Deadline: Submissions due Thursday (10 days before each issue) calendar@clarionherald.org (504) area code unless noted Nov. 17-26 PARISHES ST. MARTHA, Thanksgiving potluck dinner, Nov. 17, 6:30 p.m., parish hall.

Pope Benedict XVI called on people to never be satisfied with their earthly achievements because true happiness entails seeking out the greater good. He said people should “not be discouraged by fatigue or by obstacles born of our sins,” because striving for the greater good is demanding and cannot be built or provided by mere human effort.

November is typically the month of remembrance in the Catholic Church, noted in the earlier celebration of All Souls Day. We begin the month by recalling our loved ones and those who have passed before us, which ushers in a season of remembering all that we have to be thankful for.

Is any family really ‘normal’? Archbishop Gregory Aymond posed that question on the last day of “A Family that Prays” retreat Nov. 4 in Covington. He joked that no family is perfect, beginning with his own, as evidenced by words on a plaque his sister gave him, “As far as anybody knows, we are a normal family.” The overnight retreat, organized by Willwoods Community, Dumb Ox Ministries and the CYO/Young Adult Office, drew more than 40, with couples spending a day together with Willwood’s Jason Angelette at St. Joseph Abbey’s Christian Life Center discussing the sacrament of marriage and the importance their bond is to the family, while teens bunked at Camp Abbey discussing with Brian Butler how to be honest with themselves while deepening their faith by listening for when God is talking to them.

Four Holy Cross students were selected to be members of the 325-piece Bands of America Honor Band that will perform Jan. 1 in the Tournament of Roses Parade in California. They are Donny Arseneaux,  trumpet; Perry Forstall, tuba; and Austin Lasseigne and Michael Voss, French horn and mellophone.

Mount Carmel Academy’s Book Club has been selected as one of 16 in the nation to participate in a program to review pending releases of young adult literature by major publishers. For the next two years, the Young Adult Library Services Association will send galleys of up to 250 titles per year for review to Mount Carmel as part of its YALSA Top Ten/YA Galley Project.

As the third quarter wound down, Tiger Stadium seemed to be half full. LSU was still in a battle with Mississippi State, the fifth consecutive Top 25 team the Tigers had faced during a very tough stretch of the 2012 season.

If Mount Carmel and district rival Dominican met 100 times on the volleyball court, one would probably win 51. Which one is anybody’s guess. And that’s the way the two rivals played for the final time his year in the Division I semifinals match at the Pontchartrain Center on Dec. 9.

Enter Catholic Charities’ newly opened St. Mary of the Angels Head Start, and visitors instantly wish there were dozens more centers of early childhood education just like it. Five spacious classrooms, set along the renovated first floor of the former St. Mary of the Angels Elementary School, are beehives of organized chaos, with smiling and curious students cheerfully rotating among colorful independent learning centers serving up art, math, music, literacy, writing, dramatic play and table games.

When one considers the task at hand to classify nearly 400 schools in seven near-equal groups, I believe the Louisiana High School Athletic Association got it right last week. Of course, there are a few Catholic school principals and coaches who will disagree with me, and understandably so.

Josephite Father John G. Harfmann, who until a recent illness was pastor of Corpus Christi-Epiphany Parish in New Orleans, died in hospice care Oct. 30 at St. Joseph Manor in Baltimore. He was 77 and had served as a Josephite priest for 49 years.

The fighter pilot in Ted Besh epitomized a man who knew intuitively that preparation and precision were matters of life and death. Ted’s 20-20 vision was more than a mere physical gift. He had a plan for everything and everyone, especially for his six children and what they ultimately would make of themselves.

Now that the national elections are over and the popular vote indicates a sharply divided country, where do we go from here? If we look at the election results carefully, the important thing to realize is that, more or less, about 50 percent of the people in the United States were pleased and about 50 percent of the people in the United States were not.

In keeping with the theme of Mommy & Me, the Clarion Herald asked Archbishop Gregory Aymond, retired Archbishops Alfred Hughes and Francis Schulte, and Auxiliary Bishop Shelton Fabre to dig deeply into their family photo albums for a picture of them as a baby or young child.

Ever gone to church and arrived home wondering what the Gospel message was? Were your children, perhaps, sitting next to you during Mass? Several churches in our archdiocese have adopted a Children’s Liturgy of the Word.

“We have a story to tell about how good God is to us,” said Shirley Stokes, a founding member of the former St. Francis de Sales Golden Voices Choir. And what a story the choir told Nov. 9 at the 44th anniversary celebration of its founding at Ashé Cultural Center in New Orleans.

Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer – a philosopher, accountant, former university president and leadership consultant – always has had a fascination with the intersection of faith and reason. He’s smart enough to have debated physicist Stephen Hawking, an avowed atheist, on national television over the scientific underpinnings of the beginning of the universe and the theological arguments for the existence of God.