musicnotes(What happened to the Blog Round-Up???*)

I’m looking for help with a research/writing project I hope you’ll find interesting. Please help me discover and share ideas for Catholic Cultural Initiatives.

What is a Catholic cultural initiative??

It’s an event, membership organization, publication, gesture, website,  or campaign that involves real Catholic people in building Catholic culture, addressing issues, pursuing shared interests, and contributing to the new evangelization. It can be ‘for Catholics,’ ‘shared with non-Catholics,’ or ‘for the public,’ but it is initiated, designed, managed by Catholics. The goal of such initiatives is sometimes, but not always, to spread the Faith itself. More often, the goal is to build a context for sharing the Faith relationally.

I’m especially interested in those that have a potential to grow, or to be models others can copy. I’m less interested in projects that involve a lot of money – looking for those whose creators leverage small financial capital by investing labor, passion, time. Though I am delighted when a parish church does such things, I’m focusing on the work of laypeople, families, and groups of friends. I’m interested in your ideas and in initiatives that are/have been realized already.

Here are a few that have come to my attention: The movie “The Human Experience”; Sursum Corda renaissance polyphony ensemble; children’s choirs; Catholic community garden; catholicculture.org; lots of great Catholic magazines; Contemporary Religious Artists Association; Catholic Creatives Salon; wellreadmom.com; thewayofbeauty.org; Second Spring Associates; Catholic Voices; John Paul II Film Festival; Catholic New Media Conference; catholicartistsociety.org; G.K. Chesterton reading groups… what else should I know about???

Please help me discover and share ideas for Catholic Cultural Initiatives. Send contributions to charoster@yahoo.com. THANKS!

roundup* Now, what about the Round-Up?? April Fool’s Day caught us all by surprise, judging from the lack of blog links in my mailbox. Since I’m also Facebook-fasting for Lent, I wasn’t able to goose you there. Here’s your heads-up: Send me the link to your favorite blog post (your own) from the period March 1 – April 14 and I’ll place the Round-Up in my March 16 post. Please let others know they’ve still got time to share a post in this next CWG Member Blog collection.