Congratulations to all the Busted Halo readers who participated in our annual ash contest last week. This time you voted for the best, while the editors gave out some special honors for category winners. Thank you to all who participated. The person with the winning photo is receiving a GoBible and we’ll add everyone who sent us a picture to the running for our Lenten contest grand prize, an Apple iPad 2.
And, without further ado, the 2011 Best Ash goes to…

Click the image above to enjoy a slide show of the category winners, or check out all the entries in a Facebook album here; and come back every day to our Fast Pray Give Lent calendar.…

This past week we have all been confronted with images and tragic stories from Japan as a result of the tsunami and earthquake there. It remains clear that untold serious dangers continue to threaten the lives of the victims of this tragedy. Therefore, we at Busted Halo have chosen to postpone our 10 in 10s anniversary fundraising campaign in order to join together with other nonprofits and Catholic agencies to ask for your help in assisting those affected by these natural disasters in Japan.

It’s a seasonal hazard — you decide to stop by church on Ash Wednesday to get the obligatory ashes on your forehead. You get in line with everybody else. Then you notice people returning to their seats sporting enormous, indeterminate blobs of soot. Your heart sinks as you realize you’re going to go back to work with a gigantic ad on your forehead that might as well say: “Interested in knowing more about Catholicism?” Then you’re at the altar, offering your own forehead as a canvas for an overzealous finger painter…
You did it Busted Halo readers, you showed us your ash!
Our third annual Ash Wednesday Challenge was a huge success with over 100 ash photos coming in. And…

What are your values? And do you live them every day? These may seem like simple questions, but some honest introspection can lead to big changes in your day-to-day choices about work, volunteering, money and relationships.

We were halfway through the hour-long walk back from a neighboring township to our village of Thembalethu, South Africa, when the dark, cloudy skies opened up and a torrential downpour fell upon us. We quickened our pace, attempting to flee the onslaught. The dirt road was quickly turning to mud; with each step our feet began sinking deeper into the swampy red earth.

We were only a month into our Peace Corps service at this point, in a strange part of the village where we had never been, and had little idea where to seek shelter. I was with Heather, who was not only the nearest American volunteer to me but would also become my closest friend over the next two years. We looked at each other anxiously, despair seeping into our hearts as we resigned ourselves to walk for the next half hour, though we could barely see 3 feet in front of us. Then, a small lone figure appeared under an umbrella…

An interesting thing has happened because of the debate over Lila Rose’s tactics in going after Planned Parenthood. A serious discussion has erupted across the Catholic blogosphere about the morality of lying. As some of you will remember, I have written two columns here before about lying: “Radical Honesty” about two years ago and, last summer, “Are Affirmations Lying?“
I have enjoyed and been educated by the healthy debate among moral theologians and other deep thinkers, which was kicked up in part by the wonderful article here in Busted Halo, “Building a Culture of Lie,” by Dawn Eden and William Doino Jr. I am not a theologian, but find the subject fascinating…

The first images of the monks’ daily lives in Of Gods and Men are peaceful ones: They tend to gardens, pour jars of golden honey, and care for the sick who line up beside their clinic. They join in the occasional celebrations and sorrows of their Muslim neighbors. They sing and pray. The monks’ daily tasks seem a perfect balance of action and contemplation, and they perform them with a comforting combination of surety and peace.
It’s easy to assume things will always be this way, but viewers familiar with the real-life story of these French Trappist monks in Algeria during its 1990s civil war will know that this is not the case. The monastery is adjacent to a small Muslim village and an early montage…

Murder, sex, war, love and prayer.
The subject matters of five short films you’ll catch glimpses of if you’re tuning in to the Oscars this year, likely awarded around the two-hour mark of the broadcast, sandwiched in there someplace between the sound mixing and visual effects categories. Every year of the last five, my friend and I have ventured out to our local independent film theater, Oscar fever peaking, committing ourselves to three or four hours of watching the nominated short films attempting to give these often overlooked gems the attention they deserve.
This year, I found the live action shorts teeming with spiritual themes, ranging from moral concerns of faith and forgiveness to more…

There is something remarkably innocent and pure about the Academy Awards which draws people back in front of their TV screens year after year — in spite of the inevitable bloated telecast, bad jokes and ridiculous production numbers. At its core, however convoluted the whole procedure might be, the Oscars is about rewarding excellence, and more specifically being rewarded for excellence by a jury of your peers.
While not an official part of the Church’s liturgical calendar, awards season (along with its athletic counterpart the Super Bowl) provides remarkable comfort in the ever-so-ordinary time of Ordinary Time — post-Christmas and pre-Lent. It’s culmination, the Academy…

How do I stop procrastinating?
Where do I find a meaningful relationship?
How do I ace a job interview?
What do I do with a roommate who hates me?
And what am I really working toward in my life — what’s my purpose?

If you are between the ages of 18 and 25, then chances are you’ve asked yourself these questions. The last few years have been pretty tough for young adults: The economic downtown means that jobs are harder to find after graduation and all these life-skills and personal questions have become a lot more important.

Should I work at a job I hate just because it pays more than the career I really love?
Is this all there is in life?

Sound familiar? If so, you’re a member of Generation WTF —…

The revolution was televised — as well as tweeted, updated and blogged. It began nineteen days ago with the “day of anger“, as thousands of Egyptian protestors, young and old, took to the streets of their country calling for the ouster of the current regime; and culminated yesterday when Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, finally stepped down from office. Revolution had spread through the Middle East, with this uprising falling on the footsteps of those in Tunisia and Yemen — visible instantaneously for public view through Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, all ablaze with up-to-date news of the protests.
Frustrated with growing unemployment rates and dwindling financial resources,…

Lady Gaga’s new single, “Born This Way,” is an anthem for the different. The song offers words of encouragement for everyone on the margins of society, including gay people, members of racial minorities, and even the “broke.” She insists, God makes no mistakes,” and later adds:
Whether life’s disabilities
left you outcast, bullied or teased,
rejoice and love yourself today,
’cause baby, you were born this way.
Gaga is spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, whether intentionally or not. Her views on celibacy, personal strength and individuality are certainly laudable; and far more compelling is what she has to say about human nature and human suffering.…

On February 1, Lila Rose’s Live Action organization debuted the first video of its biggest scoop yet — an undercover video “sting” allegedly revealing Planned Parenthood employees aiding a purported sex trafficker. That same day, Fr. Euteneuer, in response to online rumors, released a statement confessing that the real reason he left HLI was that he had admitted to “violating the boundaries of chastity” with an adult woman he was exorcising.

Judging by the reaction to these stories in the Catholic pro-life media, it seems many took these coinciding stories simply as an instance of “good news/bad news,” with Lila Rose a heroine and Fr. Euteneuer a tragic figure. Perhaps it would be wise for Catholics dedicated to defending life to pause and reflect upon the confluence of events, before the news cycle moves on. It may be that the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us something about what happens when good people, with the best of intentions, attempt to justify deception.

As Ginny Moyer’s recent article here on e-readers and the reader responses showed so eloquently, you’re either comfortable with digital replacements for technologies or you’re not. To me, while they have their limits, for sure, I love their benefits. For example, my iPhone and iPad are loaded with digital study bibles from Olive Tree and the iMissal app for daily readings and the hours. (I’ve also sung the praises of the amazing handwritten Saint John’s Bible and my home is filled with books.)
There’s a new iPhone app, Confession: A Roman Catholic App, from Little iApps, that’s been making quite a stir this week. Since I’m always looking for tools that might…

I didn’t think Revolution would feel like this. John Lennon, Tracy Chapman and other artists have made it sound so upbeat, so sure of its legitimacy, and so containable in a three-minute music track. The reality is unsure, insecure, and very much “watch and wait.” There are the usual runs to the banks, the stocking up on four liters of milk and all of the rice that could possibly be eaten in a year. There was the filling of the bathtub with fresh water. The preparations — endless preparations — for that which we hoped would never come.
Except we did want it to come. Everyone did. Egyptians are starving and dying from preventable and treatable diseases. The trash here is literally smothering…

Relationships experts often tell young couples that as things get “serious” it’s important to have some conversations about money. But what exactly should you talk about during that conversation? Are you going to lay down your W-2s and 1099s to compare numbers? Are you going to have amorphous discussions about money that are really more about who’s the power broker in the relationship? Fights about money are rarely about the dollars and cents themselves and typically more reflective of some other disconnect in your relationship. So I’d like to offer a new spin on this “money talk” advice: Before you start talking numbers, take a moment to look inward and figure…

Growing up as the token Muslim in my small Florida town, I was often the go-to person for all things related to Islam. Talk about pressure. Before 9/11 no one really bothered or had any reason to ask me questions, but after that day, curiosity piqued and I did my best to answer the questions of my peers. Most wanted to know if I believed in God, Jesus, Moses and the Bible, while others simply wanted to know why Muslims hated people in the West.
I’m no religious scholar by any means, but once I started explaining the basics of Islam to my peers, they shrugged and said, “Oh — I guess we’re more alike than we think.”
Ten years later, I still find that to be true.
Islam builds upon the foundations…

Blame it on the Jesuits. Were it not for the experiences of one of their own, whose exploits combating the possessed inspired the film The Exorcist, perhaps the Catholic Church would not find its presence in contemporary cinema relegated primarily to priests splashing around Holy water at head-spinning, projectile-vomiting teenage girls — the role of priest as demon slayer added to the pantheon of stock horror characters alongside the mad scientist, the teenage babysitter and the faceless slasher. Mikael Håfström’s The Rite is yet another entry in this ever expanding catalog of films reducing the Catholic Church into Grand Guignol spectacle, inspired as always by “true…

The other day, I was reading a biography of Fr. Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulists, and it was describing the American challenge into which he was born: unlimited freedom of choice leading to a groundlessness — children weren’t expected to follow their parent’s career choices; people didn’t spend their whole lives in the same community and learn to live with and love their neighbors for better or worse; the authority of people and institutions was not recognized automatically. But what the American of 1850 saw as groundlessness would today seem stodgy and limited. Comparatively, we live in a world of almost complete lawlessness. This makes the desire for a sense of purpose —…

In the last week, two different people have asked me if I have any interest in owning a Kindle. My answer both times was a slightly softer version of “when hell freezes over.”
It’s not that I’m morally opposed to e‑readers. I don’t see them as the spawn of Satan, or anything like that. It’s a style thing; if you like to read that way, more power to you. I just happen to be pretty nuts about yesterday’s style: old-fashioned, paper-and-cloth books that you can pick up and hold in your hand.
Why? For one thing, reading is an imaginative and mental experience, but it’s also a sensual one. Think of people who love the smell of new cars and you know how I feel about books.…