Lights, Camera, Script Frenzy!

I must be really out of it lately.

I've been getting emails from the Script Frenzy people, and I was shrugging, and thinking they must be fundraising letters. Script Frenzy, the fun venture where people who have no business scriptwriting write a hundred page script in thirty days, is in June, after all, just like the companion venture, my favorite, National Novel Writing Month, is in November.

Except Script Frenzy's not in June anymore. It starts tomorrow.

Somewhere in the back of my brain I must have noted the change, but I honestly don't remember. When I realized, a few days ago, that the Script Frenzy challenge began April 1 instead of June 1, I thought, "Oh, well." April is busy. Easter's not until the 12th, and there's just no way...

Except that the first time I did NaNoWriMo, I started November 9. And the book I wrote then is still the one my nephew thinks should be published; books I've spend much longer on just don't have that YA moral hopeful science-fiction pull (with series potential, publishers!), like that one does. The thing sort of wrote itself.

And I have no illusions about scripts. I only write them for fun; I just don't have the knack. But it was fun, last year, to script a campy space adventure involving a giant space squid. No, don't ask--really. It amused my children, which is reward enough; it also seems to help get me out of any writing doldrums I might be in, and start the creative processes flowing again.

I am Red Cardigan over there, too; NaNoWriMo is where my blog nickname comes from, in fact. So if you happen to be participating, I could use some new "writing buddies;" my friend from college who got me started on this whole thing hasn't had time in recent years.

Now, here are a few people (totally randomly and gratuitously) who I think should participate this year:

Larry D, at Acts of the Apostasy (in fact, that would be a great script title)
Either or both of the Archbold Brothers
Waltzing Matilda, or her husband, or both of them
Maclin Horton, who would probably write something really, really good
and MommaLlama or Daddio (or both)

and, of course, anybody else who feels a screenplay, script, TV show pilot, or other hundred-page "Lights, Camera, Action!" experience bubbling up.

Now, maybe some of the people I mentioned aren't interested, wouldn't want to try, etc. But I'm telling you--it's very fun to do what the NaNoWriMo/Script Frenzy people call "stifling your inner editor" and just writing, with a caution to the winds, devil may care, add additional cliches attitude. But don't take my word for it--give it a try!

And if you do--let me know! :)

P.S. Don't worry if you don't have a plot. I don't. That's part of the fun!

Twenty Minutes

I battled a migraine all day yesterday, and when this storm finally blew through and took my headache with it, it was rather late.

And, having taken medicine that contained caffeine, I was wide awake.

I promised Thad that I wouldn't stay up too late--it was only midnight or so, not late at all for me even without the caffeine--and settled down to read a few blogs in the peaceful silence of the abandoned living room.

I was absorbed in other peoples' ideas and the thought-tangents these ideas led me toward, quite happy. And then I noticed something on my desk: the pile of tests I hadn't graded last week, because I kept finding myself short of time to do it.

If it weren't Lent, I might have been able to ignore them and go back to my reading. But during Lent my guardian angel's wings have a bit of sting to them, and so, reluctantly, I turned off the computer, picked up the tests, glanced dourly at the clock, and sat down at the kitchen table to grade them.

I'm terrible about grading things. I let tests and papers pile up, and put off the actual moment of red-pen truth as long as possible. Even though the girls are good students and rarely have a total test meltdown, I hate the drudgery of reading through each line, unraveling essay question answers, and the like. Back in college, I found teachers who let tests go to be frustrating; I wanted instant results, or as close to instant as possible! Now, with only three students, I have a pang of sympathy and pity for those instructors of hundreds; I'd rather do almost any chore than face a pile of tests, even in a silent house well after midnight with no distractions.

But I figured that as I was awake anyway, as my brain was whirring with activity, as my head felt clear for the first time all day, I might as well do this one little thing for my children who are also my students. I read through the tests, marked answers, smiled at the good ones, deducted a few points for some off-mark solutions, and put each completed test on each child's desk so she'd see her graded tests in the morning.

And when I finished, I looked at the clock again.

And discovered that all of twenty minutes had passed.

Twenty minutes, to do a job I'd been putting off for days. Twenty minutes, to give my girls the feedback they need, to see for myself how they're doing, to get one set of tests closer to glorious summer freedom. Twenty minutes, to get rid of a pile that was starting to make me feel guilty every time I glanced at it.

Twenty minutes.

This, naturally, made me think of other things I frequently put off or avoid, that could be done, or at least well underway, in a twenty minute time period:

• vacuuming, at least the two main living areas and the hall;
• cleaning the kitchen, or at least cleaning it better than it is at any given moment;
• planning meals, instead of ransacking the cabinets and fridge at the last second;
• tackling a "clutter spot" and making at least some progress;

and so on.

And there are other things, too. I can usually manage to exercise for at least twenty minutes a day, but how often do I skip it because there "just isn't time?"

I say a rosary daily, but how often do I end up finishing it in bed because "I just didn't get to it?"

I owe a sister a phone call (yes, Ohio girl, I mean you!) but how many days now have I missed the window of opportunity (especially given the hour time difference; I always look at the clock when I'm about to call and realize she's probably in the middle of dinner, or headed to bed, etc. by the time I think of picking up the phone)?

I still have clothing buckets in my living room--okay, part of that's because the weather got cold again right when we were packing up all the warm things--but some of it is because I didn't think there would be time before tonight's extra Easter choir practice to get to it, no?

So often these jobs look disconcertingly large, or the perfectionist inside of us doesn't want us to start something we can't finish, and finish well, once we've started doing it. But as I discovered with those tests last night, sometimes twenty minutes is plenty; and even if it's not, it's better to be twenty minutes closer to finishing than never to begin at all.

This has been a Lent full of little obvious realizations for me, but I'm very grateful for them. Just think--most of us are awake for at least sixteen hours a day, and each hour is made of three twenty minute sets, which means that we have forty-eight opportunities a day to get to one of those nagging little chores we've been putting off, because there "just isn't time."

And when I realize how easy it is to fritter away those same twenty minutes on less necessary occupations (not that all leisure is bad, mind, but balance is key), I realize that I only need to commandeer one or two of those twenty minute intervals a day to make a difference to my husband or children or house or vocation generally or even to the community outside.

What can you do in twenty minutes today?

Pastor as Soloist

An interesting quote from CNS about remarks the Pope made recently in Africa:

ROME (CNS) -- In a world that does not seem interested in hearing about God, effective communication of the faith requires a group effort, Pope Benedict XVI said.

When many people seem unable or unwilling to recognize the presence of God, "it is important that a pastor not be a 'soloist,' but be surrounded by believers who, along with him, are bearers of the seed of the word (of God) and help it live and grow," the pope said during a visit March 29 to a Rome parish. [...]

The pope told parish leaders, "The council is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and the pastor -- and even more a pope -- needs advice, needs help in making decisions. And so these (parish) councils are also a work of the Holy Spirit and a witness to the Spirit's presence in the church."

This is interesting to me, because I recently found out more about my mission parish's former pastor. He was, by all accounts, rather autocratic. Even when the parish council would research an idea and be clear on the details, Father would decide to do something completely different (and not always advisable) simply because he was the pastor, and his word ought to be law. The final straw came when the parish raised money for an addition--and Father reportedly refused to accept advice from the lay people who had raised the money, hired some substandard contractors, and permitted the laying of a floor in the addition that had to be removed almost immediately because it was being destroyed with normal use.

Now, none of this is to point fingers at a priest I've never met; these are stories I've heard, and I would certainly ask Father's side of the story if he hadn't retired to another state. But it does illustrate the need to balance the authority of the pastor, which should be respected, with the role of the laity, who should also be respected in their proper spheres.

Far too often in parishes the situation exists where the parish council or other lay members think they are, or ought to be, in charge of the liturgy. From youth group leaders or DRE's demanding unrealistic roles for children at "special" Masses to out-of-control music ministers to segments of the congregation insisting that their particular culture ought to be featured prominently on holy days or other major occasions, lay parishioners seem quite happy, in many parishes, running to Father with a list of liturgical demands and expecting him to do whatever is asked, or to approve whatever is wanted, without a consideration for the integrity of the liturgy, the sacred or solemn, or the overall liturgical character intrinsic to the Mass. Granted, sometimes Father is part of the problem, having been educated to think that the Mass is something over which he has power and in which he may ignore the Church's liturgical will, but even when Father would like to have his Masses be reverent affairs he may be "overruled" by various lay people and their demands.

But the other side of the problem, the pastor who thinks, as the Pope so aptly put it, that he's a "soloist," is a frustrating reality, too. Sometimes a pastor who is very sound liturgically will be this type of pastor, the one who micromanages not the matters of liturgy, religious instruction, etc. which are very much his concern, but also such matters as construction and repairs, fundraising, parish outreach programs etc. involving areas where Father may not only not be an expert, but where he may be ignoring the advice and experience of parishioners who actually are expert in these areas. A priest who has never had to raise money, for instance, will turn away from the sound advice of the head of a local small nonprofit group at his peril; he will overrule people who have great experience in the construction industry to his sorrow; he will end up discouraging such groups as the Altar Society by a demand for the detailed minutes of their every meeting, and the right to overrule at the last minute the plans they've made for the purchase of altar flowers for a major feast day.

There needs to be a good balance between those areas that are the pastor's total concern, and those areas where he ought to welcome and even encourage the advice of the laity.

This may seem like common sense. However, just like the head of a family, a priest can go from dispensing his rightful authority for the good of the parish family to thinking that his authority means that nobody else can ever have a good suggestion or some sound wisdom, that it would diminish his authority to let a lay person help him figure out what kind of new furnace to buy for the church building, or how to go about raising funds for a new baptismal font to replace the "1970s Immersion Pool" that is now leaking a mixture of water and lime-green paint all over the main aisle where it is most unfortunately located.

An authority figure who seeks such advice will never find his authority diminished; he will only find respect for his lawful authority increased, especially among those whose opinions he honors and experience he values. Our priests need our prayers and our support always; but sometimes, even if they don't know it, they need our help, too.

Have It Your Way?

Does fast food cause fast tempers? One has to wonder:

A McDonald's drive-through was shot up early Sunday after a customer was angered that the restaurant had shifted from the lunch menu to the breakfast menu, police said.

The driver of a white Dodge Intrepid pulled into the drive-through at about 2 a.m. at McDonald's at 210 W. 500 South in Salt Lake City and ordered food from the lunch and dinner menu, police said.

When a clerk told her the restaurant was serving only items from the breakfast menu, the woman drove to the second window, police said. Two men got out of the car, and one pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of the trunk, police said. He fired once or twice into the drive-though window before the two men and the woman left on 500 South and turned north on 300 West, police said.

Luckily, no one was injured; police are, naturally, looking for the shooter.

It's a good thing these hot-tempered customers didn't try this at a Burger King:

On Tuesday, Jean-Baptiste was out on bond awaiting trial for the carjacking charge when he walked into a Burger King at 5398 Biscayne Blvd. around 4 p.m.

Wearing a ski mask and black gloves, say police, the teen pointed a semiautomatic Bryco .380 at the people behind the counter.

Customer John Landers, armed with a 9 mm Glock and a concealed weapons permit, saw the teen and confronted him, telling him to put down the gun.

Jean-Baptiste refused and fired his weapon.

Landers, 45, fired back.

Within moments, Jean-Baptiste lay dead on the floor of the fast-food restaurant, while Landers had bullet wounds to his chest, shoulder and arm.

No one else inside the store -- which is usually crowded with children leaving a nearby school and adults getting off work -- was injured.

Granted, the two stories aren't similar. The first involves people acting in a wholly illogical, irrational manner; the thug in the second story may have been a thug--and a bad one--from his earliest days, but his actions, however nefarious and deplorable, had some semblance of reason behind them. Crime may not pay, but at least it's a motive that explains a shooting. Shooting through a drive-thru window because you're mad that you can only get an Egg McMuffin (tm) instead of a Double Cholesterol Burger with Cheese is not a motive; it's an emotion, and it's not a good sign in a rapidly deteriorating culture that more and more people seem to be willing to act on such deadly emotions with no forethought whatsoever.

In a sense, the fast-food restaurant is a symbol for everything that is wrong with America (and I say that as someone who doesn't altogether avoid them). Indulgence, excess, a meal tailored to one's specifications and prepared with dizzying rapidity; the illusion of choices, when the same bland ingredients are merely arranged in different ways and prepared ahead of time to be reheated quickly; factory farms, branding and labeling to convince the consumer that what is offered is better than it really is, and above all the subtle message that you are entitled to whatever you want, that your consumer preferences (instead of marketing you're barely even aware of) is driving the whole enterprise, that you, the customer (instead of the rapacious stockholders) are the most important person in the world to the supposedly-smiling, often surly faces behind the counter.

I sometimes thing the whole fast-food "mantra," the illusion of having things our way (as the old Burger King slogan used to say) has become a national delusion, an American mental illness. We've started to think we ought to be able to order up our whole existence as we like it, with no traffic, no annoyances, no delays, no thwarting of our immediate tastes or desires for gratification. And we react to the word "No," like spoiled children--spoiled children with guns, all too often.

Even our president's campaign slogan appealed to that national illusion of swift accomplishment of all our most material desires and needs; we were told, over and over, that "Yes, we can!" have free healthcare and good jobs for everybody and lots of free services to take over raising our children for us and caring for our aging parents or grandparents for us and cleaning up our neighborhoods for us and solving poverty and crime for us and so on, forever. It was the fast-food vision of politics, the "Would you like fries with that?" tacked on to the usual airy unrealistic political promises, and we bought it, far too many of us, hook, line, and sinker.

What's going to happen, I wonder, when people who ordered up Hope, with a side of Change, find out that we're still stuck on the breakfast menu? We'd better hope that there won't be too many disappointed temper tantrums thrown--especially by people who happen to carry sawed-off shotguns around.

The Pop-Tart (tm) Temptation

We have just observed the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Next week is Palm Sunday, and then comes Easter.

These last two weeks of Lent are rife with what I sometimes think of as the Pop-Tart (tm) temptation. For me this temptation starts when we've given up desserts and sweets for Lent, but still crave sugar. On Sunday or the two big feasts we've just enjoyed (St. Joseph's day and the Annunciation feast) we may have indulged in a little bit of dessert-eating; but now we find ourselves facing the two final, holy, solemn weeks of our six-week journey.

The Lenten sacrifices and practices we adopted at the beginning, full of enthusiasm, have begun to grow wearisome. We may have found it necessary given our circumstances in life to curtail some of them (e.g., the mom of many who could not fulfill her vocation while still keeping her promise to read the entire Bible and pray the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary daily during Lent); we may have taken upon ourselves more than we could ever hope to fulfill.

So in those final two weeks, that Pop-Tart (tm) temptation looms large; those sacrifices and prayers that remain to us are still feeling like too much, and we're getting tired as we journey toward Golgatha.

What is the Pop-Tart (tm) Temptation?

As I said above, imagine you gave up desserts for Lent. During weeks one through four you've been pretty good about it, but now you find yourself really craving that sugar.

And that's when you notice the box of Pop-Tarts (tm) in the cabinet.

You told the kids they were allowed to have these with their breakfasts, even though they're quite sweet--cereal is getting pricey, and even when you cook them some eggs or oatmeal and toast they're still hungry, because unlike their mother they are not wholly allergic to mornings and have been known to warm up leftovers for breakfast (and not just pizza; Hatchick wondered the other day if it was okay to have fish for breakfast).

You haven't, however, handed out Pop-Tarts (tm) as an afternoon snack, because at that point they're clearly a cookie substitute. You may have slipped up once or twice and eaten one before bed without thinking, but now you're really trying to be good, and to live according to both the letter and the spirit of your Lenten resolutions.

But maybe your husband is working really, really late. And maybe you've had a frustrating sort of day. And maybe you start rooting around in the cabinets looking for a snack, since you weren't in the mood to eat dinner at dinnertime. And maybe you see the Pop-Tarts (tm) and start to create lists of rationalizations in your head:

• Pop-Tarts (tm) aren't dessert; they're breakfast.
• I never have them for breakfast anyway, so I could have one now.
• I really need the sugar to stay awake until my husband gets home.
• I could use the energy; then I could get the laundry folded and clean the kitchen while I'm waiting for him to get here.
• I didn't really eat any dinner, anyway.
• I don't like them all that much, so they're not really a "treat" for me.
• There's nothing else to snack on; the kids have gone through the chips and pretzels like locusts through a prairie state again, and I don't feel like washing an apple or cooking vegetables at this hour.
• God won't really mind; it's not like I'm having pie.

By the time you get to that point, chances are the Pop-Tart (tm) is already in the toaster, filling the air with cinnamon scent and reducing your capacity to care whether or not you're violating the spirit, if not the law, of your intention to avoid dessert.

You see how this works for other sacrifices, too: the person who gave up golf may start thinking a trip to the putting range doesn't really count; the person who gave up going to the movies may think a dollar theater on a weeknight isn't really included in his intentional sacrifices; the person who gave up manicures may argue that her high-level meeting really demands the kind of "professionalism" that has to be reflected in one's nail polish; the person who gave up watching broadcast television may go on a Netflix frenzy and be glued to the screen even more than usual.

So much of Our Lord's Gospel message is about perseverance. It isn't that a little slip here and there in our voluntary sacrifices makes us terrible people; it's that we have to strengthen ourselves for our own hour of suffering, for that hour when we will turn away from what is right because what is right is terrible and grim, and what is wrong seems easy and pleasant. Jesus wasn't unreasonable; He didn't fuss at the apostles for falling asleep in Gethsemane because He didn't know what it was like to eat a really full meal and then be overtaken by drowsiness; but He knew that they needed to be stronger to endure the hour that was about to come upon them, His hour, the hour for which He came into the world. As it was, they weren't strong enough. One of them betrayed Him, ten of them scattered, and only St. John was able to endure the sight of the suffering and dying Lord.

When we stay focused these last two weeks, when we renew our commitments and prayers, when we put the Pop-Tarts (tm) back in the cabinet and wash the danged apple, we're not only pleasing Him. We're becoming spiritually stronger, deepening our faith, opening ourselves up to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that in our own hours of pain, suffering, temptation, when we feel lost, abandoned, adrift in a sea of doubt--we will be able to accompany St. John to the Cross, gaze upon His broken Body, and whisper, "Yes, Lord. I believe!"

The Lights Are On--And We'd Better Be Home

I've been enjoying the blogs at the UK Telegraph lately; not only does MEP Gordon Hannan of this viral video fame blog there, but they have several other interesting writers as well.

I especially liked this post today, from Milo Yiannopoulos, titled "Earth Hour is stupid and pointless. Leave the blasted lights on":

Tomorrow night, between 8.30pm and 9.30pm local time all over the world, the lights will go out. The Empire State Building will go dark. The Coca-Cola Co. will switch off its signs all over the world. Why? Climate change, of course.

"Switch off your lights for 60 minutes... and stop global warming," says the WWF. Brilliant! Done! Planet saved! Why didn't anyone think of this before?

Let me get this straight: we're being told that, in order to raise awareness about rising global temperatures, we ought to... fumble around in the dark for a bit.

"See your world in a whole new light," say the posters. Only you won't see anything with the lights off, will you? Yeah, I know it's about energy conservation, but seriously: my eyesight is dodgy even in well-lit areas. How does my blind, hopeless careering around the living room, bashing my head against the light fittings as I go, really help the planet?

It doesn't, of course. And the same people who were telling us that "energy-saving lightbulbs aren't going to cut it now" and that we need "urgent action to avert climate change disaster" are now saying "turn the lights off for 60 minutes". What am I missing here?

Read the rest; clearly, Yiannopoulos has no patience for "If it feels good, pretend it saves the planet" nonsense.

I sympathize. While I believe, as a Catholic, that we are stewards of the earth, that we need to use the world's resources responsibly and equitably, and that we have to respect the natural order, I'm not sold on the anthropogenic global warming idea. But even if I were, the "Earth Hour" concept really is stupid and pointless, as Yiannopoulos puts it. It's one of those adolescent ideas I mention in the post below this one, where the feel-good motivations of the group are supposed to offset the reality that there will be very little actual good done by this symbolic event.

But then, I think the real purpose of such things is to raise, not awareness, but alarm, to drive home the endless message that our climate and our planet are on the brink of disaster--and then to give the world's governments unprecedented power over us all.

Consider this, from Fox News today:

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming.

The 16-page note, obtained by FOX News, will be distributed to participants at a mammoth negotiating session that starts on March 29 in Bonn, Germany, the first of three sessions intended to hammer out the actual commitments involved in the new deal.

In the stultifying language that is normal for important U.N. conclaves, the negotiators are known as the "Ad Hoc Working Group On Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol." Yet the consequences of their negotiations, if enacted, would be nothing short of world-changing. [...]

Among the tools that are considered are the cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions that has been espoused by the Obama administration; "carbon taxes" on imported fuels and energy-intensive goods and industries, including airline transportation; and lower subsidies for those same goods, as well as new or higher subsidies for goods that are considered "environmentally sound."

Other tools are referred to only vaguely, including "energy policy reform," which the report indicates could affect "large-scale transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports." When it comes to the results of such reform, the note says only that it could have "positive consequences for alternative transportation providers and producers of alternative fuels."

In the same bland manner, the note informs negotiators without going into details that cap-and-trade schemes "may induce some industrial relocation" to "less regulated host countries." Cap-and-trade functions by creating decreasing numbers of pollution-emission permits to be traded by industrial users, and thus pay more for each unit of carbon-based pollution, a market-driven system that aims to drive manufacturers toward less polluting technologies.

The note adds only that industrial relocation "would involve negative consequences for the implementing country, which loses employment and investment." But at the same time it "would involve indeterminate consequences for the countries that would host the relocated industries."

There are also entirely new kinds of tariffs and trade protectionist barriers such as those termed in the note as "border carbon adjustment"— which, the note says, can impose "a levy on imported goods equal to that which would have been imposed had they been produced domestically" under more strict environmental regimes.

Another form of "adjustment" would require exporters to "buy [carbon] offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically."

The impact of both schemes, the note says, "would be functionally equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered foreign producers." (There is no definition in the report of who, exactly, is "foreign.") The note adds that "If they were implemented fairly, such schemes would leave trade and investment patterns unchanged." Nothing is said about the consequences if such fairness was not achieved.

This is a serious threat to the sovereignty of the United States (and other nations, of course) under the guise of protecting the environment. And sadly, the man in charge in the White House is unlikely to oppose any of it, since he shares many of the goals outlined here.

So while environmentally minded people enthusiastically plunge themselves into darkness tomorrow night, we're preparing to exchange self-government for some carbon offsets, which we'll then use quickly considering the limits likely to be placed on American industry--all of this at a time when our country's economy is in tatters and layoffs are already widespread. We need to quit playing in the dark--the lights need to be on, and we need to be prepared to defend our national home from would-be conquerors who come not with swords or guns, but U.N. treaties governing us without our consent.

Time To Grow Up, America

Writer Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy has seen the future, and it isn't pretty:

This morning I had to renew my driver's license and registration - I was dreading it because this was the first time I've had to do that since all the new regulations were put into effect last year. So I got all my papers together, made sure I had enough money in the checking account to cover the vehicle registration ($732 for local fees, state fees, federal fees, UN Zone fees, climate impact fee, evaporated gasoline recovery fee, road rage education fee, multiple passenger fee[I have a minivan], 10K+ miles/year fee, English-only forms fee and natural born citizen fee), and went down to the neighborhood United Nations General Secretary of State office.

Five f****** hours later, I finally made it to the front of the line. I thought I was going to go crazy, listening to all the stinkin' propaganda coming from the televisions - Obama this and Obama that; "Yes we can" crap over and over, Chris Matthews plugging the latest bailout (another one for the newspapers!). Needless to say, I wasn't all that happy once I got to the counter.

So then the fat whale-in-a-standard-issue UN-blue muumuu bureautard looks over my papers, pulls up my file on the screen, looks at me with those beady eyes, behind her stupid square glasses beneath the stupid UN-blue tri-cornered cap and gives a little 'tsk tsk' and shake of her head. Uh oh.

"What?" I asked.

"Well, Citizen 135-222LD, it says here you're noncompliant in your Generations Invigorating Volunteerism hours. You're 32.5 hours short of the requirement."

Do go and read the whole thing!

I've been mulling it over, and I've come to the conclusion that there's only one way to avoid Larry's vision becoming a reality: America needs to grow up.

We thought we were grown-ups once before, back around the forties and fifties. We looked and dressed and acted the part. But the real injustices of racism and similar things kept it from being real. We were like children playing with Mother's high heels and Daddy's hat, but underneath it all we were stubbornly clinging to aspects of our nation's long childhood that weren't good for us, or for anybody.

Since the late 1960s we've been on an extended adolescent bender, tearing down authority as much for the sake of destruction as for any concern about injustice; and the ugly hedonism of the Sexual Revolution took our nation's adolescent rebellion down a dark and dangerous path. We've replaced serious thoughts and philosophies with the kind of relativism that always does appeal to teenagers; "You just don't understand!" has been our constant refrain, when asked to respect traditional laws, traditional morality, or, simply, tradition at all.

Everything about us reflects our national juvenalia. We eat too much junk food, watch too much television, are fascinated with toys of the digital variety. We sleep in and skip church, shop a lot, talk a lot more. We act out on our emotions in ways that are harmful and even destructive. We dress like slobs--like sloppy toddlers, in fact; adult clothing looks more and more like the stretchy elastic-waist pants and washable, colorful tops you can find in the infant and toddler department of any major store, and on those few occasions when we really need to dress like a grown-up (nice suit or jacket for men, skirt suit or nice dress for women) we find that the clothes are surprisingly expensive, and surprisingly hard to find.

We've been easy prey for leaders who promised to fix things without filling in any of the "boring" details; we've selected style over substance as our head of state so many times in the last few decades that this time around we eschewed substance altogether, and went for style only--a fact illustrated by the reality that our president appears to believe he's still running a campaign, not a country.

We've gone from the Woodstock-era slogan "If it feels good, do it!" to the Nike 1980s slogan "Just Do It!" to the present-era's Twitter slogan: "What are you doing?" which looks almost like a progression from hedonism to stoicism to voyerism, in a manner of speaking. Can the world-weary "Why do anything?" be far behind?

It's time to put all of that aside. It's time to grow up. It's time to be able to recognize the difference between adults and children not only by their clothing and public behavior, but also by the depth of their ideas and the seriousness with which they approach the world and its problems. It's time for us to reject as unbecomingly adolescent the view of the world that thinks there are no issues that can't be solved by free government money, free government condoms, or some combination of the two. It's time for us to quit thinking that the secret to staying young is to be our children's best friends, to copy their styles and music and attitudes, and to refuse to progress beyond the age of "I want" and "Gimme" for our whole lives.

The generation that came ahead of our own can't do this, for the most part (though isolated members of it rejected the Boomer philosophy a long time ago, and are already on board). They refused to grow up, and will be the trendiest, hippest, coolest people in the nursing homes--at least in their own minds. But the rest of us have a choice: we can keep acting like they did, or we can rebel in our own way, by going to church every week, believing in right and wrong, fighting the injustice of abortion with all the passion--but none of the drugs--they used when they fought against civil rights injustices, being polite in public, teaching our children to say "Mr." or "Mrs." or "sir" or "ma'am" to adults unless invited to do otherwise, and so on.

And if we really want to drive them crazy, we'll start downloading Perry Como or Bing Crosby tunes to use as our cell phone ringtones.

It Was Never About Choice

Imagine that the President of the United States created a program whereby doctors would be randomly chosen from within their communities to assist in the execution of prisoners. In cooperation with state governors who added similar plans, the nation would require all doctors and nurses to register to participate in these executions either by administering the lethal injection, monitoring the death, signing the death certificate, or otherwise facilitating in the process of ending the life of a convicted criminal. If a doctor or nurse were to be selected to help kill a prisoner, he/she would have no recourse--he/she would have to help, or face being fired, fined, and having his/her medical license terminated.

Imagine, further, a public sentiment that was overwhelmingly in favor of prisoner execution, so much so that these killings took place on a daily basis. At any time, any person who practiced medicine in any capacity might be summoned, and it was just too bad if he/she conscientiously objected to the death penalty. De facto approval of the death penalty would be a requirement for being a doctor or a nurse, and anyone who disapproved would be held to be unworthy to practice medicine in the first place.

That is exactly the situation that is about to happen--exactly, except that it is the unborn who are being killed. And doctors and nurses who object to these killings and refuse to participate in them are bracing to face the consequences:

The Obama administration will soon face a decision, bound to be controversial, on how to balance two important principles: freedom of conscience for healthcare workers versus unfettered access to healthcare, especially reproductive services.

Should physicians, for instance, be able to decline to provide birth control services, without referring patients to other providers? Can an emergency-room doctor who believes that emergency contraception is morally wrong refuse to tell a rape victim that it is available?

In its 11th hour, the Bush administration last December issued a "conscience rule" to protect healthcare providers who decline to participate in services they find morally objectionable, such as abortion. That regulation would cut off federal funding to state and local governments, hospitals, clinics, and other entities that fail to accommodate workers' beliefs.

The Obama administration announced its intent to rescind the rule, but it is seeking public comment by April 9 before making a final decision. President Obama has pledged to seek common ground on contentious "life" issues.

Several federal laws have been passed since the 1970s to protect conscientious objection in healthcare, but women's health advocates and other groups say the new rule goes beyond the laws in ways that could limit access to services and endanger women's health. The attorneys general of seven states also filed suit to block its implementation.

Religious conservatives, in turn, insist the rule is essential because healthcare workers, they say, are increasingly pressured, penalized, or fired for exercising their conscience right.

The Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA) highlights examples on its website, including doctors who say they were forced out or had to resign from jobs because they refused to give contraceptives to unmarried women, or to refer patients to others for abortions.

More information and videos are here, at the USCCB website.

We're seeing increasing hostility in America toward anyone who lives according to traditional religious values. Catholics make an easy target: everyone knows what Catholics are supposed to believe, and despite the numbers of "I'm Catholic, But..."s out there there are still a lot of us who take our Church's teachings on the sanctity of life very seriously. But in addition to Catholics, sincere Christians with traditional understandings of morality from many different denominations are under fire as well; the degree to which a Christian is likely to find himself or herself at odds with the culture--and maybe, for those in healthcare, soon, the law--is directly proportional to the degree to which his or her own deeply held beliefs reflect the moral understandings of two thousand years of Christian history.

But this is an unprecedented attempt by the government to interfere with religion. And it matches a growing refrain I've heard in conversations about abortion, gay marriage, and the like, especially those held at Crunchy Cons where many of the commenters do not adhere to traditional Christian morality. It is this: "Sure, you should be free to practice your religion. And you are. You can go to church every Sunday (or synagogue every Saturday, or mosque every Friday, etc.). Nobody will tell you what you can or can't do in your church or place of worship. But when you leave the church building, you have to live according to the law--and the law says abortion is legal, morning after pills are legal, gay marriage (in two states anyway) is legal--so if you don't want to have anything to do with these, don't work in health care, don't work in the wedding industry, don't work for a corporation, etc. If you do, though, then you have to park your religion at the door, and do whatever the law allows; your religious freedom doesn't trump everybody else's freedom to go to Hell in the manner of their choice. You say your religion refuses to allow you to help other people commit serious sins? Too bad--find another job."

This is, of course, diametrically opposed to every sane understanding of religious liberty. The idea that freedom of religion means only the freedom to worship, but then requires the believer to violate his conscience in favor of any or all of the evil laws of the body politic, is noxious to anyone who believes in the concept of religious freedom.

Increasingly, though, in America, freedom of religion means freedom from religion. There is a notion that the unbeliever's freedom to remain un-bothered by religious behavior on the part of believers trumps any right the believer has to avoid committing sin and strive to follow God, to love Him with his whole heart, his whole mind, his whole soul, and his whole strength, and to love his neighbor as himself.

But if we love our neighbor, we cannot, must not, help him to sin. If we do so accidentally or inadvertently it is not a sin for us, though we might mourn it sincerely--but if we deliberately and freely choose to help our neighbor to sin we have sinned, and have, if the matter is serious, jeopardized our own soul as well as his.

For the medical professional, the dilemma is very real: they are not free to refuse to help the person sin, but are being coerced with threats of fines, punishments, firing--even losing their ability to practice medicine, and thus to earn their livelihoods, altogether. Yet against these dire temporal consequences they have to weigh God's law, their horror at abortion and especially at being asked to help procure one in some way, and their awareness of the deep injustice of their situation, in which people who have no business asking them to violate their consciences are actually demanding that they do so.

That this could happen in America betrays the pro-abortion lie, that abortion is all about "the right to choose." The right of religious people to choose not to kill the innocent unborn must be trampled underfoot so that the false and wicked "right" to "choose" to murder babies via abortion can prevail. Any true freedom that interferes with this diabolical "right" must be abrogated or eradicated; abortion becomes a kind of "super-right" while the ordinary right to act according to the dictates of one's own conscience is stripped away.

The "right to choose" is about to become the duty to kill. And God help those who will stand up and refuse; God help us all.

Taxation With Representation--An Idea that Has Outlived Its Usefulness

Oh, the mean-spiritedness of partisan politics. Barack Obama, our brave young hope 'n change president, proposes his brave new hope 'n change budget, and people start fussing. Cut this, trim that, can't have this...can't the Republicans give this guy a break?

Except it's not the Republicans who are complaining:

It's not exactly the can-do, uplifting message that President Barack Obama or congressional Democrats want to deliver to the voting public. But in the face of soaring deficit projections and growing Republican and moderate Democratic opposition to the Administration's $3.6 trillion budget plan, it may be the best they can do. And so, when the President journeyed to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to rally his party's support for his agenda, he sought to make a counterargument to the rising chorus that wants him to scale back his ambitious plans to reform health care, energy and education even as he tries to save the economy and cut the deficit.

"The real question is, Are we going to have a huge deficit with investment or a huge deficit without investment?" said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, emerging from the meeting. "Those are my words, not [Obama's], but I'm kind of summarizing what the argument is here. If you eliminated his investments, you'd find the deficit would still be 80% or 90% of what it would be otherwise with his investment." In other words, since Washington is going to rack up massive deficits, it may as well go all in and get some long-term bang for its buck. [...]

Still, even small differences can cause major rifts in families, and the competing budgets suggest the challenges Obama's agenda faces. Both the House and Senate, after all, removed Obama's $250 billion–$750 billion placeholder request for more bank bailout funds. And they both slashed the Administration's proposed 10% increase in nondefense discretionary spending (for education, environment and health initiatives, among other things), to 7% in the Senate and 7%–9% in the House. The Senate stripped the President's signature middle-class tax cuts, known as "Making Work to Pay," of $400 for individuals and $800 for families. The Senate plan, crafted by Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, also notably does not include any targeted funding to bankroll health-care reform, as Obama's does with $634 billion over 10 years. "When you lose $2.3 trillion, you have to cut things," said Conrad, whose plan includes $160 billion less in discretionary spending over five years than the President's, with a target deficit of $508 billion in 2014.

Do you ever read things like this and just shake your head about that whole "taxation without representation" thing? It's not like taxation with alleged representation is working out all that well for us now.

We're in a time of great economic concern. Families are cutting back, tightening budgets, learning thrift, saving more, spending less. But one of the first things the Democrat-controlled Congress slashes from the president's budget is the tiny pittance in the way of tax cuts, a mere $800 (it should be many times that much) which however small would be a great boon for working families; it would really help people who are struggling financially to make a few payments or pay down the credit card.

But no--we can afford to spend 39 billion dollars in energy programs, give NASA $20 billion, increase the budget of the Environmental Protection agency by 34%--but we can't afford to let people keep $800 of their own money; that would be frivolous and wasteful.

Of course, one can't really blame the Democrats in Congress for opposing tax breaks for the common people; for some of them, it's the closest thing to a religion they have. And given that Michelle Obama thought a $600 stimulus check would barely cover a decent pair of earrings, maybe the Democrats agree with her, and figure there's no need to send people money that they're just going to go splash around at Zale's or Best Buy; the Democrats will spend it ever so much more carefully, studying frog habitations or designing more cool brochures for the Department That Makes Useless Information Available to the Clueless for Free.

But as maddening as that is, it's not as bad as this, from the same Time article above:

The House bill includes a controversial provision for so-called reconciliation — which would leave the door open to piggyback massive programs on the budget like universal health care in case they fail to make it through the regular legislative process. House Democrats and the Administration support such a move specifically for health care — though, theoretically, the provision would allow for anything, including energy, to be pushed through the Senate with just a simple majority rather than a filibuster-proof 60 votes. Several moderate Democratic Senators, including Ben Nelson of Nebraska, have said that inclusion of reconciliation instructions in the final bill would be a deal breaker for them. "Reconciliation is not where we'd like to start, but we are not willing to take it off the table," Orszag said.

Things like that make me wonder why we even have a Congress any more. They cost us a lot of money, and they don't seem to do much when the other two branches threaten to take over their power. We have become quite accustomed to having the judicial branch make laws for us, and now it seems that the executive branch wants the authority to spend money without going through the "regular legislative process." If Congress isn't even going to slow down the rate of free-fall spending, but is going to let the White House insert back-door spending provisions into regular budgets that will take Congress' authority to regulate such monies away, then why are we feeding them, paying them really nice salaries, paying for their transportation to and from nice beaches on "fact-finding" missions, paying for their health care, and so on? They've been amusing pets, but perhaps now, in these tough economic times, we could find them a decent home elsewhere; they're getting expensive at the same time they've apparently decided they no longer need to earn their keep.

And once we've put Congress out to pasture, we can start reigning in the White House and the judiciary, reminding them that they're not our overlords, but that they serve at our sufferance, and are playing about with our money and our freedom. Maybe when that lesson has sunk in we can add back in the third branch of government on a trial basis, but they'd have to promise to behave, and quit spending billions and billions of dollars we don't have on things we don't want, don't need, and shouldn't be the federal government's job in the first place.

Hyperbole Loves Company

From Politico:

At the White House’s celebration of Greek Independence Day Wednesday afternoon, President Obama got a little unexpected flattery from Archbishop Demetrios, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States

Listing a series of challenges Obama will need to deal with as president, Demetrios predicted: Demetrios to Obama: "Following the brilliant example of Alexander the Great...you will be able to cut the Gordian knot of these unresolved issues."

Obama responded by making a face to the crowd, prompting laughter. And when he took the mic, he speculated on what the compliment could do for him at home.

Oh, well, it could have been worse; at least the Archbishop didn't compare him to...well, you know. And Alexander didn't have a particularly good relationship with his father, either, so maybe there are some possible points of comparison.

One could have wished that we were done with all the grandiose comparisons of Obama to the historic great ones of the past. But get a little bit of historical hyperbole going, and it's hard to stop. So far Obama has been compared to Jesus, Alexander the Great, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln; that's a lot to live up to for one man.

One thing is certain--were Obama to speak to a group of Muslim-Americans, there's no chance they'd let their emotions get the better of them, and compare him to their major religious leader, no matter how flattered and pleased they were to be in the presence of The One. Some things just aren't done, you know.

What Happens When You Don't Coordinate the Spin

US News & World Report's Daniel Gilgoff has an interesting observation about the Obama/Notre Dame situation and the response by progressive Catholics, particularly Catholics United:

The White House and liberal Catholic groups appear to have been caught off guard by the furor over President Obama's forthcoming appearance at Notre Dame. Catholics United, a progressive Catholic group with close ties to the White House, has just released a defense of Notre Dame and Obama's appearance there.

What took so long? The controversy erupted shortly after the White House announced Obama's spring commencement schedule last Friday. That was 120 hours ago.

Compare this response to Catholic United's performance around the White House rollout of Kathleen Sebelius as the nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services a few weeks back. Tipped off by the White House—which knew Sebelius, a Catholic supporter of abortion rights, would irk conservative Catholics—Catholics United was up and running with its Catholics for Sebelius website on the Saturday night the Sebelius news broke. The group's tardy response on Notre Dame suggests that the White House skipped the pregame strategizing this time around.

Something else surprised me about Catholic United's press release today. It attacks leading critics of Notre Dame's invitation to Obama as "partisan operatives who routinely use a single-issue analysis to divorce the Catholic faith from its longstanding commitment to social justice and the sanctity of all human life."

Does that include the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who has blasted Notre Dame for hosting Obama?

Gilgoff goes on to point out that progressive Catholics usually take more care so as not to appear that they're not on the same page with Church leaders. All in all, an interesting insight.

What we've seen so far from those defending Notre Dame has been a pretty mixed bag; my paraphrases follow:

1. The Garnett repsonse: Obama shouldn't have been invited, especially considering his recent actions in re: ESCR. But Notre Dame is a School that Matters, and shouldn't be subject to all the harsh criticism it's receiving for the decision to invite Obama (let alone to give him an honorary degree).

2. The Catholics United response: Abortion is a single issue, Catholics are bigger than that, Obama is historic and his policies support the common good (no, really, they said that), and all those Catholics who are partisan and support the GOP keep their mouths shut when people who Hate the Poor and Trample on the Oppressed are invited to speak, so...so there.

3. The Fr. Reese response: As a Jesuit, he reserves the right to make no sense whatsoever. That said, Obama's really pro-life, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. And inviting people to speak at the Al Smith dinner which by its nature invites both major party candidates to speak is exactly the same as Notre Dame's decision to invite Obama and freely give him an honorary degree, for reasons which are beyond the comprehension of those not educated by Jesuits. And academic freedom requires us to invite people who challenge our ideas to speak to us in a forum where we won't be engaging in any discussion, asking any questions, or even forbidding the ubiquitous teleprompter, even if we know that the person in question has nothing but contempt for the Catholic views on the value of human life from conception to natural death, and has called babies a "punishment" and thinks questions about human life are beyond his pay grade, which suggests that he doesn't really have any challenging new ideas--or even ideas--to offer on this subject anyway.

It probably doesn't surprise anyone that I don't find any of these responses particularly compelling. But now, in light of Daniel Gilgoff's observation, I'm wondering if the wildly varied responses from Notre Dame's defenders aren't coming from people who didn't find out that Obama had accepted Notre Dame's invitation any sooner than the critics of the decision did.

In the presence of a wrongheaded decision, it's not all that difficult to articulate why the decision was wrong. Bishop D'Arcy did it best, I think, but others have been eloquent and clear as well. It's a lot harder to spin a bad decision as if it were really a good one, or at least as if it, or the institution making it, were above criticism--and it's especially hard to do this if there was no opportunity to coordinate the spin in advance.

Which could have been done, if Obama had shared with his "Catholic support" team the news that he planned to accept Notre Dame's invitation ahead of time. That he didn't is just another indication of how much for granted Obama takes his liberal Catholic supporters, and how little they are getting from him despite how much they've been willing to set aside in order to get anything at all.

Happy Feast of the Annunciation!

Good morning! Happy Feast of the Annunciation, everyone!

In the comments under the post below this one, Irenaeus asks about prayers for this feast day. I can think of no better one than the beautiful ancient prayer, the Angelus:

The Angel of the Lord declared to Mary:
And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Behold the handmaid of the Lord: Be it done unto me according to Thy word.

Hail Mary . . .

And the Word was made Flesh: And dwelt among us.

Hail Mary . . .

Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray:

Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ Our Lord.

Amen.

Traditionally this prayer is said at six a.m., noon, and midnight, but I think it would be appropriate to pray any time of day especially on this beautiful feast day. While, as this site says, the history of the prayer is hard to trace, the custom of praying a triple repetition of Hail Marys at at least two of these hours is at least seven hundred years old.

There is a society devoted to the Angelus, made up of Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and other Christians who have a devotion to this prayer. And no mention of this lovely devotion would be complete without a look at Jean-Francois Millet's famous painting of it being prayed, from 1859:



God bless you all as we celebrate this beautiful feast!

Six Quick Signs of Spring

Just for a minute, I have an urge to be a regular mommy-blogger. Here goes:

1. For dinner: a light dish of cubed chicken, gumbo vegetables, salsa, with a little shredded cheese melted on at the last minute. Served with rice and a quick fruit salad (apples, bananas, crushed pineapple and golden raisins). Oh, and tortillas for the kids to build soft tacos out of it all.

2. I am wearing: (shh, don't tell) shorts. They're knee-length, denim, and I won't wear them outdoors (promise. It would be seriously uncharitable for me to appear in public in these, though I doubt I'd be tempting anyone's virtue). I've been doing some rather warm chores this afternoon, and the shorts let me keep the a/c set at 80 degrees.

3. The air conditioning (speaking of that): is actually running. I know, in March. Pushed all the way up to 80, even. But it kicked on for a little while.

4. In my house: There are buckets of clothes in the living room. Today we began the annual shifting of seasonal attire: we tackled closets, sorted clothes into piles, made plans to give away what doesn't fit, and packed up winter clothes to go out to the garage. Tomorrow we go through drawers, and sort out the summer clothes which we brought in from the garage this afternoon. I sometimes joke that my idea of wealth beyond my wildest dreams would be to be able to fit both season's clothes in the house. That's right--both seasons. In Texas, it's summer or winter. The brief season of "fixin' to be" either one lasts a couple of weeks, and isn't worth buying clothing for. It only took me a few years of living here (and a few "nice lightweight jackets" I never actually wore) to figure that out.

5. Outside: It was in the upper 70s today, and is still hovering near 70 at 7 p.m. Windy. Covered with this stuff, making everybody sneeze (and apparently bringing out my brother's frequent bouts of mirthful poetry).

6. An unmistakable sign of spring in my house: Corn on the cob. Granted, it's the frozen kind, and it's still in the freezer; Hatchick gave up butter for Lent, so I'm not making it until tomorrow's feast day so she can slather it with buttery goodness and enjoy it with the rest of us. I'm not sure why I think of corn on the cob as a spring food--maybe because around here it's so darned hot in the actual summer that nobody wants to cook it!

Okay, your turn. What are six quick signs of spring where you are today?

We now return to our regularly scheduled political commentary and ranting. :)

Why Richard Garnett is Wrong

A hat tip to CMR for the link to this, by Richard Garnett, in defense of Notre Dame:

As I made clear in my initial contribution to this NRO symposium, I believe that the University of Notre Dame should not, at this time, honor President Obama with a ceremonial degree and the commencement-speaker role. To say this is not to deny that there are things about his election and achievements that a meaningfully Catholic university — and, to be clear, Notre Dame is such a university — could and should celebrate. Under the circumstances, though — so soon after the president's insultingly bad statement regarding embryo-destructive research (in which he reduced moral critique to "politics") — it seems to me that there is no way to avoid the impression that Notre Dame is un-bothered (even though we are) by his deeply unjust actions. And, unfortunately, there are reasons to worry that the controversy surrounding the president's presentation and presence will distract attention from, and celebration of, the conferring of the (richly conserved) Laetare Medal on Prof. Mary Ann Glendon.

All that said, this is not the time for the tiresome anti-Notre Dame screeds that too often clutter the Catholic and conservative corners of the Internet. Some who are outraged, gathering signatures, demanding changes, and pointing fingers have long since given up — mistakenly — on Notre Dame. For them, Notre Dame's purpose is simply to serve as a convenient target. For many of Notre Dame's cyber-critics, her many achievements and successes are invisible; her mission is unappreciated or not-understood; her failures are cause for celebration, not constructive criticism.

These critics are wrong. This should not be an occasion for fundraising, grandstanding, or attention-grabbing by self-interested activists. Again, Notre Dame matters, and it is precisely because it still is meaningfully Catholic that its mistakes are disappointing. It's easy for [insert name here] Completely Pure Catholic College (or blogger) to avoid dilemmas (and mistakes) like Notre Dame's, because no one cares about that College (or blogger). Notre Dame's challenge is more difficult. We should want, and be willing to help, her to succeed.

Let's unpack this a bit, shall we?

First, I can't quite agree that a meaningfully Catholic university ought to be celebrating "certain things about Barack Obama's election and achievements" so soon after that election, and before those achievements have really started to happen. I know, I'm ignoring the "historic first biracial President" context in stating that, but I can't quite balance the historicity of that aspect against the "historic first pro-infanticide openly pro-abortion President" aspect. Moreover, while I hate to be hyper critical, Garnett seems to be giving the impression that it is the timing of this invitation, not the mere fact of it, which is problematic here--that inviting Obama so soon after the ESCR debacle is going to give the appearance that Notre Dame doesn't care about the injustice of using unwanted IVF children as spare parts for research. I'm glad Garnett speaks for the University when he says that "we are" bothered by Obama's actions--but I'm not completely sure who he means by "we," when all is said and done.

The second paragraph lunges into "methinks the gentleman doth protest too much" territory. One would think, reading that paragraph, that conservative Catholic bloggers use Notre Dame as the punch line of every scheduled Tuesday screed (honestly; hasn't Garnett noticed that it's the Jesuits, not Notre Dame, who have this dubious honor)? And while I'll cheerfully admit to having long since given up on Notre Dame, which is second only to Georgetown in my mind in the category of "Universities which remember they are Catholic when it is convenient, and suffer an equally convenient form of religious amnesia when it's not," I'll also admit that Notre Dame has very little to do with me, personally, as I come from a long line of Catholics who a) couldn't afford it and b) didn't much care for college football. It's not as though I sit, with poisoned pixels dripping in anticipation, just waiting for Notre Dame to make some slight mistake so I can gleefully tear it down; Notre Dame is doing a pretty good job of tearing itself down, and on occasion I'm going to note that fact, the way I note other examples of cultural decline. And I'm pretty sure that other conservative Catholic bloggers feel the same, more or less.

It's the third paragraph where Garnett gets down to what for him is probably the crux of the matter. Notre Dame, he insists for the second or third time, really truly is still Catholic, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Moreover, Notre Dame really matters, not like those third-rate academically hidebound "pure" Catholic colleges with their faculty Fidelity Pledges and their open, stated commitments to orthodoxy and their embarrassingly large turnouts for the March for Life in DC every January. Those tiny colleges could be making mistakes or encountering dilemmas at every turn, but who would care? They don't get into trouble, no matter how many pro-abort presidents or congresspeople they invite and honor and give honorary degrees to and...

...er...

...well, but Notre Dame has to invite and honor those kinds of people, because Notre Dame matters, you see. The tiny Catholic colleges are free to be "pure" because it's still possible for them to put their Catholic faith and their Catholic identity ahead of everything else, but Notre Dame doesn't have that luxury, because Notre Dame has to succeed, in order to attract the attention of people who ordinarily wouldn't give a Catholic institution the time of day but who are drawn in by Notre Dame's prestige, but the price of that prestige is that sometimes you have to honor Presidents who think killing really small people is a terrific idea and is willing to put the whole force of the federal government behind that idea, and....

...wait...

...but anyway, forget all that, Catholics should still support Notre Dame. Even small Catholic bloggers. Because...because it's Notre Dame!

This Catholic blogger would be happy to support Notre Dame, if Notre Dame were happy to live up to its Catholic identity. Otherwise...well, I reserve the right to get all screed-y and tiresome. The eventual collapse of a once-great university brought on by its abandonment to its core identity and its moral principles would be a tragedy--but the tragedy is not the fault of those who commented on its tendency to stray from this identity and these principles when there was still time for the university to change.

A Nation of Moral Midgets

In my post below this one, I write about parents making decisions on behalf of their minor children.

A federal judge in New York thinks otherwise:

A federal judge on Monday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the Plan B morning-after birth control pill available without prescription to women as young as 17. The judge ruled the agency had improperly bowed to political pressure from the Bush Administration when it set 18 as the age limit in 2006.

The F.D.A. has 30 days to comply with the order, in which the judge also urged the agency to consider removing all restrictions on over-the-counter sales of Plan B. The drug consists of two pills that prevent conception if taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse.

Some women’s health advocates hailed the decision.

“It is a complete vindication of the argument that reproductive rights advocates have been making for years, that in the Bush administration it was politics, not science, driving decisions around women’s health,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a non-profit group that was one of the plaintiffs in the case against the F.D.A.

But some conservative groups voiced concern that the ruling could promote sexual promiscuity. “Now some minor girls will be able to obtain this drug without any guidance from a doctor and without any parental supervision,” the Family Research Council said in a released statement.

I will now preemptively apologize for using a few colorful phrases in this post; my feelings on the subject are quite strong, as you can probably imagine.

This is absolute insanity. This is an attack on the family, at the highest levels of government.

Parents are responsible for their minor children. If your 17-year-old is truant from school, in states that require compulsory education through the age of 18, you can be arrested along with your erring teen under some circumstances. If your 17-year-old destroys someone's property you can be held liable. If your 17-year-old drinks alcohol from your house and is later involved in a drunk-driving accident you will likely be sued by the victims and may end up in jail.

But if your 17-year-old is having sex with her thirty-year-old high school basketball coach, the law wants to make sure she can get her Plan B over the counter without having to get a prescription from a doctor, without any parental involvement, and without anyone finding out that her predatory and evil teacher is committing statutory rape.

And consider the judge's advice to the F.D.A.: remove all restrictions on Plan B. Heck, why not put it in the same aisle with the Flintstones Vitamins (tm), musical toothbrushes and cartoon character headbands; we wouldn't want the tramp-pill manufacturers to miss out on the newly-pubescent market, would we?

This isn't a battle between politics and science (however ironic it is to have a shrill vocalist from a political pro-abort agitgroup trying to frame the issue that way). This is a battle between politics and parents, between condomaniacs and common sense. This is a battle between the insane sex-saturated goons running this culture into the ground, who think that any girl over the age of eleven who isn't making herself regularly available to the fifth-grade wrestling team is missing out, and those of us who still think it's a hideously bad idea for little kids to play house in the kind of way that leads to one of them thinking some Plan B might be a good addition to her school-supply box, alongside the markers, the glue-stick, and the blunted scissors (because, you know, we can't let kids have sharp scissors in school; they might get into trashy daytime talk-show reenactments in the halls, and somebody might get hurt, whereas encouraging minors to have sex is perfectly safe and a really good idea, especially if you work for Planned Parenthood, or the Center for Reproductive Rights--making sure that middle-schoolers are sexually active is job security, baby, and we can't have too much of that).

And what happens when your child, age eleven or thirteen or fifteen or seventeen, comes to you complaining of a severe headache--and you don't know that she took Plan B, and that this is a warning sign of a serious side effect that should receive medical attention immediately, but treat it like any other headache a child might have? What happens when your diabetic child takes Plan B, ignoring the information on the package insert that this pill isn't recommended for diabetics who should be closely monitored if they take it? What if your child is one of those who develops an ectopic pregnancy after taking Plan B, but you rush her to the hospital assuming appendicitis, and the diagnosis is delayed because she doesn't want to say anything about having taken Plan B?

In the real world, parents are the ones who deal with the consequences of their children's actions, up until the child reaches adulthood. There's a reason why we don't expect young girls to make healthy food choices without help and guidance, to brush their teeth regularly without being reminded, to help themselves from the medicine cabinet when they have a headache or a cold, to wear appropriate safety gear when they play sports unless we teach them about it, and buy it for them. But our expectations that parents have an important role to play in teaching our children about health, safety, moral values, and good choices goes right out the window when it comes to sex; we're assured by the toxic and degrading culture that our children will be sexually active just as soon as the urges start to strike them, that there's nothing we can or should do about it, that making Plan B available to girls who can't legally purchase their own cold or allergy medicine (which will only be sold to people over 18) is a perfectly sane and rational thing to do.

I think that from now on, any parent who is charged with any crime or sued for any reason stemming from the behavior of any of his minor children ought to instruct his legal counsel to pull up this ruling from Judge Edward R. Korman as proof that American parents are no longer to be held responsible for their children's actions. If our children are free to have sex and to buy Plan B with no parental input whatsoever, then no parent anywhere ought to pay for a broken window that fell victim to his child's baseball skills, or to be held accountable for his child's failure to attend school, or to take responsibility for his child's decision to hold a keg party on his parents' lawn. Since Judge Korman believes that not only 17-year-old girls, but girls of any age whatsoever should be able to purchase Plan B at the local pharmacy with no parental guidance, no prescription, and no adult oversight, he has effectively declared the end of the responsibility parents have to protect their children--because the judge apparently thinks that "protection" is something made of latex or of progestin, which kids only need once the little tykes have decided it's high time to act on those sexual urges that their public school teachers have been telling them about, with detailed instructions, since kindergarten.

We've become a nation of moral midgets, pimping our children to the Culture of Death. People like Judge Korman are proof of the annihilation of common sense, dignity, virtue, decency, and respect for parental authority that are the hallmarks of this degenerate age.

Social Networking and Teens

So, is this reason number infinity plus or minus the square root of pi to homeschool? Or reason number six (give or take) to be wary about letting one's teens use the Internet's social networking sites? Or, perhaps, a bit of both? Details:

A 14-year-old Fort Worth middle school student was stabbed in the chest with a pair of scissors today as she fought with a classmate over comments posted on a MySpace page, police said.

The girl was stabbed at repeatedly during the fight at Handley Middle School, 2801 Patino Road.

Barbara Griffith, a Fort Worth school district spokeswoman, said the MySpace argument was about a posting during spring break. She did not know where the fight took place at the school or where the scissors came from.

The injured girl suffered two shallow, non-life threatening puncture wounds, Fort Worth police said. The other girl was taken to the Tarrant County juvenile detention facility.

One would-be wit below the story comments, "This is why I use Facebook. Myspace (sic) is full of hoodlums."

In all honesty, one of the reasons I haven't jumped on the social networking bandwagon is because I have three daughters, one just barely a teen, the other two teetering on the brink of adolescence. They see everything I do on the computer (my computer is in the living room/school room, very visible) and enjoy the fact that we can use it together to enhance our homeschooling, to turn a discussion about refracting and reflecting telescopes into visits to places like this one or this one, to play clever games and explore faraway places, to communicate with family and friends via emails, and even to write blog posts and invite conversation.

And they want to do all of those things. Soon they will want to do them by themselves.

They're allowed a little (supervised) use of email. They're allowed some access to games--again, with strict supervision. If they need to use a search engine to investigate something, though, they have to ask me to do it; I've told them why, and that it's easy to click on a link thinking you're going somewhere safe when you're actually being directed to something immodest or scary. We've talked a little about the dangers of the Internet, and of talking to strangers, but those talks will get more pointed and more specific when they know a little more of the world than they do now. As for blogging: I think it's a great way for young people to learn to write, after they've learned the basics of grammar and composition, and taken a typing class or two. And they'd have to have a private blog, and invite family members only to view it.

But social networking is something that looks "cool" and "fun" to my girls, even though they've never used any of these sites. It's not that surprising, really. Teenage girls are quick adopters of communications technology, like cell phones and text devices, so they're equally eager to try out websites that promise instant access to their friends. And this is true even if their friends tend to be cousins, other homeschooled kids, and the like whom they can easily communicate with via that old-fashioned thing called the telephone.

Sure, some of the dangers of social networking sites can be minimized for teens and children, using methods such as supervision, setting strict rules about who can or who can't have access to one's page or deck or account, and setting even stricter time limits about how often they can be on the site to check for messages from friends and leave new ones. But the slightly-greater addictive properties of these sites compared to other types of computer use, the pressure to respond to anybody and everybody else's messages no matter how much time that takes, the chance that an inadvertent click will let others read what was supposed to be private, and the fact that your friends' friends' friends may end up being able to read what you're posting even if you don't know them and have no idea who they are make me shiver a little, as a watchful parent--it doesn't take very long for someone to be put at risk in situations like these, and children often lack the awareness to realize that they've inadvertently made themselves vulnerable.

And then there's the situation like the one in the story above. Imagine if, when you were a teenager, it had been possible in a fit of pique to make sure that not only the target of your anger, but also her closest friends, family members, etc., could see just how angry and upset you were--and that the comment you wrote in a fit of momentary teen anger had been left to fester over all of spring break. Well, we don't have to imagine--what happened next made the news.

Sure, teens can fight and argue and even become violent without the help of social networking sites, and did so before anybody even dreamed of them; MySpace didn't make the girl in the story attack the other girl. But maybe if a comment-type of "flame war" hadn't gotten so far out of hand, things might not have reached this point without the adults in these girls' lives realizing that the two of them were having a problem with each other, and offering advice and help.

We parents have the duty to make all sorts of decisions on behalf of our kids. But I think we have to be aware that what our parents used to tell us, that actions speak louder than words, is true, too. Our children see what we're doing online, and it's only natural for them to want to do those things, too, as soon as possible, as soon as they're old enough. My current way of thinking is that children should be near adulthood before they can have access to social networking--old enough for the "coolness" and the hype to have worn off, old enough to make their own decisions about how much free information they want to give to marketers, old enough to shrug and "un-friend" anyone whose behavior or comments get out of control without feeling hurt or damaged by the experience, and old enough to evaluate social networking as they evaluate all other Internet tools, to decide whether these sites are really useful to their lives or a drain on their time and productivity.

It's our job as parents to prepare our children for the world, not to let the world make them over in its image. Social networks may be one new thing we have to ponder carefully before letting our kids have access to these places on the web. But making those decisions on their behalf, until they're old enough to make the decisions on their own, is an important part of our job.

The Big Lie

I've been watching a newish TV show lately; I thought the concept was interesting, and liked the conflict being set up among some characters. I won't mention the name of the show, though, because it looks like its ratio of OSS to quality broadcast moments is becoming unacceptable, as so often happens with even those shows that have some artistic or literary merit.

OSS? Oh, I'm sorry: Obligatory Sex Scenes.

When Flannery O'Connor gives advice to writers in her various essays, she spends some time talking about how, as art is universal and must be true, it has to reflect the world as it is, not the world as we'd like it to be. Nice though it would be sometimes to read books, see movies, or watch TV shows during which the characters actually seem to have heard of the Sixth Commandment and even consider it relevant to their lives, the sad reality is that this is not our world. A friend of mine once commented, with a little dark humor, that when he was younger he thought that the OSS were just like the Obligatory Car Chase Scenes, or the Obligatory Gun Battle Scenes, and that in the real world people would not only not hop into bed with random barely-known others, but also wouldn't drive like maniacs through residential traffic or be shot on a regular basis without ever being seriously hurt. Sadly, he learned that the OSS really do reflect more of the world's reality; people may know better than to drive wildly or shoot randomly, but they don't seem to know better than to engage in what ought to be called the marriage act with anybody who comes along.

So I know that the OSS reflect our culture's reality for an awful lot of people. But O'Connor still wouldn't approve, because the OSS also don't reflect the whole of reality, just a carefully chosen, artificially glamorous part that reflects fantasy much more than it does reality.

Because, just like those car-chase scenes and gun battle scenes, the obligatory sex scenes don't ever have any consequences for the unrealistically attractive actors taking part in them. Venereal disease, unexpected pregnancy, emotional issues, and other things that in the real world go hand-in-hand with casual promiscuity never seem to crop up on TV; if a character does announce a pregnancy it's not a real crisis, but a ratings hook designed to keep people watching to see if she and the baby daddy are going to make a go of a long-term relationship or not. In the slick make-believe world of television, a man can spend an evening with a woman and then go back to being friends, acquaintances, co-workers, or even strangers--no strings attached, no expectation of more than a solitary physical encounter, though the bedroom door is always open to more of the same, equally without any consequence for the--well, it's presumptuous to call them a "couple," isn't it?

In the real world, though, things happen when two single people decide to engage in reproductive activity. Casual sex hurts people, physically, mentally, morally, emotionally and spiritually. Many women from high school on up have discovered that the man who swore he'd always be around loses interest once she crosses that line and becomes physically available. There was a lot of wisdom in the old saw our grandmothers knew and repeated, about not buying a cow if the milk is free; men don't, generally speaking, seek commitment and responsibility in a context where nobody's asking for either one.

The Church gets attacked a lot for trying to tell the truth about sex. The Pope came under fire in Africa for doing this, for reminding people that condoms aren't the solution to a culture where sex is treated as the encounter between two physical bodies, nothing more. What the Church knows and teaches is that sex is a physical iteration of a statement of a reality: the two people involved are "saying" to each other We are one, we are united body and soul, we have become one flesh, forever. And part of that statement is the couple's desire to bring forth "one flesh" from their two selves, in the living symbol and witness of their love called a child.

The casual sex shown on television reflects a dark and ugly reality in our culture. This dark and ugly reality is that many people engage in the physical aspects of this union under false pretenses. They are not one; they are not united in soul and are merely using each other's bodies; they can think of few horrors greater than the creation of a child with this person they've chosen to use as a vehicle for their own temporary pleasure.

And even people who like to think of themselves as "above" this sort of behavior, who would argue that their sexual encounters are more "moral" because they don't engage in casual sex with people they barely know, are telling the same lie to the person they think of as a long-term committed partner. The only commitment that means anything is the commitment called marriage; those other "committed relationships" aren't committed at all, and can be dissolved at any time by either person for any reason, despite the fact that the physical language of unity speaks of a oneness that can't be dissolved, that transcends the physical unity and involves the whole person.

Our culture is pretty attached to this particular lie. There's a reason for that; our culture has become a culture of secular materialism, a culture based on materialism's lies that there is no soul, there is no eternity, there is no reality beyond what can be empirically proved. Man is just a highly evolved animal, and his urges toward reproduction are fully animal; but since man has figured out how to enjoy the urges without having to deal with the reproductive consequences then he ought to do so whenever, wherever, and in whatever manner he personally finds pleasing. The only bars to his pleasure involve social ideas about consent, but even those are artificial--society itself is artificial, though, and the price for living in society is putting up with these minor irksome restraints on man's pursuit of what our founding fathers quaintly called "happiness." Aside from that though, men--and of course I mean both males and females, here--are perfectly free to mimic their favorite TV shows' ideas, and engage in soulless and exploitative sex with anybody who agrees to join them in this empty and meaningless activity.

Those of us who know that sex involves the soul as well as the body, who understand the meaning of the wordless speech between husbands and wives, who welcome and love the children God sends us as His highest and most precious blessing, who reject wholeheartedly the deficient and animalistic view of sex promoted by our dying culture as one of its most self-destructive lies, find ourselves turning our backs on more and more of our culture's expressions which enshrine this lie as some sort of great and higher truth. Whether we turn off the TV, stop reading the magazines, quit listening to the music, avoid the best-selling novels, or take other similar actions, we're always being challenged to be aware of how much cultural poison in the form of this particular lie is seeping into our homes, and to reject its ugly dehumanizing triviality, its attempt to turn something holy and sacred into something shallow, self-serving, ugly, empty and vain.

The Needle's Eye

So, Barack Obama will be giving the commencement address this year at Notre Dame. And receiving an honorary degree from the school, as well (Hat tips to CMR and American Papist).

Sigh. Yawn.

Don't get me wrong: I didn't like it when President Clinton gave the ND commencement address. And giving Obama an honorary degree goes one step further down the road of academic prostitution to the zeitgeist, in a manner of speaking.

But come on. It's not like Obama's going to be speaking at, and honored by, a really Catholic university.

Oh, sure, Notre Dame still likes to throw around the "C" word, especially to potential benefactors and parents who chose prestigious expensive Catholic high schools for their children, some of whom were actually Catholic until they got old enough to scream that they didn't want to go to church anymore (leading parents to work out the usual Confirmation Accord: you go to Mass long enough to get confirmed, and then you can sleep in on Sunday mornings, and I won't bug you anymore, promise--but your grandmother would just kill me if you didn't get confirmed, or worse, cut you out of her trust fund).

And there are still small pockets of actually Catholic students at ND, persevering in the faith in spite of most of their professors and peers, and suffering the annual outbreak of The Vagina Monologues and other assorted tomfoolery; there are even a few notable Catholic professors and teachers there. Notre Dame even has a pro-life group.

But is Notre Dame really Catholic?

As of a few years ago, only 53% of the faculty were Catholic. This blog post by Mark Stricherz last year from the New Catholic Politics blog says:

McInerney identifies one source of the problem: the share of Catholic faculty has dropped from about two-thirds in 1985 to barely half today. Worse, the percentage of new Catholic faculty hired in 2004-2005 was barely more than two-fifths. The founders of Project Sycamore identify two more sources of the problem: the reduction in the number of required philosophy and religious courses as well as a general aspiration to emulate top-draw secular universities.

I did not go to Notre Dame, though one of my younger sisters did. Yet I wonder if Dr. McInerney and Project Sycamore’s founders overlook another source of the problem: exorbitant student tuition fees (the cost is $44 grand a year) and a lack of financial aid. While I take the point that 85 percent of the students at Notre Dame are Catholic, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of those come from the top one-third or one-half of Catholic America. The pool of pious but poor or working-class Catholics who can afford to attend Notre Dame has likely shrunk drastically. As recently as 30 years ago, the son or daughter of a union member could afford to send his kids to Notre Dame. I am told that this still occurs but much less frequently.

Under Mr. Stricherz's post, a self-identified ND student writes (spelling and grammar in the original):

I am currently a student at notre dame, and let me tell you - You dudes have no clue what you are talking about. Most people like to ignore the fact that students here by and large feel oppressed and suffocated by the catholic rules that we are forced to live by, and the fact that the way we live are lives are dictated by a religion that many of us dont believe in is pretty sad. Once Notre Dame was a place where people loved to live, nowadays students cant wait to move off campus - in fact it is a standing rule that freshman arent allowed to move off or have their own car, because if they did they would get the heck out. The vagina monologues go on every year, and so do all the othe r”offensive” and “pornographic” events. The university is a place of learning and expression, not the achive of backwards superstitions and religious right. Dont even get me started about pareitals - the vast majority of students HATE it, except for the deeply religious sycophants of the administration. Im GLAD that the school doesnt discriminate based on religion. I would rather have the best professor than one that isnt good but was hired just because he worships the same god as the people who do the hiring. Its also sad that the school refuses to agree not to discriminate against homosexuals and silences those who are.

Doesn't look like $44,000 a year gets you much in the way of well-prepared students, at least as regards English composition, does it?

The kind of Catholic who populates schools like Notre Dame is likely to be the kind of Catholic cut from the same cloth as Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, John Kerry, and the like, along with their enablers of the Kmiec variety. They are the country-club Catholic Democrats, who believe in promoting peace 'n justice, but would rather not talk about abortion. They craft elaborate arguments about pluralism to justify their support for gay marriage--or at least gay civil unions; it's just the word marriage that gets the Church upset.

The kind of Catholic who sends his children to Notre Dame would be more likely to be uncomfortable in the presence of a George W. Bush (who talks about religion as if he means it) than Barack Obama (who has the good taste not to talk about it at all). This kind of Catholic is just fine hearing a Biden or a Kerry talk about those cute cultural clubby churchy things like altar service or Ash Wednesday, but they'd rather not be reminded of actual Church teaching, especially in the realm of sexual morality (do you think most people who eschew contraception could afford the $44K per child tuition price ND charges)?

As it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it's only fair that rich Catholics should have a fairly easy time getting in to Notre Dame. But in an environment where money, power, and prestige mean much, much more than authentic Catholicism, it's pretty easy for Barack Obama to be welcomed there as well, as a more-palatable twenty-first century messiah, who will set up his telepromter and say nice things about hope and change instead of ruffling any feathers or challenging anyone's consciences. That he is the Abortion President won't even be noted; caring for the right to life of the unborn is such a red-state religious right evangelical sort of thing to do, and the right sort of Catholics who understand the value of nuance and the meaning of the word "pluralism" would never be so gauche as to mention this one little speck marring Obama's otherwise shining character.

Adopting the Welborn Protocol

I'd like to draw attention to the "Contact Me" bit on the right-hand side of this blog. You'll notice that below my email address I've added the Welborn Protocol; for the convenience of those who use Google Reader or another feed service here's what it says:

As of March 20, 2009, this Site has chosen to employ the Welborn Protocol: All correspondence may be blogged unless you specifically request otherwise. Please feel free to continue to send me private letters; just begin your email with the word "Private" or place the word "Private" or the letters DNB (do not blog) in the subject line of your email to me. Every effort will be made to respect your privacy when you request it.

Up to now I've always considered emails to be private, and have only blogged things sent to me on two types of occasions: one, when the sender says, in effect, "Hey, check out this news story--you might want to comment on it," and two, when the sender sends a prayer request which is obviously meant to reach as many people as possible. Otherwise, I've emailed my correspondents back when they've sent something that I'd like to write about, or when their email is germane to a post I'm working on.

But recently I've started to receive more emails from readers, and at times I'd like to comment on something or quote some pithy observation--but by the time I think about sending the person a request the email is no longer relevant.

So, from here on out, I most likely won't contact someone directly to find out if I can blog something; anything sent to me can be blogged unless you ask me not to do so.

Exceptions to this rule are emails sent from immediate family members to my gmail address, and business emails sent to that address (since I receive a few emails from people for whom I occasionally write at that address, as well).

I do enjoy hearing from readers and I certainly hope that my use of the Welborn Protocol won't stop you from writing to me! It was just getting a bit confusing and complicated to contact people when they email me something I'd like to post here. That happened today, and while I'm waiting to hear back from my correspondent (since she wrote before I posted this) I thought it would be a good time to make the change.

Thanks!

Prognostication Fulfilled

I'm rather proud of myself for this one. You see, I called it, in this post I wrote back in September of last year:

...And the trend toward liveblogging or Twittering or texting or otherwise commenting in, or near, real-time on these television debates has the potential to make changes, as well. Now, instead of worrying about how they look or what they say, what image they project or what soundbite will be played in an endless loop on CNN, the candidates have to come up with such things as "YouTube shots" or "combox fodder" for the bloggers and typing heads of the new media. Which means that watching the debates will seem increasingly like a foolish and painful waste of time--why put yourself through the agony of viewing ninety minutes of meaningless posturing and sentences which express no particular thought except to cram as many talking points as possible into Jim Lehrer's idea of two minutes, when you can painlessly scan a couple of your favorite blogs later to see what your favorite writers thought of it all, and maybe read a transcript?

Hmm. Reading the speech or debate transcript, along with a journalist's comments. Perhaps we've come full circle.

Sadly, though, we haven't, because the new technology will probably make people's attention spans even shorter, so that before long debates will be conducted on wireless keyboards, and will consist of exchanges like this:

Dude.



Dude?



Dude...



Dude!



Dude, dude, dude.



Duuuuude...

Okay, maybe we haven't come quite that far--but by all reports, George Stephanopoulos's attempt to interview John McCain using the increasingly popular Twitter was...less than impressive:

George Stephanopoulos has proven he can interview a top politician via Twitter.

Now he should step away from his Blackberry, computer, iPhone, whatever, and drop, cold turkey, the notion of Twitter as an interview tool.

Walk away. No, run.

Using the messaging system Tuesday to interview Sen. John McCain, former presidential candidate and ranking politician, was a gimmick, nothing more.

It added nothing to the journalism discourse, other than to prove, perhaps to some wonk's eyes, that McCain, an admitted Internet neophyte, could do it.

Truth is, doing it via Twitter, rather than in person or on-camera, removed all emotion from the exchange.

Wouldn't it be nice to have had McCain go on longer, on-camera, or even in a longer e-mail, about his daughter? Or, on a more serious note, about the problems in Iran and Iraq?

Take this exchange, for example.

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain: Cheney said on CNN that Obama putting US at risk of new terror attack. Agree?

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos: Too early to draw that conclusion.

Wouldn't that exchange have been more meaningful on-camera, or with a longer e-mail or written narrative?

Instead, they were like high school kids texting each other across the cafeteria lunch table.

Want to do a solid interview? Leave Twitter out of it.

I couldn't agree more.

Sure, there are uses for Twitter (though not for me, personally--who has the time?). But those uses don't include thoughtful, meaningful dialog of the sort that characterizes a good interview; in fact, "Tell us about world peace in 140 characters or less," sounds like a parody of a beauty contest candidate interview question.

Of course, as the early-adopters play with all the new toys and gadgets, there's going to be a new category of "Fail," the Internet word for something gone completely awry. I think the McCain Twitter interview is a Twitter "fail," and can only wonder what, say, a Facebook or MySpace "fail" might look like (though those people who didn't get a job interview because their prospective employers read their MySpace pages and learned that the job applicant "parties hard" and "thinks weekend work sux..." come to mind).

As we develop more and more ways to communicate, we forget that it's important to have something to say. A face-to-face interviewer can tease out the idea behind a politician's tendency toward terse and noncommittal statements; a soundbite (soundbyte) interview where the politician can take refuge in short platitudes rendered in txtspch to make them even less meaningful than the spoken word.

Richard Huff, the author of the McCain/Stephanopolous Twitter article I cite above, has the best last word: "Let's pray Stephanopoulos doesn't discover Morse code next." Yes, let's.

Lost in the Mail

A whole host of Catholic and Christian blogs, Facebook pages, and the like have been talking for quite a bit about what's being called the Red Envelope project. From the Red Envelope site:

Dear Friends and Intercessors:

This afternoon I was praying about a number of things, and my mind began to wander. I was deeply distressed at the symbolic actions that President Obama took as he began his presidency. Namely, that he signed executive orders releasing funds to pay for abortions, permission to fund human stem cell research, and federal funding for contraception. I have been involved in the pro-life movement for nearly 20 years, and it pained my heart to see a man and a political party committed to the shedding of innocent blood. This man, and this party lead our country, but they do not represent me or the 54% of Americans who believe that abortion is wrong and should no longer be legal.

As I was praying, I believe that God gave me an interesting idea. Out in the garage I have a box of red envelopes. Like the powerful image of the red LIFE tape, an empty red envelope will send a message to Barack Obama that there is moral outrage in this country over this issue. It will be quiet, but clear.

Here is what I would like you to do:

Get a red envelope. You can buy them at Kinkos, or at party supply stores. On the front, address it to:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington , D.C. 20500

On the back, write the following message.

This envelope represents one child who died in abortion. It is empty because that life was unable to offer anything to the world. Responsibility begins with conception.

Put it in the mail on March 31st, and send it. Then send this website to every one of your friends who you think would send one too. I wish we could send 50 million red envelopes, one for every child who died before having a a chance to live. Maybe it will change the heart of the president.

Warmly, Christ Otto

Now, before I go on, I just want to say that I in no way wish to hurt anyone's feelings or denigrate the sincerity of this very heartfelt and well meaning--but ultimately ineffective--attempt to send a message to our pro-abortion president.

But the clearest way for me to discuss this involves a glimpse at this news article, posted today:

Every weekday, President Obama sits behind his big desk in the Oval Office or settles into a comfortable chair in his East Wing residence and opens a purple folder containing some very important material—10 letters from the outside world. The correspondence is chosen by his staff as a sampling of the 40,000 letters he gets every day. The letters are selected to give him an idea of the public's cares, concerns, suggestions, and critiques of how he's doing.

Sometimes, Obama will read a letter or two during the day, to fill a lull in the seemingly endless series of meetings that dominate a president's schedule. Often, he will take the folder home and peruse the letters at night. He will respond to one or two with handwritten notes. Sometimes, the letters prompt him to inquire about a specific problem or to pass along an interesting idea or poignant story to his policymakers, advisers say. He recently gave senior adviser David Axelrod and other aides copies of a letter from an Arizona woman whose husband lost his job and had to take a big pay cut from his next employer, resulting in the family having serious trouble making mortgage payments. It was a heart-wrenching story that illustrated the pain that Americans are enduring during the economic downturn. "We need to help folks like these," Obama told an aide.

Ten letters. Obama gets ten of the thousands of letters sent each day, selected by his staff after they've already been processed via the White House's mail room--which routinely discards many sorts of mail (and I have a feeling empty envelopes would make the list of things to be thrown away). The odds that Obama will see even one of the Red Envelope letters is slim to none, even if millions are sent.

Now, does that mean there's no value at all to pro-life grassroots initiatives like these?

Of course not. People may be moved to pray or to join in other efforts to spread the pro-life message, to donate money to pro-life ministries, or to do other things to raise awareness about pro-life issues because of initiatives like these. Everyone should use his or her discernment about this effort as about every other effort.

But using our discernment means understanding the likely outcome of the effort. Since this Red Envelope project is targeted at sending Barack Obama a message, it must be understood by those who take part that this is not going to be the outcome. The ten letters his staff selects for him to read are going to be letters, not empty envelopes with a message on the back; it might be more possible to get a pro-life letter campaign that would eventually reach the president, though I still think his staff probably chooses only those letters which are focused on issues and matters the president is already interested in and agrees with.

So if you decide to participate in the Red Envelope project, perhaps you could commit to saying a certain number of prayers for the president's conversion on life issues, or in some other way to pro-life action. As for the envelopes themselves, we need to be realistic--this is one message Barack Obama simply isn't going to receive.

Happy St. Joseph's Day

As you enjoy a little "break" from your Lenten fasts today, take a moment to consider this beautiful saint, the husband of the Queen of Heaven and the earthly father of Our Lord.

Picture: Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, Saint Joseph and the Child Jesus, c. 1622.

Last year our choir sang this beautiful hymn on the Sunday closest to St. Joseph's feast. This year, as we have the feast of the Annunciation rapidly approaching and only one Sunday in between the two, we'll be singing a Marian hymn instead. I know Saint Joseph doesn't mind--he always points us to Mary and to the Holy Child, instead of to himself.

One of my favorite aspects to ponder about Saint Joseph is that he is the patron of a happy death. I pray daily for his intercession, that my death will be a good one, not unprovided for but surrounded with holy prayer and access to the sacraments, especially Confession, Holy Communion, and the Anointing of the Sick. This is a favor Saint Joseph is all too happy to be asked to intercede for on our behalf, and though only God can know the time and manner in which we will die, I'm sure that Jesus likes for us to ask his earthly father for such a good thing, and will grant our prayer in some way.

Because St. Joseph is the patron of a happy death, I think it's fitting that his feast day falls during Lent. For a time before his feast we have been practicing the art of dying to ourselves and of earthly detachment, of putting aside the cares and concerns of the world and cultivating a greater awareness of our eternal destiny, of being caught up in the Kingdom of Heaven instead of the worldly life which surrounds us. However well or ill we've managed so far, we can stop today, look around at our successes and failures, ask St. Joseph for his help, and remember that this Lent is a time for us to practice those virtues which will lead us closer to God and to His Kingdom. We can celebrate a little, recommit ourselves to our sacrifices and spiritual practices, and take heart when we think of St. Joseph and his life of devotion, in which he was privileged to live in the daily presence of Our Lord Jesus and His Blessed Mother.

Happy St. Joseph's Day!

Welcome to the Future

Well, while we've all been sitting around blogging and chatting and tweeting and Facebooking and so on, the people at Terrafugia have been making the flying car a reality. The Terrafugia had its maiden voyage today:



Meanwhile, in Japan, the robots continue to be made--but not yet maid. This "supermodel" robot can pose and walk and show some emotions--but she's not taking out the trash anytime soon, and isn't about to help Mrs. Jetson make dinner.

I think the most impressive use of sci-fi technology I've read about today is this high-tech bug zapper, though. It uses Star Wars laser technology--no, not Lucas's version, Reagan's version:

Scientists in the U.S. are developing a laser gun that could kill millions of mosquitoes in minutes.

The laser, which has been dubbed a "weapon of mosquito destruction" fires at mosquitoes once it detects the audio frequency created by the beating of its wings.

The laser beam then destroys the mosquito, burning it on the spot.

Developed by some of the astrophysicists involved in what was known as the "Star Wars" anti-missile programs during the Cold War, the project is meant to prevent the spread of malaria.

Lead scientist on the project, Dr. Jordin Kare, told CNN that the laser would be able to sweep an area and "toast millions of mosquitoes in a few minutes."

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people from the bites of female mosquitoes.

It is particularly prevalent in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world and kills an African child every 30 seconds, according to the World Health Organization.

There are an estimated 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than one million deaths, the WHO reports.

Flying cars. Robots. Mosquito death-rays. Welcome to the twenty-first century.

Pope Refuses to Allow Sin; Media Surprised

The pope is making history as he visits Africa for the first time in his papacy. Naturally, all the news media can think about is sex and condoms:

PARIS (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI's denunciation of condom use to prevent the spread of HIV sparked an international outcry on Wednesday as he toured Africa, the continent hardest hit by the disease.

The pope told reporters on his plane as he headed to Cameroon on Tuesday that AIDS "cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems." [...]

Michel Kazatchkine, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, demanded that the pope retract the statement, saying "these remarks are unacceptable."

"It's a denial of the epidemic. And to make these remarks on a continent that unfortunately is a continent where 70 percent of the people who have AIDS die, it's absolutely unbelievable," he told France Inter radio. [...]

The New York Times wrote in an editorial that the pope was "grievously wrong."

"Health authorities consider condoms a valuable component of any well-rounded programme to prevent the spread of AIDS. It seems irresponsible to blame condoms for making the epidemic worse," it said.

Of course, the New York Times is shrinking by the minute, losing subscriptions left and write, and only slightly better off than other forms of dinosaur print journalism, while the Catholic Church in Africa is large, growing and vibrant. But let's not forget the media template for covering stories involving the pope; in fact, if I may steal blatantly from CMR, there's an easy way to write headlines during this particular papal visit story, which is: combine words from column A randomly with words from columns B and C, below:
A:
Pope Visits Africa, Causes
Pope’s Africa Visit Creates
Pope’s Words In Africa Lead to

B:
Outrage
Division
Anger
Frustration
Unhappiness

C:
Over Condoms
Over Condoms and HIV
Over Condoms, HIV and AIDS Prevention
Over Church Teaching on Condoms, Gays
Over Birth Control, Abortion, Condoms and Gays
Over Church’s Refusal to Allow Condoms for Gay Sex, HIV, AIDS, or Journalists

Of course, what the pope actually said, as usual, is far more nuanced than the reporting makes it seem:

Lest it be taken out of context, here is the exchange that took place on the pope's plane. The question's premise was "The Catholic Church's position on the way to fight against AIDS is often considered unrealistic and ineffective," and the pope responded:

"I would say the opposite. I think that the reality that is most effective, the most present and the strongest in the fight against AIDS, is precisely that of the Catholic Church, with its programs and its diversity. I think of the Sant'Egidio Community, which does so much visibly and invisibly in the fight against AIDS ... and of all the sisters at the service of the sick.

"I would say that one cannot overcome this problem of AIDS only with money -- which is important, but if there is no soul, no people who know how to use it, (money) doesn't help.

"One cannot overcome the problem with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, they increase the problem.

"The solution can only be a double one: first, a humanization of sexuality, that is, a spiritual human renewal that brings with it a new way of behaving with one another; second, a true friendship even and especially with those who suffer, and a willingness to make personal sacrifices and to be with the suffering. And these are factors that help and that result in real and visible progress.

"Therefore I would say this is our double strength -- to renew the human being from the inside, to give him spiritual human strength for proper behavior regarding one's own body and toward the other person, and the capacity to suffer with the suffering. ... I think this is the proper response and the church is doing this, and so it offers a great and important contribution. I thank all those who are doing this."

What the news media seems not to realize (ever) is that people who are engaging in risky sexual behavior outside of wedlock are already committing (objectively) intrinsically evil acts. All sex outside of marriage is morally wrong, and the kind of sexual behaviors which are most responsible for the spread of HIV/AIDS are forbidden, and have been for a couple thousand years of Christian moral teaching. So clearly the Church isn't going to start saying, "Well, if you're already committing grave sins that will most likely put you in Hell for all eternity, what's another sin on top of that? Go ahead, use condoms--you're already doomed by your sinful behavior, so you might as well minimize the collateral damage." It's absurd, isn't it?

Yet the media still writes "Shock and Awe" headlines which, boiled down to their essential elements, read, "Pope Refuses to Allow Sin; Church Won't Make Sin Easier, More Pleasant, or Less Risky for Catholics." It makes me wonder if any of the MSM journalists out there know the meaning of that quaint expression, "Duuuhhhh...."

The saddest thing about these mush-minded minions of the MSM is that they really don't get the philosophical depth and beauty of what the pope is trying to say. We can't solve HIV/AIDS by looking at them as only health problems, any more than we can "solve" the problem of out-of-wedlock pregnancy with Depo-Provera and easy quickie abortions. In point of fact, trying to minimize the health consequences of promiscuity only lulls people into a false sense of safety, and creates the illusion that it's perfectly fine to use other people sexually, to enter into what ought to be the most profound sort of physical relationship not only without any serious commitment, but with no thought whatsoever, as if the other person were an object against which we may pleasure ourselves for a moment, or a few days, or even a few years--which is animalistic, grotesque, selfish, vain, and truly ugly in every way.

For the secular materialist, however, there are no eternal consequences to our actions because there is no eternity, and there is no way of relating to other people except to use them, because we don't know for sure that they even exist, and might as well get what we can from them while we can get it. To the materialist "love" is glandular, marriage is probably temporary, children are a choice--but sex is a necessity; anyone who seriously proposes that the best way to fight AIDS is to renew a sense of the beauty and significance of sex inside marriage, to remind people of the lack of this beauty and significance outside of it, and to fight the spiritual poverty that sees people as objects to be used for our pleasure is going to be speaking in angelic tongues as far as the materialist is concerned. It's just not realistic to tell people they can be more than animals, or that they shouldn't let themselves be objects; people are animals and objects, and must fight AIDS and other sexual evils with latex barriers, because allowing them to create barriers against evil within their souls and to think of themselves as children of God with eternal destinies might cut into the pleasure of those who are happy (or think they are) being animals, and acting like animals especially when it comes to sex.

So the pope speaks, and the materialists in the press shout "Condoms!" Because they've put condoms over their souls, which prevent the grace of God from reaching them, and keep them "protected" against anything of hope or beauty or eternity which might otherwise come their way.

Fahrenheit 621.43

Remember CPSIA, the gift that keeps on giving?

Some libraries are beginning to worry that they may have to start pulling children's books published before the mid-1980s:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Could a vintage, dog-eared copy of "The Cat in the Hat" or "Where the Wild Things Are" be hazardous to your children?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has raised that possibility in urging the nation's libraries to take children's books printed before 1986 off their shelves while the federal agency investigates whether the ink contains unsafe levels of lead.

Few, if any, libraries are complying, and many librarians are ridiculing the recommendation as alarmist. Even the nation's premier medical sleuths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, say any danger from lead in children's books is slight.

"We're talking about tens of millions of copies of children's books that are perfectly safe. I wish a reasonable, rational person would just say, `This is stupid. What are we doing?'" said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's Washington office. [...]

CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson said libraries can safely lend any children's book printed in 1986 or later, by which time a growing body of regulations had removed lead from printer's ink. But the commission still must study the lead content in books printed before 1986. The CPSC delayed until next year the lead testing required as part of the law.

Until the testing is done, the nation's more than 116,000 public and school libraries "should take steps to ensure that the children aren't accessing those books," Wolfson said. "Steps can be taken to put them in an area on hold until the Consumer Product Safety Commission can give further guidance."

But Jay Dempsey, a health communications specialist at the CDC, said lead-based ink in children's books poses little danger.

"If that child were to actually start mouthing the book—as some children put everything in their mouths—that's where the concern would be," Dempsey said. "But on a scale of one to 10, this is like a 0.5 level of concern."

And some libraries are taking this to heart:

Sheketoff said she heard of just two libraries that started to restrict access to children's books last month. One roped off the children's section; the other covered children's books with a tarp. Both libraries, which she declined to identify, stopped after being contacted by the association, she said.

"Communities would have a stroke if public libraries started throwing out hundreds and hundreds of books just because they came out before a certain copyright date," said Margaret Todd, librarian for the Los Angeles County system, which has 89 branches and about 3 million children's books. Todd said she expects the commission to develop reasonable standards that protect children.

Nathan Brown, a lawyer for the library association, said libraries should not even be subject to the law. He argued that Congress never wanted to regulate books and that libraries do not sell books and thus are not subject to the consumer products law.

I think Mr. Brown has the right idea, here. How did a law that was supposed to keep unsafe imported lead-painted brand new toys produced in factories by people making pennies an hour and working, sometimes, in unsafe conditions end up getting targeted at used bookstores, children's clothing resale shops, libraries, small home-based craft businesses and others who were never part of the problem in the first place?

Maybe there really is an agenda out there to remove the old books and ideas, to force consumers to buy everything new instead of saving a little money by recycling gently used children's goods, to shut down home-based businesses, and to confiscate those lovely old copies of The Velveteen Rabbit from the library, replacing it with copies of King and King and Heather Has Two Mommies. Or maybe this is just the law of unintended consequences at work once again.

Unintended consequences have a way of getting out of hand, though, as Ray Bradbury once examined in his book about removing books from society. In Bradbury's tale, it wasn't censorship that was responsible for the removal of books, but a culture that became absorbed in television and immersed in trivia; Wikipedia's entry puts it this way:

Over the years, the novel has been subject to various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship; he states that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of "factoids", partial information devoid of context, e.g., Napoleon's birth date alone, without an indication of who he was.

We are seeing what happens when Congress decides to govern by "factoids," thus: Fact: lead is bad for you. Fact: lead is especially bad if it is ingested. Fact: Children ingest lead. Fact: lead is found in paint. Fact: some lead paint ends up on things that are sold to children. Conclusion: ban lead paint in children's goods.

But there are other facts, such as the fact that lead in the environment and especially in old house paint is a bigger threat to children than trace amounts found on parts of toys or clothing that they're not supposed to put in their mouths in the first place (e.g., lead paint on the inside of a sealed toy block or on a small blue rectangle on the back of the heel of the child's shoe) and the fact, as mentioned by the article, that children rarely put paper books into their mouths and would have to ingest a large number of pages before the lead would make them ill--eating that much paper would probably be a much bigger threat to their health than the minute amounts of lead that theoretically could be present. These competing facts, though, can't really be reduced to sound bites, and make it awfully easy for Congress people to play that Washington-style game of "eating each other alive," to wit: "Senator, is it true that you voted against banning lead paint in children's products? Senator, do you want children to die? Do you hate children?" etc.

So nervous librarians cordon off the children's section while pushy officials sternly instruct them to remove (for hazardous waste disposal) the old classic children's books reposing in quiet majesty on the few shelves where books are still collected (but there are plenty of kids' DVDs, ma'am, right over here!). And the law of unintended consequences takes us one step closer to a dystopian future not altogether unlike the one forged in the powerful furnace of Bradbury's imagination.

Saint Patrick's Prayer

It is, perhaps, an interesting feature of Saint Patrick's Day that Catholics, especially Irish ones, will enthusiastically quote, write, and sing--the words of a notable Protestant poet.

I refer to the common translation of the prayer usually called St. Patrick's Breastplate; it is legendary that the Irish saint is responsible for this prayer, though like so many things about this great saint's life it's hard to establish his authorship with any certainty. A poetic translation from the 1920s of this prayer may be found here, and reads as follows:

I ARISE to-day
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise to-day
Through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in a multitude.

Christ to shield me to-day
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise to-day
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

Now, there are several other versions out there, and some of them claim to be a literal translation of the original prayer. Unfortunately, a little further digging reveals that the prayer we have today is most probably a composite of two prayers attributed to St. Patrick, one the Lorica, or breastplate (the "Christ with me, Christ before me etc." part) and the other the Deer's Cry, the prayer which according to legend allowed St. Patrick and his followers to slip past a band of pagan enemies undetected.

Whatever the case may be, it's clear that the most well-known "translation" is actually the poetic hymn composed by Cecil Frances Alexander. She--yes, she's a she, even though the name "Cecil" threw me a little--was a Protestant Church of Ireland lady married to the Reverend William Alexander of the Diocese of Derry. The terse biography on this page contains the interesting information that her husband's age, six years younger than her own, caused "great family concern, and birthdate deferentially altered accordingly..." Thus some biographies of Mrs. Alexander list her birth date as 1825 instead of 1818!

Mrs. Alexander is well known for some of her other hymns, many of which have also found their way into Catholic hymn-books; these include "There is a green hill far away," "All things bright and beautiful," and the lovely Christmas hymn, "Once in Royal David's city." One of her early books was called "Hymns for Little Children," and Mrs. Alexander wrote about her poetic efforts for children as follows:

The writer’s wish would be to prolong the child’s love of the glorious Old Testament stories, by throwing round them something of the poetical tinge which is attractive to almost every mind in opening youth; and thus to connect associations of quiet pleasure with the examples of holy life, and the doctrines of saving truth, which the Bible contains in such exceeding abundance.’

A link to "Hymns for Little Children" is here; it's interesting to glance through the poems, to see a few that are still familiar, and a few that, with their focus on the graveyard, seem a bit morbid for young childhood.

According to the Cyberhymnal website:

The lyr­ics are a trans­la­tion of a Gael­ic po­em called “St. Pat­rick’s Lor­i­ca,” or breast­plate. (A “lorica” was a mys­tic­al gar­ment that was sup­posed to pro­tect the wear­er from dan­ger and ill­ness, and guar­an­tee ent­ry in­to Hea­ven.) Ce­cil Alex­an­der penned these words at the re­quest of H. H. Dick­in­son, Dean of the Cha­pel Roy­al at Dub­lin Cas­tle:

I wrote to her sug­gest­ing that she should fill a gap in our Irish Church Hymn­al by giv­ing us a me­tric­al ver­sion of St. Patrick’s “Lor­i­ca” and I sent her a care­ful­ly col­lat­ed co­py of the best prose trans­la­tions of it. With­in a week she sent me that ex­qui­site­ly beau­ti­ful as well as faith­ful ver­sion which ap­pears in the ap­pend­ix to our Church Hymn­al.

Mrs. Alexander's version of St. Patrick's Breastplate, then, came from several different prose translations of the prayer; it is still very well-loved today, since her gift for arranging the various translations into a lovely poetic form shows forth whether the poem is read or sung.

Our choir sang part of Mrs. Alexander's hymn on Sunday. There are too many verses for the entire thing to be easily sung at Mass, especially during the post-Communion period; we sang the first verse, and then verses 8 and 9 (by the Cyberhymnal arrangement). It was nice to be able to include this song on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day.

I think that St. Patrick, who fought so hard to bring the Faith to Ireland, would be pleased that his prayer brings together both Protestants and Catholics to sing about the Trinity. We should keep praying for the unity that Christ wants for all Christians, and remember on this feast day to ask St. Patrick to help unite all who sincerely seek to follow Christ, to know, love, and serve Him, and to worship in His Church.

Words and Meanings

Apparently out of fresh ideas, Time decides to discuss what it appears to think is a novel and creative solution to the problem of gay marriage:

When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition. But missing in each of those cases — and in countless others of equal religious importance — is any role for government. There is no baptism certificate issued by the local courthouse and no federal tax benefit attached to the confessional booth, the into-the-water-and-out born-again ceremony or any of the other sacraments that believers hold sacred.

Only marriage gets that treatment, and it's a tradition that some legal scholars have been arguing should be abandoned. In a paper published March 2 in the San Francisco Chronicle, two law professors from Pepperdine University issued a call to re-examine the role the government plays in marriage. The authors — one of whom voted for and one against Proposition 8, which ended gay marriage in California — say the best way out of the intractable legal wars over gay marriage is to take marriage out of the hands of the government altogether.

Instead, give gay and straight couples alike the same license, a certificate confirming them as a family, and call it a civil union — anything, really, other than marriage. For people who feel the word marriage is important, the next stop after the courthouse could be the church, where they could bless their union with all the religious ceremony they wanted. Religions would lose nothing of their role in sanctioning the kinds of unions that they find in keeping with their tenets. And for nonbelievers and those who find the word marriage less important, the civil-union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states and in federal law for married couples.

"While new terminology for all may at first seem awkward — mostly in greeting-card shops — [it] dovetails with the court's important responsibility to reaffirm the unfettered freedom of all faiths to extend the nomenclature of marriage as their traditions allow," wrote Douglas W. Kmiec and Shelley Ross Saxer. Kmiec voted for Prop 8 because of his belief in the teachings of the Catholic Church and his notion of religious liberty but has since said he thinks the courts should not allow one group of Californians to marry while denying the privilege to others.

Where to start, where to start...

Hmmm. How about with the minor fact that both boys and girls are confirmed in the Catholic Church, not just girls? Oh, but that's just a bit of fact-checking, something we can hardly expect from the kind of two-bit rag that would quote Doug Kmiec's opinion on anything.

Well, how about with the fact that marriage really is a civil as well as a religious state? If the recently confirmed were being granted the right to vote at the same time they were being confirmed, the government would have something to say about it. Married people are being granted rights and duties that go beyond the Church, most importantly the right to participate with each other in the biological act of reproduction and then the duty to provide for all the natural and expected offspring that are the result of that right and that unity. Same-sex people simply can't create children together as their own biological offspring who are the natural and expected result of the union; we've had that discussion here before.

How about the fact that the Church has laid out a very clear argument against creating parallel institutions to marriage? Any Catholic who approves of "gay civil unions" or the like really needs to read this document in its entirety; it lays out in exhaustive detail why Catholics cannot in justice and charity approve of such unions.

Since I've written about all of this on other occasions, let's do something different. Let's pretend for a minute that the sort of compromise Kmiec and others want would come to pass. What would we do about the vocabulary?

I think that heterosexual couples would fight to retain the use of the word "marriage" to describe our unions. After all, the word has been used in both civil and religious contexts for hundreds of years to describe the joining of one man and one woman in a state of matrimony--would it really be fair for heterosexuals to adopt some new civil term? Most of us would probably just ignore it.

Moreover, there's the question of religious groups and their understanding of marriage. It's just going to create widespread confusion if "Catholic marriage" means one man and one woman, and "Episcopal marriage" means either that, or two women, or two men, one of them a bishop, for instance. And things could get really confusing if the number of people involved grows to more than two, which is the next step in dismantling marriage and removing it as a societal concept in order to destroy the family and lay waste to our culture once and for all (and does anyone really think that's not the endgame of the forces involved in all this?).

For now, though, perhaps those religions that want to unite two men or two women in some kind of union ought to lead the way, and come up with a new, revolutionary name for this kind of union--at least until the State decides to act. I even have a suggestion--an acronym, actually. I think that the churches who want to marry gay couples could propose uniting these couples in Same-sex Innovative Nuptials, or SIN. Churches that wanted to bless SINs could advertise that they do so, and create special SIN-blessing ceremonies for their same-sex attracted congregants. They could encourage gays and lesbians to commit to SIN, to unite with each other in SIN and to live in SIN, proudly accepting all the consequences of making SIN the center of their lives.

In a SIN ceremony, two men or two women would pledge to remain in SIN with each other. They would not have to pledge fidelity, as SIN is usually open to the involvement of other people on a more casual basis. They could write their own vows, making it clear to the whole assembly just how important SIN is to them and how they find no conflict whatsoever with God's words or traditional church teaching about sex, marriage, and the like and SIN. The pastor or minister could exhort the couple to persevere in SIN and never to let anything draw them away from SIN, especially those other homophobic churches who just don't appreciate how vitally important SINs are to people who struggle with same-sex attraction.

After the SIN blessing ceremony, all the friends and family could gather at a reception which would be a celebration of the SIN the couple had just committed themselves to for life. The reception could be a chance for others to affirm the SIN of the couple and pledge to support them throughout their life of SIN.

If some key churches introduced this term--I'm thinking Episcopalians, Unitarian Universalists, and perhaps a few others--then the greeting card companies Doug Kmiec worries about wouldn't have to wait until the State acts to start creating cards especially for same-sex unions. A whole line of cards could be created, with themes like "Congratulations on your SIN!" and "Best Wishes, as You Enter Into SIN Together."

The great thing about this is that Catholics who courageously struggle with same-sex attraction and who sincerely try to live according to the Church's teachings about same-sex attraction, embracing the cross of celibacy as they journey together with the rest of us toward eternal life in Jesus Christ could simply say, when asked about their lifestyle choice, "Sorry, but I'm just not into SIN." And that would be all they would need to say, to keep the world that doesn't understand them and mocks and attacks their great heroism, their love for Christ, and their devotion to His Church.

Dora the...What, Now?

So, Mattel and Nickelodeon thought they'd create a new, tween version of Nick's popular Dora the Explorer character, to keep the interest of older girls in the Dora phenom while still appealing to the nursery-school set with the classic version of the character.

But some people aren't happy about the new Dora:

NEW YORK (AP) -- When toy maker Mattel, working with Nickelodeon, announced earlier this month that a "tween" version of Nick's beloved "Dora the Explorer" cartoon character would be unveiled in the fall, the response was overwhelming ... overwhelmingly negative.

Dora the streetwalker. A sexed-up version of a children's icon. A poor example for kids.

Those were just some of the terms tossed around the blogosphere after Mattel released a silhouette of the "new" Dora, whose image was drastically changed from the endearing tomboy look Dora fans grew to love, with her bowl-cut hairdo, T-shirt and red shorts. This new Dora appeared to have long flowing hair, and was wearing what seemed a scanty skirt, emphasizing her long, shapely legs.

"Did Mattel turn Dora the Explorer into a Tramp?" read one headline from The Huffington Post.

But not so fast.

Mattel and Nickelodeon both say there are two major misconceptions about the new Dora, which is not replacing the "Dora the Explorer" cartoon, but will be a new interactive doll aimed at the 5- to 8-year-old, or tween market.

"People care so deeply about this brand and this character," Leigh Anne Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon Viacom Consumer Products, says. "The Dora that we all know and love is not going away."

"I think there was just a misconception in terms of where we were going with this," Gina Sirard, vice president of marketing at Mattel, says. "Pretty much the moms who are petitioning aging Dora up certainly don't understand. ... I think they're going to be pleasantly happy once this is available in October, and once they understand this certainly isn't what they are conjuring up."

Part of the confusion stemmed from the silhouette that was released, which made Dora look more like a Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan than a young girl. For the record, the doll does not wear a short dress, but a tunic and leggings. And while she looks older (she's supposed to be about 10), with longer jewelry and longer hair, she doesn't have makeup and seems pretty much like a 10-year-old girl.

Here, for comparison, are some pictures:

The classic Dora:

The new Dora:

My girls' reactions to this were mixed. Kitten, the oldest, thought they were trying to push a "too-old" look for the children the toy is aimed at; my youngest, Hatchick, who is ten, thought the new doll looked pretty. Bookgirl, in the middle, was ambivalent about it.

My thoughts are mixed, too. I can see how, if only a silhouette were released, moms might think that the doll was going to be a Bratz doll wannabe--a truly jarring change for the innocent and childlike Dora. Then, too, I'm wondering when the 5 to 8 year-old crowd started being called "tweens," since to me a five-year-old is a young child and an 8-year-old still a little too young to be a "tween." The "tween" definition is getting pushed on to younger and younger girls; but are five-year-olds really too jaded to enjoy the original Dora anymore?

Perhaps most concerning to me is how slender this new iteration is. My husband jokingly remarked that the new Dora had lost her baby fat, but given the young age of the girls these toys are aimed at, do we really need yet another reinforcement of the ideal for girls of tiny slender arms and legs and a dainty, elflike shape?

However, I do think that this isn't a "Bratzification" sort of look, and I have sympathy with the fact that for moms whose daughters have outgrown Dora there's not a whole lot out there in terms of popular, positive female characters for girls. Still, though, wouldn't this be an opportunity to create such a character, instead of taking a character aimed at younger children and making such a dramatic change to her appearance?

Again, I recognize that the company wants to capitalize on the popularity of the original "Dora." But we've gone sequel-crazy, lately, with so many movies, TV shows, and other popular culture offerings turning into an endless parade of "the new, improved, reimagined...show you used to love way back when." Instead of challenging people to grow, move on, and risk trying new things, our culture seems to be stuck in a mode of offering the same old, same old, dressed up to look new, or different, or even just...older.

Why couldn't Dora have had an older sister or cousin join the show's cast, perhaps? A doll aimed at the older set could easily have risen from just a few "guest appearances" of a slightly older female relative who joins a few of Dora's adventures. It would have been an opportunity to show a ten-year-old who loves and appreciates her little sister or cousin, and who demonstrates to the older girls out there that it can be "cool" to hang out with one's younger relatives on occasion. Dora could have admired her older relative, too, and shown the enthusaism and affection younger girls often have for a big sister or older cousin who spends time with them.

By making this new doll an "older Dora," though, the opportunity to do any of those things was missed--and the older girls whom the doll is aimed at will probably still not like her, as she's still "Dora," a character they associate with earlier days--and a monkey, and a fox named Swiper, and other aspects of the children's show which are being deleted from the older girl's adventures. Instead of the "Dora the Explorer," this new girl is a Dora they don't know and have no reason to be fond of; I have a feeling this toy will be bypassed by its target market, who will be too busy looking at the latest toy offerings from the High School Musical franchise to care what an older Dora is doing these days.

Genetic Orphans

I think just about every child knows the sweet story called Are You My Mother? Written by P.D. Eastman, the story follows a poor baby bird who has fallen from his nest in his mother's absence, and he asks just about everyone and everything he meets that same plaintive question (with results from the silly to the mildly scary). Just when the sad little bird is about to give up, his own real mother returns and finds him, and he is safe and secure once more.

I thought of that story when reading this news brief:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Things are about to get crowded in Cat Cora's kitchen.

The "Iron Chef America" star says on her MySpace page that she and her partner, Jennifer, are each expecting sons.

"(Jennifer) carried my embryo and I carried hers," Cora told OK Magazine. "It's like surrogating, but obviously all of our kids are equal."

The same anonymous sperm donor fathered all four children.

The 41-year-old Food Network chef says she and her 37-year-old partner will deliver their babies about three months apart. The couple already has two sons: Zoran, 5 and Caje, 22 months.

Are you my mother? How do children in this sort of "arrangement" ever answer this question? How do the women answer? "Well, I'm your genetic mother, but to make things fair she's your birth mother--we didn't want there to be any messy custody fights over you if our relationship doesn't work out. So we were willing to take the chance of creating you outside either of our wombs; if you didn't survive implantation we had some leftovers in the freezer--so don't worry! We'd have gotten to experience the wonderfulness of parenthood even if you, personally, didn't end up making it. Your father? Some guy, we never found out his name. Why do you ask? Aren't two mommies enough for you?"

And this, in our brave new world, is called love. We're supposed to applaud "parents" like these for their progressive and enlightened choices, for cooking up babies in a lab and serving up a heaping dose of "family" where family is defined as any two or more individuals who find each other temporarily satisfying and who create children to give the whole thing a sort of cachet. When they get tired of each other they'll go find someone else to act as surrogate to their future embryos; after all, studies show that it's much, much more important for children to be surrounded by happy, fulfilled adults than to have anything remotely resembling stability in their lives, right?

Meanwhile, little boys cry themselves to sleep at night because their friends have daddies and they don't; little girls wonder why other little girls have mommies, but they have dad and his newest "friend," while the woman who gave them birth got paid for carrying the embryos dad made with the eggs from his old "friend's" second cousin, who needed the cash. Even their little friends who have divorced parents have two of them--maybe Susie lives with Mom and only sees Dad on the weekend, and maybe Charlie lives with Dad and spends his summers with Mom, but they have one of each. As for their friends who have a mom and a dad who are married to each other and who live together and stay together and love their children together--well, such a thing is completely outside of the experience of the child who was created in a lab so his lesbian "moms" could extend their illusion of normalcy as far as possible.

Children are pawns in these selfish, self-centered games. It's bad enough when a man and a woman seek divorce and make their children pawns, too (except for abuse, when protecting the children may require some kind of separation) but at least the married heterosexual parents didn't start out seeking children as pawns, objects, props--but as the living sign of their parents' love for each other, the natural and expected result of the marital relationship between two people whose marital activity together is naturally capable of participation in bringing a third person into being. This cannot be said for the children manufactured by homosexual couples, who must always use a third person in the creation of the children they plan to raise--the mother the child will never know, or isn't allowed to call "mother" if she does know her; the father the child will never meet, though the child shares his father's love for butterscotch ice cream topping, his interest in history, or his great fast pitch.

Are you my mother? Are you my father? These poor little genetic orphans, made part of a political statement by their very existence, created with reckless disregard for their own well-being and safety (since there's always leftover embryos in the freezer if something goes wrong), left to wonder what life would be like in a family like the ones in books and movies and most of their classmates' lives, always missing, in a very important place inside of them, the knowledge of the parent whose genetic material was arranged for or purchased but who then walked away with no concern for these sons or daughters of their own flesh and blood.

The Catholic Church has been trying to tell us this; though this quote mentions children adopted by gay couples, the damage is the same, or even worse, when talking about children "manufactured to order" by same-sex couples:

Even though science clearly supports her position, the Catholic Church was vilified last summer when it issued a similar opinion in the document, "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons." In it, the Church clearly stated its concern for the effects of gay marriage on society in general, and children in particular.

"The absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development." The Church cites the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as asserting that the best interests of the child should be put first in these situations.

Are you my mother? Are you my father? The Church says that children have the right to know, from their earliest infancy, who these people are, and to see them and interact with them daily. While tragic circumstances may deprive a child of his mother or his father, that's vastly different from having two men or two women "create" him in such a way that he will never know one of these parents, and may, given the "option" the women in the article chose, be deeply confused and conflicted about the identity of the other. I can't imagine placing such a terrible burden on a child, who deserves to know and to love his actual, biological parents, not be forced to pretend that he doesn't really need a father, or that he doesn't really need to know which of the two women he calls "mom" is actually his mother.

Down in Adoration Falling

An interesting bit from CNS News Briefs (you'll have to scroll down):

Adoration is key attitude toward Eucharist, even at Mass, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Because Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, adoration must be a Catholic's primary attitude toward the Blessed Sacrament at Mass as well as when praying before the tabernacle, Pope Benedict XVI said. "Our task is to perceive the very precious treasure of this ineffable mystery of faith both in the celebration of the Mass as well as during worship of the sacred species," the pope told members of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. Members of the congregation met the pope March 13 at the end of their plenary meeting, which was devoted to discussing ways to promote Eucharistic adoration. Pope Benedict said he hoped the meeting would result in the identification of "liturgical and pastoral means through which the church in our time could promote faith in the real presence of the Lord in the holy Eucharist and secure for the celebration of the holy Mass the entire dimension of adoration."

Interesting bit of irony: my spell-checker highlighted the word "eucharistic" (sic) in the penultimate sentence and suggested a capital letter at the beginning--the CNS story didn't have one. I made the change. Granted, it was probably only a typo, but things are pretty sad when a secular browser's built in spell-checker is more on the ball regarding Eucharistic piety than a CNS article, no? :)

That said, this is a wonderful thing to read. Many people have reported asking for Eucharistic devotions in their parishes, only to be told, with some shaky theology, that we don't do "that" anymore, that the Real Presence of Christ involves the whole community's presence at Mass (which isn't correct, anyway) and that therefore there's no point in adoring Christ in the Eucharist outside of Mass. But the Pope's reminder that the subject of Eucharistic adoration isn't an "either/or," but a "both/and," and that we our worship at Mass should be focused on adoring Christ, Who is really and truly present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

How can we better adore Christ in His Eucharistic Presence at Mass? How can we better impart that sense that we have come to church to worship Him?

I have a few suggestions; I'm sure there are more:

1. Eliminate all informal greetings, even if these take place before Mass actually begins. Our parish has just started that silliness of "turn and say hi to your neighbor," right before the processional hymn, and it's terribly distracting. Being called away from the spirit of worship to greet people, chat, find out who's visiting from out of town, announce anniversaries and birthdays, etc., is not the way to foster the sense that we're about to enter into worship and adoration of the Most High God, Who deigned to come among us as true God and true Man, and Who still comes among us hidden in the accidents of bread and wine. There are times and places to focus on each other, but Mass isn't that time or that place.

2. Work to cultivate a spirit of proper dress, posture, and attitude among the faithful. Now, I think there are right ways and wrong ways to do this; but perhaps the best way is to lead by example. Wearing our Sunday best to Sunday Mass whenever possible (recognizing that ours is a casual culture, and avoiding judging those whose dress is different from our own), carefully genuflecting if the tabernacle is behind the altar, or bowing if it is reserved in a different place (not ideal, in my opinion), avoiding unnecessary chatter or a too-relaxed posture in the seat or pew, and the like may do more than a lot of scolding or scowling will. Of course, it is always supremely helpful for one's pastor to give gentle reminders (perhaps in the bulletin) about these kinds of things.

3. Eliminate the Sign of Peace. I'm aware that there is a push to relocate this anyway, something which ought to be done; but until then, I believe that this is optional and may be eliminated at the pastor's discretion. Since it so greatly interrupts the solemnity of the Mass at this point I think we'd be better off without it.

4. Eliminate the communion hymn. I know, as a choir member this is practically music heresy. But there is no demand in the rubrics, as far as I know, for a hymn there, and the communion antiphon could be intoned, instead, as people prepare to receive the Blessed Sacrament. Then, some quiet music (in season) could be played, and the choir, returning from communion themselves, could go ahead and sing what is usually called a "communion reflection" song, from among the vast treasury of sacred music written about the Eucharist. Certainly parishioners could join in with any such hymn that is familiar to them, but no one would feel any pressure to join in the singing when they have just received Our Lord and would like to spend time in quiet prayer instead of singing more modern hymns, many of which contain dubious Eucharistic theology and/or melodies which are not appropriately solemn for this particular moment.

5. Greatly reduce the number of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. It seems distracting to many to have half a dozen or a dozen or more lay people rush to the altar, receive communion, and be parceled out all over the church with both the Body and Blood of Christ. In parishes with only one priest and no deacons it is probably necessary to have a few people assist Father with the distribution of the Body of Christ, but while I know that the practice of receiving communion under both species has many defenders I've never really understood the need to do this all the time. Christ is really present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the smallest fragment of the Eucharistic host or the tiniest drop of the Precious Blood; is it really necessary for every lay person who has made his or her First Communion to be offered the opportunity to receive under both species at every single Mass? The chances of disastrous accidents go up considerably; there usually have to be two people offering the chalices of Precious Blood for every one person offering the Body of Christ; the time it takes for the purification of the vessels increases, as does the risk that the vessels will not be properly purified at the appropriate time, and so forth--whatever benefits may be gained from having communion under both species must be weighed against these realities, in my opinion.

I think that changing the practice to reserve communion under both species for certain high feasts (Christmas, Easter, Holy Thursday Mass, etc.) and certain sacramental occasions (First Communion or Confirmation Masses, Nuptial Masses, perhaps funerals if the deceased's relatives request it) would cause a greater appreciation of the reception of the Precious Blood, and a greater reverence generally for the Eucharist, than we have now. One extra chalice besides the priest's could always be made available for those parishioners who suffer from celiac disease or other impediments to receiving the Body of Christ but who are capable of receiving the Precious Blood in churches where this is an issue, of course.

6. If announcements must be made before the close of Mass, keep them to a minimum and make sure the announcements do not unduly interfere with parishioners' time to adore the Eucharistic Lord Whom they have just received. There is nothing more jarring than finishing one's prayers, returning to a seated position when the Blessed Sacrament has been reserved, pondering quietly the Mass in one's heart--and then having someone get up and in an incongruously jovial manner read off the entire bulletin to the congregation, taking the opportunity to extemporize and try to get a few laughs from the congregation. While it may at times be necessary and important to announce things at Mass (such as a change in a weekly Mass time, an upcoming Holy Day of Obligation, or something of similar importance) it is not necessary to list the dates and times of parish group meetings, fund raisers, religious education events, and the like. These should be listed in the bulletin, posted on a board in the church if possible, and highlighted on the parishes' well-designed and regularly updated website. If the parish doesn't have a website, perhaps the confirmation candidates could make it a service project (I'm only partly kidding).

7. When the Recessional Hymn has ended and Father has left the altar and proceeded to the vestibule or out of the church, silence should be maintained in the church proper. Noisy, happy conversation should certainly take place--in the parish hall, parish basement, school gymnasium or other weekly post-Mass gathering place, where, hopefully, coffee and doughnuts are being served and fellowship is being encouraged. Such conversation should not be taking place inside the church itself, where parishioners may choose to remain a while in silent and adoring prayer, and where in some churches people will be gathering for the next Mass.

I think that all of these things, if implemented into a parish's Sunday Mass celebration, would go a long way toward reminding us all that we come to Mass to adore our Lord in the Eucharist, and toward creating a fit environment to do exactly that.

Temptations

Since it is Lent, I thought it might be interesting to take a moment to write about temptations that interfere with a woman's vocation as a wife. No, don't worry; I'm not going to delve into the kind of deep marital issues that lead couples to counseling, retreats, and prayer, because while those sorts of things ought to be discussed, perhaps, they're not really subject matter for a simple blog post, and I haven't the sort of expertise necessary to write about them.

Instead, I want to talk about a few temptations that beset us wives from time to time, in the context of trying to be good wives to our husbands. Some of these I've experienced myself, while others I've only observed, but in any case I think they're the sort of things that are fairly common, and that can get in the way of good intentions to live as devoted wives.

My male readers may want to skip over this post. Or they may want to keep reading; perhaps to gain a little insight into certain struggles females can, on occasion, deal with.

Temptation One: Treating Him like One of the Children

In this temptation, the wife is, perhaps, a little exasperated by some minor, but perhaps repetitive, displays of what some might call Intentional Male Helplessness Syndrome on the part of her spouse. Perhaps he leaves his clothes draped on the end of a chair, or perhaps he, the king of most household technology, is thwarted by the moat called the "washing machine." Perhaps he wanders into the kitchen on Saturday and asks, "What's for lunch, dear?" oblivious to the fact that each of the children over the age of three has successfully made himself/herself a sandwich.

Giving into the temptation to see her husband as one of the children, perhaps a little older than the baby, the wife takes care of all these little things for him--but then she starts to assume that he really can't do anything without her (except for his job, of course, but that's different). From a little mild spoiling of the sort that's usually good for a marriage, she drifts into the character of a nursery governess, scolding him for drinking directly out of cartons, nagging him for leaving dirty socks on the floor, and adopting a tone with him that is partly annoyed, partly indulgent--not unlike the tone she uses with the toddlers in the family. This is not, of course, the best way to reinforce to the children the idea that Daddy is the head of the family; they may start to think of Daddy as a kind of uber-child who gets away with things even more than they do.

Temptation Two: Treating Him like a CEO

I think this temptation occurs when a wife reaches a point of "decision burnout." She's asked to make decisions for other people all day long: what should Billy wear today, how should Janet do her hair, what does Martin want for breakfast (a vast mystery that even Martin seems unable to discern), what time should Genevieve leave to get to her art lesson, what can be done to help Sylvia improve in math, and on and on and on. By the time one of the children has asked her to decide what color socks he ought to wear while another is pleading to know what book she should spend the afternoon reading, Mom no longer wants to make any decisions. Ever.

So she starts deferring to her husband, demanding that he decide on matters that pertain to the family and the household. Note: this isn't the same as asking for his input; a wife who plans to put new curtains in the kitchen should do her husband the courtesy of asking if he has some general opinions as to the color or type, perhaps. But when a wife treats her husband like a CEO, she starts expecting him to make decisions for her, and will not, for example, change the curtains at all unless she can pin him down to a decision involving the amount of money she ought to spend and what ought to be done with the old ones.

Moreover, she will start using Daddy's absence to put off making decisions at all. The children may ask all they like about weekend plans, desires for recreation, etc., but Mom's one answer will be "We'll have to ask Daddy." Pretty soon, the children will come to the belief that Daddy is not just a CEO but the whole corporation, and Mommy is a subsidiary--and this will make them want to bypass Mommy whenever possible. This is not, of course, the way to teach children that parents share responsibilities for the family, or that Mommy is usually capable of making decisions, even thought she will consult Daddy whenever the matter requires it.

Temptation Three: Treating Him Like a Guest

Perhaps this temptation occurs most when Daddy has to travel a lot on business, but I think it can happen in other circumstances, too. I think this one starts out, a lot of the time, as a praiseworthy desire on a wife's part to let her husband know how much she appreciates him; so she consults his tastes and cooks his favorite foods, works hard to create a homey, pleasant atmosphere for him, and goes out of her way to pamper him a little here and there.

All of that is just fine, of course--but the temptation comes in when a wife insists that her husband be treated almost like a visitor, not only by her but by the rest of the family as well. And she goes out of her way to hide anything unpleasant, uncomfortable, or otherwise difficult, anything that you wouldn't ordinarily want a guest in the home to experience. She instructs the children to keep their voices low and bribes them not to argue while Daddy is home; she never serves anything her husband even remotely dislikes, even if this includes most non-potato vegetables; she doesn't tell him about the dispute she's having with a neighbor or the trouble one of the children is having with his schoolwork; and in general she keeps him out of the loop of anything that might make home a less than perfect place to come home to.

But keeping her husband out of the loop means keeping him at arm's length from the family. The illusion of perfection will break the minute some problem which requires his aid comes up, and he may be puzzled as to why he never heard about the problem before it reached such a stage of crisis, not knowing that his wife was hoping to handle the whole thing before he ever heard of it. And treating him like a guest means treating him almost like a stranger.

Temptation Four: Treating Him Like a Handyman


Every wife probably has a "honey do" list somewhere, even if it's just in her head. And husbands should pitch in and help around the home, especially by doing those chores and tasks that require the ability to work with power tools while not being clung to by a toddler. There's nothing wrong with expecting our husbands to help us, and making reasonable requests to them to do so.

But this temptation is about degree. The wife suffering from it goes from appreciating her husband's help around the house to seeing him as an endless source of manual labor. The internal dialog running in her mind sees his helpfulness as proof of his love and involvement in their life together--which wouldn't be bad, except that the flip side of that dialog is for her to see any signs of relaxation on his part as proof of his lack of love and involvement.

To a woman suffering from this temptation, then, there is no sight more beautiful than that of her husband carefully installing a new floor in the kitchen--and no sight more painful than the sight of that same husband watching a baseball game on TV while drinking a beer. No matter how happy she is with their home, the house seems to change from a neat, snug, well cared-for place (while he's working on something) to a dingy, paint-peeling eyesore (the minute he sits down with a book, or takes a phone call from his mother). As long as she is in the throes of this temptation, she will be "measuring" his love with a yardstick, a level, and a carpenter's square--but perhaps a little reflection on the life of the Holy Family and its saintly carpenter may help her remember that love isn't something you can buy at the hardware store.

Temptation Five: Treating Him Like A Psychology Experiment

To be fair, the woman conducting this "experiment" probably has no idea she's doing so. She may tend toward the passive-aggressive side, herself: her feelings are easily hurt, and a little dose of male indifference is just like an attack, as far as she is concerned. Or she may be the histrionic sort, craving attention and alternating between rewarding her husband for giving her that attention and punishing him for failing. There are dozens of other types as well--but the one thing I think women struggling with this temptation have in common is that they're all quite convinced that something is wrong with their husbands, and that he needs them to analyze him and straighten him out.

Unless a wife is a licensed psychologist (and probably even then) this is a really bad idea. In the first place, unless a husband really is suffering from some particular mental issues, in which case he needs outside help, this is probably going to backfire badly. Few men like to be quizzed endlessly about their feelings, and even fewer want their wives to be doing the quizzing. And while there are times when a man really wants to open up to his wife to share conversations about his experiences or thoughts about life in general, chances are that he doesn't want that conversation to lead to lots of "Aha!" moments in which his emotions about something that happened at work today lead back to a conflict he had with his wife three weeks ago, and which she now triumphantly claims to understand.

Treating a husband like a clinical experiment, or even like a patient, is only going to try his patience. Chances are good that the "experiment" won't ultimately explain the ordinary frictions and tensions of married life, and the wife whose plan is to "fix" her husband's problems may only be adding to her own. Ultimately she's failing to treat him with love and understanding, and is thinking more along the lines that she'd love to understand him--because then he could apologize and be a better person.

I'm sure there are many more wifely temptations out there, but these are a few I've seen here and there; I've struggled with some of them myself. Any of them can be minor, temporary bad habits; but any of them can also lead to some marital conflict, or at least get in the way of a positive relationship with the most important person (earthly, of course) in our lives.

Leftover People

A subject has been raised recently in regard to President Obama's decision to allow federal funding of child cannibalization, otherwise known as embryonic stem cell research. Defenders of the research have said, in effect, "Well, if ESCR bothers you, then what about IVF? How can you defend IVF while opposing ESCR?"

Catholics have it easy, when that question comes up. We can just say, "We don't support IVF. We think it's immoral, and our Church does too. Catholics who seek to use IVF to create children outside of the marital embrace are (objectively) committing a very grave sin." And we can then point the questioner to some of the appropriate Church teachings and writings on this subject.

Our Protestant brethren are not always so lucky. Some of their churches do oppose IVF, of course, but others do not, or don't take a specific position one way or the other. I've heard well-meaning Christians say something along the lines of, "IVF isn't perfect. But when couples are seriously struggling with the pain of infertility, and this offers them the hope of a child, who are we to tell them no? Would we tell them, if they have children using IVF, that those children weren't wanted by God, and shouldn't even be here?"

This is a heartfelt question, but it's not as hard to answer as it seems.

The first part of the answer is the reality that there are lots and lots of children in the world, and indeed in the history of the world, who were conceived in less than ideal circumstances, and even in sinful ways. Among the stories in the Bible are stories of children conceived in incest, in fornication, in adultery. Clearly God did not condone the sins which were committed by the parents of these children; yet He loved the children and their sinful parents, and allowed some of these children to fulfill a purpose in His plan for salvation history.

But we can say, clearly and unequivocally, that rape is gravely wrong, that incest is gravely wrong, that fornication is gravely wrong, and that adultery is gravely wrong. To say this is not ever to deny the worth of children who were conceived as a result of these sins; they are, no less than we are, God's children, and He loves them very much regardless of the sins committed by a parent, or even by both parents. Nonetheless, we must and do oppose the evils these four things truly are, and work toward a goal of eliminating such sins from our lives as Christians and from society itself.

So we can also say, clearly and unequivocally, that IVF is wrong because it reduces the child to an object sought outside of the loving embrace of holy matrimony--though the parents may indeed be married to each other, the act of creation is removed from their acts of love, and takes place in a cold and clinical laboratory. No child should be objectified in this way, and become, instead of the mysterious and magnificent blessing of God, nothing but an act of science, a "thing" brought about as a result of a financial transaction.

As bad as this is, in the practical realm there is one more reason for opposing IVF; and it is this reason that has to do with ESCR.

IVF doesn't just objectify a child, it objectifies children. Would-be parents who turn to IVF will create multiple embryos--the process of removing eggs from the woman is painful and difficult, and the likelihood of any one embryo surviving the implantation process is actually rather slim. So those seeking IVF will create multiple embryos, implanting some of them on each attempt at pregnancy. When 'too many' embryos survive the implantation process, selective abortion is often done to increase the woman's chance of carrying one or two of the children to birth; when a "successful" outcome of pregnancy and birth is achieved, there may be several more embryos frozen at the fertility clinic, which may or may not ever be "used" to try to achieve another pregnancy.

In other words, IVF creates leftover people. People, their developing lives put on hold, waiting in a freezer for Mom and Dad to decide to try again. People, who often die when they are being thawed out for implantation, or in the implantation attempt itself. People, whose likely deaths are accepted by their parents, and who may be given away as leftovers for scientists to experiment on, once Mom and Dad decide they have enough already-born children, and no longer need the rest of the children they created.

This is horrible, of course. But it's a horror we moderns have gotten awfully comfortable accepting--that this child, a boy with brown hair and blue eyes is entitled to live because he survived the implantation process and became a little brother for the first child we manufactured with the lab's help, but that child, whose DNA already shows that she would be a girl, with her mother's blond hair and her grandfather's brown eyes, a striking child, sweet-natured, loving, intelligent--well, we don't need her, she's a leftover, let the scientists have her to take her cells and force them to configure in the ways that they hope will cure diabetes or Parkinson's disease.

Human life is sacred, because we are made in the image and likeness of God. There are no leftover people, even though it is proof of the grave evil of IVF that it has created the notion that there are.

Late Blogging Alert

I've got a couple of posts planned for later tonight, but it's been a crazy day and we've got choir practice coming up soon. So my fellow night-owls may want to check in around midnight or so; or you could just read them in the morning!

Thanks! :)

Not An Example of Transparency...

American Papist today had this interesting USA Today article talking about whether modesty is back in fashion:

Finding a bit more coverage in their clothing may be a goal of many adult women, but finding fashion that wouldn't be considered "sexy" can be an obsession for mothers of tween and teenage girls. When consumer insights firm BIGresearch polled 5,000 consumers last fall, 64% of those 18 and older agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "Fashions for young people have gotten too provocative."

Brenda Sharman, who became national founder of the teen girl group Pure Fashion in 2006, already knew public sentiment was starting to lean in favor of her modesty mission. However, she didn't think there would be much concern about low necklines and high hemlines in a time of staggering economic pressure and spiraling unemployment. But now, she believes the economy has become a boon.

"Fashion's in our court right now," says Sharman, a former model.

Pure Fashion has about 700 members who work as models at spring teen fashion shows, which attract about 11,000 people. The group has affiliates in 10 countries, and is signing new groups on its website, PureFashion.com.

Pure Fashion was an offshoot of a Catholic missionary organization, but Sharman believes its message resonates from Muslims to Orthodox Jews to parents who simply believe it shouldn't be hard to find shorts that completely cover the rear end.

As Thomas Peters points out, Pure Fashion is said to be an offshoot of a "Catholic missionary organization;" in fact, at least as of when I wrote this blog post, they were an affiliate of Regnum Christi. Peters goes on to add this update:

update 2: I received a report from an RC member saying that Brenda Sharman claims Pure Fashion is "no longer directly affiliated with RC." I'm not sure what to make of that statement because their website still says PF is sponsored by RC and affiliated with their "Mission Network."

Can anyone add a clarification?

I, too, would like to know. The Pure Fashion website still claims affiliation with Regnum Christi, as Thomas Peters says. And this article published in January of this year doesn't seem to be hiding the connection, either.

If troubled economic times lead to greater options for modest clothing for women of all ages, that's a good thing, of course. But this story once again highlights how frustrating it can sometimes be to discover LC/RC's connections to apostolates which are connected to them.

If Pure Fashion is no longer an RC apostolate, why the January article and the information at the bottom of the website's homepage?

If Pure Fashion still is an RC (and thus an LC) apostolate, why the past tense and vagueness in the USA Today article: "...was an offshoot of a Catholic missionary organization..." etc.

This illustrates, albeit in a microcosmic fashion, why it may ultimately be impossible for the LC/RC to reform from the inside. There is absolutely no reason to adopt a posture of defensive secrecy on the subject of Pure Fashion--even some critics of the Legion have found this effort to be worth supporting. But old habits die hard, and the RC's old habit of distancing itself from its works seems to be resurfacing. While it is possible that this is just a misunderstanding of some kind, I find it hard to believe that USA Today would not have noted the Legion connection if it was made clear--or that Pure Fashion wouldn't have announced its total independence from Regnum Christi if that had actually happened. Ordinary Catholics are left scratching their heads and wondering: is Pure Fashion RC-affiliated, or isn't it? And if there can't be transparency in such a simple thing, how can we trust that there will be transparency in significantly more important matters?

UPDATE 3/17 Thomas Peters reported March 13 that Brenda Sharman clarified: Pure Fashion is still Regnum Christi; the reporter knew that. Given my suspicious nature, I emailed USA Today to double check that; I just received a nice email from the reporter, who corroborated that she did know of the Regnum Christi affiliation, but as the story was retail, not religion, did not include the reference for reasons of space and brevity.

So this is an instance where no attempt at hiding anything was made, and no official implication that Pure Fashion was no longer RC was made, either. Apparently the person who originally sent the information to American Papist implying that Pure Fashion was no longer RC was simply misinformed, and combined with the article's apparent gloss over the Regnum Christi connection the misinformation led to the resulting confusion.

So, I apologize for my earlier suspicions. I can't completely apologize for having had them, though; I remember during some of the early days of Legion/Regnum Christi apostolates how maddeningly difficult it could be to find out whether that exciting new program or religious ed. opportunity at one's parish was actually Legion affiliated, and how well-hidden some connections sometimes were. Even today, why have the structure of "Mission Network" as an offshoot of Regnum Christi which is itself a lay branch of the Legion and from which most of the apostolates now come...and so on? Why not simply label clearly everything that comes from the LC/RC so people can know up front what they're getting involved with?

Setting a Good Example--the TV Edition

Earlier today, I was visiting another blog, reading about the writer's dilemma with a popular TV show: was it good for her family, or not? She was leaning toward "not," and commenters seemed to be agreeing.

I don't want to link straight to the conversation, because I don't want to single out any specific people who were over there discussing this topic in an honest, heartfelt way. But a lot of good issues were brought up, and I'd like to touch on a few of those.

It's quite true that there really isn't a lot of television available for what used to be called (and maybe still is) "family viewing." TV programs tend to be written for and aimed at specific market segments, from the youngest children to the older male or older female demographics. While some shows may have "crossover" appeal, the vast majority of television simply isn't appropriate for children; some may argue (and with some justice) that most of it isn't all that appropriate for adults who are trying to follow Christ, either.

But there's no harm in the notion that now and again mom and dad might like to sit down with the children and watch something together. No harm in the notion--but sometimes all too much harm in the practice. It's bad enough when mom and dad must park their brains on the couch (along with some other portions of the anatomy) in order to sit through slickly-produced children's fare which is innocuous and inoffensive enough, but mind-numbingly dull, cheesy, repetitive, derivative, cutely moralistic about problems too vague and general to cause controversy (e.g., the perpetual "My friend and I are having a--gasp--disagreement!" story line), and barely even entertaining enough to hold the attention of the youngest member of the family, who would rather be sorting block-shapes into a bucket or playing with a bead race instead.

But bad as that might be, it's at least not openly harmful to the children. Should mom and dad think that some slightly more adult fare might be nice, though, there is the very real chance that chancy images, sexual content, bad language, gratuitous violence, and mindless materialistic greed might be seen by the kiddies--and that's just the commercials.

Steering through the shallow waters of the popular culture's entertainment offerings requires constant vigilance. There are all sorts of hazards, and it can be hard to recognize some of the dangers until you're nearly on top of them. And the powerful marketing messages sent out by the medium work very hard to lull your discriminating powers into submission--everybody's watching this, everybody's kids are too, and if you don't keep up you'll become one of those people who never gets the office lunchroom jokes, or misses the cultural references that even your parish priest puts into his homily from time to time (albeit with a somewhat charming inaccuracy, and a decade or so of cultural delay on occasion). Your kids will be those mousy wide-eyed little people in prairie dresses or three-piece infant suits at the homeschooling conference, and other homeschooling moms will ask if you aren't worried that you're sheltering them!

Thus do the marketers behind television shows play on our fears, and try to get us to rationalize making more and more choices in favor of what television and movies have to offer. There's so little out there, we think. We don't want this sort of thing to become forbidden fruit. This show or movie has good values (mostly) and hardly any bad things (and the bad stuff is over the kids' heads, anyway). We don't want to raise children who are going to go crazy when they go off to college, and either spend the first six weeks doing nothing but watching reruns of "Carnal Knowledge and the Borough" or becoming wild-eyed campus street preachers denouncing their classmates for watching old episodes of "Full House." We really owe it to our kids to watch some iffy shows with them, so we can have a lengthy family discussion afterward about which aspects of the show conflict with our values, play a rousing game of "Where's That in the Catechism?" as we challenge them to find all the sins committed in the half-hour episode, and end with a prayer intervention for the actors, the writers, the director, the producer, and the network executives. Surely that's better than...just not watching this stuff in the first place, right?

It can be difficult to know whether or not a TV show is worth watching, even as adults. Adding our responsibilities to our children into the mix makes the question even more challenging--but even more imperative to answer well. As adults, we've encountered the world, and will not find most of it shocking or disturbing, even when some shady elements are dressed up as entertainment. But our children's consciences are still developing, and the things we almost don't even notice can draw them in, excite unhealthy curiosity, disturb their peace, or desensitize them to evils they're too young even to know about.

As parents who are trying to follow Christ, it's important that we try to be aware of the influence the entertainment we allow into our home is having on our children. If a program started out seeming like good clean family fun, but started to sneak in more and more dysfunctional or disturbing cultural elements (as so often happens--the "bait and switch" of TV programming), we should accept this as an opportunity to set a good example for our children by explaining to them why we won't be watching anymore, and finding something else to do together. This example will stay with them, and they will have the discernment someday to make good entertainment choices themselves, and the courage to turn off and tune out when something stops being entertainment and starts trying to be a near occasion of sin, instead.

Should the Legion be Investigated from the Outside?

Although there haven't been any new developments regarding the information released in February that the late Fr. Maciel of the Legion of Christ had fathered a daughter some twenty years ago, conversation has swirled around the ramifications of what this all means for the Legion. Thomas Peters at American Papist has remained on top of things, and is reporting today on the statements Cardinal Pell made to the UK's The Catholic Herald:

Cardinal George Pell has become the first senior Church figure to call for outside intervention to tackle the crisis afflicting the Legion of Christ.

The cardinal, speaking in Oxford last week, said a Church authority external to the Legion should investigate its founder's corruption and re-examine its charism.

His comments follow revelations that the Legion's founder, Fr Marcial Maciel, who died last year, secretly had a mistress and fathered a child.

The cardinal said it was "not entirely reasonable" to expect the leadership of the Legion to deal with these revelations without any outside help.

He said: "I think there should be an intervention, perhaps a visitation or something like that. I don't know what the facts of the matter are, the alleged corruption, if that's the word, on the part of the founder, to what extent there was a cover-up, to what extent the whole rationale of the order [should be] re-examined, but I think it should be sponsored by some extra-Legionary Church agency."

I'd just like to point out two aspects of the Cardinal's statement.

One, Cardinal Pell is specifically addressing the need to re-examine the Legion's charism. This is a key point for many people who have discussed and commented on this issue; to the extent that a religious group's charism is associated with its founder, and given the possibility that Fr. Maciel's secret life may have made it impossible for him to hand on a legitimate charism, it is essential that any investigation of the facts of Fr. Maciel's life and the extent and duration of his living a double life and/or committing abusive acts take into account the very central question of whether the Legion's charism can possibly be a valid one.

Two, Cardinal Pell specifically mentions the need to determine "...to what extent there was a cover-up..." Again, this is key. There are people still in leadership in the Legion today who because of their close involvement with Fr. Maciel during his lifetime may very well have known about or been aware of this double life he was living. If it can be established that they were, indeed, absolutely ignorant of his sinful lifestyle, then this raises the question as to whether people so capable of being fooled by a duplicitous person ought to be in positions of leadership in a large religious order.

There are still many unresolved questions and issues involving the Legion. While the initial shock at the disclosure that a man whom many thought was a living saint had been living a sinful life and had fathered a child has died down, new matters continue to be brought to light. In recent comment box conversations at American Papist, for instance, a Legionary priest revealed that he had personally spoken to three men who were victims of Fr. Maciel's abuse--a stunning revelation, considering that for so long the Legion has denied that any of the accusations of pedophilia had even a modicum of truth to them.

I'm certain that we haven't heard the last of the situation involving the Legion as of yet; we could hardly be said to have heard the first of it, given how much is still unknown. I think Cardinal Pell is on the right track, though; this is not a matter the Legion can resolve with a mere internal investigation, and putting outside investigators in charge of things will go a long way toward making the situation clearer.

And the Money Kept Rolling In...

Apparently, eight hundred billion dollars doesn't go as far as it used to. Nancy Pelosi is already talking about the possible need for a second stimulus package:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Congress needs to "keep the door open" to a second stimulus package -- raising the question of how much the government could eventually spend on top of the $787 billion already allocated to rescue the country from dire economic straits.

"The word of the day is confidence. Confidence in our markets, confidence in lending, confidence in our financial institutions," Pelosi said before suggesting the need for a second rescue package during a press conference Tuesday following a meeting with top economists.

Mark Zandi, chief economist and founder of Moody's Economy, took a more definitive stance than Pelosi, telling reporters a second stimulus bill is necessary.

"We are going to need more taxpayer money ... I think another stimulus package is a reasonable assumption because of the way things are going," Zandi said.

The Obama administration has not ruled out a second stimulus package -- should the current bill prove insufficient -- but it has not indicated a second bill is currently in the making either.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Feb. 17 that Obama "is going to do what's necessary to grow this economy." While "there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package," he added, "I wouldn't foreclose it."

Wouldn't foreclose it? That's a pretty unfortunate turn of speech for a White House Press Secretary to employ, don't you think?

Panic is such a useful political tool. The economy is still soft, of course--and during the votes and debate (such as it was) over the first Obama stimulus package the average American was constantly reminded that it would be impossible to see quick results, that even if the economy seemed to be improving it might or might not be because of the stimulus, and that even with the stimulus the economy might not improve. But we couldn't do nothing. Oh, no, doing nothing was hardly an option, not when "doing something" meant spending billions of taxpayer dollars, most of them in small unmarked untraceable bills.

Surprise, surprise! There's still, a whole two months (more or less) after the passage of the Obama Plan, some economic struggling, some (dare we invoke the not-yet-dead ghost of Jimmy Carter?) malaise out there. And we can't have that, not with only a little over a year and a half left before the midterm Congressional elections, now can we?

So the "We may need a second one-time-only-emergency-billions-of-taxpayer-dollars-in-small-unmarked-bills-do-not-call-the-police-if-you-ever-want-to-see-your-beloved-economy-again-stimulus-package" trial balloon is already soaring to lofty heights, with many news reports picking up the chatter and reporting on it as if it's only a matter of time before a new plan is drafted and passed.

I think Americans need to say no, now, before this becomes a habit. You know the drill: first a bright-eyed Congress promises to get its act together if you'll only give it a little more cash, then the demands and whining for money start to become a regular thing, and pretty soon you're finding out that your Congress is so addicted to this lifestyle that it's out robbing convenience stores to keep the money coming, especially if you wise up and cut it off from your income as an act of tough love.

We need to put our feet down, and remind Congress that the way most people get money is by earning it, not by borrowing billions and billions of dollars from unborn Americans quite likely to be cannibalized for their stem cells long before they ever start paying any income tax. Oh, they'll probably protest, and raise the specter of a total economic meltdown, but since by their own admission they don't know if their stimulus packages will stop this or make it happen faster I don't really think they have a leg to stand on.

Mad Scientists and their Presidential Enabler

The CNN headline is wrong, of course; does that ever even need to be said?

"Obama moves to separate politics and science." Oh, really? Have there been raging debates in Congress over what constitutes an inclined plane? Have I missed the talk-radio shoutfests in which the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is hotly attacked or defended? Is someone insisting that Schrodinger be the subject of a PETA protest for his cruelty to hypothetical cats?

Of course not. By "separate politics and science," CNN means "separate embryonic stem cell research from the people who rightly point out that it's pretty ghoulish and ethically unsound to murder small humans in order to take their cells in the hopes of keeping Hollywood actors, members of Congress, and other parasites on humanity functioning well past the 130-years-old mark."

Because, let's not kid ourselves, that's what this is really about. If the debate about ESCR was really about curing diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes and the like, then the tremendous and overwhelming success that adult stem cells, especially skin cells have had in pursuing goals like these would be widely celebrated, and federal research money for the use of adult stem cells would be poured into research facilities with the kind of reckless abandon that Ted Kennedy used (hypothetically) to use when pouring alcoholic beverages into a three-gallon glass.

The fact that ESCR is still pursued with such tenacity when it hasn't been shown to produce any cures even in countries whose ideas of ethics are far more obnoxious than our own and where this research has been conducted for years is just proof of two things: one, that a certain segment of our population is completely convinced that they are far too special to grow old and die and that ESCR is the key to giving them the eternal youth that endless plastic surgery can only imitate, and two, that admitting even for a moment that it's unseemly to cannibalize unborn children for this sort of research is tantamount to admitting that human embryos are, well, human, and that killing them either in early abortions or in inhumane and disgusting "research" might possibly be morally problematic--something a fair amount of our citizens would almost rather die than admit, except that they're way too special to grow old and die, etc.

But framing this debate as one between "politics" and "science" is useful to the moral cretins who are fine with killing unborn humans, even with partial birth abortion (and Obama's favorite, post birth abortion). If only "politics" objects to cannibalizing tiny humans, and pure noble "science" is in favor of it, why, we can't possibly distrust "science," right? There has never been a "scientist" who would conduct unethical experiments, right?

Well, except for Dr. Mengele and his cohorts. And a similar group in Japan during WWII. And the Soviets' secret poison lab. And the scientists involved in the Tuskegee experiments. And the Stanford prison experiment of 1971. And...well, you get the idea.

The notion that scientists are always brave, honorable, noble, disinterested people who cannot act unethically is a fairly recent one. Certainly Mary Shelley, herself a rather unsavory character, didn't have any such illusions about scientists when she penned her classic work, Frankenstein. In her work it was precisely a scientist who could be capable of shoving aside God and taking His place, with complete ignorance and lack of foresight about the terrible consequences.

Of course, in these days the scientists can count on the help of would-be Messianic presidents and their politics of massive human destruction. It's a toss-up as to which sort of person is more hubristic, more ignorant of morality, and more incapable of having the imagination to fathom the nightmarish consequences of their unethical and wicked actions.

President Obama has shown pretty clearly that when he talked about "respecting" pro-life Americans and their views, he meant "humoring them long enough to get elected and then crushing them with a reign of terror on abortion the likes of which have never been seen in America." As the cries of glee go up from the pro-death left who never met a human baby they would vote to protect (except for those who actually survive long enough to be born, of course, and even then there's the Peter Singer element ready to deny those children life if they're "defective" in any way), the mad scientists rub their hands and chortle over the idea of getting to tear apart living human embryos and use their cells in a hellish broth that will probably never cure anybody (and even if it did, it would be wrong to make it; imagine if it were theorized that culling two-year-olds to harvest their newly developed immune systems would cure all disease?). Meanwhile the sycophantic emasculati cheering for Obama mumble and stutter and insist that Obama is still, still, still the pro-life president; it's sad to see them descent from understandable (if deplorable) human cupidity to a complete disconnect from reality.

It's Time for the Separation of Church and Connecticut

Oh, sure, we can talk all we want to about the "separation of Church and State." Some groups of people talk of nothing else; of course, since what they really mean by "separation of Church and State" is "separation of all religious values and all the people who hold those values from the public square" they have to be opposed more often than not.

But I think it's time for a radical new idea. I think it's time for the separation of Church and specific, individual states. I think it's time for the Church to write a "Dear State" letter to a handful of truly obnoxious states which keep trying to encroach on the rights of the Church. Particularly, I think this letter ought to go out to Connecticut:

A bill regarding control of the Catholic Church has exploded as one of the hottest issues of the session at the state Capitol - prompting charges and countercharges about religious freedom.

The measure, which was raised as a committee bill by the Democratic co-chairs of the influential judiciary committee, would allow the finances of local parishes to be run by lay councils and would essentially remove power from Catholic pastors, who would serve in an advisory role. Opponents say the bill is clearly unconstitutional and would violate the First Amendment regarding the right to freedom of religion. [...]

The issue has spread far beyond Hartford and has reached the national Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights, whose outspoken president, Bill Donohue, said he agrees with Bridgeport Bishop William Lori's characterization of the bill.

"Bishop Lori is correct to say that the bill 'is a thinly-veiled attempt to silence the Catholic Church on the important issues of the day, such as same-sex marriage,' '' Donohue said. "Indeed, it is payback: this brutal act of revenge by Lawlor and McDonald, two champions of gay marriage, is designed to muzzle the voice of the Catholic Church.'' [...]

On the other side, a constitutional law expert, who served as deputy solicitor general of the United States and has taught the subject at Columbia University and Georgetown, said the bill is deeply flawed. Attorney Philip A. Lacovara, a Catholic in the Archdiocese of Bridgeport, wrote a letter to members of the judiciary committee that said, "In more than forty years as a constitutional law teacher and practitioner, I cannot recall a single piece of proposed legislation at any level of government that more patently runs afoul of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment than does this bill.''

Lacovara, who was counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor, has argued 18 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I find it utterly astonishing that Bill 1098 could be taken seriously enough to warrant a hearing before your Committee,'' Lacovara wrote. "I would find it difficult to use it as a "hypothetical" in one of my constitutional law classes, because even first year law students would have so little difficulty seeing why the bill goes well beyond the powers that the Constitution allows the States to exercise in dealing with organized churches. ... One of the key doctrines embodied in this protection of religious liberty is that the State has no legitimate power to intrude into the internal affairs of a hierarchical church. That is, the guarantee of religious liberty applies not only to the private beliefs of individuals, it also protects the autonomy of organized churches as such. That principle has been established for two centuries.''

Applause to Attorney Lacovara, who clearly understands what's going on here.

Connecticut, of course, has already tried subtle anti-Catholicism, such as forcing Catholic hospitals to administer Plan B to anyone who says she's a rape victim without first administering an ovulation test. But with this latest legislative travesty they've dropped the subtlety and have engaged in open anti-Catholicism of the sort that Henry VIII might applaud.

So I think we need to start rallying for the right of the Church to separate from the State: Connecticut, first, and then perhaps Massachusetts which is almost as bad. The "Separation of Church and (a specific) State Plan" would work as follows: in the event that any State made egregious interference with the Church part of State law, the Church would immediately cease all activities within the State except for worship: all hospitals, schools, charities etc. would be placed on "sabbatical" and would remain closed until the State thought better of trying to usurp the authority of the Church. Thousands of people would thus seek unemployment benefits, state hospitals would have to absorb the patients being cared for in Catholic hospitals, public school districts would have to take on all the extra students being taught in Catholic schools, state agencies would have to take care of all the people currently being cared for by Church charities and religious orders, etc.

To be honest, I doubt the Plan would ever have to be enacted. But if such a Plan existed, I think the sort of legislative nonsense dreamed up by Lawlor and McDonald would never even be drafted in the first place. Congress people, after all, are cowards who fear the loss of an election more than any other calamity, and nothing could be a surer way to utter electoral annihilation than being known as the Congressman or Congresswoman who triggered the "Separation of Church and Connecticut (for example) Plan."

Daylight Savings Time Blues

One of the hazards of being sick for a week is that you miss things. Things like this:

March 7 (Bloomberg) -- It’s the day Americans lose an hour of sleep again, as the U.S. shifts to daylight-saving time tomorrow.

Most of the nation will set clocks forward by one hour at 2 a.m. local time, which becomes 3 a.m. local daylight time.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 lengthened the period for daylight time, moving the start to the second Sunday in March and the end to the first Sunday in November. Until 2007, daylight-saving time began the first Sunday of April and ended on the last Sunday of October.

Arrgh. Just what I need right now--another hour of lost sleep. And we were planning to go to our usual Mass in the morning (provided Thad feels up to it--he's still running a fever), but as that Mass is at 8:30 a.m. and we usually get there by 8 a.m. to run through the music which means leaving our house by 7:30 which means getting up by...well, okay, we only have to get up by six at the latest, but for a night person who's been staying up later than usual the thought is agonizing. It would, in all honesty, be almost easier to just stay up all night--the worst night of coughing I had with this bug I stayed up until 5 a.m. anyway, so what's a few more hours?

It's not really the one hour sleep difference that bugs me about Daylight Saving Time. As I wrote about it two years ago:

All of this is at least part of why I'm none too thrilled about the early arrival of Daylight Saving Time this year. I never much like "Spring Forward!" time anyway, as it takes me quite a while to break the habit of looking in utter shock at the clock that's telling me that it is nearly 3 a.m., and readjusting my schedule so that I'm in bed at an hour that doesn't make it futile to go to bed at all. But having to do this now, in March, when the gentle warm light of the rising sun has only just started to make me feel as though mornings aren't so bad after all, and that maybe a nice cup of hot green tea and a muffin would be worth getting up earlier than usual for, seems almost cruel.

It has just started to be lighter earlier in the mornings. I've just (well, okay, except for this past week) started waking up naturally a little earlier, and feeling a little more awake in the mornings. Yet here we go again; in exchange for an extra hour of light in the evenings we lose that morning wakefulness, and will (some of us) stumble around half-awake for days trying to get used to it.

I honestly don't understand the need for Daylight Saving Time at all, let alone the need to have it come so early in March. Do we really save energy this way? Considering how many stores, businesses etc. are open twenty-four hours a day, using lights and electricity all day long no matter how light it is outside, does it really make a dent on electricity use if people come home from temperature-controlled, brightly-lighted offices, swing by the temperature controlled, brightly-lighted day care centers to pick up their children, stop at the cleaners and pick up a fast food dinner from a restaurant that uses more electricity in a week than the family uses in a month, and then get home and leave the lights off a whole extra half-hour or so (assuming they don't rush in and turn on the TV anyway?).

Of course, the real question is, why change the clocks back to standard time at all? Right now, DST lasts from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. So standard time only covers a few weeks of November, all of December, January, and February, and a week or so of March. Does it really make sense to keep changing clocks backward and forward all the time, especially when Congress can't seem to decide just how many months ought to be DST in the first place?

In fact, according to this website, Congress made all of 1973 a daylight saving time year. The "End Daylight Saving Time" site further challenges us to consider this: if DST really saves energy, why not do it all year long? And if DST does not save energy, why not abolish it altogether?

Excellent questions, I think. I'll be pondering them tomorrow morning, when my body insists that it's really only 5 a.m. but my brain is trying to insist that it is six, and time to get up.

Bloggers and Social Networking

My dear SIL whose blog is a work of art has posted on a topic that has been troubling her; judging from the enthusiastic response she's gotten, I think she's expressing something other people have been struggling with as well:

I feel left behind in this whole social networking craze. I once defended the internet because it was a way to build community where there was none but now, I see many friends I have communicated with in thought and word via blogs turning to social networking and in turn, neglecting their blogs. So I tried popping onto Facebook via my husband's page (which he doesn't ever use) and just couldn't get into it. It was all jumbled up and not very orderly which made me feel like I needed to tidy up and declutter. If I want to feel like that, I just have to walk into my kids' bedrooms! Then, I opened up a Twitter account, tried to pop around and see what people were talking about... and promptly had a panic attack. Seriously. All the chatter, all the conversation, all the virtual noise and I felt my chest tighten up, my heart race and my breathing get shallower and shallower. I felt like Professor X in a New York subway. Thankfully, it was not telepathy induced so I could turn it off before I started hyperventilating.

I don't want to offend anyone who enjoys these communication mediums, but I love blogs! A blog is a beautiful place filled with the character and spirit of the person who owns it. It offers pieces of them and their world. It opens your eyes to places, customs, family situations that you might not get to experience in your own world. Even if a blog is not visually beautiful, it can be intellectually beautiful and carry your mind to the pinnacles of thoughts you never could have imagined yourself. You can follow the conversations of the blog hostess and other readers and you can even choose to engage in those conversations as well. It is a notebook where you can quickly share a small silliness that you will just as quickly forget or a scrapbook to hold those precious things that you want to remember forever. And it can be a lovely place to share yourself with the world and a comfortable parlor to invite guests to come in and sit a spell with you. If blogging is like a home cooked meal, then social networking is fast food. And while fast food can work in a pinch, I'd rather enjoy a succulent pot roast with roasted sweet potatoes on the side.

Do go and read the whole thing.

I share my sister-in-law's perplexity at the sudden popularity of social networking among Catholic homeschooling mommy-bloggers. To be honest, I see these tools as valuable and useful to a few distinct groups of people: businesses, as a source of "free" advertising; high-school/college students, as an outreach of their natural gregariousness and desire to stay best friends forever with people they met six months ago; and the techno-bloggers, who try all the new technology out there so they can stay abreast of current trends and report on them to their audiences.

Now, I could see where you could add "politicians" or "information writers" to the "business" category, and where some large extended families might find something like Facebook an easier way to stay in touch than the old method of calling six people in the family, expecting them to pass on the information you're sharing, and then finding out at the next family gathering that three of them never bothered to share what they assumed everyone knew and the other three distorted what you said and created a lot of false assumptions and hurt feelings among the people they did share your news with.

But I find it harder to imagine how useful Facebook, Twitter, and other networking sites are to Catholic homeschooling mommy-bloggers specifically. Sure, some of them use the sites to stay in touch with distant and extended family or scattered friends, but it seems like others are just using the sites to "talk" to each other, the same people they used to "talk" to on forums, blogs, e-mail lists, etc. As my SIL says in her post, this has the effect of moving the conversations to a new platform where only the technologically-savvy will be able to continue participating. Brand new homeschooling moms, those still investigating homeschooling, those needing support in the early years may find that these social networking sites are too hard to use for the purpose of getting help from more seasoned homeschooling moms, and too difficult especially if you need to ask serious, complex questions; the answer to "How do I discern a call to homeschool my children?" will probably take more room to answer than is generally allowed in these brief formats.

This isn't to say that Catholic homeschooling moms who find social networking sites fun and enjoyable shouldn't keep using them. It may be easier for some to write a quick sentence saying "At the grocery store. The usual battle about sugar cereals. Why is it so hard to say no when my brain is thinking secret midnight mommy-snack?" than to write a longer post about how our battles with our children so often reflect our own ambivalent feelings about a thousand different aspects of parenting, discipline, limits, self-control and the like. But the quick post or tweet or other brief thought gets swallowed up among the hundreds of similar thoughts scrolling quickly across the page; there's no real opportunity for reflection, for introspection, for examination. If former prolific and thoughtful blog authors eschew blogging altogether, or severely cut back on it, in favor of the briefer and more immediate but less reflective thoughts posted on social networking sites, I think it would be a pity.

Perhaps it will be possible for Catholic homeschooling mommy-bloggers, to balance their use of social networking sites while still providing thoughtful, reflective posts about their vocational lives as devoted wives, loving mothers, dedicated and focused homeschool teachers, skilled and conscientious homemakers, and kind, involved friends. To be perfectly honest, I couldn't do it; there are already enough demands on my time and attention, and having to add the pressure to post five to ten "quick thoughts" detailing the minutiae of my day on top of the blogging and writing I already do (and enjoy very much) is not an appealing thought.

We Interrupt this Blog...

...for a totally unsolicited product endorsement.

I have used a certain pizza place's online ordering system in the past. I've found it frustrating, needlessly repetitive, and difficult to use.

Domino's Pizza now has online ordering in our town (I think other towns have had this for a while). With Thad now home sick too, poor sweet, and neither of us having gotten much sleep last night, I decided to order pizza for dinner (the girls are awfully sick of soup, and it's Friday anyway so soup would have to be vegetarian vegetable--not a problem if I weren't nearly out of veggies at this point).

I went to Domino's website to see if there were any coupons available before calling my local store. That's when I discovered the online ordering. Hesitantly, I gave it a try--if it got too complicated, I could always call the store instead.

Complicated? Wow. They make that other pizza place's online ordering process seem like something authored by former Gitmo employees.

What could be easier than a list of clickable coupons, a "virtual pizza" that shows your toppings as you place them and prompts you to complete the coupon order? What could be easier than a checkout page that lets you place the first order *before* you register as a user on the site? What could be easier than a real-time tracking system that told me when "G." was making our pizza and when "K." left the store to deliver it? What could be more friendly than "A" calling me from the store to confirm that one slightly unusual sauce/veggie combo was, indeed, what I meant to select (my kids and I all like mushrooms--Thad most emphatically does not).

All I can say is, my preconceived notion that it's less of a hassle to call the pizza restaurant directly to place an order just went out the window. Domino's is doing this online ordering thing right!

No, They Can't

I truly enjoyed the OSV interview with Archbishop Naumann on the Sebelius matter. Excerpt:

Valerie Schmalz, OSV contributing editor: What precipitated writing Gov. Sebelius last May to tell her not to receive Communion?

Archbishop Joseph Naumann: I had actually written the August before that, in 2007, asking her not to present herself for Communion and I did not make that public. But then she violated that in March, and so in May I had written her again and made that public. Since then to my knowledge she has not presented herself for Communion.

OSV: She violated it by going to Communion in March (2008)?

Archbishop Naumann: Yep.

OSV: What does the appointment of Gov. Sebelius to HHS mean in terms of her policies? There are a whole bunch of people, like Doug Kmiec and others, who are saying when she was governor abortion dropped by 10 percent. This letter (from Catholics for Sebelius) says, “She’s made clear she agrees with Church teaching that abortion is wrong and has lived and acted according to that belief.”

Archbishop Naumann: I think that’s very, very dishonest and not at all accurate. It’s true that abortion dropped during her term as governor but I don’t think she really had anything to do with it, although she likes to take credit for it. And in fact, during that time she vetoed measures that could have helped prevent abortion. At one time, she struck from the budget a pregnancy maintenance initiative that gave state funding to crisis pregnancy centers. Only when the legislature passed it by such an overwhelming margin that it was highly probable she would have been overridden, she allowed it to stay in the budget.
She’s on Emily’s List. During her last campaign she identified herself as one whose always been a leader in protecting a woman’s right [to abortion] and one who has tried to keep abortion safe legal and rare. Clinton I think perhaps was the one who originally developed that language and of course it's never safe for the child. What she did in the state of Kansas in terms of vetoing efforts to try to better regulate abortion clinics, certainly didn’t show a real concern for the safety of women either. And you perhaps know, although Kansas has some of the most restrictive laws on late-term abortion, no thanks to the governor, we’re kind of a center for late-term abortions because those laws are generally not enforced. And as the legislature has tried to do things to try to make them be enforced, again she has blocked those with vetoes.
She accepted money early in her political career from Dr. [George] Tiller who is a notorious abortionist in Wichita, and after that became politically not very convenient for her to do, Dr. Tiller formed a [political action committee] in which she was the principal beneficiary along with other equally staunch abortion-supporting politicians, and he put in hundreds of thousands of dollars to get her elected and re-elected. So I really think they may support Gov. Sebelius for this appointment, but they certainly can’t support her because she’s faithful in living the teaching of the Church on the life issues.

"...very, very dishonest and not at all accurate..." Yes! Yes! It's so very nice to see a leader in our Church call out the "Catholics for Moloch" on their dishonesty!

Ahem. Sorry for that emotional outburst. Do read the whole interview; it's good to see the archbishop explaining so clearly why Sebelius is a bad pick for HHS, and to connect some dots regarding Obama's continual appointment of pro-abortion "Catholics" for high office, and how problematic that is for Catholics in America as a whole.

As I said before, I think that Obama is doing all of this quite deliberately. His answer to the question, "Can Catholics in the Democrat Party remain Catholics in good standing while shilling for the abortion industry and prostituting themselves in shameful service to the power-hungry Planned Parenthood minions who feed on the vile depths of its baby-murdering evil?" is "Yes, they can!"

And it's nice to see Archbishop Naumann replying, rather calmly, all things considered, "No, they can't."

I'd like to see Archbishops Niederauer and Malooly make this equally clear in regard to Pelosi and Biden, respectively; but as Archbishop Naumann pointed out, it doesn't take an archbishop's explicit statement for it to be a mortal sin for pro-abort Catholics to receive communion--and we're all familiar with St. Paul's warnings to people who eat and drink their own death and destruction.

And if Barack Obama thinks he can somehow overrule the Church on the matter of abortion--well, my former pastor used to give a Christmas homily each year listing those who thought they could destroy the babe of Bethlehem and the Church He founded, beginning with Herod and the Roman empire and ending with the Soviet Union. All of these, Father would say, are gone, destroyed, no more--yet the Church remains. And she will remain and endure long after the abortion-hungry Democrats eager to unleash ever more of their evil onto our nation have been forgotten into dust.

Technology as Tyranny

Have you ever considered how many gizmos and gadgets there are in our life that were completely unknown even fifty years ago? From cell phones and computers to digital video recorders and text message devices, we're surrounded by electronic helpers that go way beyond grandma's innovations of automatic dishwasher and washing machine.

But as useful as each new thing can be, there's always the potential of overuse. That cell phone which helps us stay in touch when we're out running errands can be an annoyance when a peaceful family outing is interrupted with business calls; that dvr we use to record our favorite shows can create a backlog of unwatched programming that we don't have time to view.

And both the computer and the text message device can connect us to news, information, friends, and family; or they can become a source of frustration as we try to juggle a hundred different demands on our time.

I thought this article was a thoughtful look at the downside of some of our connectivity:

E-fatigue: It's that mild, gnawing nausea that sets in once the marvels of a technology have worn off.

More and more, people are worn out by all the newfangled interpersonal communications inventions. The onslaught is relentless: Facebook, Twitter, iPhone applications, FriendFeed, Qik and on and on. Dub it download overload, innovation enervation, neoteric terror.

Karl Douglas Humm, 20, felt it earlier this school year. A sophomore at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., Humm says he signed up for Facebook as a senior in high school. Eventually he had about 560 friends, and he was spending a lot of time on the site. "At the beginning of last semester," he says, "I got really sick of it. It was annoying to have something to always check besides e-mail when I went online. I deactivated my account."

The maneuver succeeded. He enjoyed life — online and offline — more than he had in a while, he says. "I could concentrate on work more," says Humm. "I didn't procrastinate. It was something not to worry about."[...]

"The promise of a new technology," says Joel Garreau, author of Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human, "is freedom from the tyranny of the old ways of doing things. When it turns out to be just a different form of tyranny, people are disappointed. It's a bait and switch."

A different form of tyranny. I really like that phrase.

Is the dishwasher freedom from the old drudgery of washing dishes, or a new drudgery where there always seems to be a load of clean dishes waiting to be put away and another load of dirty ones cluttering up the sink? Is the microwave a friend or a foe? Did wall-to-wall carpeting and vacuum cleaners make life easier than careworn wooden floors and good stiff brooms, or did they just replace one kind of cleaning with another?

And these questions apply to our virtual activities, too. Is it easier to stay in touch with friends and family via Facebook and Twitter--or do we just end up posting public details of our lives in a format where people we barely know can read our breathtaking insights into...what we're fixing for dinner, or which child has a cough? Is online shopping a time-saver--or a money pit? Is reading the news of the day on the Internet more efficient than subscribing to newspapers or magazines--or does any efficiency we might gain vanish when we linger to post our opinions in the comment boxes?

You might think it's ironic to be reading this on a blog; but then, I think the key to keeping technology from being a master instead of a servant is to examine all of these things, to welcome the technology you find useful and get rid of the tech you don't.

For instance, when I stopped drinking coffee we eventually got rid of our coffee maker. It took up a lot of space on the counter, and Thad so rarely drank a cup at that point that it wasn't worth keeping a large, clunky machine just for making coffee for guests.

Instead, we bought a couple of these. And when we saw this on sale at a local store, we snatched it up, too--now we can make coffee for company quite easily, but we still don't need a large electric appliance parked on the kitchen counter to do so. (And I have to tell you, coffee made this way is really, really, really good.)

The same principle can be used to weed out our "e-fatigue" problem. Those types of technological interactions that work for us, that we find valuable and rewarding, get to stay. But anything that's becoming an unpleasant chore or a dreary hassle can be jettisoned. We can prune our daily reads list, consider carefully before signing up on forums and email lists, examine the value of the social networking sites we may belong to, and eliminate any that are, or have become, more trouble than they're worth.

Our culture usually sends the message that anybody who is anybody is participating in all of these things, reading the latest blogs or websites, sending messages via the latest gadgets, absorbing all the tech news to know what the next hot new great thing is going to be. But nobody can do all of it, and nobody should feel the pressure to try; there's no harm in walking away from things that have become a hindrance, a distraction, an annoyance, or even an occasion of sin (in fact, that last is pretty mandatory; we should walk away from occasions of sin).

Technology may seem like a benevolent tyrant--but no tyrant is better than even a benevolent one. So long as we retain the power to disconnct, log out, shut off, turn down, and tune out, then we're still in charge. But staying in charge means staying on top of the situation, and not letting the technology we use get to the point where it feels as though the technology is using us.

What is Conservatism?

I don't know how many people have been following the recent debates on Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con blog about the dustup between Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steele, and the future of conservatism.

I've been reading with great interest, but not commenting as much as usual. As a student of political science--I was a good lit. major. Which is a nice way of saying that the deeper books about political theory and the history of political movements escaped me completely; I'm a complete novice in the field, and rarely venture into heated arguments that try to hash out the pedigree of modern American conservatism and thus forecast its inevitable future.

All I can say, from the vantage point of an observer, is that the various voices of conservatism, mostly content to work together within the Republican party up to now (though not necessarily accepting the GOP as a perfect fit for their ideas, just accepting the expedient fact that the other party has no room in their "big tent" for conservatism at all) have turned on each other as each seeks to blame the other for the recent election's dismal results, and that they are engaged in the simultaneous effort to tear down the others while positioning themselves as the "true voices" of conservatism who alone can lead the way out of the morass of the present and into the future.

It was bound to happen, of course. Even before the election there were rumblings: the social conservatives were to blame for their pro-life, anti-gay marriage views; no, wait, it was the moderates with their moderate support of moderate baby-killing; no, wait, it was all Sarah Palin's fault; no, wait...

But now the various factions are beginning to coalesce, and to find their voices--and their spokesmen. I suppose that it was inevitable that there would be a "talk radio-style conservatism" with Limbaugh at its head; but the sheer nastiness on both sides as one side rejects Limbaugh's "brand" of conservatism as too populist and anti-intellectual, and the other rejects the critics as too enamored of Obama, of Ivy-League credentials and east coast snobbery to be able to relate to ordinary Americans, is a little surprising.

I'm sure that some of this is probably healthy. But if it's too protracted, or it splits conservatives into too many subgroups, then no matter how bad the economy gets or how much socialism Obama enacts or even how generally inept he may turn out to be, there will be no chance to nominate a conservative to replace him.

Some may wonder, given that our only choice as conservatives thus far has been to work with the GOP, whether it was ever possible to nominate a conservative again. Certainly John McCain wasn't a "conservative" candidate, was he? The people at CPAC seem to think that Mitt Romney is a "real" conservative, if their presidential preference straw poll is any indication--but during the last election lots of conservatives rejected Romney, preferring to support either Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee as men who were each more conservative than Romney.

This is where I think conservatives, both inside and outside the Republican party, need to seize the opportunity to have a national conversation about what conservatism is, what it would mean to have and to advance a conservative political agenda, and what a truly conservative leader would look like. Instead of each faction advancing a "champion" and then loudly defending their champion while destroying the other factions' heroes, we could be talking about just what we stand for, how our ideas are different from those of liberalism, and, most importantly of all, what it is we're trying to conserve.

I think, quite honestly, that in the recent past conservatism has become associated too much with money. I don't mean in the sense that some people draw the simplistic equation: conservative = Republican = country club, but rather the idea that conservatives are all about material success, making money and keeping it, fighting for tax cuts and spurning the legitimate needs of their fellow men.

This isn't an accurate portrayal of what conservatism is, but I can see why some have reached this conclusion. Aside from the reality that this is how the media presents conservatives--as greedy, selfish people concerned only with amassing ever more wealth at the expense of all the poor homeless unemployed people from the approved politically correct categories--there is the undeniable element within conservatism of what we might call "bootstrapism," the philosophy that success, material success, in large quantities is equally available to all Americans and that all we really need is for the government to get out of our way--and that this is fundamentally what conservatism is all about.

The bootstrapist conservatives seem to believe that it is conservative to want to be rich, and further, that it is conservative to place that goal at the forefront of one's objectives, above such concerns as faith, family, community, home and the like. It's the conservatism that seems to want to conserve Hummers and McMansions, and that would view a teacher and his wife living on $35,000 a year so she can stay home with the children almost pityingly, as if the only possible reason anyone would ever choose to do this was because this person was an underachiever who would never have amounted to anything anyway.

I see the bootstrapist element as having defined much of conservatism in the recent past; now, having lost an election, lost control of Congress, and lost face, they're fighting to make sure that their notion of conservatism doesn't get swept aside.

Unfortunately, the bootstrapists were also the ones who loudly celebrated their triumphs when the Dow climbed past 10,000 and when the housing market made people into overnight millionaires. This, they crowed, was proof of the virtue of their ideas--left alone, the market would make everybody rich, and the sourpuss naysayers on the left would have to realize that only the lazy, the criminal, the unambitious and the underachievers would fail. Which was too bad, of course, but it was their own fault for not seizing hold of the American dream when they had the chance.

But the tide has turned, the wealth is evaporating, and bootstrapism is a less-appealing side of conservatism (if it can even be called that, except by its own champions) than ever.

So it's time to talk about what else conservatism is. It's time to talk about what it is to that teacher and his wife in my fictional example above. It's time to talk about what it is to small farmers, to middle-class suburban Americans, to the poor in inner cities. If conservatism as a political philosophy is going to inspire, uplift, inform, and form, then it has to be something that matters to each of these people, not just to wealthy entrepreneurs and wealthy political figures.

We know what liberalism promises and offers. We know the liberal vision, that people do not need God or morality, that all they need is an all-encompassing government that will pay for them from cradle to grave, fund their education, subsidize their jobs, take away all worries at the price of their freedom. In the short term the liberal vision is to create newer and bigger and more powerful government, to take over health care, to mandate various approvals of immorality from gay marriage to forced participation in abortions even by those who object to them, even, perhaps, to encourage euthanasia. We know that the liberal notion is that any money a person earns really belongs to the government (or to the "collective") and that the benevolent government allows him to keep some portion of it after it decides how much of it the government needs to pay for its pet projects and advance its ambitious agendas.

So the question, "What is Conservatism?" needs to be answered in the light of all of that. For too long the answer has centered so much around the money aspects that even so-called "conservatives" have pretended that it is possible to be conservative while believing in abortion, in government-funded contraception programs aimed at our children, in gay marriage, and the like. It has long been my view that without social conservatism you don't really have "conservatism;" what you have is a kind of progressive with a little bit of financial caution as a characteristic.

What is conservatism? What are its aims, its goals? And when the various Republican factions have fought out their differences, what of conservatism will remain within the party--if any of it will?

The Apocalyptic Refrigerator and the Quest for Perseverance

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of Stephan Pastis' comic strip, Pearls Before Swine. Pastis writes with a lot of insight into human nature; coming from an Orthodox background he seems not to mind tangling with eternal verities from time to time, and has probably featured themes involving death more than any other comic strip writer whose work has ever been syndicated.

I was thinking the other day about a series of strips Pastis wrote which can be found in his collection book, Lions and Tigers and Crocs, Oh My! In the series, magnetic letters on the refrigerator in Rat and Pig's house begin forming ominous messages like "The End is Near," and "Repent." Though the sweet and innocent Pig is ready to take the messages seriously right from the first, the more cynical, worldly Rat's initial response to the seemingly apocalyptic refrigerator is to suggest that they eat out. When a much more elaborate message quoting Revelation 9:6 appears, though, even Rat is scared; the next thing we know, the two are in a monastary, copying Scripture and wondering how to spell "Leviticus."

Alas, Rat's carnal nature is not a good fit for the monastery, and even Pig misses "beer and pizza" night. The two return home and vow to pay no further attention to the fridge (though they're quite willing to be pandered to by the television).

I was thinking of this series because of a very strong truth about human nature it expresses: it is easy to seek religion, to cling to faith, in times of uncertainty or fear--but it is hard to persevere in faith when times are relatively easy.

Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have written about the dangers of materialism; we Catholic Americans who rightly opposed communism for so long sometimes forget that nearly as many warnings exist about godless capitalism and its dangers to our souls. When times are good, men tend to forget that God is still the author of our lives, the beneficient Love Who gives us every good thing; they start to believe that they themselves have made their own successes, by following a series of pragmatic decisions, understanding and exploiting the rules of the market, or otherwise creating their own destinies.

The terror attacks upon America in 2001 were a momentary reminder that this is not the case, that we are not the masters of our fates, that even the man in the Bible who stored up grain and celebrated his riches was called a fool by God, Who did not intend the evil that is death, but Who allowed for that possibility when He gave man free will. People responded to the great evil of the terror attacks by seeking what is good; churches were packed. But only for a time; our parish seemed unusually crowded right up through that Christmas, but by the following Lent there were plenty of empty seats again.

What gets in the way? I'm sure the people who started coming to Mass after September 11, 2001 had every intention of drawing closer to God, of spending time each week in worship and prayer, of returning to the practice of the faith of their youth, or finding a spiritual home even if they'd never had one. And here and there, some probably did remain, a few souls out of many who were able to keep those promises and open themselves up to the mystery of grace.

But so many more, making the same promises and having the same intentions, did not keep them. Why is this?

In the microcosm of Pastis' comic, I can see three of the reasons why people are unable to persevere:

1. Doubt. Having lived with cynical scepticism, perhaps for a whole life, some people may find that once the moment of fear or anxiety which drove them to seek God is over, their doubts return, making the practice of coming to church seem like folly.

2. Flesh. Having indulged their carnal natures, they are unprepared to reform their lives when called upon to do so. While neither the Catholic Church nor the various Christian churches expect people to live completely free from sin, there is an expectation that believers will be constantly heeding God's call to reform their lives and live in accordance with the Gospel, with Church teachings, and with the desire and intention of practicing virtue. But someone who has never tried living this way may refuse to give up certain sins, or slide back into them so often that they begin to resent and reject the Church's transformative message.

3. Habit. Like Pig and his desire for a "beer and pizza" night at the monastery, people form habits which are not always sins in themselves, but which can be very hard to lay aside and do without when they are called to do so for the sake of the Kingdom. The most obvious of these in our present culture is the habit of sleeping in on Sunday mornings, but there are other habits of self-indulgence which can get in the way of the practice of a Christian life and regular habits of worship and prayer.

But just as these three things get in the way of those who, in bad times or times of fear and uncertainty, seek a return to the practice of their faith, so do they also get in the way of those of us who do practice our faith on a regular basis. Doubts can enter our mind and weaken our love for God; the lure of the flesh can make us try to reason that we can still be a good Catholic (or a strong Christian) and do or have something that the Bible and the Church both say we can't have; and our habits may be the most pernicious roadblocks of all, lulling us into laziness and self-indulgence all while convinced that we are living the Gospels in our day-to-day lives.

The enemies of perseverence in faith surround us, as they always have surrounded believers. Lent, as it always does, provides us with a wonderful chance to see more clearly what stands between us and God, and to work on weeding those things out of our lives, to let His work bloom in us more fully as He calls us to become fit citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Still Hacking

I had planned to do some more serious writing this afternoon; at the very least I was going to comment on this story, and may try to do so tomorrow.

Alas, I've reached the purely miserable stage of this stupid cold the girls and I have all picked up; our house sounds like a symphony of coughing, and we're all really, really tired of being sick.

So below are a couple of cold-virus-related Blogthings quizzes for fun; I'll try to get back to some actual writing tomorrow, when hopefully this thing will be loosening its enervating grip.

See you then!

You Are Cranberry Juice

You're sassy and even a bit snarky at times. You have an edge to you. And while you can be brutally honest, you're still quite a charmer. You are confident, modern, stylish, and dazzling. You have an overpowering personality. You're a bit of an acquired taste. People often wish you were sweeter.

What Kind of Juice Are You?

You Are Tea

You are mellow and reflective. You don't allow yourself to feel in a rush and frenzied. You're likely to appreciated the ideas or connections that come up over a warm cup of tea. While you do enjoy the energy of a caffeine boost, you love that it allows you to take a break. You're not in a rush to do anything. You're content with your life, and in no rush to change it.

Are You Coffee or Tea?

You Are Chicken Noodle Soup

You are a traditional and conservative person. You value the past, and change frightens you. You are very loyal, especially to your family. You prefer a low-key life, with lots of time spent at home. You like soup because it's easy, quick, and cheap. You tend to have a favorite soup you stick to. Why change a good thing?

What Kind of Soup Are You?

The Manilow Effect

You may have seen this story: a mall in New Zealand, tired of having its business driven away by misbehaving teens, plans to fight back with a unique weapon:

It'll be Barry Manilow versus the mall rats. The New Zealand city of Christchurch hopes that putting the American crooner's smooth and gentle tones into the mix of music to be broadcast through the central mall district can pacify unruly teens who congregate there_ or at least convince them to go elsewhere.

The intention is to change the environment in a positive way ... so nobody feels threatened or intimidated," Central City Business Association manager Paul Lonsdale told The Associated Press. "I did not say Barry Manilow is a weapon of mass destruction."

A group of several dozen young people regularly spread rubbish, spray graffiti, get intoxicated, use drugs, swear and intimidate patrons at the outdoor mall, he said.

It's a funny story in many ways, the sort of news blip that ends up being a late-night comic's "gimme" of the evening. But in addition to the humor, there's fodder for cultural reflection.

Marketers know well that many things create a mood that influences the behavior they most want to produce: the behavior of shopping, and especially of buying things we don't necessarily need. Music is a part of that, as is lighting, store design, placement of various goods, scents, etc.; and within the last century the creation of places that specialized in manufacturing the sort of ambiance that leads to impulsive spending has risen to a near-art form.

At the same time, our culture has become saturated with messages appealing to self-indulgence. Whether we're talking about sex, food, money, or behavior, the message is: do what feels good. Don't accept limits. You can have whatever you want.

The marketers and merchants were happy with those cultural voices; they helped create them. And so long as the behavior it drove was the sort that led overindulged adults to congregate at their stores and spend large amounts of money on things that have little actual value, all for the perceived status of ownership, they were glad to encourage the cultural message, to augment it, to amplify it, and to provide an outlet for its quenchless hedonism.

But now, apparently, the message has begun to backfire. When "do what feels good" equals "hang out at an outdoor mall and harass the shoppers," when "you can have whatever you want" means you can have the ability to gather in small hordes to drink, use drugs, curse, and otherwise display antisocial behavior, when "don't accept limits" was your parents' philosophy, and now means that you have no respect for other people's property or authority, then suddenly we have a problem. These teens aren't coming to the mall to spend money (preferable) nor even to work at minimum wage jobs (less preferable, but necessary) but only to disrupt the consumer process, to show the marketers and mall-designers what the evolutionary outcome of their principles really is.

Sadly, the options of those dealing with the problem are limited. Since these places are open to the public, the teens can't be driven off unless they commit some crime--and shoppers will be driven off by the teens' very presence. Adding the music of Barry Manilow to the mix probably seems like a pretty good idea, but I think the people behind that decision may be underestimating the degree to which the teens have assimilated society's message of self-absorption.

One thing that might drive off the marauding teens is classical music, of course. But any mall that tried this tactic would be taking the risk that music of such transcendence might drive off the shoppers as well as the teen troublemakers, reminding both of the existence of the sort of beauty and goodness that doesn't rely on slick marketing campaigns or overpriced designer gewgaws. Oh, not really, of course; though one can always dream.

UPDATE: See Mike Licht's illustration which captures the mall's tactic.

Catholics for Moloch

So, Barack Obama may think that questions about when life begins are above his pay grade. But apparently he has no problem selecting for his head of Health and Human Services someone who is good friends with the kind of guy who thinks that slaughtering full-term infants is a good idea:

Last year, Planned Parenthood boasted in a Wall Street Journal story they would spend an unprecedented $10 million in the 2008 election cycle to make sure they elected strong allies at all levels of government. With the election of President Obama and a long chain of Planned Parenthood affiliated cabinet and staff members, the investment has paid off.

The crown jewel for Planned Parenthood’s portfolio is the appointment of Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas as Secretary of Housing and Human Services, deceptively presented in an Associated Press article on February 28 as a lovable Democratic governor “reaching across the aisle” to do whatever she can to “minimize abortion;” the article even credits her with the 9% drop in abortions from 2002-2007. [...]

Sebelius is arguably the best friend to the abortion industry of all our country’s governors. She has proven during her tenure that it is possible to have abortion restrictions on the books while simultaneously preventing their enforcement. As governor, she made prevention of enforcement and protection of the abortion business a top priority. When former Attorney General Phill Kline became the first prosecutor in the nation to file criminal cases based on redacted abortion records from infamous late term abortionist George Tiller and Planned Parenthood, Sebelius swung into action to prevent him from ever gaining a conviction. [...]

With Sebelius’ ties to notorious late term abortionist Dr. George Tiller and her consistent decisions to put the interests of the abortion industry above the safety of families, the Governor has clearly indicated where her loyalties lie. She is bought and paid for by the abortion industry and President Obama is showing his true colors by continuing to serve up the culture of death in choosing the poster girl of the abortion industry to run an agency whose decisions will influence every aspect of our lives.

Read the whole Human Events essay if you can; its author, Jennifer Giroux, gets into some other troubling aspects of Kathleen Sebelius' wholehearted and enthusiastic support of the murder of unborn children.

One aspect not mentioned in the Human Events article, but mentioned elsewhere, is what a slam this pick is to Catholics. Sebelius, of course, is a Catholic who has been asked by her own bishop to stop taking communion, so openly objectively evil is her unwavering abortion cheerleading. This blatant disregard by Obama for the sensibilities of his Catholic supporters has been met by some of those supporters with the most disgusting example of sycophantic boot-licking toadyism ever demonstrated by Catholics eager to curry favor with a leader who obviously has nothing but contempt for them; I refer to the website "Catholics for Sebelius," to which I will not link as I don't want the residual electricity from their eventual divine smiting to harm my computer. I'm kidding. A little.

But in all honesty, I have to wonder at what point those Catholics eager to sell themselves on the altar of political expedience will find enough to be enough. At the present time I think Obama could nominate Moloch to run a department of the government, and the response from the "Catholics Who Shill for Abortion Pols" and their various works and pomps would be to set up, with the same dog-like docility, a "Catholics for Moloch" webpage. It wouldn't be all that different from their "Catholics for Sebelius" page; they could have the same sort of "Q and A" page, which could read, in part, as follows:

Is Moloch really Catholic?

As a pagan god, Moloch is very religious. His whole pagan deity family is very religious, and assured that Moloch would have a very religious upbringing. Moloch believes in the dignity of human life, especially the power that comes from immolating infants. Surely all people of religious values can agree that Moloch is someone who shares our core values.

Does Moloch support abortion?

Moloch agrees with Catholic Church teaching that abortion is wrong. He much prefers that fully born infants be thrown into his fires, rather than aborted ones. However, recognizing that this is a complex issue and understanding the need for real compromise instead of polarized debates, Moloch accepts the homage paid to him by Dr. George Tiller as an example of acceptable infant slaughter, even though it is technically abortion and not ritualized human sacrifice, which he prefers.

Did abortions increase in Biblical times under Moloch's watch?

No. Infanticide did, but this was a fervent religious custom that our training in multicultural diversity sensitivity must appreciate. But Moloch never increased abortion, and in fact probably kept abortion rates low, since women who were his worshipers could always toss unwanted infants into the flames covering his altars of sacrifice. Catholics can find much to celebrate in Moloch's determination to reduce abortion rates!

And so on. It would be just as easy to cast Moloch as an acceptable choice for Catholics as it is to paint Sebelius in that light; the truth is, Sebelius never met an abortion dollar in fundraising she didn't like, and has been the kept woman of the Kansas abortion industry for a long time now.

I see this pick as a line in the sand drawn by Obama; he wants to know just how many of his "Catholic" supporters will cross it to stand by him, and loudly proclaim that Sebelius is just as pro-life as anybody, even though her own bishop has told her not to present herself for communion. After Obama's pick of the pro-choice "Catholic" Biden to be his vice-president, this is starting to look like a disturbing pattern: Obama is bent on going to war with the Church in America over abortion--and he thinks he will win it.

So while the "Catholics Who Shill for Abortion Pols" rush to be the first to cross that line and assure Obama that his grace and favor mean much, much more to them than God's, the rest of us are finding that line in the sand to be the faint tracings of a battle line being drawn. With Obama's concurrent act to rescind conscience protections to keep health care workers from being forced to participate in abortions, the battle plan is emerging clearly, and it's a two-pronged attack: Obama will surround himself with Catholics eager to declare that you can dissent from Church teaching on abortion while still remaining a Catholic in good standing, and at the same time will dismantle all religious protections that keep Catholics and others from being forced to participate in the evil of abortion. The end game is to weaken and destroy any notion that being Catholic means being pro-life and/or that one's Catholic, pro-life views are deserving of any protection in the public square.

Surrounded by Catholic abortion quislings like Biden and Sebelius, lauded by Catholic sycophants like those behind the pro-Biden and pro-Sebelius website, Obama will seek to advance the notion that being opposed to abortion is a mere quirk, a view held by some Catholics who perhaps aren't capable of deep, complex thought, a view that should be humored, perhaps, but neither respected nor protected, nor even, among health-care workers, tolerated. He's already defining the debate, and if those of us Catholics who understand that opposition to abortion is a crucial and non-negotiable issue for Catholics don't get busy fighting back, it won't be too long before that "Catholics for Moloch" website is a reality.

Praying for Jen

Anybody who reads the blog Conversion Diary, written by a former atheist, now Catholic mom of four (baby's coming today!) has probably been touched by Jen's thoughtful writing on spiritual topics, on her amazing journey, and on her lovely family.

And like I just said, baby number four is scheduled to arrive today; Jen has to have induced deliveries, and her handling of her difficult pregnancies with grace and love is also very inspiring to those of us who read her blog.

I know lots of Jen's readers are remembering to keep her in prayer today, but I wanted to provide a space for some of us to let her know that we're praying and waiting to hear about the arrival of her newest little one. For myself, I'm offering up my day for Jen and her labor and delivery; the girls and I are still sidelined by this yucky nasty virus thing, and I figured that offering my day, and particularly my efforts to remain patient and cheerful despite all the hacking and malaise, was probably the best I could do.

If you're saying some special prayers for Jen today, and would like to post them below as a kind of spiritual bouquet for her, please do so! And if you haven't yet discovered Jen's blog (there may be one or two of you, but I kind of doubt it) please take a second to read some of her amazing and insightful posts.

Jen, God bless! You're in our thoughts and prayers as you welcome your newest blessing into the world today.

UPDATE: She's here! Thanks be to God! (And we've been promised pictures soon--wooo!)