices about new quotes. You will need the URL of the page you want to subscribe to to make this work.

Friends of Theology?

For anyone who might not have read the e-mail, there is a meeting about a few exciting activities planned for this year on Thursday evening (Sept 20) from 630pm to 7:30pm. in SM222.

For those of you who weren't at the meeting on Sept 13, please read the summary on the Class of 2009 page if you want to catch up.

In the meantime, we're trying to come up with a better name than "Friends of Theology." We'll use this forum for gathering suggestions. If you have one, click the comments link below this post and add it.

Friends of Theology Meeting

For those who attended last semester's FOT (Friends of Theology) meeting this will be review, for those who have yet to hear about this topic, I hope you find it as exciting as I do.

Last year a few of us majors, most of the Theology department, a brother, and our awesome campus ministers sat down and had a discussion that focused on a few main points:
1) What can we do to help "get the word out" about our incredible theology
department and the hard-to-find majors like Youth Ministry and Religious Education?
2) How can we help upcoming theology majors, PYM majors, and RE majors, gain more experience in our fields outside of class and internships?
3) What can we do to brighten the faith of, not only our St. Mary's campus, but the surrounding Winona community, and, ultimately, the church as a whole?

What we came up with was a semi-concise group of ideas that draw not only excitement, but a sense spirituality as well. These ideas were as follows:

1) An on-campus faith- based weekend retreat for high school students. Benefits: The high school students would get a sense of the campus and the Lasallian experience that can be had here. It would also give volunteers (majors and non-majors alike) a chance to flex their major specific skills (for instance, if a Marketing major wants to try their hand at marketing our retreat, they could do that). Additionally, for people in the theology majors, we could try our hand at things a parish might ask us to do in a job, like learning to manage a budget, etc.

2) A Christ Ambassador group. This would be a group of us who would go out to various parishes and put on a night of some kind. Benefits: We could try our hand at event planning for the different nights, public speaking, and leading. Also, the high school students would hopefully be getting a little taste of what we offer here at St. Mary's and learn how they could live out their faith here as well.

Obviously, we have much to talk about and even more to do. So if you are interested come to our first meeting of the year, which will be: Thursday, Sept. 13th, at 8:30pm in SM222 (right across from the Theology Suite).

Thanks so much for reading this and I pray for Christ's peace to be with you as the rest of your school year settles into a steady rhythm.

Peace, love, and joy in Christ,
Eric Michael Duffy
Junior, Pastoral Youth Ministry major

Welcome

Welcome to the new Theology Department Homepage/Virtual Community. If you are a department faculty member, major or minor, or alumni, you should soon receive e-mails inviting you to participate in the appropriate forums. If you are a friend of theology and would like to participate, or you would like a forum created for your theology-related group, please send your request to theology@smumn.edu.