Re-introducing Sister Frances!

The end of summer means a lot of things ("Back to School" is only the most commercially visible of them). For the Daughters of St. Paul, it can mean transfer time--and so it was for our Chicago community as we welcomed Sister Frances back to the Windy City. Sister Frances is no stranger to Chicago: she was the manager of our Michigan Avenue center from 1996-2000, and oversaw the renovation that put a new facade on the street and a lovely new interior to the center itself.
After leaving Chicago, Sister Francis spent the next ten years in California, where she focused much of her time and energy on care for her parents (who died within a year of each other) and managing our SoCal locations in Culver City and San Diego. Now that she's back, Sister Frances says, "I'm totally impressed by the expansion and growth in the city. I can't believe how much it (and the traffic!) has grown."
Sister Frances brings with her a wealth of artistic ability and experience. After meeting the Daughters of St. Paul in Cleveland, she followed her sister Margaret in entering the community. (Sister Margaret is  stationed in our Boston community.) From her very first days in the convent, Sister Frances worked in the graphic design department of our publishing house. Moving to the book center ministry, she excelled in the design aspects of our locations. Now she's enrolling in the program in Interior Architecture and Design at the Illinois Art Institute to get some theory to refine her many years of practice.
Sister Frances is delighted to be back to renew old friendships and make new ones; we're just delighted to have her back!

New online study starting soon!

Our Theology of the Body class will resume on the 2nd Saturday of the month, beginning in just 10 days. Instead of going through the tome of John Paul's Wednesday talks ("the" source of the Theology of the Body),  we will be studying Karol Wojtyla's earlier work, "Love and Responsibility." People who think that the Theology of the Body was just the Pope's after-the-fact attempt to justify the Church's teachings in the widely-scorned encyclical "Humanae Vitae" will be surprised to see that "Love and Responsiblity," first published in Polish in 1960, is the real precursor to the Theology of the Body.


Basic class info:
Meet here at the bookstore or online every 2nd Saturday of the month, 10:30 US Central Time.
Text: Love and Responsibility
Spread the Word!

Movie "Transforms" the Pauline block

Over the past several days, the back door of our Michigan Avenue center has been the scene of epic disaster. "Scene" as in "movie," that is. Sister Helena wrote a blog post about navigating the set of "Transformers 3" at our back door, and (literally) running into stars Shia La Beouf and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
To the left is a cell-phone shot of a tiny bit of the mayhem as seen from the back door of the convent. (The AAA truck totally disrupted the filming sequence; read Sr Helena's account!)

Catholic Bloggers for the Trib

Since last autumn, our Sister Anne Flanagan has written several guest posts for the Chicago Tribune's spirituality blog, "The Seeker." She has been one of a number of voices representing quite a variety of faith communities (including non-faith, secular humanist communities), addressing issues of concern to Chicagoans generally. More recently, two Chicago priests have been added to the Tribune's guest blog roll, Father Michael Phleger (pastor of Saint Sabina's) and the genial Father Robert Barron (charged in a special way by the Cardinal with the efforts to evangelize culture).

Today, both Sr Anne and Fr. Barron offered contributions on the controversy surrounding the Vatican document on "grave crimes," which has been widely represented as putting the attempted ordination of women on the same level as sexual abuse of children (it doesn't).

For more on the document, see:

News from Vatican press conference
Catholic News summary of the issues
The document itself
US Bishops' presentation on processes for handling child sexual abuse, according to the new document
US Bishops' presentation on attempted women's ordination in the new document

Lenten events

Sister Anne will be giving a series of talks on the Mass at Our Lady of Mt Carmel Parish as part of their "Soup and Substance" Lenten program, Wednesdays from Feb. 24-March 17. The evening begins with 6:30 Mass, followed by a hearty soup and then the presentation.

Assumption Parish has also invited Sister Anne to give a talk on March 24 as part of its Lenten series. Her presentation will be on Eucharistic Adoration.

The Daughters of St. Paul are loading up the van for parish book and media displays at Our Lady of the Woods Parish, Orland Park, and Sts Peter and Paul, Naperville. Contact the parishes for details.



Looking for a way to run a Catholic book fair for your Catholic school? Contact the Daughters of St. Paul, or visit www.jclubcatholic.org!

The Greatest Story Never Told!

How much do you know about the path of the Church through these past 20 centuries? Do you have questions that you just can't answer? Does popular fiction that touches on Catholic characters or history sometimes leave you with a nagging sense of missing something really important? Just coming back to Mass and the sacraments, and not sure where or how everything fits together?
Join us Saturday mornings (10:30-noon) from Jan. 16 to June 26. We'll be using the Ascension Press DVD series "Epic," picking up where the Acts of the Apostles left off in a 20 week overview of Church History!

WHEN: Saturday mornings 10:30-noon (except for 2nd Saturday, when we have Theology of the Body)
WHERE: Here at PAULINE BOOKS & MEDIA 172 N. Michigan Ave. (between Lake and Randolph)
COST: $40 (optional workbook $25, optional timeline chart extra)

Pre-registration required: 312-346-4228 or HELRAPHAELFSP@aol.com
(Sorry, payment not refundable after Jan. 16.)