Web Picks has expanded to a second page.

       See this new section on the Sacraments:

         Baptism is now posted
 

Don’t take our word for it. Check things out with the "hier" ups.

• The Archdiocese of Toronto: www.archtoronto.org

• The Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops: www.occb.on.ca

• The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops: www.cccb.ca 

• The Vatican: www.vatican.va

      Other interesting Church Sites

Neighbouring Parishes: Just case you need to go to mass on a Sunday evening some weekend:

St. Elizabeth Seton (Newmarket)
Holy Martyrs of Japan (Bradford)

Our Lady of the Lake (Keswick) 
Our Lady of Grace (Aurora)

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• Here's an article on the life of John Chrysostom published by the Diocese of Kamloops for their Diocesan News. The picture of St. John used in the article is from our stained glass window.

• Catholic Online Saints and Angels has the largest collection of facts and information about saints and angels on the internet, including St. Isidore of Seville - the proposed patron saint of internet users. This site is very comprehensive and well done. The "Fun Facts" section is great for elementary age kids. You can look up saints by their name, their patronage, and feast day.

• The website of St. Anthony Messenger Press features a "Saint of the Day" to which you can subscribe to receive each day. The content is reliably good. There’s even an audio version so you can turn it on and listen to it as you clean off your desk! Includes short commentary and quotes. You can also look up Patron saints at this site by topic or by feast day.

• And you can go strait to the top! Here’s the Vatican’s latest Saints and Blessed. If you read in multiple languages all the better as the biographies may be in Italian, Spanish, Polish or French depending upon where the holy person comes from.

• Bridge Building Images is also worth a visit. While this is primarily a site which markets saint images (cards, plaques, etc.), it has great images and short bios of many of the most popular saints as well as saints that may not be found in other places. Well worth checking out.

• So is Trinity Stores, which again is a site intended to market the art work of artists who produce some wonderful saints images. Featuring some saints that can’t be found else where and some people who are popularly considered saints but are not officially named so such as Dorothy Day and Oscar Romero. Excellent biographies and quotes from the saints or holy people.

• If reading about the Lives of the Saints is just not your thing - you are more of a kinesthetic learner - then you may want to order a saint doll. You can have St. Joan of Arc & St. Michael gang up and conquer the evil stuffed animals that seem to continuously multiply in the house while providing little to no play value. The price of $89 may deter you, but the website is well worth checking out. All kidding aside, the dolls are, actually, very nicely designed. www.softsaints.com

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• What exactly does it mean to be Catholic? What particular set of beliefs and practices sets us apart and makes us distinctive as a community? The following articles from Catholic update are excellent resources for summarizing our particular system of beliefs and practices.
  
  Being Truly Catholic Today by Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B.
  
  Eight Good Reasons for Being Catholic by Richard Rohr, O.F.M. and Joseph Martos
  
  My Vision for the Church by Benedict XVI
  
  Nine Things that Make us Catholic by Thomas H. Groome
  
  Seven Disciples of Successful Catholics by Matthew Hayes
  
  Seven Key Trends in the Church Today by Jackk Wintz, O.F.M.
  
  Ten Reasons to be Catholic by Kathy Coffey
  
  Treasures of Vatican II - Our Compass for the Future by Edward Hahnenberg, Ph.D.
  
  Vatican II - The Vision Lives on - Thirty Years After the Council by Leonard Foley, O.F.M.
  
  What Catholics Believe: A Popular Oveerview of Catholic Teaching by Leonard Foley, O.F.M.
   

• One of the very best sites on the Internet is American Catholic - the publishing ministry of St. Anthony Messenger Press and Franciscan Communications. It is home of the online editions of St. Anthony Messenger, Catholic Update, Millennium Monthly, Youth Update, Scripture From Scratch and other Catholic features. www.americancatholic.org. It is comprehensive, reliable, and theologically both solid and up-to-date.

• The best general Canadian Site is Catholic Canada.

Here are sites which provide a wealth of information about Catholicism.

• Catholic Online

• Catholic Net

• New Advent

• Catholic Exchange

• At the Home page of U.S. Catholic Magazine and Salt of the Earth. You can read really high quality and accessible articles at these sites.  

• You can subscribe to the Home Faith newsletter, also published by the Claretian Fathers. This short little newsletter has timely and good articles pertaining to Catholic family life: http://www.homefaith.com.

• Ralph’s Resource Barrel
  Ralph Milton is a writer and storyteller from the United Church tradition. His weekly newsletter - Rumours - is well worth subscribing to. It includes jokes (you can tell in church), stories and reflections on the Sunday readings. He he has an avid interest in Julian of Norwich and you can learn a great deal about this amazing woman by visiting Julian’s cell.

• For Christian Faith, History, Practices
  All kinds of information at a fairly basic level. Everything I read was very balanced and correct but there is a great deal to this website so I didn’t read everything. The history section was well done and balanced with great pictures.

• An enormous and excellent site where you can find pretty much everything Catholic is Ecatholicism.

• Most of the "buzz" regarding the DaVinci Code by Dan Brown has passed, but we still get the occasional question or comment regarding the book and the issues it raises. Here are two excellent site for help you separate fact from fiction: Challenging DaVinci and Jesus Decoded.

• Busted Halo is a website "for seekers in the 20s and 30s. An outreach of the Paulist Fathers Young Adult Ministries, the editor, Father Dave Dwyer appeared on the Daily Show... what more can be said? Check out the video called Where's God? Look for the article How to Attend a Dinner Party for Jesus under Faith Guides - Mass Class for a great article on good manners at mass. There's a great deal of really well written, engaging material here. Not everything at this site will suit every one. The writers are not afraid to tackle some controversial issues, but everything I read was thoughtful and reflective with a strong sense of love for the Catholic tradition.

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• The Scriptures in any translation you might need are available at: Crosswalk.com. If you want the translation which most scholars consider to be the most accurate, as well as the one which the Canadian church currently uses in our lectionary, select the NRS version of the Bible. (New Revised Standard Version). This is a very good site for looking up passage when you only know a few words of a passage as it has excellent search capacities.

• For younger children, try out the Canadian Bible Society’s new http://www.biblekids.ca/ site. It has games, colouring and even music videos.

• The liturgical readings of the day can be found at the US bishop’s web site: http://usccb.org/nab/today.shtml

• both Canadian and American lectionaries can be found HERE.

• A superb resource for lectors is: http://www.lectorprep.org/ It links you to the US lectionary but also gives excellent historical and background information for the readings.

• Some of you who are interested in learning more about the Sacred Scriptures, or who may have been reading articles in the news related to "newly discovered ideas" in early Christian documents may want to find out first hand what people were writing at the time when our Christian Scriptures were being written. You can find everything you need at this excellent site: Early Christian Writings.

• Women in the Bible is a really interesting site which looks at the role of women in biblical times from Eve through Mary using text and images.

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• Having trouble finding a card to send to your friends on Ash Wednesday or the Feast of St. Joseph? This is the site for you: www.catholicgreetings.org. The artwork and the text of the cards is very good.

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We often get asked where people can buy religious books and articles. These are the geographical closest places to our parish. They have reliably good products.

• Joseph’s Inspirational Inc. Unit 39, 2721 Markham Road, Scarborough, Ontario M1X 1L5. Phone: 416-291-1772 or 1-877-756-7374 (toll free). Email: josephs_90@bellnet.ca. Joseph will ship things to the church and has lots of really high quality Catholic books and gifts. www.josephsinspirational.ca

• Novalis is the main publisher of Catholic books in Canada. It is a great source of reading material on liturgy, prayer, spirituality, sacramental practice, catechetics, religious education and personal growth. Most people recognize them as the publisher of the Living with Christ Missals. www.novalis.ca

• For beautiful Catholic cards, music and liturgical prayer books visit World Library Publications  or The Printery House

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• Put some good Catholic liturgical tunes on your iPod and practice singing for Sunday Mass! Believe it or not, iTunes carries the music of a number of wonderful Catholic artists including Marty Haugen and David Haas. You can download songs ethically at the very reasonable cost of 99 cents a tune. Good music without an extra trip to confession! http://www.apple.com/itunes/

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• Are you going on vacation? Do you want to be sure you won’t miss mass? Before you leave, you can find out where and when you can go to mass just about anywhere at www.MassTimes.org. This is a nationwide ministry to travelling Catholics. They provide information on the location of nearby churches and the times of Masses, adoration, confession and devotions on weekends, weekdays and holy days. This is also good if you can’t travel but would still like to find out what times people are heading off to worship in Burkina Faso. In case you were wondering, yes, St. John Chrysostom parish is listed and up-to-date.

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The following sites are useful for ideas to use in the classroom or home.

• You can find everything from lesson plans to clip art at: www.silk.net/RelEd subscribe to their newsletter for the most up-to-date ideas, clip art, lesson plans."

• www.domestic-church.com describes itself as a family apostolate which aims to teach families how to live the Catholic faith in their family's lives and build a Catholic culture of the home. There are lots of easy activities that families can do at home to enrich the faith life of their children.

• If you are a scrap booker and want some pages to do up your family’s First Eucharist or Confirmation pages go to ScrapbookScapbook.com for some great paper designs which you can download.

• Religious Textbook Publishers are great resources. Here is my favourite: Sadlier

• see the Sunday School and Family Resources at the bottom of this page

• new Feb. 4, 2010
  Children's Liturgy 
  Christine Way Skinner has created a list of Internet Resources for Ministers of Children's Liturgy of the Word. You can download this PDF resource HERE

• new March 18, 2010
  Religious Education and Children with Special Needs
  At St. John's we are committed to providing quality programming for all our parishioners no matter what their needs. Providing sacramental preparation for children with special needs is something we are committed to doing. If you have a child with special needs please be sure to speak to Christine so she can be sure that your child's needs are met.
  
  For those of you who are involved in catechetical ministry and who wish to learn more about preparing your classes so that they meet the needs of all children, you may find the following resources helpful:
  
  Catechesis for Children with Special Needs - Helpful Resources for Catechists (PDF Document)
  
  What Would You Have Me Do For You?- Strategies for Special Needs Catechesis (PDF Document) Link corrected to actual document (June 10, 2010)
  
  Co-operative Learning Strategies (MS Word Document)
   

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• A superb site is the site of America Magazine - an American Jesuit publication. It has a comprehensive section on movies about Jesus and movies with religious themes. The only drawback is that if you want the most up-to-date reviews you need to be a subscriber. If you’re looking for movies a year or two old, then the site is excellent.

• If you want to know the Vatican’s choice of Top 45 films (and who wouldn’t want to know) you can visit the US Catholic bishop’s site. While you’re there, you can also check out the over 8000 other movie reviews as well.

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• The best Site on the Rosary I’ve seen is http://dsjliturgy.blogspot.com. It includes a visual rosary for adults and children. Forget your rosary, you can even click on the beads and do your own on-line version.

• On-Line Retreat!
  You don’t have time to go away for a retreat? How about doing an on-line retreat? The Jesuits at Creighton University have an excellent on-line 34 week retreat "for everyday life." Try it out.

• Stations of the Cross!

Christine has created a 5 page PDF document which lists the best Stations of the Cross on the Web. You can download it -  HERE

For adults: from Creighton University's Collaborative Ministry Office.

Stations of the Cross For Children: two of my favourite sites are (ages 6-10)   -   (ages 8-12)

Stations of the Cross for Youth at American Catholic.

You can find an version of the stations directed at youth at Youth Specialties. It has some really interesting ideas for presenting a way of the cross in ways that engage all the senses.

A variety of other very good versions from audio visual to reflections using art are available through The Catholic Educators Web Site

There is a Stations of the Cross colouring book at Catholic Mom.com - be warned though, the following .pdf file is over 3 megabytes and will take forever to download if you have dial-up - stations coloring book

• The Franciscans at St. Bonaventure’s Parish in Don Mills, Ontario. Check out their Pet Blessing Video

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Much of what is on the internet are American Sites. If you want a Canadian perspective on Catholicism, there are a number of excellent publications that have websites. Here are the top four:

• The Catholic Register

• The Prairie Messenger

• The Western Catholic Reporter

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• "Let's start this section with some words from our patron ... St. John Chrysostom's message to liturgists." www.dsjliturgy.blogspot.com

• The Gospel of Matthew in 2008 - on our Resources Page

• An excellent site on liturgy can be found at the Diocese of San Jose website or Blogspot. You can subscribe to their blog (which is well worth doing) or just look at the web site from time to time. There are resources for all liturgical ministries as well as general information about liturgy.

   Seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany

• Celebrate the beginning of a new liturgical year by printing a liturgical year poster to colour. Most suitable for intermediate children.

• Are you wondering how your faith might inform your Christmas shopping? Buying fair trade products can bring peace of mind and peace on Earth. See the article at: http://uscatholic.claretians.org/ . Then look at some of their suggestions at "Site Seeing with Santa". These are listed below and are directly copied from the article:

  • www.agreatergift.org I supplement the elves’ work with fair trade toys from artisans around the world. This site, a project of SERRV International, one of the first alternative trade organizations, offers puzzles, puppets, tea sets, bibs, backpacks, and even a creepy wooden snake.

  • They also sell candy, food, and other items. www.gxonlinestore.org.  In addition to items for adults, Global Exchange has a kids’ section, which features fair trade dolls, jump ropes, soft toys, books, and more. Global Exchange is an international human rights organization.

  • www.lankakade.co.uk. This British company sells mostly wooden toys from fair trade artisans in Sri Lanka. They offer puzzles, furniture, mobiles, board games, and dolls, as well as decorative accessories for kids’ rooms. They deliver internationally.

• Bless the Door to Your Home on Epiphany or early in the New Year

   Seasons of Lent, Easter, Pentecost

• Ten Ways to Put New Life into Lent

• Glad you Asked: If Lent is 40 days, why are there 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter?

• Glad you Asked: Why Does Easter Seem to Go on Forever?

• see our Resources Page for more liturgical information
   

   Season of Ordinary Time

• Ordinary Time: Summer  -  A Sense of the Season
   

    Updated Instructions for Ministers of the Word

• on the Resources Page, CLICK HERE

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• For a Busy Christian's Guide to Catholic Social Teaching - all the major documents of the Church on Social Teaching, as well as a timeline of the Roman Catholic Church's involvement in Social Justice Ministry visit http://uscatholic.claretians.org

• Watch a really good PowerPoint based on the well known article: "If the world were a hundred people... " http://www.100people.org

• Are you looking for something to do in your spare time? How about building a Lego model of St. John Chrysostom Church. You can check out this Lego Church for inspiration.

• If you are a fan of Stephen Colbert, you may want to check out the THE WORD: a Colbert Blog for Catholic It-Getters. http://catholiccolbert.com

• 10 Divinely Designed Churches: In the words of the creator of this site, Jesus didn't need fancy church's, "but thank goodness that some people didn’t listen too well and built magnificent buildings to glorify God." There are some magnificent churches to look at here, including some rather unusual ones. www.neatorama.com

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• Looking for pages to colour? Go to Christian Coloring

• There are all sorts of interesting ideas, information & reflections ranging from "meatless meals for lent" to "Catholic music for kids" at Catholic Mom

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