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I’ve finally listed the talks I’m giving for the Pauline Year. I still have openings and would love to come to your parish or organization to share insights about St. Paul. Print the list and give it to your pastor or adult education director!
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The Pauline Cooperators’ Conference, the annual spirituality and mission conference for the lay members of the Pauline Family, will be held Oct. 31-Nov 2 at the Vincentian Renewal Center, Princeton, NJ. This year’s principal speaker will be Father Antonio da Silva, postulator for the cause of canonization of Bl. James Alberione and other Servants of God in the Pauline Family. Father will be speaking in Italian; simultaneous translation will be provided.
For information and registration form, download the conference brochure.
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I’ve come across a few more Pauline Year websites; they’ve been added to the links:
Paulus.net from an international consortium of missionary institutes (starting with the Pauline Family)
Pauline Year from the Tarsus Chamber of Commerce. This one offers features like a virtual tour of the lone church in Tarsus–St. Paul’s, of course. (Long a museum, it appears now outfitted for liturgy.)
Please add other sites in the comments box!
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Sr. Julia’s “Best Catholic Books for the Pauline Year.” Do you have any titles to add?
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Some wonderful events lined up at Vilanova for the Pauline Year. Makes you sort of wish you could fly to Philadelphia on a regular basis. But wait! The administrator of this blog will be flying to Philadelphia in the fall!
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The Society of St. Paul launched a new Catholic video-sharing site and service; the home page features many Pauline Year resources as well.
The Diocese of Birmingham is busy with preparations for the Year of Saint Paul, called for by Pope Benedict XVI last year, which begins this year on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (June 29) and concludes one 
year later on the same Feast.
Shortly after his installation last October, Bishop Robert J. Baker commissioned Father Mitch Pacwa, S.J., to write a bible study guide for parish and school use within the diocese during the Pauline Year. Our Sunday Visitor Publishing in Indiana agreed to co-publish the book, “Saint Paul: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics” with The Birmingham Catholic Press making it available to all Catholics throughout the world looking for a resource to use in celebration of the Year of Saint Paul.
The book, now released, includes six sessions covering Saint Paul’s teaching on the Sacraments as well as his missionary activity. The appendix of the book includes a reference checklist to enable the reader to study the Letters of Saint Paul during the year.
In September and October of 2008, Father Pacwa will present a lecture on each of the six sessions in the book at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Birmingham. Parishes in the diocese will conduct the bible study on Saint Paul this Fall and in the Spring of 2009.
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I have a few reservations about this one (Paul of Tarsus: A Visionary Life), but overall, it answers the average person’s basic questions about Paul’s life and background. You would expect this, given that the author, Edward Stourton, is an award-winning journalist (educated by the Benedictines, no less). This immensely readable book offers more historical background than any other non-scholarly book on Paul I have ever encountered; it even includes the more obscure legends from the 2nd-4th centuries. Paul was always a “sign of contradiction,” and so Stourton also investigated Jewish and Muslim attitudes toward Paul as well (generally… not very favorable).
While Stourton maintains his journalistic integrity throughout, he could have been been a little less naive in assuming that certain profoundly counter-cultural things in Paul’s writings were simply the prejudices of a pre-modern mind, things we enlightened ones can look on with a benign gaze, if not a smile. Paul was as counter-cultural in the first century as he is in ours; if we don’t especially like things he said (especially with regard to moral behavior), that might be a sign that we need to take him all the more seriously!
That said, “A Visionary Life” gives a fine overview of Paul’s life, basic teachings, and place in history. If you want to know more about his spirituality and have a deeper grasp of what he called “my Gospel,” you will need to go elsewhere.
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The feast of the Conversion of St. Paul falls on a Sunday in 2009. Usually, that means the saint’s day gives way before the higher dignity of the Lord’s Day, but for the Pauline Year, the feast day liturgy will be permitted:
From the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments: “The Apostle St. Paul, who proclaimed the truth of Christ to the whole world and did so after being Christ’s persecutor, spent himself in using every means to proclaim the Good News to the nations, committing himself
with zeal to the unity and concord of all Christians, has always been and continues to be venerated by the faithful, especially in this particular year, the bimillennium of his birth, which the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI desired to institute as a special jubilee year.
“Thus, in virtue the faculties conferred on this Congregation by the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, it is permitted, in an extraordinary manner, that on Jan. 25, 2009, the Third Sunday ‘per annum,’ a Mass according to the formulary ‘Conversion of St. Paul,’ as is found in the Roman Missal, may be celebrated in the individual churches. In such a case, the second reading of the Mass is taken from the Roman Lectionary for the Third Sunday ‘per annum,’ and the Creed will be recited.”
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Here’s a Pauline Year resource coming from the Missionary Society of St. Paul, a relatively new community founded in Nigeria, but now very active in the US. The 30-day walk with St. Paul is a great way to prepare for the opening of the Pauline Year at the end of the month!
