“The new sexual revolution is here!”

In this video, Jason Evert and friends answer the question “Why Chastity?”

They’ve got tons of fantastic material! They’ve got an Audio/Video Vault! The Theology of the Body for Teens is, we believe, a must-watch! You can view the promo video here.

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This and other similar websites are a wonderful way in which to put into practice the advice given by Pope Benedict in a recent meeting with participants of the “Digital Witnesses” congress:

We likewise recommend the reading of the paper on the negative effects of pornography, by Dr Patrick Fagan.

We urge all those reading this to do everything on your part to “put in your little grain of sand” in this regard: set up a blog, blog about your Catholic faith, share good videos (like those above), speak of important values, place links to good sites, etc.

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For guidance, we recommend the following:

• Read “10 easy steps to an effective use of cyberspace“
• Read Pope Benedict’s Message for World Communications Day

Let’s all be good ‘digital witnesses’! We encourage you to send in feedback and comments.

The creator and administrator of opusdeialdia.org, Mr Antonio González, has come up with “10 Easy Steps to an effective work on the Net”.  We offer here a translation to English:

(1) Provide good content:

Content is king on the Internet: it is Rule #1.  If you don’t follow this rule, the remaining 9 ideas here are of no use.  If you’ve got good material ―videos, explanations, pictures, news―, by itself it shall spread.  If yours is not original material, feel free to spread the good content you find on websites or news channels which you find interesting and helpful.  Speak in today’s language…  Use videos a lot: those that are original, impactful, amusing, are the most desired by readers.

(2) Always positive:

Speak always in a positive manner, speak personally to the heart of your reader.  You should never be against anything or anyone.  A friendly and amusing explanation would do much greater good than a long list of arguments, no matter how well reasoned out these are.  You might not convince a given reader or listener, but if you write in a sufficiently gracious or humorous manner, you might win a friend Only then will you be able to help.  We should practice refinement and an extreme respect for the freedom of others.

(3) Speak ‘to the world’:

The use of e-mail is useful for person-to-person dealings.  But it would be passé for today’s need to speak ‘to the whole world’.  Learn to use, to your advantage, the many-to-many modes of communication that are more and more available.  Avoid being a spammer, that incessantly sends out mass mails containing all sorts of things or with requests to “forward to everyone you know”.

(4) Speak up! Leave a comment

Statistics show that one comment (on a piece of news) elicits 100 readers.  On the internet, your opinion is just as good as mine, as good as the global expert on the issue.  It is for this reason that huge companies or lobby groups employ people who dedicate at least 8 hours daily just to leave comments, anonymously or using aliases, on blogs, forums, social networking sites.  Opinion is, thus, created and disseminated.  When you don’t comment on a piece of news, the understanding is that you are not interested in that news, or at least that you may not know the rules or consider the e-news as hardcopy news (they tell me this, I listen).  If you find a certain item important, leave your comment, whether you’re in agreement or opposed to it.  Write it down!

(5) Send in suggestions

I don’t mean a one- or two-line comment, but a suggestion that’s studied and deep.  If you look around some more, you’ll find ways in which to communicate yourself better, with anybody, and to make helpful suggestions: learn to use contact emails you find on websites, to GoogleSearch or to search via Facebook, or simply ask for the email address of the source of the item.

(6) Social networking sites

…are the “in” thing, especially for all sorts of communication.  You need to sign up in order to participate.  Out of the 10 most visited internet sites, 9 are social networking sites and the other is Google, which in turn has its own social network via googlegroups and gmail Buzz.  In all of them, everybody talks: through videos (mostly via YouTube), articles (eg, wiki’s),  headlines (especially via Twitter), Facebook status messages…

(7) Participate in online forums

Answer questions on forums.  Help us out in the forum here, or in the Forum at catinfor.com.  They’re a great place to meet people! to make your ideas known, or to help others resolve their doubts or problems.  Wouldn’t that be great?

(8) Blog! Create your own webpage!

You’ve never created a blog on wordpress.com or on blogger.com? If you DO have a blog or website, please place links to those websites or blogs that seem important or interesting to you.  [If you’re reading this now, and have a blog or webpage, kindly put the following link: http://opusdeitoday.org/ ]  You might also want to write out a simple news item on the website or blog of interest: your readers are intelligent: they READ your news, not the links… They CLICK on the links, though…

(9) Train the others! Learn the rules of the game
The following is KEY: start a conversation, and make your friends speak up.  The more people you get involved in the conversation, the greater your Christian influence in cyberspace! How could you start? Send THIS POST you’re reading to your friends, or tell them about it

(10) Anybody has problems? See us!

Is there anybody you know that wishes to ‘perk up’ his/her website or blog? Put him/her in touch with the team at revaloria.org or with us here at opusdeitoday.org – We’d be glad to help you out or give you ideas

Ruth married Michael [Michael’s responses to an interview can be found in opusdeiblogs.org.]

Both Ruth and Michael went to Harvard University. During the early part of their university studies, they were atheists, but converted to Christianity and became Evangelical Protestants. In their third year, they got married: they felt the special call to live the rest of their lives forming a family and living an intense family life. By Divine Providence, they were surrounded by good friends and, wanting to seek and find the ultimate truth, ended up converting to Catholicism. One of those friends, who decided to “come home”, explained to them something that left them restless: the theological notion of munus [office] in our Catholic faith: that if a Church were the true one, then there would have to be someone or some authority that would say whether something’s good or bad. This can be a rather disarming or thorny issue for Protestants surrounded by persons in search of the true faith. In Ruth’s case, her re-reading of the Apostolic Fathers brought her closer to her conversion to the Catholic faith. Meanwhile, there remained in Ruth certain issues of morality, e.g., the question of abortion and her pro-choice stance. Having been convinced, in a debate with a friend, that there was no difference between a fetus and an infant, the only unanswered question that remained was contraception: but even in this, her friend easily convinced her that the entire “contraceptive mentality” was ultimately selfish, individualistic, and consumerist.

Since the couple were in the “Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship” at Harvard, some leaders in the group, in order to prevent their eventual conversion, invited two parties ―one a Protestant, the other a Catholic― to a debate, so that each side would expose his true convictions before the public on campus. Guess who was invited to speak about the Catholic faith: Peter Kreeft! Ruth and Michael delayed slightly the moment of their conversion, because the latter had received a scholarship to study in Britain. But no sooner had they arrived at Edinburgh than she knocks at the door of the chaplaincy directed by a Dominican, and declared: “I want to become Catholic.” It was here that Ruth conceived her first son, whom she had always considered a gift coming from the all-bountiful God, the Giver of all life and grace. Both began practicing the Catholic faith from Christmas of 1980.

Since then, Ruth turned into a great and zealous pro-life advocate. She also used, with great effectiveness, the weapon of “letter-writing apostolate”. Together with Paul Swope, and with the help of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL), she decided to initiate a series of meetings, film showings and other pro-life activities at Harvard. This movement produced the Harvard-Radcliffe Human Rights Advocates. Ruth went on to be President of MCFL, from which she launched a dynamic and vibrant work in defense of life and helped form a coalition of Protestant communities interested in the pro-life movement.

In 1989, they lost their fifth child: thousands went to his funeral, including some people of the Work. Even in Scotland they had known the Work, because the godfather of their first child was a resident at a Residence run by people of the Work. Back in Cambridge they were in touch with Fr. Sal Ferigle. Within a year, the couple joined the Work. Since the death of the fifth child, Ruth began longing for heaven in a real and concrete way. The birth of another child, a daughter, gave her much consolation and joy; but nothing presaged another suffering she was to undergo: during the medical exams at this stage, it was found out that she was afflicted with breast cancer, to which she was later to succumb. In spite of this, she conceived and gave birth to another daughter. In addition, she carried on her intense pro-life work: during this period, she crafted a series of presentations*, which used a new paradigm that was to influence individual hearts and minds through education. In particular, she addressed the young people of Massachusetts, so that she called them “Life Education Awareness Project” [LEAP], and at times she’d entitled the talks “Pro-Life is Pro-Love”.

During this entire period, she fully placed her trust in God and in His love. She spoke very clearly about how much she longed for Heaven; in talks and Circles about vacation and sanctification of leisure, she would manifest her desire for Heaven which was real. But the cancer had spread to the bones by 1993. Still, she had plenty of energy left for being the director of Religious Education at the Parish, which led her to re-organize and make more youthful the learning of the Catechism, especially for the young ones. She died in September of 1998. Thousands of people, many more than for her little child, went to the funeral and rites in honor of the “most pro-life woman in Boston”.

Ruth: Pray for me; pray for us.

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*Her memoirs are forthcoming with Ignatius Press, and shall carry the title “The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God”. There is no intention here whatsoever to pre-empt such publication. In the final work, there shall appear the pro-life presentations she used to give all over Boston.

**Five years after Ruth’s death, in early 2004, Bishop Reilly before his retirement constituted a Postulating Committee to prepare a formal request to the Bishop of Worcester to open Ruth’s cause of canonization.

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